Well good evening everyone and welcome to my sixty seventh episode. In the previous episode, I discussed Pascal’s wager and explained why I think it is a problematic way of approaching Christianity. Tonight, I want to address Blaise Pascal’s thoughts in a broader sense. I want to go beyond the wager. If you’ve been following this podcast for a while, you know that I’m always interested in uncovering truth. If I think something that is wrong or if I have a blind spot in my worldview – I want to know about it. After I published the episode on Pascal’s wager, one of my listeners suggested to me that I’m not taking the breadth of Pascal’s thoughts into consideration as I speak on the wager. He told me that there is much to learn from Pascal and that I would actually agree with some of what Pascal said if I would take a closer look. So that’s what I did.
For those of you unfamiliar with Blaise Pascal, his most notable Christian work is a collection of theological and philosophical thoughts published posthumously with the title Pensées – which is French for “thoughts”. The first bit of charity I would like to extend to Pascal is that his work should not be scrutinized as if it were complete. He died before he could finish it. When you die before you get to finish your work – your thoughts and ideas are laid open to all sorts of misrepresentation. I think this might be what happened with Pascal’s wager. The wager, as it is most commonly understood, is a really stupid idea. And since many people adhere to this silly version of the wager, everything I said about it in the previous episode needs to be heard.
But tonight the question is: is this colloquial version of the wager the same thing as what Pascal meant to say? After having read the Pensées, I don’t think it is. I think I criticized a straw man version of what Pascal actually believed. Normally, what I would do is create a part two for that episode and correct the areas where I misrepresented him. The problem is, the version of Pascal’s wager that I criticized is more widely subscribed to than the original. It has taken on a life of its own. It’s also a difficult situation because it would not be hard at all for an uncharitable literary critic to suggest that the wager doesn’t change even in the context of the Pensées. That really is just an unfortunate side effect of dying before you get a chance to finish your work. Other people had to guess what he would have wanted and publish the Pensées accordingly.
So, I can’t scrub my first criticism of the wager because that wager is the idea most commonly meant when someone says, “Pascal’s wager.” But I also will not misrepresent Blaise Pascal and what he actually believed. So, what I’m going to do is talk to you about all of the various points on which I think Pascal was absolutely correct. I also want to tell you about some ideas I learned from reading his work. At the end of this, we will see whether or not his other beliefs change the nature of the wager.
The first major point where Pascal and I agree is that we cannot apprehend total reality. Pascal illustrated this by saying that the universe is infinitely large, while it is composed of material that can be analyzed down to the infinitely small. So you have an infinity on both ends – and we humans are finitely stuck in the middle. Now, you should note that Pascal lived during the 17th century – so we can’t expect his theoretical physics to be accurate. But the concept remains true. We are not designed as perfect observers of reality. In your own perception, you actually have to screen out most external stimuli because you can’t take all of it into account. You use your hierarchy of values to do this screening. Unless you are cognizant of it, you don’t even notice that you are doing it. For more information on the hierarchy of values, you can listen to MHB 17. I also had a discussion about our inability to perceive total reality and what we can do about that in MHB 62. The gist of it is that we should be careful about how we define the term “literal,” and I think it is unwise for us to claim we have a big picture view of all that is literally real. Pascal thought this as well, and he admonished those who thought that the natural sciences could observe reality with a wide enough scope to take everything into consideration. Basically, you don’t act like you’re just a chemical accident and you don’t like it when others treat you like you are.
Pascal was not an enemy of reason, but he certainly thought that reason had limitations. He didn’t think that human beings held consistently to a purely rationalist worldview. For example: If I handed you a revolver that had only one bullet in it, you should feel pretty safe about the probability of putting it to your head and pulling the trigger with nothing happening. But most people would never dare to accept that challenge because most people are quite happy with abandoning rationality in favor of self-preservation.
