Barry's Blog

In this sixth in a series of posts gleaned from The Trinity Forum's booklet, "Blaise Pascal:The Wager & Other Selections from the Pensees," Peter Kreeft, who supplies the excellent commentary, suggests that Pascal offers up two popular pseudo-solutions to avoid reflecting upon our place in this universe, our inability to be lastingly happy, and our ultimate destiny. These two pseudo-solutions include both Diversion and Indifference.

In regard to diversion, Pascal suggests that modern life is a lot like "foxhunting," in that we complain about our lack of time, but in reality love to complexify our lives! As dispossessed princes and princesses, who may recall some Edenic memory of happiness, we now love diversion and distraction by diverting ourselves from our unhappiness: "The only good thing is for men to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation that takes their mind off it...or by some novel and agreeable passion which keeps them busy, like gambling, hunting, some absorbing show, in short, by what is called diversion...That is why gaming and feminine society, war and high office are so popular...that is why we prefer the hunt to the capture." (#136). Sheesh, does this not capture our contemporary culture and personal lives in so many ways?

The second pseudo-solution, indifference, may in fact be more insidious and frightening than diversion. Listen to Pascal weighing in on indifference:

"The immortality of the soul is something of such vital importance to us, affecting us so deeply, that one must have lost all feeling not to care about knowing the facts of the matter...Thus our chief interest and chief duty is to seek enlightenment on this subject, on which all our conduct depends. And that is why, amongst those who are not convinced, I make a distinction between those who strive with all their might to learn and those who live without troubling themselves or thinking about it...I can feel nothing but compassion for those who sincerely lament their doubt, who regard it as the ultimate misfortune...but as for those who spend their lives without a thought for this final end of life...I view them very differently...Man's sensitivity to little things and insensitivity to the greatest things are marks of a strange disorder." (#427, 632)

Kreeft is right, I believe, when he suggests that this is the nadir of the soul, and as he observes, why Dante had the lowest circle of Hell as being ice, and not fire. It further shows that the real distinction in spiritual concerns is not so much between the "believer" and "unbeliever," but between seekers and nonseekers, for while the distinction between believers and nonbelievers is temporary, the distinction between seeking unbelievers and those who are unseeking, is eternal.

"We are more put out at missing a parking place than at missing our place in Heaven; more perturbed at missing the right road to our next appointment than at missing the road to our appointment with God. For 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.'" -Peter Kreeft

I wonder if Kreeft is right?