Pascal's Wager

7/20/18        Bill (video)   late 20's

Pascal’s Wager is alive and well on the streets of Chicago, and it’s turning people off to the Gospel.

This is the “wager” put forth by philosopher Blaise Pascal in the 1600’s that, since we can’t be absolutely sure of God’s existence, the wise thing to do is to live as if He does exist because if we are right, we have gained heaven, but if we are wrong, we have lost nothing. If, on the other hand, we live as though God does not exist but we find after we die that He really does exist, we have gained hell and lost heaven.

I had asked a man named Bill, late 20’s, about his beliefs and he said that in a high school philosophy class he had come across this line of thinking and felt turned off by it because it is basically just promoting a relationship with God based on fear.

When it comes to human relationships, no one wants to be motivated by fear.  The thought of someone punishing us or withholding rewards seems demeaning, like we are being treated like a child, and we want to believe we are above that.  We want to believe that we are motivated by love and our own desire to be kind and good to others and to just basically do the right thing.

But are we?  There is a healthy place for fear in a parent-child relationship as children learn to internalize and live out moral values for themselves.  And when it comes to our relationship with God, can we really bypass that early stage of development and never need some healthy fear to motivate us toward maturity?

The problem with Pascal’s wager is that the fear of the possibility of God, judgment and punishment doesn’t work with people who feel they have it all together morally.  Bill felt like he would be one of those people, so whether God exists or not, he feels he has all bases covered.  Because of this I used some examples from the Ten Commandments to show him how he would be judged by the standard of God’s law.  James 1 refers to God’s word as a mirror that helps us see ourselves as we truly are: 

“Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”

The point of using the law in this way is not to show us what we have to do to be saved, but to show us our need for a Savior.  Hebrews 6 tells us to “move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity”, and lists God’s eternal judgment as one of those elementary teachings.  

Pascal’s wager might be cold and calculating, but just as it is healthy and good to fear jumping out of an airplane without a parachute, it is healthy and good to fear eternal judgment without the intervention of a Savior.  It is also healthy and good to grow beyond that fear to the mature loving relationship that God desires for us all.

PS – Bill graciously allowed me to record the conversation.  Watch it HERE