The supernatural nature of near-death experience
One thing is for sure—science has long well observed the strange, unique properties of near-death experience. For one thing, it gives a person an entire picture of their bodily and mental mechanisms, because as the boy dies, he is forced to kick and scream against death. In other words, his body will never forget what it feels like to die, so he has a weird point of view, a fully informed point of view—which in this case leads the boy to say things that are so enlightened and epic and beautiful that his own parents are forced to read their Bibles to see if he's quoting the book.
Christianity and miracle belief
The authors are explicit about this: The family believes that the boy went to heaven and met Jesus. In other words, their argument is that, given the boy is so genuinely enlightened that he reminds them of God. Imagine praying desperately for the strength to survive a son's battle with sickness, and for his health, and then the boy dies, but then he comes back because of modern medicine and technology, and he is enlightened by whatever the body does in the brain when life stops.
They choose to say this is a miracle from God, a divine moment in time where the circumstances were painful, unusual, and terrifying, but then, someone is enlightened (the boy) and then they work through their issues as a family, mourning together and moving on toward a better future. So was it God or wasn't it? That question has a literary device associated with it: Deus Ex Machina, which is when, right at the last second, something absurd happens to save a hero from nearly certain doom, so much so that the characters all say, "Wait, was that God?" The boy is a living embodiment of that principle.
Healing, family, and grief
The passion of the family revolves around their shared nightmare when the son became sick and died for a brief moment on the table. When he came back, so to speak, he was affected by the death experience, such that he was infinitely wiser and more therapeutic in his relationships than his parents could even fathom. They were amazed by their four year old.
But it wasn't just that they were impressed. Actually, the most amazing feat of all was that the four year old, having never read the Bible whatsoever, had wisdom that reminded his parents of their religions. Why? Because he allowed them to grieve together, as a family. They mourned the horror of the boy's sickness, but also, somehow, they also mourned things together that the boy knew about without anyone explaining them to him—the death of a miscarried child, and the death of the grandfather.
