A Narcotic

Pascal writes, “…I have often felt that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his own room…

“The only good thing for man, therefore, is to be diverted so that he will stop thinking about his circumstance. Business will keep his mind off it. Perhaps there will be some novel and enjoyable pursuit which keeps him busy, such as gambling, hunting, or some show. In short, it will be what is called distraction.

“In busyness we have a narcotic to keep us from brooding and to take our mind off these things. That is why we prefer the hunt to the kill. [Emphasis added.]

“That is why men have tried to think of ways to make themselves happy. Those who philosophize about it maintain that people are unreasonable to spend all day chasing a hare they would never buy. But such have little understanding of our nature. For it’s not the hare that saves us from thinking about death…Hunting does this.” [Pages 96, 97; Mind on Fire, Edited by Dr. James M. Houston, Bethany House, 1997.]

Perpetual distraction so that we don’t think about death – this is the calling of consumerism. Diversion used to be the prerogative of the aristocracy, they could command and pay for entertainment – now it is accessible to virtually all in the West and to many in other parts of the globe. The entrance fee to this narcotic den is the price of a television, a radio, a smart phone. The hares we chase today are luxury cars and McMansions and exotic cruises and chic images and upscale cuisine and positions of power and influence…what can you add to the list?

We cannot remain quiet, we loathe stillness, we pity those who remain aloof from the materialistic fray, we look down upon those who have never been intoxicated by the elixir of power and position. King Solomon, who led a life of diversion, contemplated the futility of it all in Ecclesiastes and realized that…guess what…we are all going to die; rich and poor, king and slave, pretty and ugly, smart and dumb – we are all going to die and we are fools not to realize it.

Death is a good thing to think about, it reminds us of our mortality, and it should give us pause to consider the future. Those who deaden their senses today by diversion die early; those who ignore death are already in the grave; those who refuse to pay attention to their consciences and their a priori knowledge of transcendent truth do not cultivate their intellects – they dumb them down; they do not practice freedom of conscience or freedom of thought or freedom of speech – they become their own little police state lest the recesses of their heart and mind and soul attempt a prison break and shout, “I know there is more, I know there is more, I know that I and those I love are more than accidents of time plus matter plus chance!”

We are a nation of fools; who but fools would pay, and even go into debt, to have their eyes blinded and their hearts dulled by the narcotic of perpetual diversion? We are like children who refuse to get off the theme park ride – only death will stop the ride and we live as if it will never come.   

Perhaps if we saw these things as they really are we would cease being enamored of them? Perhaps we would be confident in walking away from them? Maybe we would not be defensive and frankly state that they hold no interest for us? Could it be that our souls could be weaned from this dance of diversion if we realized that the music we dance to is composed to destroy our souls?

God’s beauty is all around us, it is a beauty understood and heard and seen in stillness, in contemplation, in reflection. God’s beauty invites us to thoughtfulness; we consider Him, we consider ourselves, we consider one another, we consider His creation. He speaks to us of His love and His desire for us to know Him – He speaks…He does not entertain, He does not dole out candy, or positions of power and fame – He speaks…will we listen? Will we be quiet and listen to the voice of God in Scripture, in creation, in our hearts?

The theme park will close one day – where will we go then? What will we do when the narcotic of diversion runs out?

Greatness or Baseness? Or Both?

Pascal writes, “It is dangerous to let a man recognize too clearly how much he has in common with the animals without at the same time helping him to realize his greatness. It is also unwise to let him see his greatness too clearly without realizing also his baseness. It is even more dangerous still to leave him in ignorance of them both. So it is advantageous to draw attention to them both.”

Angels one minute, ravenous beasts the next; missions of mercy versus insatiable genocide; predatory economic practices versus Habitat for Humanity; mankind’s contradictions live in nations, communities, families, and individuals - our nature is inconsistent except in its inconsistency.

Teachers and preachers who prey on puffing our greatness at the expense of revealing our baseness lead us down a path to hell, a hell filled with self, a black hole of living that uses self as the benchmark. They have us traipse down an ever-widening highway of good feelings and intentions designed to make us feel better while we ignore the dis-ease of sin in our narcissistic souls – like animals we live to satisfy our appetites, except with us the appetite is that of self-esteem, of feeling good about ourselves no matter how delusional the hall of mirrors may be. They ignore the fact that our true greatness lies in experiencing restoration to the image of God, the image from which we fell; they ignore the fact that the way to that greatness is the Christ of the Cross and the Cross of Christ.

Preachers and teachers who tell us we are worthless worms, creatures of the earth and ground and dirt and dust; who offer no respite from a continual pounding of guilt and shame – impose on us a slavery of the worst kind, a slavery that puts royalty in shackles, that convinces a prince that he is a pauper, a princess that she is a harlot. And humanists that bring us down to accidents of time plus matter plus chance rob us of all nobility, of a sense of Paradise Lost with the hope that Paradise may be regained. The humanist says, “Fool, animals have no hope except it be in their next meal. Eat, drink, and be merry – for when you die you die.”

