Lindsay Clancy Provided Evidence of God's Existence

I realize the title of this article may be startling to some, perhaps even most, readers.

How could the horrific case of Lindsay Clancy, who is accused of strangling her three children—five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson, and eight-month-old Callan—possibly provide evidence for God’s existence?

Surely, if anything, one might think a case like this provides evidence against God. But I believe the opposite is true.

Not because the suffering itself proves God exists, but because our profound conviction that what happened was really and objectively wrong points beyond a merely naturalistic understanding of reality.

And that realization helped me work through my own struggle with this case emotionally.

“Why, God?”

Although the deaths occurred in 2023, the case has recently received renewed attention because of the ongoing legal proceedings. Clancy has pleaded not guilty (despite admitting on a phone call that she indeed caused the deaths of her children), and her defense has argued that she was suffering from postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings.

Many people have rallied around Clancy, arguing that she should not be viewed simply as a murderer but as someone whose mental illness, circumstances, medical treatment, and lack of adequate support contributed to what happened. (See footnote [1] for my brief Facebook post on this).

Whatever one’s conclusions about the legal and medical questions surrounding the case, none of this changes the devastating reality that three children died.

And that is what I found myself struggling with.

I began imagining what those final moments may have been like for these children. If the prosecution’s account is correct, they were taken downstairs to the basement by their own mother—the person they presumably trusted most—and were strangled one by one.

The thought of it broke my heart.

I imagined the terror those children must have experienced. I imagined the possibility that the younger children may not have understood what was happening. I imagined the final child witnessing what had happened to the others.

It brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to stop thinking about it, but I couldn’t.

Eventually, I found myself asking the question that Christians have asked throughout history: “Why, God? Why would you allow this to happen?”

As a Christian apologist, I encounter the problem of evil and suffering constantly. I believe there are intellectually compelling answers to the problem of evil. But having an intellectual answer does not mean that suffering ceases to be emotionally devastating.

Sometimes the question is not merely, “Can I answer this objection?” Sometimes it is, “God, why did You allow this?”

As I prayed and wrestled with that question, however, another thought came to mind. It was not a new thought. In fact, it is something I have taught others before.

But experiencing it emotionally rather than merely discussing it intellectually caused me to see the broader implications of this case in a new way.

How Do We Know This Was Evil?

Why was I so troubled by what happened? Because I knew, deep down, that it was wrong. Not merely unpleasant. Not merely something I personally disliked. Not merely something that violated my subjective preferences. Wrong.

There is an enormous difference between saying, “I don’t like chocolate ice cream” and saying, “It is morally wrong to strangle innocent children.” The first is a statement about personal preference. The second is a statement about moral reality.

And this is where C.S. Lewis’ famous argument becomes so powerful. Reflecting on his own objections to Christianity, Lewis wrote:

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?"[2]

I knew what happened was wrong (hence, my wrestling with it in the first place), but by what moral standard was I judging such an act to be wrong? To say something is wrong, I must first have some concept of what is right (for what is wrong is, in a sense, a privation or perversion of what is right). Something can only be objectively “right” or “wrong” if there is some objective standard by which we can make such judgments. And something can only be “right” if there is Someone who says so. As Greg Koukl says,

“Put in a playful way, it makes no sense to say things are not the way they’re s’posed to be, unless there is a way they’re s’posed to be, and there can’t be a way they’re s’posed to be, without a ‘S’poser.’”[3]

If God does not exist, there is no transcendent “S’poser” to ground objective moral obligations. Nor is there any real “right” or “wrong.” All that exists simply “is.” As atheist Richard Dawkins famously said,

“In a universe of electrons and selfish genes… [the universe] has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”[4]

Therefore, if God does not exist, it seems there is no such thing as evil “out there,” so to speak. There are simply things that happen. A naturalist or atheist may certainly believe that killing children is wrong, but the question is whether that wrongness is something objective and binding on everyone, or whether it is ultimately dependent upon human beings and their preferences, feelings, evolutionary history, social conditioning, or some combination thereof.

