Review - 'Who Needs God' - part 5

I’m reviewing a series of six talks called ‘Who Needs God’, by Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Community Church, Atlanta — https://whoneedsgod.com/ — and we’ve reached the fifth talk.

Talk 5: ‘In-Justice For All’

In this fifth talk, Andy discusses the question, How can there be a good God when there is so much injustice in the world? He constructs his own version of theodicy — the attempt to defend God in the face of the existence of evil and suffering.

This is by far the most unsatisfying of the talks so far. It seems to be full of logical fallacies and round-about arguments that do not add up to a convincing case at all. And in the end, it completely ignores the biggest question that his audience would have.

I can’t help but notice that the tone of Andy’s voice and his facial expressions have become somewhat harsher in this talk compared with the previous ones. I wonder whether he senses that his argument is somewhat lacking, or whether he would much rather not have had to deal with this topic at all.

The talk starts with a rather strange ‘footnote’. Andy states that we should beware of using other people’s suffering as an argument against God. This is because, he claims, many people (especially in the developing world) accept suffering as part of life, and even find it to be what he calls ‘a path that leads to God.’ He claims — with unusual passion and more than his usual amount of finger-pointing — that it is insulting to these people to use their suffering as an argument against God. He then generalises this to claim that it is not valid to use anyone else’s suffering in building a case against God. But this is a faulty generalisation. I wonder whether the passion in Andy’s delivery at this point is there to make up for the lack of logic because, even if we discount those who accept suffering in the way Andy has described, that still leaves a good many people for whom suffering really is what the word implies: unwelcome, painful suffering with no apparent purpose. If anything is insulting, surely it is Andy’s argument that is insulting to these people. This footnote does nothing to alter any of the logic for or against the main argument. Even if Andy’s point here were valid, it would still leave a person able to use their own suffering as an argument against God.

Now we reach the main part of this fifth talk. Andy’s argument is that the existence of injustice and suffering in the world is not an argument either for or against the existence of God. He says that using injustice against the existence of God is an emotional argument, but it is not a rational argument.

Andy at this point qualifies the main argument, allowing that the existence of injustice could count as an argument against other versions of God, but not against the Christian God, the God revealed by Jesus. And he claims this is because Christians have never used the absence of injustice as an argument in favour of God. In Andy’s own words, ‘Christians have never made an argument for God’s existence based on a world where bad things never happen to good people.’ Other religions have claimed that God, or the gods, protect good people, but Christianity does not. And therefore it’s not valid to argue against the existence of the Christian God based on a world where bad things do happen to good people. Now correct me if I’m wrong, but this appears to be a logical fallacy. You can skip the next paragraph if you’re already convinced of that!

To show the fallacy in Andy’s argument, let’s set out two statements as follows:

• A: Bad things never happen to good people.
• B: God exists.

Andy’s logic here is that A has never been used as an argument for B, therefore not-A (bad things do happen) cannot be used as an argument against B. But this is not valid. There are three cases in which no-one would use A as an argument for B:

1. A is known to be false;
2. A is known to be true but does not imply B;
3. A is known to be true and does imply B, but no-one has thought of it before.

None of these cases says anything either way about the validity of the claim ‘not-A implies not-B’. That claim would have to be evaluated on its own terms. (In case 3, it would be invalid to claim ‘not-A implies not-B’ based only on ‘A implies B’ — that is the fallacy of denying the antecedent — but it could still be perfectly valid to claim ‘not-A implies not-B’ for other reasons.)

So far, then, Andy has done nothing to disprove the claim that the injustice or suffering experienced by at least some people could be used as an argument against God.

Nevertheless Andy from now on takes as given that injustice can’t be used as an argument against the existence of God, and moves on to consider what else injustice might mean instead. He says, ‘Injustice in the world calls into question the justice of God, not the existence of God.’ In other words, injustice doesn’t preclude the existence of any god, but it might seem to preclude the existence of a good god. Using another of Andy’s quotes, ’It makes more sense to be angry, than atheist. … It makes more sense to be disappointed in God than to completely disbelieve.’ This does make sense. Andy is at this point assuming that the case for the existence of the Christian God is compelling for other reasons, but allowing that the presence of pain and injustice can lead his audience to question the goodness of that God.

