In Second Kings, we get an account where the prophet Elisha is mocked by a throng of children. He curses them, and God sends two bears to attack them, which results in 42 of them being killed/injured:
2 Kings 2:23-24
23 And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the Lord. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
This is used by Atheists as an example of God being unjust, or evil. How should we understand this story?
The Bible makes a distinction between children which have not yet attained to the age of reason (Deuteronomy 1:39), and those who have. Those who have are responsible to God for what they do, in the same manner as an adult is. They go to Hell when they die, just the same as adults would (Romans 7:9).
Quite clearly, even though we aren't given the age of the children in the story, they had reached the age of moral responsibility, hence why God punished them.
This moral responsibility is also why, in the Law of God, children were subject to the death penalty for cursing their parents (Exodus 21:17, Leviticus 20:9, Matthew 15:4, Mark 7:10), striking their parents (Exodus 21:15), and being persistently, egregiously evil (Deuteronomy 21:18-21).
God wouldn't make these laws if they weren't just. And, having grown up, yet still being able to remember some truly evil, despicable kids from my childhood, I agree with these laws completely, along with what God chose to do in the passage in question. Some of those kids grew up to do terrible things, and so it would have been better had they been taken care of early.
By the way, what were ostensibly hundreds of kids - of which only 42 got caught - doing ganging up on a random guy to mock him, anyway? Have you ever been surrounded by hundreds of evil, stupid teenagers? Would you care to try it?
Whether we understand the laws or not, they are made by God, who knows far more about children than anyone who has ever lived - including modern sinners trying to stand in judgement of God by mocking this passage.
I'm not embarrassed by this story, at all. I think God was 100% in the right for judging those evil kids. They got what they deserved, and served as a lesson to all those who would come after them.
Someone raising an objection to this passage, or finding it ridiculous, demonstrates more about that person, and their morals, and the way they were raised, than it does to cast aspersions onto God.