But when I think about those three children being strangled by their mother, I don’t merely see it as, “It’s wrong to me,” in the same way that I might say, “I don’t like chocolate ice cream.” No, I see what happened to those precious children as really and objectively wrong. The action itself was evil regardless of anybody’s opinion about it.

And this is important. I am not merely expressing an emotional preference. I am making a moral judgment about reality. In short, this is a summary of the classic moral argument for the existence of God:

(1) If God does not exist, objective morality does not exist.

(2) Objective morality does exist.

(3) Therefore, God exists.

Here’s where the Lindsay Clancy case really becomes interesting: those who defend Lindsay ought to agree with the second premise of this argument.

Cuts Both Ways

All of those who have gathered together in person and online in support of Lindsay’s innocence, or in defense of her lack of full personal accountability, appear to believe that Lindsay was wronged in some way by someone else.

For instance, here’s what somebody commented under my post on this matter. As you read it, tally how many times Lindsay is portrayed as the victim—meaning that someone or something did something wrong to her:

“Respectfully, if you’re watching the trial and learning all of the evidence that they have and lack of evidence that they have on Lindsay herself.. speaks volumes. Also the lack of help from her husband, the lack of help from the suicide hotline, the lack of help from medical professionals. All of the opioids they had her taking is also disturbing. She was failed, this will be changing the mental health field especially for women with postpartum depression. One could find it very interesting that only his fingerprints were found on the fitness bands, that his timeline did not matchup, that he can even talk about his children without shedding a tear, that he was in a new relationship 4 months after the death of his kids, that evidence shows he committed adultery, that he was on vacation with his new girlfriend 20 days after cremating his children, that the obituary he wrote for his children were all about him, that he would only take his daughter on trips with him and her coming back with a UTI.. the list can keep going on.”

How many times did you count that Lindsay was portrayed as the victim? The comment accuses her husband, the suicide hotline, and medical professionals of failing her. In other words, the commenter is making moral judgments about what happened to Lindsay and arguing that other people did something wrong to her.

But here’s the thing: where does one get an idea of “wrong” from in the first place if God does not exist?

Surely, the commenter above—and the many others supporting Lindsay—do not merely believe that what happened to Lindsay “is wrong to them” and therefore isn’t binding on anybody else, any more than their dislike of a particular flavor of ice cream would be binding on somebody else.

That would make protesting (or gathering publicly), commenting, and making videos defending Lindsay rather pointless.

They are not merely saying, “I personally don’t like what happened to Lindsay.” They are trying to persuade others who disagree with them that they ought to agree with them—that Lindsay was failed, that she was wronged, and that others bear some degree of moral responsibility for what happened. Some even advocate for her innocence!

But notice what this requires. It requires that there actually be a standard of right and wrong that extends beyond the individual making the claim. Otherwise, why should anyone else agree?

If morality is nothing more than personal preference, then someone who says, “Lindsay was wronged,” is ultimately no different from someone saying, “I don’t like chocolate ice cream.” You can disagree with them, but there would be no objective moral truth about which of you is actually right.

But that is clearly not how these arguments are being presented. And I don’t think it is how most people actually understand morality, at least according to how they live it out. 

When people argue that Lindsay was failed by her husband, by medical professionals, or by other institutions, they are not merely expressing preferences. They are appealing to a moral standard that they believe others should recognize. They believe that something really was wrong.

Therefore, for those like myself who have been wrestling with the tragic deaths of these three children—and even for those who support Lindsay’s innocence or argue that she should not bear full personal accountability—this case provides an opportunity to recognize something important:

We all seem to know that there is a difference between what is right and what is wrong.

And if objective moral truths really exist, then we have another piece of evidence pointing beyond the natural world and toward God.