At this point Andy seems to almost deliberately confuse his audience by asking, ‘Why do we assume if there is God, God must be good and just?’ Who told us this? After a long diversion in which we wonder if Andy is about to discard this idea like the false foundations of Christianity he has discarded in his earlier talks, he eventually comes round to saying that this idea was introduced by Jesus. Andy claims it was Jesus who was the first to introduce the idea of the ‘justice-and-dignity-for-all version of God’ rather than a God who favoured one nation at the expense of the others. ‘Until Jesus came along there was no concept of a God who loved everybody on the planet.’ But that is to discount the elements of Judaism that were already developing this idea, and that Jesus drew on.

Next Andy contrasts the idea of a God of love and justice with nature and with the process of evolution by natural selection, which is indifferent to justice. Note that Andy is not rejecting science here, he appears to accepts natural selection, and chooses to contrast it with God. Andy says, ‘Nature is not just. … Natural selection knows nothing of justice, love or dignity.’ And quoting Stephen Hawking, ‘we have arrived here because of our aggression.’ Then Andy claims that because nature knows nothing of justice or injustice, without God there would be no such thing as justice; there would be no standard of right or wrong. We would be left with each of us defining right and wrong for ourselves and being in continual conflict with each other. But this is to ignore the work of anthropologies who can explain that what sense of justice we do have is a natural product of our evolution.

Andy concedes that at this point his audience might have a major question about all of this. But it’s not the question I would expect. His question is, ‘Does God have an answer to all this?’ and he goes on to answer this in the affirmative in the rest of the talk: God will bring justice in the end, through judgment, but has also provided a Saviour. Andy’s final conclusion is that suffering is not an argument against God; it is in fact a reminder that we need God. If we reject God, we reject justice. But he misses the more fundamental question: Why would a God of love and justice create a world based on a process that has no justice in the first place? Why create a world in which suffering is natural? Why create a world that needs a Saviour? This larger question is not only left unanswered, Andy seems to be totally unaware that his audience might even raise it as a question at all!

As well as ignoring this elephant in the room, we should also note that Andy has presented no hard evidence that God will actually bring eventual justice. He has provided no evidence that there will be judgment, apart from one vague mention that Jesus said so, but without using any quotes from the gospels. And he has said nothing about what form that judgment will take. We assume he is referring to the standard Christian doctrines of final judgment and hell, but he doesn’t mention them directly. Nor does he attempt to explain how a future judgment of sin could possibly put right present suffering due to natural diseases. The two don't seem to be related.

Andy’s final point is that our deepest longing for justice is a good match for Christianity, that it proves this all to be true. He says that if we care for justice then we should wish Christianity to be true; we should wish that God will bring justice. But this is a rather weak point. If we care for justice, why should we only wish that God will correct everything one day? Why shouldn’t we wish that the world had been different in the first place? Christianity isn’t really the best match for our deepest longings at all. The Eastern religions actually do a better job of dealing with suffering, by saying that all our experiences are an illusion and giving us tools to cope here and now, than Christianity does by deferring the solution to the future.

Overall, Andy seems to have failed to present a logically consistent argument. If I were to summarise the talk it would go something like this:

• You can’t use other people’s suffering as an argument against God because some people accept suffering as a path that leads them to God.
• Suffering isn’t an argument against God, but it could be an argument against a good God; it could be a reason to be angry with God.
• But were did we get the idea that God must be good? (seeming to argue as though this were false)
• It came from Jesus (so actually it’s true after all).
• Without God, nature has no justice; natural selection is indifferent to justice or injustice.
• But God is just, and will execute judgment to bring justice for all in the end. (implication: our anger against God is not justified after all)
• Injustice and suffering are a reminder that we need God.

