Thoughts From Blaise Pascal

Dear Friends,

Throughout my life I have heard preachers say there is a “God-shaped hole in the souls of people.” I believe it is true, since we were created by God and in his image. It is indelibly imprinted on our being. St. Augustine suggested this in different words when he suggested our souls will “never be at rest until they rest in him.” Others point to Ecclesiastes 3:11 to prove the point, where we read: “[God] has also put eternity into the human heart…”

Yet, the one person who expressed this concept better than any I have read (besides possibly C. S. Lewis) is Blaise Pascal, the brilliant French mathematician, physicist, and religious philosopher, who lived from 1623-1662. It is taken from the book, ”Pensees” (“Thoughts”) first published in 1670, eight years after he passed away. Though passing at the early age of 39, it consisted of profound thoughts, ideas and notes which he had scribbled down with the intention of using them in a book he hoped to write in defense of the Christian faith. His words have always resonated with my heart, and in many ways mimic my own journey to Jesus. Enjoy.

“All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves. And yet, after such a great number of years, no one without faith has reached the point to which all continually look…

What is it, then, that this desire (for happiness) and this inability (to attain it) proclaim to us, but that there was once in man a true happiness of which there now remain to him only the mark and empty trace, which he in vain tries to fill from all his surroundings, seeking from things absent the help he does not obtain in things present? But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only by God Himself.

He only is our true good, and since we have forsaken him, it is a strange thing that there is nothing in nature which has not been serviceable in taking His place; the stars, the heavens, earth, the elements, plants, cabbages, leeks, animals, insects, calves, serpents, fever, pestilence, war, famine, vices, adultery, incest. And since man has lost the true good, everything can appear equally good to him, even his own destruction, though so opposed to God, to reason, and to the whole course of nature.”

It is worth reading a couple of times, just as I did when I first ran across it. Because for me, the thought that the pursuit of happiness was the reason that people hang themselves, did not register! Yet, upon further examination (and through conversations with people who had contemplated it) I realized he was right. Suicide is usually (if not always) the choice of people who are in so much internal grief and pain (and have been for some time); people who have wrestled with depression and physical or internal pain for so long, that they’ve lost all hope that things will ever get better.

Therefore, to them, death or suicide actually seems preferable (less painful, or more in the direction of ‘happiness’ or ‘relief from the unbearable suffering’) than continuing to live each day in pain.

It actually helped me to see that many a suicide could be prevented, if only that person could be convinced that things could get better. It made me see why Paul can put such a high premium on “hope” in Scripture (I Cor. 13:13). What the suicidal person needs is not to be berated for being “selfish” (something more likely to make them jump), but be given the hope that things can and will get better.

Many people have come down off that ledge, or put the gun down, simply because a compassionate person was able to wisely convince them, “things could get better.” It was hope in the direction of that elusive “happiness” that made them refrain. Telling them how selfish they are just makes the problem worse and reinforces in the mind of the suicidal person – “I knew I was a loser, all the more reason to off myself.” Yet, if they don't find God, in Christ, who can fill the heart with inexpressible joy, and can ALONE fill the infinite abyss in the human soul, they may contemplate it again. 

Consider your own life. For I do believe if you think about his words more deeply, you will see he is right.

In His Grace, Pastor Jeff