Christianity For Modern Pagans: Alienation, Death, and Selfishness

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

My sum­ma­ry of this week’s read­ing is a bit of a rant. Buck­le up.

I was caught off-guard by this tweet yes­ter­day from ABC News: “Pro­test­ers in Cal­i­for­nia set fire to a cour­t­house, dam­aged a police sta­tion and assault­ed offi­cers after a peace­ful demon­stra­tion inten­si­fied.”

It was those last few words that caught my eye: “a peace­ful demon­stra­tion inten­si­fied.” I would have thought the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of peace was some­thing akin to heav­en, but appar­ent­ly inten­si­fy­ing peace leads to a place full of flames.

I sup­pose it is pos­si­ble that the per­son who wrote the tweet sim­ply meant that the peace­ful protest changed into some­thing vio­lent, but it’s so in line with oth­er lan­guage that’s float­ing around that I sus­pect it reflects the author’s per­spec­tive: peace­ful demon­stra­tions are some­times accom­pa­nied by fire and vio­lence.

Per­haps the tweet was noth­ing more than poor­ly-word­ed. Even if so, it illus­trates the schism in our cul­ture. Go read the com­ments on the tweet. It’s like we’re all watch­ing the same for­eign-lan­guage movie with sub­ti­tles for dif­fer­ent films. We’re see­ing the same things and can’t under­stand why we dis­agree about the plot.

Exam­ples abound. Is the 1619 Project is a nec­es­sary cor­rec­tion of the stan­dard Amer­i­can nar­ra­tive or is it a mali­cious dis­tor­tion of our his­to­ry? Is can­cel cul­ture even a thing? Is free speech a real val­ue to cel­e­brate in all areas of life, a nec­es­sary legal stan­dard which we should con­strue as nar­row­ly as pos­si­ble, or a hyp­o­crit­i­cal tool used to mar­gin­al­ize peo­ple? How do you feel about Black Lives Mat­ter? Does it mat­ter whether we are talk­ing about Black Lives Mat­ter as an orga­ni­za­tion, as a slo­gan, or as a grass­roots upris­ing? Is reli­gious lib­er­ty the cor­ner­stone of human rights or does it deserve scare quotes because “reli­gious lib­er­ty” is real­ly a pre­text for priv­i­lege? Who should be pres­i­dent? How many gen­ders are there? Is the envi­ron­ment on the brink of col­lapse? Is social­ism one of the most ruinous mis­takes in his­to­ry or a hope­ful inevitabil­i­ty we should embrace? Can a well-informed and decent per­son be a con­ser­v­a­tive? Can a well-informed and decent per­son be a lib­er­al?

Peo­ple strong­ly (and even vio­lent­ly) dif­fer about each of these ques­tions. With that on my mind, two pas­sages from the read­ing stood out to me. The first is a reminder that the bro­ken­ness we see out there is an aggre­gate of the bro­ken­ness that is in each of us.

The prob­lem is not in our sys­tems but in our selves. This is the rea­son all soci­eties col­lapse, why the dams of good­ness nev­er hold out long against the floods of evil, why the bad peo­ple always some­how seem to come to the top. Soci­ety is only us. There is no “them”. If there were no such thing as Orig­i­nal Sin, why else couldn’t we ever attain the good­ness and jus­tice and joy and peace that the major­i­ty of sane peo­ple always want and have always want­ed? Orig­i­nal Sin is the only key that opens the mys­tery of his­to­ry.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 211 (page 155)

And then, as a cau­tion­ary note, this one:

Stag­ger­ing­ly enor­mous mis­eries have been the fruit of modernity’s five great rev­o­lu­tions: the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion, the Nation­al Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion and the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion. These five rev­o­lu­tions are one rev­o­lu­tion: five vis­i­ble out-crop­pings of the same invis­i­ble under­sea con­ti­nent. Each stems from the same root: the idol­a­trous search for a new absolute, the diviniza­tion of pow­er or free­dom or equal­i­ty or pride or plea­sure, respec­tive­ly.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 199 (page 135)

I have opin­ions about all of the ques­tions I rat­tled off ear­li­er, and I hold this opin­ion as strong­ly as any of them: words are bet­ter than weapons and bal­lots are bet­ter than bul­lets. Our dis­agree­ments must not dri­ve us to destroy one anoth­er or to tear down the soci­ety we live in. Peo­ple suf­fer when a soci­ety col­laps­es, and those who are already vul­ner­a­ble suf­fer even more.