But this doesn’t follow a logical flow, and raises new questions that don’t get answers:

• Why would a God concerned for justice create a world whose natural processes are indifferent to justice?
• Why would a good God create a world in which there would be suffering, even if it is only temporary?
• How does the promise of future judgment of sin cancel out present suffering due to natural causes such as disease or disability?

In conclusion, has Andy created a satisfactory theodicy? Has he successfully justified why God allows suffering? No. His definition of the goodness of God is limited to ensuring eventual justice, not preventing suffering. He has left us with a God who is quite happy to create a world based on natural selection, a world in which there is illness and disease, and in which humans are free to inflict suffering on each other. He has even admitted that God foresaw what the world would be like. The promise of eventual justice, for which he has presented no evidence, does nothing to negate present suffering. This talk has been the most unsatisfactory so far. Far from drawing his target audience of sceptics back to Christianity, this has only served to show that Christianity really doesn’t have an answer to the biggest question after all.

Review - 'Who Needs God' - part 4

I’m reviewing a series of six talks called ‘Who Needs God’, by Andy Stanley, senior pastor of North Point Community Church, Atlanta — https://whoneedsgod.com/ — and we’ve reached the fourth talk.

Talk 4: ‘The God of Jesus’

As mentioned last time, Andy starts this talk by reacting to some criticism that he received from more conservative Christians for his earlier talks, condemning him for ‘not believing the Bible’. He defends himself with a summary of his argument so far, which is that, even though he does ‘believe the Bible’, Christianity does not stand or fall on the truth of the whole Bible. Christianity stands on the resurrection of Jesus, which later got written down in what we know now as the New Testament. Once people believed in Jesus and reflected on his life and teaching they found what they believed to be references to Jesus in the Jewish scriptures, our Old Testament, and so even non-Jewish believers became interested in the Jewish scriptures, the end result of which was the compilation of both sets of scriptures into one volume. The point: the Bible came later than Christianity, so it can’t be its foundation. This is all very valid, and would be enough to make a Christian of everyone if the evidence for the resurrection were convincing enough.

Andy at this point picks an example from the Old Testament to illustrate his point about Christian believers’ early interest in the Jewish scriptures — Isaiah 53. But his argument is rather simplistic. He simply says, ‘Does this prophecy sound like Jesus? Yes it does,’ completely discounting the fact that it could easily be referring to anyone suffering torture or nearing death. He cites the case of a Jewish rabbi who admitted that the passage sounds a lot like Jesus, without mentioning that Jewish scholars have dozens of other different interpretations of the passage, many of which don’t even refer to a Messiah figure at all, let alone Jesus.

Now, as a link into the main topic of this fourth talk, Andy picks up that not only did the first followers of Jesus use the Jewish scriptures, so did Jesus himself. He says that we must take seriously anything Jesus said, because he predicted his own resurrection, which then came about. In other words, we should take the Old Testament seriously because Jesus did. Nevertheless, Christianity still doesn’t stand or fall on the historical accuracy of the whole of the Old Testament; it stands on the historicity of the resurrection. Andy repeats his earlier claim from talk 3, that the first believers didn’t need faith to believe in the resurrection because they are supposed to have seen Jesus for themselves.

This is the point at which the series of talks takes a new turn, moving from rejecting false foundations, to using the resurrection as the foundation for what comes next. And it is the point after which any sceptic who has not been convinced so far will find nothing further of interest. If Andy had decided to discuss the evidence for the resurrection in more detail, then he might have kept some interest amongst his target audience, who would be interested to know if he has any new evidence, or any new way of presenting it. But he doesn’t. He takes the resurrection as fact from this point onwards, and builds on top of it, and I suspect that like me, this is the point at which his sceptical non-church audience switched off. It’s not enough to leave us with the simplistic statement that the disciples met Jesus on the beach, when the only evidence for that meeting is in the very document that Andy has already admitted was written at least a generation later by those who already believed. This series of talks has done nothing to shift the opinion of any sceptic who finds the evidence for the resurrection unconvincing.

