classic Saturday

By the time Frenchman Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was 31 years old, he was well known for his contributions to math and science. However, it was also at this age that he visited his sister who lived in a religious community, and he had a profound experience with Christ. He lived six years in that community, and while there wrote thoughts that were later gathered up to become the book Pensees. Pascal died at the young age of 39. Below is a short piece from his writing.

Such amazing contradictions

"Our greatness and wretchedness are so evident that the true religion must necessarily teach us that there is in us some great principle of greatness and some great principle of wretchedness. It must also account for such amazing contradictions.

To make us happy it must show us that a God exists whom we are bound to love; that our only true bliss is to be in him, and our sole ill to be cut off from him. It must acknowledge that we are full of darkness which prevents us from knowing and loving him, and so, with our duty obliging us to love God and our sin leading us astray, we are full of unrighteousness.

It must account to us for the way in which we thus go against God and our own good. It must teach us the cure for our helplessness and the means of obtaining this cure. Let examine all the religions of the world at that point and let us see whether any but the Christian religion meets it."

Foster/Smith: Pascal writes, "Observe yourself, and see if you do not find the living characteristics of these two natures." In looking at your own life, how have you seen both greatness and the wretchedness, the pure and the impure, the noble and the ignoble?"