Running from Reality

Pensées is a collection of French Philosopher Blaise Pascal’s arguments defending the Christian faith. Published in 1669 as Thoughts (Pensées), they have exerted a powerful intellectual influence ever since.

Pascal denied that the tenets of faith must be rational, and that human reason can prove the existence of God, as some thinkers of his time argued. Rather, he held that God is beyond human understanding and that man has no assurance of meaningfulness in the universe aside from God.

Having studied the mathematics and logic of gambling, he concluded that to believe in God is perhaps implausible, but if one believes, and it turns out that God does not exist, then one has not lost very much, whereas, if one does not believe, and God does exist, then one has lost absolutely everything. This is called “Pascal’s Wager,” and it is probably his most famous theological contribution.

Pascal rests his arguments on one simple and undeniable fact – that human beings are unhappy. He saw that all humans were on a desperate search for happiness but were finding it to be elusive. Pascal said, “We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.” Pascal’s observations are also like the conclusion reached by Solomon, one of the wisest men in the world, who said in Ecclesiastes 2:9-11;17:

So, I became greater than all who had lived in Jerusalem before me, and my wisdom never failed me. Anything I wanted, I would take. I denied myself no pleasure. I even found great pleasure in hard work, a reward for all my labors. But as I looked at everything I had worked so hard to accomplish, it was all so meaningless—like chasing the wind. There was nothing worthwhile anywhere. . .. So, I came to hate life because everything done here under the sun is so troubling. Everything is meaningless—like chasing the wind.

Can you hear the angst in Solomon’s words? Even though he was one of Israel’s wisest and richest kings, his life had been a meaningless pursuit after happiness – "a chasing after the wind."

Pascal believed that unhappiness is perhaps the most obvious and pervasive feature of human experience. However, there is a clear reason for our unhappiness. The reason according to Pascal is our mortal condition. Death is the most obvious fact of life. It slaps us in the face when we realize our own helplessness in overcoming it. Deep down we are haunted by the fact that when we die, we will experience the loss of everything we know in this life.

Obviously, a lot of people are hoping for a different outcome. In 1967, James Bedford, a former University of California-Berkeley psychology professor, who died of renal cancer, became the first person to be cryopreserved after death with the hope of being revived in the future. His body is still stored in liquid nitrogen today, over 58 years later. Since 1967, more than 500 people have let their dead bodies be cooled down to -200 Celsius and preserved in liquid nitrogen in the hope that someday, in the future, science will be able to cheat death and make them wake up from their Sleeping Beauty state. Another 4,000 are still on a waiting list. As of today, no one knows with certainty whether they will ever have the chance for a second life.

But Bible says there are no second chances. In Hebrews 9:27 it says, "Each person is destined to die once and after that comes judgment."

According to Pascal, this is one of the reasons people love pleasure so much. It keeps them from thinking about their mortal condition, the loss of their very being and God's judgement. He said: “The only good thing for men therefore is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their minds off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion that keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short, by what is called diversion.”[1]

Pascal was clearly fascinated by humanity’s ability to embrace diversions and so easily dodge the realities of life. He believed we are all running from reality, and that we must somehow be persuaded to have the courage to face the truth about ourselves, our mortality and all the issues that spring from it.

Paul says in Romans 8:20, that “all creation was subjected to futility.” That futility includes people like you and me. Because of sin, our world has been twisted into a knot and we are all living in the tangled mess. How do we run from this reality?

We can’t reason our way out of this snarled mess. We can’t mathematize or philosophize our way to some “nirvana”. All the knowledge we have about the universe still doesn’t answer our basic question, who are we? Only God can untie the knots of our moral entanglement.

The fear of death, unchecked and mismanaged, leads to denial, and in the process, we unconsciously remove truth from its rightful place in our lives. And without truth in our lives, we stumble and flounder until we find ourselves in an ever-consuming moral quagmire. Worse still, the more we struggle to get out of the quagmire by our own efforts and reasoning, the more the knots tighten and the deeper we descend.

Jesus spoke to this futility when he said, in Matthew 16: 25-26, "You must give up your own  way, take up your cross, and follow me.  If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.  And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but lose your own soul? Is anything worth more than your soul?"

One of the biggest diversions we practice is to indulge ourselves in our own sinful pleasures. We live for the moment and love to follow our version of the truth. We reason – if it feels good it must be right. And so, we plunge headlong down a path of self-destruction. Solomon described such actions in Proverbs 2:13-15, “These men turn from the right way to walk down dark paths. They take pleasure in doing wrong, and they enjoy the twisted ways of evil. Their actions are crooked, and their ways are wrong.”

It is hard to imagine that people could take pleasure in evil, but it happens all the time.

Is this twisted? Yes. But that’s how sin works. It captivates our senses; distorts reality, hides it's consequences and drowns out the reality of our mortality.

Paul described the sinful state of the unbeliever in Ephesians 4:18-19, “Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity.”

Whenever God is replaced by sinful and lustful pleasure, people’s minds and hearts will inevitably become closed and darkened. You don’t have to look very far around you to see a confirmation of Paul's depiction of the unbeliever.

Moses, however, took a different path. When he had grown up, he “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin (Heb. 11:24-25).”

Moses could have easily embraced the momentary pleasures of sin, but he rightly saw them as temporary and empty, and chose instead to follow God.

Pascal warned, “Between us, and heaven and hell, there is only this life, the most fragile thing in the world.” As such, life's fragility should force us to become seekers of truth, and not drive us deeper into running from reality.

Solomon warned, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death (Pr. 14:12).” No matter what path we take, we cannot avoid the inevitable reality of our own mortality. Death awaits all of us. But spiritual death –eternal separtion from God – only awaits the ungodly. Paul said the following in Romans 2: 5-9:

But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed. He will judge everyone according to what they have done. He will give eternal life to those who keep on doing good, seeking after the glory and honor and immortality that God offers. But he will pour out his anger and wrath on those who live for themselves, who refuse to obey the truth and instead live lives of wickedness.

Refusing to obey the truth has eternal consequences. So, let me state it again, “the fragility of life should force us to become seekers of truth.” But, then again, what is truth? Jesus knew a lot about truth. That’s because he didn’t just speak truth, he claimed to be the embodiment of truth. In John 14:6, Jesus said "I am the way, the truth (italics and underline added), and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me."

One day, as Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees and to the crowd that had gathered, this is what transpired:

Jesus said to the people who believed in him, “You are truly my disciples if you remain faithful to my teachings. And you will know the truth (Jesus), and the truth (Jesus) will set you free.” “But we are descendants of Abraham,” they said. “We have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean, ‘You will be set free’?” Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. A slave is not a permanent member of the family, but a son is part of the family forever. So, if the Son (Jesus) sets you free, you are truly free (Jn 8:31–36; italics and parenthesis added).

Jesus saw people as slaves to sin. Their ancestry or religious associations were not going to help them. They weren’t free and happy people. Their sin had held them in a despairing mess. They were victims of sin’s consequences.

So, Jesus laid out a path to freedom. He said, “if you remain faithful to my teachings, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” The more we embrace Jesus and his teachings, the more our minds are opened to His truth and the more freedom we will experience.

Are you running from reality? Are you trying to avoid the question of your own mortality? Are you embracing every diversion you can find to avoid facing the reality of eternity? Perhaps you find yourself caught in the consequences of your own sinful actions and choices. Stop what you are doing right now and ask yourself this question, “Do I want to be free? If the answer is yes, then stop running from reality, embrace Jesus as your Saviour, follow his teachings, and you will be set free.

---

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/394569-the-only-good-thing-for-men-therefore-is-to-be