You Bet Your Life

“Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists. “
Blaise Pascal

Blaise Pascal was a 17th Century mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. A Frenchman, Pascal was Catholic, but at about age 31, he was converted to a sect known as the Jansenists, who would later be condemned by Pope Innocent X, in part for their belief that no person could merit salvation—that salvation came only by faith.

As a mathematician Pascal was possibly best known for the development of probability theory. This field of study may very well have influenced his thinking as he formulated the proposition with which this article begins, known famously as Pascal’s Wager. Since faith cannot be “proved” or disproved by mathematics or logic, Pascal instead posits an argument from probability.

Pascal’s Wager was not intended to prove or disprove the existence of God, but to open the door to consideration. As an apologetic tool, it is a mere first step, and a baby step at that. Because without an understanding of who God is and the nature of His relationship to us, a gamble on His existence is of little benefit at all. “For,” as the writer of Hebrews tells us, “whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (11:6). A mere gamble on a probability is a far cry from faith. Nor can we confuse a mere belief in God with saving faith. As James tells us, “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!“ (2:19)

When we consult the apostle Paul, we find that he grants Pascal neither his categories nor his premise. For Paul, the propositions are not the existence of God versus atheism. Rather they are the truth of the Resurrection versus the certainty of divine judgment. Nor does Paul represent the stakes as “gain all” versus “lose nothing.” On the contrary:

“ . . . if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15: 13-19).

If we get this wrong, Paul tells us, we lose everything. In fact, if we are wrong on the Resurrection, we Christians are worse off than if we’d not believed. Not only are we still in our sins, but we’ve added to them by misrepresenting God.

This statement from Paul reveals another weakness in Pascal’s Wager: it only holds water in the realm of Christendom. Pascal wrote in a Catholic world, where belief in God was safe. In Christendom the one who gambles this way can play with little, if any, skin in the game. This argument made sense to me many years ago when I was a young so-called Christian in Reagan’s America, just as it still sounds good to many professing Christians in America today. But this gamble would ring nothing but hollow to a man like Paul who gave up everything he had once lived for only to be jailed, beaten, stoned, and eventually murdered for his faith in Christ. And it would sound like nonsense to a Muslim, for instance, or to an LGBTQ+ American. These are examples of people who have a whole lot to lose if they follow Christ: family, community, identity, and possibly life itself.

And this is why I am bringing this up now. Various formulations of Pascal’s Wager are still circulating today, intended as evangelism. I came upon this version on one of my social media feeds a while back. Attributed to the Christian musician, Lecrae, it stated:  “If I’m wrong about God, then I wasted my life. If you’re wrong about God then you wasted your eternity.” This argument has the same limitations as Pascal’s. But the person who shared the quote took the conversation a step further: “I don’t feel that I have wasted my life,” she said, “I believe that I have had a wonderful life. A wasted life, in my opinion, would be one spent chasing after riches, living for sex, or getting high or wasted. A wasted life would be just living for my own happiness and pleasure, believing that that is all there is or ever will be. Even if I die and there is no God, I will be so thankful for the joy of having believed and for having enjoyed ‘Him’ and for having had ‘His’ example of LIFE to inspire me . . . I will NOT regret having believed even if I find out I was wrong.”

Those words took my breath away, and they have haunted me ever since. Never mind the fact that she assumes an afterlife apart from God, and that in it she will have the capacity for thankfulness (to whom?). Never mind the fact that the values she expresses are a by-product of a life lived in Christendom. Her words represent a moralistic, Christless vision of life. No gospel is needed. No legitimate object of faith is required. Anyone can live this life, and many atheists do. So do many people of many other religions, and sadly—based on the affirmative responses she received—so do many who consider themselves Christians. When it comes down to brass tacks, they can dispense with Christ. In their minds, not only will they lose nothing in the wager, but they gain even if they lose. The Apostle Paul, by their way of thinking, must not have known what he was talking about.

But contra Pascal (and Lecrae), if Paul was wrong about Christ, he lost everything—in this life and the life to come. And, contra Pascal, Paul was not gambling. He was dead certain of the truth of Jesus Christ. Otherwise he would never have obeyed with all his heart Christ’s gospel call: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mt. 16:24).

Brothers and sisters, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a matter of life and death, and it is no gamble. We can’t afford to have a deficient understanding of the Gospel. We can’t afford to miss the point. Christ calls us all to proclaim from the heart along with Paul:

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Php 3:7-11).

Is gaining Christ worth losing everything else? Or is Pascal’s Wager good enough for you?

"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep
to gain that which he cannot lose."—Jim Elliot