On Pascal's wager. The win/win situation.
When I was a know-it-all freshman in St. Francis College in Brooklyn, I used to debate my Jewish father about the eternal questions and the deep meanings of life. And of course, since I was all of eighteen, had a crew cut hairdo and wore saddle shoes, I believed (in my teenage superficiality) that I was certainly right and my uneducated father to be woefully " out of it."
After all, he had a mere high school diploma from De Witt Clinton high school and made his living as an ACTOR! How could he possibly know these things? And besides I was a student at a Catholic college and I had the answers!
Now that I am in my eighties and I look back over my life I have difficulty restraining my impulse to throw up as I recall my adolescent and repulsive behavior. In the vocabulary of our contemporary sophisticated era I was a jerk, nerd and punk.
However, there was one spiritual/intellectual psychological device I did employ which had and has great merit. It was one which gave Pop food for serious thought. It was the famous wager of Blaise Pascal, the great French philosopher and mathematician.
In our debate, for example, about the "afterlife", we considered Pascal's wager in the following way.
If there is life after death and I follow the dictates of my religion, I live peacefully and happily, fully confident of my eternal future and destiny. I can enjoy the beauties of the earthly life, freed from anxiety of doubt. I gain the hundredfold here and now. I have found the Holy Grail of happiness and contentment. I am able to laugh and work joyfully and sleep the sleep of babes. Further, I gain eternal happiness with God. I win as a believer.
On the other hand, if there is no life after death and I follow the dictates of my religion, I still live peacefully without doubt, freed of the anxieties of the atheist and agnostic, able to frolic in life, fully believing in the certainty of my personal eternal life.
The contrary is illustrated by some doubters and unbelievers. Note the poignant yearning articulated so many times by Larry King on his CNN program. He speaks to the Billy Grahams and the Frank Grahams and even Jerry Falwell with whose conservative views he sharply disagrees but whose faith he so pathetically envies. He speaks of his fear of death (and possibly, by extension, his fear of life) and how desperately he wishes he could believe in the afterlife.
I recall the sad eyed, bitter, brilliant essayist of Vanity Fair, Christopher Hutchens (sp?), who attempted to discredit Mother Teresa after her death. Her outright belief in God and her patent peace of soul apparently were so antithetical to his own inner turmoil that he became infuriated with her, calling her a hypocrite and a fake on television. God give him peace and enlightenment.
In any event, even if there were no life after death, living as if there were would still put the person in the winner's circle. So, if I am a naïve but believing intellectual dwarf, I still win by enjoying this life of mine with peace and laughter and relaxed sleep. I win as a believer even if there were nothing real to believe
In. My old Irish grandmother, with her 3rd grade education was very shrewd in repeating the old axiom:
" Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise."
Either way, placing the bet on the side of belief insures a priceless income. It becomes a win/win situation where one cannot lose. Obviously, in the long run, it is a matter of Faith which cannot be forced or nudged by fancy (cute) language or precisely cut logic. Still, the problem has existed as long as the human race.
In relatively recent times, two giant experts in researching human happiness, S.Freud and Carl G. Jung, debated somewhat ferociously the honesty of the " as if" and the " what if" behavior. Jung argued that should a patient find solace and support in an imaginary mountain of gold, he would encourage this person to persist in his illusion to allow the patient to continue living a kind of rewarding if illusory living.
Freud, on the other hand, argued that if the patient lives by an illusion (from Freud's point of view), e.g. religion, it is the duty (in the name of honesty) of the therapist to help the patient confront and resolve the unreality.
In spite of the debate, one's choice is probably highly influenced by temperament, character and up bringing. From a believer's point of view, there is also the possibility of the little nudge from the Holy Spirit enticing one into the world of Faith.
In any event, living life with Faith is a great way to Live!
Imagine this structure:
I believe in a loving, merciful, provident and ever present God Who sends His only Son to suffer and die for me personally - - -because, without this Sacrifice, eternal happiness would be a closed door for me. I would have wandered eternally in a " limbo" like state for ever. A great aboriginal calamity called Original Sin somewhere back along the line of the human species would have blocked my personal eternal salvation without a Redeemer Whom I call Jesus.
This Original Sin explains to me the mystery of human functioning and human imperfection. I can see why there are basic flaws in me and in all others. I can understand, because of this Anthropology, the characterologic scars and personality wrinkles I find in myself and in all others. I can see the point of Paul of Tarsus who laments that what he wants to do, he doesn't do and what he does, he doesn't want to do! Inner tension. Inner confusion. Inner struggle. Ever present but stemming from the Original fall which is called O HAPPY FAULT in the Easter Saturday Liturgy because it gave us this Redeemer, Christ, Who becomes the All in All for us in everything.
