"No, I Would Not Consent."

Today I'm very sad. From news about a little boy.

On good days my faith hangs by a thread. Today is not a good day.

Today I'm reminded of this exchange between Ivan and Alyosha in The Brothers Karamazov:

"Listen: if everyone must suffer, in order to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children got to do with it?...Tell me yourself, I challenge you answer. Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature that little child beating its breast with its fist, for instance—and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I would not consent," said Alyosha softly.