How the Moral Outrage Over Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock Points to the Moral Argument for God’s Existence
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A week from last Sunday provided a memorable experience for those that tuned in to the live television broadcast of the 94th Academy Awards. I have not personally watched the Academy Awards for several years now. The low ratings at the Academy Awards shows that I am not the only one who has lost interest in it. But whether one watched it live or not, social media quickly spread the news about the undoubtedly low point of the show.
During the ceremony, actor Will Smith, the then-nominee and eventual winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor, walked on stage and proceeded to violently slap comedian Chris Rock across the face as he presented the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The reason for the slap by Smith was in response to Rock mentioning Smith's wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who was also in the audience. Rock made a joke which referenced Pinkett Smith’s shaved head, likening her appearance to Demi Moore in the film G.I. Jane.
Apparently, Rock didn’t know that Pinkett Smith had been outspoken about her battle with the hair loss condition alopecia. What was more than a little ironic was that Will Smith was seen initially laughing at the joke until he saw the disapproval on his wife’s face about Rock’s joke about her. So the audience proceeded to watch a morally outraged Will Smith get up from his seat, march up to Chris Rock on stage, and slap him. Smith then proceeded to by return to his seat, but the moral outrage went even further, as Smith yelled profanities at Rock for making jokes about his struggling wife.
The responses and opinions about the incident have only demonstrated the ease with which we all appeal to a moral standard. Naturally, some people and the Hollywood community were mortified by Smith’s actions and condemned his slapping of Rock as a violent action. The Academy President David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson released a statement confirming it had “initiated disciplinary proceedings against Mr. Smith for violations of the Academy’s Standards of Conduct, including inappropriate physical contact, abusive or threatening behavior, and compromising the integrity of the Academy.” For them the bottom line was that Smith had done something wrong, in violation of both the Academy’s standards and moral strictures. As I write this article, Smith has resigned from the Academy and acknowledged his wrongdoing, and he has now been banned from attending the Academy Awards for ten years.
So how might this incident point to the evidential significance of morality? Allow me to identify three ways:
1. People’s reactions to the Smith incident show their conviction that a moral law has been violated:
How we react when we or others are treated unfairly shows, whatever our professions, a strong tendency to appeal to an objective and binding moral standard. A moral law is nearly always the standard to which we hold ourselves and other accountable, and this point isn’t vitiated by what disagreement in analysis there may have been on this particular matter. For we see moral outrage on both sides of the debate—a debate that’s been lessened somewhat by Will’s mea culpa and admission of gross wrongdoing, which has significantly weakened any case for something like a moral equivalence in wrongdoing between Will and Chris. Some of course were, quite rightly, morally outraged by what Smith did, which involved nothing less than a physical assault of a much smaller man. Others were morally outraged by what Rock had said that apparently triggered Smith. Behind both sides of the argument, note, is thought to be an authoritative moral standard providing a measure of what is good or bad and right or wrong. Where, though, does this moral standard come from? And is there someone that has the right to impose this standard and enforce adherence?
2. Without a Moral Law, There Are No Moral Grounds for Disagreement Over Smith’s Actions:
The initial disagreements in the cauldron of social media over how best to analyze and assess the situation are telling in another regard. Since Rock made a joke about Smith’s wife, who has a health condition, some commentators defended Smith’s right to slap Rock because, apparently, this was the “moral” thing to do. Or if this rationale didn’t excuse Smith’s behavior, it was thought at least to help explain it. Some went so far as to cast Smith’s behavior as noble—a man defending his wife’s honor or something in that vicinity. Of course, others have said Smith was in the wrong, violating a moral standard and meriting accountability. Although I have my own judgment on how to adjudicate this disagreement, the point here is this: if there is no Moral Law, then no position on this moral issue would qualify as objectively right or wrong. Even treating the divergent perspectives on the matter as a genuine moral disagreement would be fundamentally confused if there is no moral fact of the matter by which to advance the discussion, come to a meeting of the mind, and settle the dispute.
3. The Smith Incident Demonstrates the Depth of Conviction in Objective Moral Values and Moral Duties:
Moral values are what matter to us—love, justice, mercy, justice. They are often what motivate our behavior and ground our judgments about what is good or bad, desirable or undesirable. Moral duties indicate oughtness of action, whether or not an act is morally obligatory (blameworthy for not performing and the like). Duties and value alike are among our beliefs with the most ingression: beliefs that have a wide impact on many of our other beliefs and convictions, and beliefs about which we are about as sure as anything, and rightly so. They are among our convictions that, as J. Budziszewski puts is, we can’t not know. They are plausibly thought to be among our “properly basic beliefs,” beliefs we argue from rather than feel a need to argue to. At least the clearest and most obvious among them are such that they invariably seem to be so, and, in the views of some, are eminently justified to believe as a result.
What is the best, or perhaps even only, explanation for these stubborn and persistent features of reality? Do the impersonal laws of nature account for these things? That seems unlikely—the laws of nature presumably how the natural world operates, which is descriptive, whereas morality is ineliminably prescriptive. Or are the moral realities of the world better explained by a personal God? Following William Lane Craig’s deductive variant of the moral argument, we can put it like this:
1. Objective values and duties are valid and binding, independent of human opinion.
2. If a personal God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
3. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
4. Therefore, a personal God exists.
We might instead couch it in less ambitious terms like so:
1. Objective values and duties are valid and binding, independent of human opinion.
2. A personal God provides a ready, robust, and powerful explanation of such values and duties.
3. A naturalistic perspective is hard pressed to provide as good of an explanation of them.
4. So, such values and duties give us reasons to take theism more seriously.
Given that so many people passionately hold and wish to share their opinion about the Smith incident, perhaps such talking points can be utilized by Christians in discussions with others. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity before us to speak a redemptive word of moral clarity into a situation like this, including the good news that, when we fall short of the moral standard, as we all invariably do, there is deliverance from both our shame and guilt, and both our sinful acts and sinful conditions, in the saving blood of Christ.
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