The great driving force inherent within all of us, hidden or manifest, to WORSHIP seeks constantly for some kind of outlet. Is it a person? A thing? A cause? One's own self? But I hear a Great Commandment: Thou shalt NOT have strange gods before Me! Idolatry is forbidden! Then I see that God Himself plants within me such a drive----- - - - -- but it is to worship HIM! But how?
He gives me the very Holy Sacrifice of the Mass where real bread and wine are substantially changed into the Real Body and Blood of God's own Son, Jesus, whereby I am nourished and strengthened and illuminated. I am overcome when I see the Calvary experience re-presented before my eyes! I am awed as when I look at a moonlit sky studded with stars! I am stunned as I am led by this direct path to God's own life. This becomes clearly the Supreme way to worship Him. It offers God back to God!
And this Eucharist ( translated Thanksgiving), this Blessed Sacrament is reserved for me wherever I go - - for my " visit" to my Lord Who is RIGHT BEFORE ME!
Anytime, I feel the need or desire to speak DIRECTLY to Him a very special way, whenever I want Him to speak to me in His own subtle, meta-verbal hinting tones, whenever I want to sit quietly in His calming, supportive presence without words, He is there. I have "visited" Him in Johannesburg and Capetown and Cairo and Jerusalem and Madrid and Rome and
Entebbe and Vienna and Sydney and Mexico City - - and He is ALWAYS there. And it is different from the beach or the mountaintop search for the Lord! I have experienced that kind of contemplation - - - - and it is beautiful but NOTHING compares with meeting Him in the Eucharist!
Should I fall, God forbid, into the ugly prison of sin, I have the Constant Resurrection of His sacrament of Penance whereby I am ASSURED of forgiveness and spiritual cleanliness.
And should I get confused or perplexed about life, He is there for me through His Holy Spirit Who speaks to me through the Church which He personally founded and which He GUARANTEED would never fail and which He said would last through all ages in an unbroken line until the end of time. Even hell itself could not conquer it. I believe in His Grace, or help, in every life situation so that I can make distinctions between the weaknesses and sins of human beings in His own Church and the Church itself.
I grieve and lament the sins and revulsions I have found in Popes, Bishops, priests, religious and Catholic leaders and followers. But what has that to do with my Faith which gives me an anthropology understanding human nature? And which teaches me that anyone's spiritual life depends on Grace building on one's nature. The failures are human but not of the Faith.
Yet this Faith teaches me the value of the Human and the physical. I am taught that the Human body -even in death-is to be respected and never degraded. I am taught that matter is not evil and I can enjoy a glass of red wine drinking a toast to Our Lady, the Mother of God! This Faith believes in Beauty - - - of God and His creation. So, we encourage the Michaelangelos and the Da Vincis and the Palestrinas to take raw material and make it beautiful. This can be highly coincident with the beauty of all things. Only man with his perverted free will makes ugliness to smear the earth.
I am taught that Life itself is precious and must be safeguarded, that killing is an evil - - - abortion and war and capital punishments - - - - are all areas of deep concern!
I am taught that my life, like every one else's, is filled with small crosses and irritations and frustrations and that I am to use these inevitable negatives as a stepping stone to purification and intimacy with the Lord. I am taught to interiorly "offer up" these personal pains and that there is a kind of " Brownie point" system before God. I am taught to unite my " suffering" with my Lord on the Cross, to enter into His Pain for Union with Him. This will all be held " in my heavenly account" toward my part in my salvation, knowing full well that it is Jesus Who saves me but Who expects from me some kind of loving response to His call to "carry the Cross." It makes sense out of the nonsense of living.
I am taught that I am physical and intellectual and emotional all levels of which I must nurture properly.I am taught that the feeling level of me must be nourished with devotions of all kinds. I say the Rosary of Our Blessed lady filling me with warmth and love for her and her Son. I am taught to make devotional exercises daily whether I walk with Him in the Stations of the Cross or I make a Novena to Him or to His mother or any of His devoted followers, the saints, whose number is dazzling to me so vast is my choice!
The meaning the Faith attaches to my life is awesome!
I understand why, when we suffer huge, smashing difficulties, we say " I don't know how I could have handled it without the Faith." Is it any wonder we call the Catholic Faith, the Pearl of great Price? Is it any wonder we place greater stress on "keeping the Faith" than taking seriously the shrill screaming about "saving the whales"?
The wisdom of betting on Pascals' wager becomes obvious - - - but frustratingly inadequate. Since it is about God, it is Infinite. We can never truly grasp it. That is for the hereafter. As for me, I have put my whole "bankroll" not only on the wit of Blaise P., but clearly on the Love of Jesus. I wish the Larry Kings of the world would take the bet. I hope my wonderful Jewish Pop did!
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