The Gospel tells us that we are noble and ignoble at one and the same time and it tells us why, it helps us understand ourselves collectively and individually. It gives us a picture of health, it reveals our malady, and it offers a cure. The Law of God reveals our sin, the grace of God reveals our Savior.      

Questions to Ponder

Pascal writes, “The greatness of man is so obvious that it can be deduced even from his misery. What is natural in animals is seen to be wretchedness in man. From this we can recognize that since his nature today resembles that of the animals, he has fallen from a better state which in former times was more appropriate to him. Who does not feel more unhappy at not being a king except a king who has been deposed?...Who considers himself unhappy because he possess only one mouth? Yet who would not be unhappy if he had only one eye? No one, perhaps, has ever taken it into his mind to fret over not have three eyes. But man is inconsolable if he has no eyesight.

“So man’s greatness comes from knowing that he is wretched, for a tree does not know it is wretched. Thus it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but it is a sign of our true greatness to know that we are wretched.” [Pages 82 and 83, Mind on Fire, cited in previous posts]. 

If we didn’t seek constant entertainment and diversion we might reflect on who we are; we might consider the dichotomy between good and evil that lies within us; we might ask why we have the capacity to act like angels one moment and devils the next; why we are capable of self-sacrifice at 9:00 AM and of inflicting harm on others at 9:05 AM.

We might also consider why things like a sense of fulfillment and accomplishment are important to us, whether we are an elementary-school child taking a spelling test or an employee receiving an annual review. Why do we want this year to be better than last year? If our names are in the paper recognizing an accomplishment why do we want others to see it? Why do we seek to love and be loved? Where does anger come from, not anger from bodily injury, but anger from wounded pride, from hurtful words, from a social slight?

Why do we seek something better today than we had yesterday? Why does the loss of position or of things distress us? Why this capacity for both good and evil, for right and wrong? Why does it matter what others think of us?

Why do stories of heroes and heroines and adventure and danger and overcoming impossible odds appeal to us? Why does it matter whether there is justice and redemption in novels and movies? Why do these things draw us and touch our hearts, reaching down into our souls?

What do people want and why do they want it? To listen to people, to ask questions, and then to ask more questions; we can serve those around us by asking questions – but then we must serve them again by listening without distraction.

Jesus came to seek and save those who are lost; to save the lost we must know where they are; to know where they are we must ask questions. We live and work with people but we do not know where they are, they might as well be on the other side of the earth, we see them but we do not know them. Why is that? 

In a society with noise and noise and more noise, questions that quiet the soul and mind, that invite reflection, that require more than an answer in a game of trivia – those are the questions that matter.

A line of questions we can ask people is, “Where do these desires for greater things come from? How can we be angels one moment and devils the next? Why do we want to be more than we are?”

The Imaginary Life

Pascal writes, “…mankind is not satisfied with the life we have in ourselves, within our own being, Instead, we want to lead an imaginary life in the eyes of others, and so we are constantly trying to make impressions. We strive to embellish and improve our image, and so neglect the true self…” [Page 60, Mind on Fire, edited by James M. Houston, Bethany, 1997].

The Gospel liberates us from self-delusion by giving us understanding of our fallenness, sinfulness, vanity, and propensity to engage in self-delusion. Of course another great Gospel liberator, as Pascal discusses elsewhere, is the knowledge that mankind has fallen from greatness (the image of God) and that Christ has come to restore us to God’s image.

There is a sense in which we are all born crazy and that those in asylums are only there because their craziness is too crazy for the rest of us, too disruptive. Those in asylums are there because their views of reality and of themselves are warped beyond our own views, as disparate as our own views might be. We tend to think we are better than we are, even those who appear to be down on themselves are often down on themselves because they think too much of themselves – their problem isn’t low self-esteem, it’s preoccupation with themselves.

The Gospel teaches us that we are sinful; the fact that we sin is, in a sense, secondary – the Gospel message is that we sin because we are sinners not that we are sinners because we sin. This is a relief to us because now that the dis-ease has a name we can seek a remedy; now we can discover that the remedy, Jesus Christ, is seeking us this very day.

A few years ago a camera company had as its slogan, “Image is Everything”; that is the banner under which we live, we’ve convinced ourselves that perception is reality. While perception is important in that there are consequences to our perceptions, the ultimate consequences occur when perceptions are judged by reality. The objective truth of things is often not the issue in our thinking, it is image; and if the image fails the test of reality then we conjure another image to replace the image shattered.

What does money do except allow us to improve and flaunt our image?  What do advertisers sell? Whether they produce cars or phones or clothes or drink or food or drugs, they sell image and their advertising has little if anything to do with their products and everything to do with image. We are like children in a amusement park enticed by this ride and that, pretending that we are pilots in planes or engineers on trains or captains of ships or explorers reaching new heights – we spend our money in pursuit of image – instead of dressing up dolls or donning super-hero custumes, we dress ourselves up in images. Dare we look in the mirror and confess, “I’m acting like a child”?

