Aspiring to Be a Voice of Reason and Guidance

Early on the morning of July 12, I had a very vivid dream about the world being in chaos. I then woke up thinking, “The world’s in chaos and needs voices of reason and guidance.” At that point, I decided that I need to spend less time doing rather meaningless activities and more time seeking to be an outspoken voice of reason and guidance. Please join me in that endeavor.

Is the world in chaos? Well, it is not as chaotic as I saw in my dream that morning. But, yes, in many ways I think there are ample reasons to assert that the world today is, indeed, in chaos.

The physical world is in chaos because of environmental problems that are bad now and only going to get worse. For example, the glaciers are melting, the seas are rising, droughts are increasing, and reservoir levels are falling. We are experiencing the effects of “overshoot,” about which some knowledgeable people have warned us about for a long time.**

The geopolitical world is also in chaos in many places because of wars (such as in Iran, Ukraine, Sudan) and widespread immigration (because of necessity or desire). Co-Pilot told me that the world is experiencing the highest levels of forced displacement ever recorded, driven by war, persecution, state collapse, climate disasters, and economic desperation

In the world of ordinary people, chaos is seen in what can be called social decadence. A large part of such moral decadence is due to the President, about whom Michael Steele recently called a “disgusting man … with no moral code. “(This was in March, said in reaction to Trump’s gloating over Robert Mueller’s death.)

The current social decadence in the U.S. under the present POTUS is evident to anyone willing to look objectively. That decadence was quite apparent in the primetime speech Trump delivered on July 16.

Paul Krugman is a Nobel Prize-winning economist (2008) and currently a Distinguished Professor of Law. He has also been an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times. Early on July 17, he posted on his Substack account “more or less every word he spoke was a lie, including ‘a,’ ‘and,’ and ‘the’.”

And this is what Jen Rubin asserted on her July 13 Substack post: “To pretend there is any moral equivalence between the parties when it comes to handling moral depravity is to become an apologist for the party that has eschewed every standard of decency in favor of ruthless pursuit of power and cultist loyalty to a depraved narcissist.”

Fairly recently, I have become a regular reader of David Rothkopf’s Substack posts. (He is a foreign‑policy analyst and author. Among his many books is Traitor: A History of American Betrayal from Benedict Arnold to Donald Trump, issued shortly before the 2020 presidential election.)

On the same day Rubin’s article was posted, Rothkopf (b. 1955) wrote how the USAmerican society

became so degraded, our values so diluted by our desire to be comfortable, that we allowed the most profoundly evil political leader in our history to become president and to echo the Nazis and authoritarians from centuries past as he compiled an administration, built a government, of people who were equally morally bereft, amoral, and immoral.

That is not to say that any democratically elected leader will be a saint or perfect. That is impossible. But we can value moral rectitude more than we do.

What can we do to be a voice of reason and guidance in this chaotic world? This is perhaps the question that most of us have, especially those of us who were adults (at least 18) when the U.S. celebrated its 200^th anniversary.

One of Jesus’ most challenging and most neglected admonition is “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23, NRSV). 

As you know, Jesus also said, “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves.” (Matt. 11:28-29).

Most Christians, including most preachers/pastors, have emphasized the Matthew passage far more than the challenging words from Luke 9. But rest has meaning only after strenuous efforts for doing good and being a voice for reason and guidance.

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** Many of you will remember that I have written about this in the past, inspired to do so by Michael Dowd (1958~2023), the eco-theologian and “evolutionary evangelist.” Here is a link to a blog article in which I wrote about Dowd and his challenging ideas:

https://theviewfromthisseat.blogspot.com/2022/01/facing-grief-of-looking-up-looking.html

 

In Praise of Pascal

Many years ago I made a list of the top ten modern (since 1500) theologians and/or philosophers by whom my thinking had been most influenced. The first name on that chronological list was, and remains, Blaise Pascal. That French genius, who died 355 years ago in 1662, was a man whose ideas are certainly praiseworthy still.

Pascal’s Precocity 

There is no question that Pascal (b. 1623) was a precocious child. He reputedly discovered for himself the first 32 of Euclid’s propositions while still a boy, and as a teenager he invented the first calculating machine.

In his twenties, Pascal confirmed the existence of the vacuum and instigated the development of calculus. His expertise as a physicist is such that “pascal” became the name for “a unit of pressure in the meter-kilogram-second system equivalent to one newton per square meter.”

Later, “Pascal” became the name for “a structured computer programming language developed from Algol and designed to process both numerical and textual data.”

There is no question that Pascal from an early age excelled as a mathematician, physicist, and inventor. However, it is because of his deep religious experience and then because of his keen thinking as a Christian philosopher that I find him most worthy of praise.

Pascal’s Profundity 

Pascal’s great contribution as a Christian thinker came after a profound religious experience in November 1654, when he was 31 years old. At that time he wrote, and then carried with him until the time of his death, the following testimony of that mystic experience:

Fire!
"God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob," not of philosophers and scholars.
Certainty, certainty, heartfelt, joy, peace.
God of Jesus Christ. . . .
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.

Following that “night of fire,” Pascal abandoned his pursuit of science until just before his death and decided to write a book for the vindication of the Christian faith. But, alas, he died at the young age of 39 before the book was published and even before his copious notes were organized.   

By 1670, though, Pascal’s thoughts were published, without much organization, under the name Pensées—and the book is still published in various translations and editions, including more than one on Kindle. 

While some of Blaise’s thoughts may seem a little blasé, many are quite profound. Of particular import are these contentions:

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: . . . (423)

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason. (424)

(Pascal’s quoted words are all from A.J. Krailsheimer’s 1966 translation of Pensées.) 

Pascal’s Paradoxicality  

It is particularly Pascal’s dual emphasis on opposites that I have found most helpful. For example, concerning reason: 

If we submit everything to reason our religion will be left with nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we offend the principles of reason our religion will be absurd and ridiculous. (273)

Pascal’s paradoxical view of human nature is of great significance. “Man is only a reed, but he is a thinking reed.” (200)

He repeatedly wrote about both the wretchedness and the greatness of humans.

Pascal also averred, “There are only two kinds of men: the righteous who think they are sinners and the sinners who think they are righteous.” (562)

Wikipedia interestingly, and correctly, summarizes Pascal’s paradoxicality in these words: “In the Pensées, Pascal surveys several philosophical paradoxes: infinity and nothing, faith and reason, soul and matter, death and life, meaning and vanity—seemingly arriving at no definitive conclusions besides humility, ignorance, and grace.”

Many of Pascal’s “thoughts” are praiseworthy and unquestionably worth thinking about—perhaps especially in the present day.