The main point of talk 4 is that if Jesus predicted his own resurrection, which then took place, then we can trust what he says about anything else, including God. In Andy’s own words, ‘when someone predicts their own death … and resurrection, and pulls it off, I go with whatever they say.’

But why does successfully predicting his own resurrection make Jesus a trustworthy source of information about God? I believe here that Andy is relying on some logical steps that he doesn’t directly state. I assume the content of this unstated argument is that the resurrection was an act of God, and therefore it counts as God’s endorsement of Jesus, and therefore we can trust what Jesus said. But there are some unstated assumptions here, and we need to pause and note them.

The first hidden assumption is that the resurrection, if it happened, can only have been brought about by God. But this is only an assumption, and requires a prior belief in God. This looks suspiciously like a circular argument to me. If Andy’s aim is to demonstrate that there is a God, even if it’s not quite the God you were brought up to believe in, he can’t use the existence of God as one of the premises in the argument. Of course, if you already believe in God, then the resurrection of Jesus would most likely be interpreted as an act of God. But if you don’t already believe in God, the resurrection (if you were convinced by the evidence for it) would simply be a mysterious event whose cause needs to be investigated.

The second hidden assumption is that the resurrection, taken to be an act of God, counts as God’s endorsement of everything Jesus had said. But there is no sound reason for taking this logical step. The resurrection, if it took place and was an act of God, could indeed count as God’s endorsement of something about Jesus. For example, it could be seen as God’s approval of Jesus’s moral character. Or it could be seen as God’s approval of at least some of the aims of Jesus’s ministry. Or more specifically it could be seen as God choosing to ‘complete’ the actions Jesus took at the climax of his ministry to bring about the kingdom of God. All these are possible interpretations of the resurrection, but none of them imply that Jesus got everything right. We know Jesus wasn’t right about cosmology — he was a man of his day and believed in a flat earth with heaven physically above it, as did everyone else. So we need some pretty strong reasons to suspend judgment when it comes to his views about God, which were also shaped largely by the beliefs of his day.

So despite Andy’s claim that his version of Christianity doesn’t require a blind step of faith, that is exactly what he is doing here. Firstly in taking the resurrection as fact despite the questionable nature of the evidence, and secondly in assuming this makes Jesus trustworthy in everything he said.

Now we come to the question of what Jesus said about God. As we found in talk 3, Andy places enormous faith in the accuracy of the gospels as eye-witness accounts. He says, ’the gospel writers documented what Jesus said about God,’ and takes this as fact. Given that this is generally disputed, especially with regard to the later gospels, we might expect Andy to start with an example from Mark, the earliest gospel, as a concession to the sceptics, but instead he starts with John, the last of the gospels to be written, and boldly claims, ‘John who was an eyewitness … documented what Jesus said.’ But not even most Christian scholars would claim this; the majority viewpoint is that John was not written by anyone who was there during the ministry of Jesus. So we need to take great care when reading John, to see whether it gives any direct evidence of the teaching of Jesus, or only reflects the views of the later community in which the author lived.

As it happens, the first passage that Andy has picked from John is one of the most theologically developed pieces of writing that can be found anywhere in the gospels, and is radically different from the simple, practical teaching found in the earlier gospels. It’s the place where Jesus says, ‘anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.’ In Andy’s paraphrase, if you want to know what God says, listen to Jesus; if you want to know what God is doing, watch what Jesus is doing. The sceptic would say at this point that this just reads as Jesus deciding for himself how to act as the agent of an invisible God, and then saying that’s what God is like. (This passage also adds nothing to the flow of the argument in this talk as far as I can discern.)

The next statement of Jesus that Andy picks, also from John, is ‘God is spirit’. But as Andy explains, this is what Jews had always believed since the establishment of Judaism. So we don’t get anything new from Jesus at this point. Andy then tries to align ‘God is spirit’ — that is, immaterial and timeless — with modern science. He claims that an immaterial, timeless God is exactly what we would expect as the cause behind the big bang, where all the time and material that we know about began. And yet, the founders of Judaism had the same belief in an immaterial God even though they had a very different cosmology. So we can hardly say that ‘God is spirit’ fits with our scientific knowledge any better than it fits with theirs.