The Gospel liberates us because it allows us to see ourselves for who we are outside of Christ, people engaged in self-deception, creating imaginary selves that we can worship and nurture and that we can try to convince others actually exist. “Do you like my imaginary self? If you like mine I’ll like yours. Let’s create a collective imaginary self, a collective image that will give us identity and security, and we’ll vie with other collective images the way sports teams compete against each other.”

It is not the impression I make on others that matters; it is the impression Jesus Christ makes on me.

A Strange Disorder

Blaise Pascal wrote, “Man’s sensitivity to trivia, and his insensitivity to matters of major importance, reveal he has a strange disorder.”

The game Trivial Pursuit and the television game show Jeopardy tell us a lot about ourselves – we are intrigued by trivia, impressed by it, and applaud those who excel in it. People become famous by winning games based on trivia; they do not become famous explaining what the trivia actually means, its context, its place in history or in life. I’ve heard the host of Jeopardy say how bright various contestants are; they may have good memories but can they explain the questions or answers, can they critique a painting put on the screen, can they judge the truth of a quotation? Giving an answer does not mean that we know what the answer means. If I ask my Border Collie to “get fish” she will retrieve a canvass toy that looks like a fish and bring it to me, but I don’t think she has much of a larger context in which to interpret and understand my command; I don’t think she can engage in a comparative analysis of “fish” and “hose” and “ball” and “bottle” and her other toys. Perhaps with enough training she can participate in Jeopardy?

The news, as it is typically presented to us, is not much more than trivia – after all, how much contextual content can be communicated in thirty seconds or one or two minutes? If Pascal was writing about trivia in the 17^th Century, what would he think today?

It is indeed a strange disorder that we applaud the trivial and resist engaging in the most important questions of life; we embrace the things that don’t matter and we reject eternal questions.

Why is this so?

When the Ride Stops…What Happens?

Pascal wrote, “This present life is momentary, but the state of death is eternal. How terribly important it is, then, to live in the light of the eternal…Since nothing is more obvious than this observation, how absurd it is to behave differently.

“Seen from this angle, how absurd it is for people to go through life without regard to their final destiny. Instead, they are led as they feel inclined and as they indulge themselves, unreflective and careless, as though they could wipe out eternity and enjoy some passing happiness merely by repressing their thoughts.” [Excerpts taken from Mind on Fire – A Faith for the Skeptical and Indifferent, Edited by Dr. James M. Houston, Bethany House, 1989, 1997 – this quote from page 45].

When the amusement park ride begins I know it will end, I may not know how long the ride will be but I know it will end. When the plane lifts off from the tarmac I know its destination, I know the flight will end, I know I will disembark. When I awake in the morning I know that the probability is that I will be alive when night comes; I also know that I will awake one morning and not live until the next morning. We plan for the ride to end, we plan for the flight to land, but we do not plan to die. We have a general idea of what we will do when the ride ends, we know what we will do when we disembark from the plane, but we do not (as humanity) consider what we will do when we die – we think we can control this life and we think we can control the next.

We criticize those around us with behaving like an ostrich if they fail to recognize the realities of life, and yet we tend to ignore and suppress the reality of death and so play the ostrich ourselves. A builder would not build a house without blueprints, a corporate executive would not begin the new year without a plan for the coming months, a family would not begin a vacation drive without gasoline in the tank and monetary provision for the week, we would not invite guests for Thanksgiving without a turkey and pumpkin pie, a surgeon would not operate without knowing what organ requires attention – while some of us may exercise more forethought than others, we all plan to one degree or another, we all think ahead, we are all aware of the passing of time and the diminishing of resources – the gas tank needs to be refilled at some point.

Yet we suppress and ignore by denial and diversion the reality of death. For people who are otherwise intelligent and thoughtful this is amazing and illogical. People in business who are constantly focused on the financial bottom line ignore the bottom line of life, they ignore death. Why? How can this be? 

Would we begin a trek across the Sahara without first ensuring that we had water and provision for the journey? Would we say, “The pint of water I carry is enough for now, I’ll worry about more water when I run out.” Yet we say that we need not think about death today, we’ll deal with it when it happens. We will have no more control over death when it comes than we will have over the absence of water in the Sahara once our little pint of water is exhausted – just because we say we’ll deal with the lack of water when it happens means nothing – other than that we are denying reality – there will be no supernatural appearance of water in the desert. 

No reputable builder would build a house without a foundation – yet we build our lives without foundations, we build houses without bearing walls, and we see no contradiction in our actions and thinking, we see no hint of being illogical – in fact we applaud ourselves and each other. It is as if the Emperor has convinced everyone else to wear his new clothes…is there no little boy to tell us that we are naked?