Penn State’s Mike McQueary and Applied Christian Apologetics

Penn State assistant football coach Mike McQueary has been the target of outrage from people all across the country who believe that he didn’t do enough to stop his colleague Jerry Sandusky from molesting a boy when he walked in on Sandusky and the boy in the shower of the  locker room back in 2002. Furthermore, McQueary did not report the incident to the police and, as a result, it is believed that Sandusky was allowed to continue on with his nefarious ways until finally resigning from coaching just a few years ago.  The moral outrage directed towards McQueary is because he could have stopped the molestation of several children, but he didn’t. 

Most of us instantly recoil at the thought of someone not acting to prevent the suffering of a child when they could have.  Yet Christian philosophers and apologists provide a  variety of arguments that an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, all-good God is off the hook for idly sitting by and watching the suffering of countless numbers of his creation, including children. 

Bradley C. Bower / AP

If these arguments are good enough for God, are they good enough to get Mike McQueary off the moral hook?  Let’s try a little applied Christian apologetics and imagine actually trying to defend McQueary using the same reasons given for God’s inaction.   

The JOB Defense:  McQueary could argue that, after all, who do we think we are questioning the behavior of football coaches in the locker room? How can we, mere sports couch potatoes, know what kind of behavior is appropriate? How many of us have ever been in a football locker room?  And if we have, has it been the locker room of one of the most prestigious football programs in the history of the game?  Do we even know the number of football players on a team?  How to read a playbook?  How to sweep left? Line up in nickel formation?  Blitz?   McQueary should argue that we simply have no standing to comment on anything that goes on in a football locker room, period.

The “Can’t Have One Without the Other” Defense:  McQueary could say that in order to really appreciate coaches that act appropriately around children we must experience coaches that don’t every once in a while. You can’t have good coaches without bad coaches.  To step in and stop Jerry Sandusky would be depriving the rest of us the knowledge of truly evil coach and the appreciation of what it’s like to have good coaches.

The “Character Builder” Defense:  McQueary could argue that Sandusky’s molestation of the child in the locker room was ultimately for the child’s benefit, and had he stepped in and thwarted Sandusky, that victim and all the others would have missed out on the character-building effects the experience produced.   After experiencing such a horrific act, Sandusky’s victims will now be better able to cope with later suffering in life; will be more empathetic to others in the same situation, or a number of other benefits. 

The Free-Will Defense McQueary could argue that the most important thing in the world for any coach to be able to do is to exercise his own free will.  After all, what good would it be if coaches only acted appropriately towards young children because they had to?  Sometimes when you have free will you make the wrong decisions, but you can’t expect a guy to step in and stop someone every time they use their free will to make a wrong decision, can you?

The” Mystery or Skeptic” Defense: McQueary could argue that unless someone can prove that he didn’t have a really good reason not to go to the authorities and report Sandusky, then they can’t really say he was wrong for not acting.  If someone then asks him, “What exactly was your reason?” he should just say, “You’ll have to see for yourself in five (ten, fifteen, twenty, etc…) years, but it’s a really good one I can assure you!”

I suspect that McQueary would not fare too well with arguments like these.  I’m more inclined to believe McQueary when he says that he was “shocked, horrified, not thinking straight” after witnessing the events in question, and that contributed to his inaction. The question is, “Are apologists and their followers ‘thinking straight’ when they defend the existence of God in spite of inaction in the face of suffering with arguments that don’t measure up to anyone’s own moral sensibilities anywhere except in their own mind?”