Pascal also thought that reason could lead to false conclusions. If you go outside and walk into an open field, your perception gives you every reason to believe that Earth is a flat disc with a dome sitting on top of it. Without a big picture understanding, reason can easily suggest false conclusions. The other issue Pascal had with people claiming to be pure rationalists is that he didn’t think reason was immune to personal bias. You don’t allow a person to be the judge or jury in their own case because they will leverage reason to arrive at conclusions that benefit themselves – with little regard for actual truth.
Pascal thought that there needed to be a tension between reason and mystery. I think he was right about this. I think this is what people mean when they say that the advanced civilization of the West is a consequence of a tension between Athens and Jerusalem. Between Greek reason and Hebrew revelation. If you abandon reason, you end up producing a cult or a religion that is impossible to communicate to others. If you abandon God, your reason leads you to an unsustainable nihilism that erodes the pillars of your society until everything comes crashing down. Without God, all you have left is moral relativism and you can’t build a civilization when no one agrees on absolute truth, or even if there is such a thing as absolute truth.
When it came to humanity, Pascal thought that one of our top priorities should be acknowledging our iniquity. He believed that many people would rather deceive themselves about themselves and encourage others to add to that deception. He thought that’s why we like to keep our sins and our shortcomings private. And why we don’t have too many complaints about people praising us – even if the praise is unmerited. Personally, I don’t think humanity can tolerate full transparency with each other. I think privacy is a good thing and should be protected. The only One who you are fully transparent with whether you want to be or not is God – so you should take your sins to Him and ask for forgiveness and grace. After all, it is only by His power that you can be sanctified anyway.
Another area where I agree with Pascal is that faith in God is about the journey, not the destination. That might sound weird considering Pascal was hyper-sensitive to the things of eternity, which is reflected in his wager. I think what he meant is that you are always going to be growing in faith and so in this life, your relationship with God is a journey. He thought that this journey was the only way a person could sustain happiness in this life. I think he should have used the term meaning instead of happiness, but I get what he was saying. He actually didn’t think it was possible for people to sustain meaning apart from God. He thought you could get it from chasing some goal of your own making, but as soon as you achieved the goal you lost the meaning. I think he viewed these worldly pursuits more like distractions from your state of misery than anything else. Pascal was a pessimist.
I said Pascal was hyper-sensitive to the things of eternity, he actually thought that anyone who wasn’t worried about eternity was insane. I’m not sure I agree with him on this point. I believe eternity is important – far more important than anything else in the grand design. But you only have so much resource for focusing on things. If you’re using all of this resource on eternity then it becomes very easy to harm yourself and others in this life. Not even intentionally either, but simply because you aren’t paying attention or you don’t consider this life as important enough to improve upon.
I’m not going to go so far as to suggest that Pascal was too heavenly minded to be of any earthly good. Indeed, he believed that faith should be evidenced by works. He thought that even if you acted out belief in God you would receive earthly benefits. You’d be an honest person, a good friend, willing to sacrifice, and all the rest. He also had the tremendous insight that there is more to you than yourself in the present moment. There’s you now; you a week from now; you two months from now; you five years later, etc. He also believed in the power of the butterfly effect. He thought that your actions would ripple outwards into the world further than you could imagine because everything is connected. Pascal believed that it was best to take all of these things into consideration when acting and making decisions. I’m definitely in agreement with that – I think he’s right on.
Pascal was Catholic and Catholics have been accused of imbuing the liturgies with more gravitas than necessary. Some people have said that the Catholic church goes so far as to invest their faith in the ceremonies. Pascal had an insight on this point that I had never even considered. He thought that the ceremonies were important because human beings spend most of their time on auto-pilot throughout the day. I think he’s exactly right, we don’t really have the capacity to deliberate every little move we make during our day – so we form habits. Pascal thought that the ceremonies were effective at automating us toward God. This was especially important because if we weren’t automated toward God – we were automated toward something else. Being automated is not optional for us. Pascal didn’t put his faith in the actual liturgies, but he did think that the liturgies were good for humbling people who were too proud to participate in ceremony.
