How should a Christian answer an atheist neighbor who says she can not believe in a God who allows the murder of children (she referenced the Sandy Hook crime)?

Your neighbor’s question comes from a place of real pain, and it deserves a compassionate answer. The murder of children is one of the hardest things for anyone to understand, and the Bible never asks us to treat such suffering lightly.

A Christian can begin by acknowledging that what happened at Sandy Hook was truly evil. God did not create murder, cruelty, or suffering as part of His original plan. Scripture says that when God created the world, it was “very good” (Genesis 1:31). Sin entered later through human rebellion, and with sin came violence, suffering, and death (Genesis 3; Romans 5:12).

God has also given human beings genuine freedom. That freedom allows us to love, obey, and choose what is right, but it also means people can choose terrible evil. God allowing human freedom is not the same as God approving of every choice people make.

The Bible also makes clear that God cares deeply about children. Jesus said, “Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me” (Matthew 19:14). He is not indifferent to their suffering. Scripture teaches that God sees injustice and that every evil act will ultimately be brought into judgment (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

It is also important to remember that God is not distant from human suffering. In Jesus, God entered this broken world Himself. Christ experienced grief, rejection, violence, injustice, and death. The cross shows that God does not merely watch suffering from far away; He entered into it and made a way for sin and death to finally be defeated.

Revelation 21:4 gives the hope Christians hold onto: one day “there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain.”

So I would gently tell your neighbor that Christianity does not teach that God wanted Sandy Hook to happen. It teaches that we live in a fallen world where human beings can commit terrible evil, but God sees every act of suffering, will judge every wrong, and has promised that evil and death will not have the final word.