a theology of miscarriage

Miscarriage and LossGriefFaith
Written By Anna Kettle

…a few thoughts about reconciling pregnancy loss with faith

 

Why I think this matters

Although I grew up with parents who were in church leadership and have been an active, church-goer for most of my life, when I found myself facing recurrent miscarriages a few years ago, it quickly became apparent that I didn’t have any real biblical framework to understand or explain my experiences within.

And neither did anyone around me for that matter really…

What I’ve since learned through co-founding and leading SPACE miscarriage support network, is that I am not alone in this.

In fact, although the network wasn’t specifically set up to be faith-based, in our months we were approached by so many individuals who were struggling with a personal crisis of faith following loss, and/or feeling hurt or confused by poor advice they’d received from other christians, we quickly began to realise the depth of this need…

The truth is that miscarriage raises some big spiritual questions for those who walk through it - and when the statistics say that around 1 in 4 couples pregnancy loss, it’s a subject that should bother us all. Because even if we aren’t all included in those figures, almost all of us will have friends, colleagues, and family members who are.

It’s an issue that should also concern anyone who has an interest in supporting the spiritual health of others in any kind of capacity, including church pastors, leaders, spiritual directors, mentors, christian counsellors, small group leaders and more.

 

Questions that miscarriage can raise

Like any area of suffering, sickness and pain, miscarriage raises some general theological questions about the character and nature of God.

Where is God when it hurts? Why didn’t He answer my prayers? And can I really believe that God is good, when bad things happen to me?

But I also think that miscarriage throws up some quite unique and specific questions too. If God knits each person together in their mother’s womb, as Psalm 139 describes, then where is God in miscarriage? And if God is the creator of life, why does miscarriage happen? Does He create a life, then immediately change his mind? Does He sometimes get things wrong?

These kinds of questions that miscarriage can raise are challenging for even the maturest in their faith. Because even if you can a find confidence that God didn’t cause or intend those miscarriages, He didn’t exactly stop them either - and how do you make peace with that fact?

Yet too often churches and faith communities have nothing at all to offer newly bereaved parents in the way of any real spiritual answers, reassurance or support - only well meaning, but ultimately hollow spiritual platitudes such as ‘It will happen in His timing’ or ‘Maybe God has a better plan’.

Decent faith-based resources* on this subject continue to be few and far between, and in the absence of any serious engagement with this difficult subject by wider faith communities, grieving parents are often left to wrestle with their experiences alone.

This is why I decided to launch ‘faith SPACE’, a spin-off support group within the SPACE miscarriage and infertility network, which is specifically designed for people wrestling with their faith after experiencing loss and infertility. It offers a simple online forum in which to connect with other christians facing these challenges, and a chance to voice and wrestle with hard questions in a safe and non-judgemental space. You can learn more about it here.

(Side note: I’ve added links to a few resources that I personally recommend at the bottom of this post)

 

Unhelpful things people say

As I alluded to above, often well-meaning church people (as well as non-church people) can say unhelpful or unbiblical things in the face of hard questions posed by this subject. And I know that most people who haven’t experienced a similar thing, find this area hard.

What is the ‘right’ thing to say? Often people can say things in the moment without properly thinking them through first…

To those individuals I choose to extend grace, because the truth is that most of us struggle to know what to say to a grieving individual, and it’s much braver to try to engage than to just avoid the person or the subject completely.

But if we want our churches and faith communities to be safe places for those who are bereaved, then we need to get much better at having hard and honest conversations about miscarriage and grief.

And to help us with this, I’ve included just a few examples of the ‘not-so great’ comments that I have received after losses, alongside some brief explanations about why they might be problematic to say someone who is grieving:

  • ‘Perhaps heaven needed another angel’

    But where in the Bible is it ever suggested that unborn babies turn into angels? I’m not aware of any theological evidence for this at all.

  • ‘Obviously God has a better plan.’

    This is really problematic because it suggests that someone’s miscarriage was actually planned or intended by God, yet this is completely counter to what the Bible tells us about his role in creating not destroying life and the character and nature of God.

  • ‘Maybe it happened for the best’

    This assumes that miscarriages occur because of genetic abnormalities, which is simply not always the cause (it wasn’t for me). More often than not, the cause of miscarriage is unexplained - but even if it was found to be due to genetic issues, is it helpful to add your value judgement on that?

  • ‘God will work this out for your good’

    Of course, God is able to heal and redeem all things in time, but for a grieving parent there is nothing that makes up for losing their baby. And saying this can often be conflated with God intending a miscarriage in order for a ‘greater good’.

  • ‘It will happen (again) in His timing’

    You should really never say this to a bereaved parent because you can’t possibly know that for sure. Nothing is ever guaranteed. And even if they do have more children in the future, that doesn’t remove or replace their grief over this current loss.                                            

  • ‘Maybe God is just asking you to wait for a season before having a baby’

    This doesn’t make any logical sense. Why would God decide that you need to wait for a baby, but only after already giving you a pregnancy? Did he change his mind or do asudden u-turn about their suitability as parents?