Another good thing about Pascal is that he believed in peace through strength. I think peace through strength is a reflection of the real biblical definition for the term “meek.” When the Bible calls Christ “meek”, it’s saying that He has all the weapons and is choosing not to use them. Although Pascal was not a pacifist, he was libertarian when it came to legislating his Christian values. He didn’t want to force people to believe what he believed. This is another point where I agree with him completely. If your nation gets to the point where they need the laws to maintain Christian values, then you’ve lost the people. The laws of a nation are meaningless if the population does not respect them. I think a more ideal situation is for a nation to have maximum possible freedoms, and to be composed of people who stay away from certain evils for fear of God.
Earlier I said that Pascal thought one of our top priorities should be acknowledging our iniquity. This same principle applied to acknowledging our own ignorance. Like me, Pascal thought that the most dangerous and frustrating people were the ones who had some natural intelligence but who refused to listen. They were too proud to see their own flaws and shortcomings, but smart enough to efficiently spread them around to others – making everyone just a bit more miserable than they need to be. Pascal thought that a person could do much better once they understood their need for wisdom. This is similar to what Jung called integration of the shadow. The idea is that you can’t know exactly how good you are until you understand how much evil you are capable of.
Something else I learned from Pascal was that our sense of “ought” functions as evidence of past glory. So this would be humanity having a sense of who Adam and Eve were before the Fall. We have a sense of the perfection of God and an acute awareness that we are cut off from that perfection. He thought this sense of “ought” was evidence because we don’t feel it in other areas. For example, we don’t feel as if we ought to have two mouths instead of one. Although if we lost an eye we would feel as if we ought to have two eyes. So the sense of “ought” is evidence of something that once was, which is now missing from us. Namely, the perfection of being with God. I think this observation is fascinating because it applies to basically everyone everywhere. This sense of “ought” is what drives human advancement and progress. This sense is universal to all of humanity, and I think it’s because all of us know that we are not who we could be.
Pascal thought that the Gospel humbled the proud and comforted the lowly. So if you are self-righteous and you accept the Gospel, you begin to understand just exactly how sinful you are when compared to the perfection of God. But if you are downtrodden and you accept the Gospel, you find hope and comfort in the fact that you have a Savior. He also thought that Jesus simultaneously represented our hope of perfection and the reality of our misery. This was exemplified by Christ, being the human embodiment of perfection, voluntarily going to the cross of suffering. I think this is a good observation.
One of the aspects of Christianity that made it unique for Pascal was that it called us to love God – instead of simply fearing and obeying Him. Pascal thought that the struggle of life was God wrestling us away from the sin in our hearts and of this fallen world. He said it would be like a mother ripping her baby out of the arms of kidnappers – the baby would feel pain and struggle, but would end up okay because the mother did not let the thief take him. Pascal also thought that holiness was about being rather than doing. He thought the most reliable testimony of someone being saved was the presence of the Holy Spirit. This would be characterized by the fruit of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
So, all things considered, I think the Pensées gives us enough insight into Pascal’s beliefs that we can say the common version of his wager is a straw man. If I could articulate Pascal’s wager in the way I think he would’ve have wanted it, it would be like this: You are alive. You didn’t choose to be alive but here you are. So now you have a choice to make. You can live as if God exists and maybe nothing happens or maybe you go to heaven when you die. You can live as if God does not exist and maybe nothing will happen or maybe you’ll be lost forever. Living as if God exists is the best way to maximize your well being in this life. It’s what you are designed to do. Pursuing happiness and fulfillment apart from God is just going to lead to the void of nihilism. But loving God and loving your neighbor will ignite your life with meaning and purpose. You are a fallen human being who is bent toward evil and can do nothing on your own – so pray to God for His grace and do the best you can. The more you act this out, the more you will realize that you never really wagered anything – because following the other road was never leading to your best life anyway. That is a version of Pascal’s wager that I can fully agree with.
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