What I'm Not Arguing

This isn’t to say, “Therefore, Christianity is true.” The moral argument by itself does not establish every distinctively Christian doctrine. At most, it provides evidence for the existence of a transcendent moral lawgiver and therefore contributes to the cumulative case for theism—and, ultimately, to the cumulative case for Christianity.

Nor does this mean that one can only do “good” or recognize that certain actions are really wrong if they believe in God. Human beings are made in the image of God and have His moral law written on their hearts (Gen. 1:27; Rom. 2:15). Someone can know what is right and wrong without believing in God.

But there is an important distinction here between moral epistemology and moral ontology.

Moral epistemology concerns how we know moral truths. Moral ontology concerns what moral truths actually are and what makes them true.

A person can recognize that murder is wrong without believing in God. But the question is not merely, “Can an atheist know that murder is wrong?” Of course they can.

The deeper question is: What makes murder objectively wrong in the first place?

What is the ontological foundation for objective moral obligations if God does not exist?

This is where the argument becomes much more difficult for naturalism. Human beings may recognize objective moral truths, but if reality ultimately consists only of matter, energy, space, time, and the laws of nature, it becomes difficult to explain why certain actions are objectively morally obligatory or prohibited.

The Christian worldview, however, provides a straightforward grounding for this. Moral values are ultimately grounded in the nature of God, and human beings possess intrinsic dignity because we are made in His image.

Even if one concludes, as C. S. Lewis did, that God exists given the reality of objective morality, it is completely fair for that person to still admit that they struggle emotionally with why God allows the evil that He does.

And that is where I found myself in this case.

Closing Thoughts

Knowing that God exists does not make the horror of what happened disappear. Nor does knowing that objective evil exists answer every emotional question about why God permits particular instances of evil. The problem of evil is not merely an intellectual problem; it is often a deeply emotional one.

Thankfully, many brilliant Christian thinkers have provided fantastic answers to this issue. While I do not consider myself among them, I have written an article exploring why God allows evil. You can read that article HERE.

And if you’re interested in how morality is difficult to adequately explain or ground in naturalism, and why it is better explained given the existence of God, I explore this issue in much greater depth in my upcoming book, Sacred or Secular: The Pro-Life Case for Grounding Human Value in the Image of God, with a foreword by J. P. Moreland.

The book releases September 18th through Sound Faith Books, an imprint of Inkwell Press.

In this book, much like I have done here with those on both sides of the Lindsay Clancy case, I argue that people on both sides of the abortion debate either explicitly or implicitly appeal to objective morality and human dignity. Yet if objective human value is real, we need an adequate explanation for where that value comes from.

I argue that human dignity cannot be adequately grounded in a purely naturalistic worldview and is much better explained if the Christian doctrine of the Imago Dei is true: that human beings possess intrinsic worth because they are made in the image of God.

To learn more about the book and sign up for the waitlist, click HERE.

Finally, I want to be clear about something.

This article is not meant to minimize those who failed Lindsay Clancy, nor is it meant to excuse what happened to her children. Nor am I attempting to render a legal judgment concerning her guilt or innocence (though the evidence seems to point towards her being guilty). Those questions belong to the evidence and to the courts.

Rather, I am trying to make a philosophical observation that struck me while I was wrestling with the horror of this case:

Our deepest moral reactions to tragedy point beyond our personal preferences.

When we look at the suffering of innocent children and instinctively say, “That is wrong,” we are making a claim about reality itself.

And perhaps that is one of the most unexpected lessons that can come from even the darkest circumstances. The horror of evil does not prove that God does not exist. In a surprising way, our recognition that something is truly evil may actually provide evidence that He does.

May God bring justice where it is due in the Lindsay Clancy case, comfort those who are grieving, and help us all to recognize the profound value of every human life.

Footnotes:

[1] https://www.facebook.com/share/p/188qRy31Dg/ 

[2] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 38.

[3] Greg Koukl, “Why God? Part 1”, Stand To Reason, January 01, 2018, https://www.str.org/w/why-god-part-1.

[4] Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.