  • ‘Perhaps God has other things for you to birth right now’

    This suggests that parenting can’t coincide with other callings and purposes, which is clearly untrue as many parents also simultaneously serve God in other ways.

  • ‘Is there some unconfessed sin in your life that you might need to confess?’

    This one is particularly problematic because it actually seems to suggest that the parent is to blame for their miscarriage - which may be even worse than blaming God. So to this kind of comment, my answer is always: Quite probably, but if sinlessness was a pre-requisite for parenthood then no child would ever be born.  

This list isn’t exhaustive, but hopefully you get the gist! In short, it’s just best to avoid any comments that seem to tribute the cause / reason / blame for miscarriage to either God, or the person who has just encountered the loss.

The reality is that the theology around this is a bit more complex than anything you can for into a quick soundbite or platitude… so don’t try to offer one. It’s much better to focus on offering empathy with lines like this instead:

“I’m so sorry… that must be so hard” or “I don’t know what to say… but I am here if you need me” or “I don’t have all the answers… but I’m praying for you.”

 

What does the Bible tell us?

So what does the Bible actually say about the subject of miscarriage/pregnancy loss?

Well in short, not very much at all - and this is somewhat problematic, as is only adds to the sense of spiritual silence on the issue for christian couples facing this issue today.

Of course, there are a good number of infertility stories mentioned in the Bible, including Sarah, Rebekah and Rachel (Book of Genesis), Hannah (1 Samuel 1), the unnamed mother of Samson (Book of Judges), and Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist (Luke 1) - and it may well be that miscarriages were a part of these stories too, but there is no specific mention or indication whether that was the case.

In fact, reading these accounts can feel a little frustrating for women facing problems with having a family today, and I can’t help but wonder how much more detail about these women’s experiences might have been included in the Bible, if it hadn’t been solely authored by men…

But conjecture only gets us so far, and as it is, the only specific references to miscarriage that explicitly appear in the Bible are in the Old Testament, and they are solely in the context of passages about God’s blessings and curses over Israel.

For example, in Exodus 23:26 Israel is promised that “none will miscarry or be barren in your land” if they followed the Mosaic Covenant, and in Hosea 9:14 the prophet suggests that God should give his people “wombs that miscarry, and breasts that are dry” because of their wickedness and disobedience.

Needless to say, such passages are not massively helpful for further study by those experiencing miscarriage today. Certainly, there is no value in continuing to interpret miscarriage or baby loss as God’s punishment on individuals, as these ancient writers of early scriptures once did.

After all, the New Testament makes it abundantly clear that “there is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus”(Romans 8:1).

 

Exploring a wider Biblical narrative

So where does all this leave us? If the Bible doesn't deal with the issue of miscarriage very specifically, or at least not in a way that is massively relevant to our modern medical understanding and context, then what more can we deduce?

Is God simply indifferent about the issue? Well, personally I don’t think so.

In fact, you don’t have to look very far into the Bible to realise that life is never seen as ‘an accident’ or just ‘here by biological chance’.

For example, Jeremiah 1:5 says “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” and Psalm 139: 14-16 says, “For you created my inmost being… your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

But if I’m honest, for a long time after my losses, these kinds of passages were incredibly difficult for me to read. I just couldn’t comprehend how God could be so involved in the planning, forming and conception of life, and then simultaneously be so silent or absent when that same life fails or slowly ebbs away.

I’m still not fully sure how to reconcile and make sense of all these verses in the context of my personal experiences of loss. I mean, are we actually meant to take these ideas held in the writings of ancient poets and prophets about how and when life begins so very literally? How close is God’s involvement in the detailed process of conception? Is he really planning all those teenage pregnancies, but denying infertile couples in their 30s? Or does God create the original spark of energy required for life but then leave the rest up to nature, and our own choices and agency? Honestly, I don’t know… but I’d like to think it’s the latter as I can’t make much sense of anything else.

What I do know for sure though is that there’s this undeniable theme running throughout scripture which gives a very high view of all life as God-created and spirit-breathed. And this gives me cause for very real hope that no pregnancy loss, however early it might have happened, is ever overlooked, or unimportant to God.

I’ve also found it helpful to treat the tragedy of miscarriage within a similar theological framework to any other form of sickness or disease or brokenness in our bodies - not as God’s plan, will, or intention for our lives, and not as a judgement upon individuals for sin either, but simply as a terrible ongoing side-effect of living in a world that is still waiting to be redeemed.

The overall narrative arc of the whole Bible makes it clear that death was never God’s original plan for our lives, and there’s multiple scriptures that remind us that God is the author of life, not death. In John 10:10 Jesus teaches that, ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that you may have life, and have it to the full.’ And then just a few chapters later in John 14:6, he claims to actually be ‘the way, the truth, and the life’.