Now at last we come to a statement from Jesus found in the earlier gospels and therefore more likely to be authentic: ‘When you pray, say “Father …”’. Andy explains this as Jesus teaching that God is personal — not human or male, because God is spirit, but personal in such a way that ‘father’ is the closest concept within our human experience. But this understanding was not unique to Jesus either. Other Jewish teachers around the same time also referred to God as ‘father’. The reason Andy has included this statement is in order to invite his audience to say ‘Father’ as a simple prayer. This is the most obvious of a number of points in this talk where Andy urges this audience to take a step of faith, rather than using the purely evidence-based approach that he originally promised.

Andy now jumps forward to the first letter of John, and the statement, ‘God is love.’ He claims that this is something the author of the letter learned directly from Jesus (although it’s not a recorded saying of Jesus in the gospels). As we have already mentioned, it’s unlikely that the author of the letters of John was there during the ministry of Jesus so this is most likely a refection of the beliefs of the later church community. Nevertheless, the statement ‘God is love’ is certainly consistent with the teaching of Jesus.

As with the statement, ‘God is spirit’, Andy then tries to make a modern justification for the statement, ‘God is love.’ He uses the concept of light and shade as a metaphor for love and what he calls ‘unlove’. (Andy uses the word 'unlove' not in the dictionary sense of the verb, ‘to cease to love’, but in his own made-up meaning, a noun meaning ‘absence of love’ or maybe 'the opposite of love' — because of this, I will use quote marks for the word every time I quote it.) Andy claims that just as shade does not exist without the sun, so ‘unlove’ cannot exist without love. Love must necessarily pre-exist ‘unlove’. Hence the statement ‘God is love’ must be correct. This is a classic example of a false analogy — taking a metaphor literally and using it to deduce additional facts that are not part of the original metaphor. It’s very poor reasoning. When he extends the argument to also infer that good pre-dates evil, therefore God is good, we know he has taken this too far. In fact, it’s perfectly possible for ‘unlove’ to exist without love first existing. Within the contemporary understanding of evolution and anthropology, love is something that has emerged as a result of evolution, while the previous natural world had no love, only the survival of the fittest. Even if you don’t believe in evolution as fact, you have to accept that this is logically possible; it is possible for a world to exist without love, before love has been introduced to it. Andy’s supposed proof that ‘God is love’ is nothing of the sort.

Let’s take a step back and look back at what Andy has been doing here. For two of the main statements he has quoted from Jesus or from John (‘God is spirit’ and ‘God is love’), Andy has attempted to add his own justification that he thinks should appeal to us today. Why does he think he needs to do this? If it’s true that we can trust everything Jesus said because of the resurrection, then why does Andy need to add his own arguments in support of each point? Why not just give us the evidence for the resurrection and leave us to believe everything Jesus said because of it? The answer is, because the evidence isn't convincing on its own. To put it more generally, what is the need for Christian apologetics if the evidence for Christianity is good enough on its own? In the end, despite his best intentions, Andy is doing what all Christian preachers have done before him, which is to use persuasion to urge his audience to take a step of faith. He is trying to drip-feed his audience with a collection of points from different angles, which he hopes will add up to a case for the trustworthiness of Christianity. But if the evidence itself were persuasive, neither he nor any other preacher would need to do this.

Now we reach the end of this fourth talk. Having made the claim that the gospel of John accurately records the teaching of Jesus, Andy assumes we now agree with him on this without question, and invites us to read the whole of the gospel of John and ask, ‘What do I learn from the Son about the Father?’ Once again, Andy isn’t really doing anything different from what previous pastors and evangelists have done — asking his audience to read the New Testament in isolation, in the hope that they will feel emotionally drawn by it, instead of asking them to go away and research all the evidence, for and against, in an unbiassed way. While the earlier talks promised a new evidence-based approach to Christianity, and made a good start by clearing away some of the old dogmas, by this point we begin to see that in fact Andy is still urging the same old faith-based approach as everyone before him.