Growing in Christ - Meditation
Meditation #105, July, 2018.
Blaise Pascal
As you do not know
the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you
do not know the work of God who makes everything. Ecclesiastes 11:5 (ESV).
The above verse is a humbling reminder that there is much
about God we simply do not know or will ever know. At the same time it reminds
us that the everyday occurrence of a child being born is miraculous.
Not everyone sees this.
Where do we begin? When we are talking to our beloved
non-Christian friends and neighbors, where do we begin? How do we communicate
the profundity of scripture? How do we explain the power of prayer? How do we
present the joy of fellowship? Above all, how do we discuss the vital, robust
gift of hope for eternal life?
An evangelist in the twenty-first century has a bewildering
array of challenges, not least of which is the endless array of distractions
that pull our friends and neighbors everywhere except the direction of the local
church. We admire and enjoy technology, but mainly because it provides us with
inane entertainments like video games. We consider ourselves to be logical
because we have figured out how to take instructions from a GPS device. We enjoy
the latest in telephone gadgetry so that we can carry on endless conversations
about everything, all the time, with everyone; but are we ever saying anything?
We are an affluent society but we endure astonishing statistics for suicide,
depression and drug and alcohol abuse. Celebrities, the richest and seemingly
best-loved people among us, are not immune from those diseases of
self-destruction. Our non-Christian friends receive plenty of information about
the church—from the media, whenever there is a controversy, or a personal
failure of a leader. They generally do not receive any positive information by
actual attendance, or biblical instruction, or encouragement from peers.
We are endlessly busy but do ever stop to think? From time to
time we are reminded of the relentless passing of time and the shortness of our
mortal lives.
Blaise Pascal was born in 1623. In France at that time there
was considerable religious controversy. But Pascal was neither a politician nor
a priest—he was a mathematician. He applied his gift of logical thinking to the
very basic questions of the existence of God and the reasonableness of belief.
His book, Pensees (Thoughts),
[1] covers a great many topics pertaining to
Christian faith, but before anything else, Pascal takes pains to point out the
inherent misery of the human condition without belief in God:
"We do not require great education of the mind to understand
that here is no real and lasting satisfaction; that our pleasures are only
vanity; that our evils are infinite; and, lastly, that death, which threatens us
every moment; must infallibly place us within a few years under the dreadful
necessity of being forever either annihilated or unhappy." (Page 70, para. 194).
Pascal goes on, trying to articulate the mindset of someone
who does not care to enquire into the possibility of the saving grace of God:
"Perhaps I might find some solution to my doubts, but I will
not take the trouble, nor take a step to seek it; and after treating with scorn
those who are concerned with this care, I will go without foresight and without
fear to try the great event, and let myself be led carelessly to death,
uncertain of the eternity of my future state." (Page 71, para. 194).
Pascal is in turn rather scornful of those who think this way.
He points out, with relentless logic, that the unreasonableness of unbelief
helps to prove the very reasonableness of belief:
"In truth, it is the glory of religion to have for enemies
men so
unreasonable; and their opposition to it is so little dangerous that it serves,
on the contrary, to establish its truths. For the Christian faith goes mainly to
establish these two facts: the corruption of nature, and redemption by Jesus
Christ. Now I contend that, if these men do not serve to prove the truth of the
redemption by the holiness of their behavior, they at least serve admirably to
show the corruption of nature by sentiments so unnatural." (Page 72, para. 194).
The corruption of nature, or in other words, humankind in its
sinful state; explains so much. When we try
to speak up on behalf of Jesus Christ, we are doing no less than pitting
ourselves against that very obstacle. That fact that we can do it at all we must
credit to the Holy Spirit (Luke 12:12).
Some make a deliberate choice in choosing the agnostic road;
others fail to make a choice, blinded by fear of controversy or commitment. But
by failing to seek and accept the road of faith, they are making a decision by
default, or omission. This might seem bewildering or unfair to some, but Pascal
sums everything up with the language of a bet, or wager:
"Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is.
Let us estimate these two chances. If
you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then,
without hesitation that He is." (Page 83, para.233).
Yes, let us wager. Let us embrace the mystery and the joy of
the gospel. Let us accept there is a transcendent meaning to our lives. Let us
sense the love of God even as we try to love one another as Jesus would have us
do. Let us exult in the beauty of the natural world, that beauty that begs for
belief in a Creator. Let us have confidence in our foundational evidence, Holy
Scripture, which tells a story too complex and wonderful to have been created by
the human mind alone. Above all, let us turn away from apathy and despair and
turn towards the joy and beauty of eternity.
Praise the Father, praise the Son, praise the Holy Spirit.
In faith and fellowship,
Patrick McKitrick
Outreach Canada Ministries
[1] Blaise
Pascal, Pensees (London: Arcturus
Publishing Ltd.)2018.