This matters because Jesus was the exact representation of God in human form (Hebrews 1:3). In other words, the purpose of his life and his words were to show us what God is like and to demonstrate His intentions towards us.

So if you want to really know what God’s character is like or learn more about how he works in our world, a good place to start is by looking in scripture, and particularly those scriptures that centre on the life and teachings of Jesus.

And the more I look, the more I realise that those intentions are for each of us to experience life. God’s intention is always for our human flourishing, and so we can be fairly confident that anything outside of this does not come from him - whether that’s cancer, or depression, or miscarriage, or just growing sick in our old age.

To me, applying this over-arching biblical narrative to the subject of miscarriage offers the most satisfying explanation for it, since this means that it need never be justified as a part of God’s ‘plan’ or ‘will’ for our lives - which is an idea that has always jarred for me. Indeed, it seems wholly inconsistent with both the character of God and the roles that He plays as a loving parent and the creator of all things.

As someone wise once said to me, ‘If something you’re believing about God doesn’t draw you closer to Him, then it’s probably not the truth about who He is’ - and I think that’s a pretty good benchmark to work from.

It’s also interesting that in Genesis 3, which is the passage that describes the fall and subsequent curse of sin, it specifically refers to ‘pain in childbearing’ as one of the direct consequences for Eve and all women descending from her line. Although we tend to interpret this as referring to the pain of labour itself, I would argue that it could also just as easily refer to the emotional turmoil of infertility and pregnancy loss too.

Either way, I think any consideration of the subject needs to be within the framework of the larger Biblical ‘narrative arc’ stretching from Genesis to Revelations, and the final day of redemption that we still eagerly await.

 

What else does the Bible says about loss?

It’s also worth remembering that while the Bible doesn’t make many references to miscarriage specifically, the Bible does reveals a lot about God’s heart towards those who experience loss. He doesn’t just leave us to grieve alone, but promises to be our comfort and to draws near to us in our grief.

Psalm 24:18 says, “The Lord is close to the broken-hearted, and saves all those who are crushed in spirit” and in Psalm 56:8 David writes, “You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle”, which is such a beautiful picture of how intimately God cares about our anguish in grief.

But perhaps the best reflection of God’s heart towards those who are grieving is seen in Jesus’ proximity to those who are hurting. In Matthew 5:4, Jesus even preaches that: “Blessed are those who mourn or grieve, for they will be comforted.”

At first glance it might seem like a strange thing to call those who grieve ‘blessed’. I mean, what could be blessed about losing a baby?

But having wrestled with this idea for a while, I think that maybe the blessing is not in the grief itself – but in the invitation that grief can present, to experience God’s comforting presence in a much deeper, fuller way than we’ve ever needed to know before.

What’s more, in John 11:35 we are reminded that ‘Jesus wept’ with grief too – about the untimely death of his close friend Lazarus. What an incredible reminder this story offers to anyone who is bereaved, that in Jesus we have a saviour who doesn’t just sympathise with our pain from afar, but knows that same kind of searing pain we feel? He’s a saviour who has also walked in these shoes.

 

A hope beyond the grave

Finally, I also believe that it’s possible to experience God’s supernatural hope and peace, even in the midst of the deepest grief and loss - and part of that hope for a believer comes from knowing that death is not the final end.

How can I be so sure? Because the Bible repeatedly references eternal life as a future promise for all those who believe in Him.

For example, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14 says this: “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus all those who have fallen asleep in him.”

What’s more, as you read through Bible passages about the end times, whether in Old Testament prophecies like Isaiah 43 or in the New Testament descriptions by John in the Book of Revelations, there is a clear and recurring theme around God’s awaited final redemption of all things.

He promises to heal and redeem and make all things new again, and although again unborn babies aren’t explicitly referenced anywhere, as a bereaved parent I simply can’t imagine a version of this promise which doesn’t include the redemption of my motherhood story as part of this.

Could there be any greater consolation or hope to be found after miscarriage, than in knowing that we will one day get to hold our unborn babies in our arms?

 

When questions still remain

So circling back to the original question, ‘Where is God in miscarriage?’ I know that I have presented a lot of big ideas here. But I also continue to wrestle with some questions that I still can’t fully resolve too…

Yet as time goes on, I also realise that there’s also some peace to be found in not knowing or fully understanding everything, but simply in trusting the One who does.

The truth is that we can trust God with the parts of our story that we don’t fully understand in the present, because He is ‘the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end’ (Revelations 1 & 22).

He doesn’t just see and know and hold all things in time, but He is the author of time itself. Past, present and future. It all unfolds by and for and through and back to Him. And since He is both the beginning and the end, then we can trust that He also holds the beginnings and the ends of each of our stories too.

And maybe that’s not the answer that we always want to have, but it’s the only answer we really need.

 

A list of further helpful resources

Below is a list of some of the best resources I’ve found that do try to wrestle with theology around miscarriage and grief after loss:

Best christian books

UK-based christian support & groups

 
 
Anna Kettle
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