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.