I don’t think Amer­i­ca is on the cusp of a vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion, but why keep walk­ing down this road? Opt out. As fol­low­ers of Christ let us instead become what I’ve heard called “a cre­ative coun­ter­cul­ture for the com­mon good.” As our Mas­ter said, “Love your ene­mies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mis­treat you”(Luke 6:27–28).

Let your peace inten­si­fy. Here endeth the rant.

Some oth­er quotes from the read­ing that stood out to me:

Pas­cal, Pensee 165: The last act is bloody, how­ev­er fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is fin­ished for ever. 

Kreeft com­ment­ing: A sto­ry, like a syl­lo­gism, gets its uni­ty and point from its con­clu­sion, its end. Life seems wretched and vain because its end, and hence its point, seems to be death, and death seems to be noth­ing­ness. There­fore the ques­tion of immor­tal­i­ty is exis­ten­tial­ly cru­cial.

Pas­cal, Pensee 165 (page 144)

This may seem abstract to you while you’re in col­lege, but Pas­cal makes an excel­lent point else­where:

Any­one with only a week to live will not find it in his inter­est to believe that all this is just a mat­ter of chance. Now, if we were not bound by our pas­sions, a week and a hun­dred years would come to the same thing. 

Pas­cal, Pensee 326 (page 141)

Relat­ed:

Is not our span of life equal­ly infin­i­tes­i­mal in eter­ni­ty, even if it is extend­ed by ten years?

Pas­cal, Pensee 199 (page 125)

On a dif­fer­ent note:

Sec­u­lar moral­i­ty is a plan for the ful­fill­ment of self­ish­ness, Chris­tian­i­ty is a plan for its destruc­tion. It cuts to the heart. In fact, it is heart surgery. Clear­ly, this is going to appear opti­mistic only to one who knows he has heart dis­ease. No one who thinks he is healthy is going to be hap­py to be offered a free heart trans­plant.

Kreeft intro­duc­ing chap­ter 12 (page 148)

And a use­ful reminder that peo­ple are the same wher­ev­er you go, whether 17^th cen­tu­ry France, con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, or ancient Israel (see Eccle­si­astes 7:21–22):

No one talks about us in our pres­ence as he would in our absence. Human rela­tions are only based on this mutu­al decep­tion; and few friend­ships would sur­vive if every­one knew what his friend said about him behind his back, even though he spoke sin­cere­ly and dis­pas­sion­ate­ly.

Pas­cal, from Pensee 978 (page 151)

In my expe­ri­ence this next obser­va­tion is spot-on:

The great­est liar in the world is still out­raged by being lied to. No one is a moral rel­a­tivist, sub­jec­tivist or min­i­mal­ist when it comes to oth­ers’ behav­ior to him, only his to oth­ers.

Kreet com­ment­ing on Pensee 978 (page 153)

And I am always amused when some­one pulls the move Kreeft describes here:

In Pas­cal, as in the Mid­dle Ages, the vast size of the uni­verse is used to show forth the vast­ness of God’s pow­er. The very same fact is com­mon­ly used by the mod­ern mind (which igno­rant­ly thinks it is the first to dis­cov­er the fact) as evi­dence for athe­ism! “How could you believe in a God when Man is but a lost speck in an infi­nite abyss?” Why the size of the uni­verse should count against the­ism is nev­er argued for, only assumed. For the argu­ment is worth­less or nonex­is­tent, but the feel­ing is strong. That’s where the change takes place: in feel­ing, in sen­si­bil­i­ty.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 199 (page 128)

Sim­i­lar­ly:

Sci­ence no more proves that nature is not a moth­er but only mat­ter than an X‑ray proves that a woman is not a moth­er but only a bag of bones.

Kreeft, intro­duc­tion to chap­ter 10 (page 120)

And this last one seems to me to be most­ly true. It’s true enough to think about.

How nat­ur­al and nor­mal is our unnat­ur­al injus­tice! Of course we are annoyed at crit­i­cism, even true crit­i­cism. Espe­cial­ly true crit­i­cism. A man will for­give you for unjust crit­i­cism but not for just crit­i­cism. A bul­ly will for­give you if you call him a cow­ard but not if you call him a bul­ly. A cow­ard will for­give you if you call him a bul­ly but not if you call him a cow­ard.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 978 (page 153)

It reminds me of the say­ing, “when you throw a stone into a pack of dogs, the dog that yelps is the one that got hit.” What makes you yelp? It’s worth pon­der­ing.

For this week we’re read­ing chap­ters 13 (Diver­sion) & 14 (Indif­fer­ence). I think you’ll be shocked at how con­tem­po­rary they seem.