Tag: Religion

Justice and amazing grace

Some people get confused about God’s nature: they think that God is “only love” – as if that one divine attribute is so glorious that it says all there is to say about God. Others, however, are gripped by “the fear of the Lord” and apprehend that God is a cruel judge who is out to condemn them to hell. What is right?

All God’s various attributes (and there are as many as 25) cohere in Him in absolute harmony; he is in no way divided against himself. All the attributes that describe him are his in perfection, and all he does honours all the many facets of his glorious divine character.

So when he contemplates us, sinful human beings, he looks on us both with justice and with love. His love desires our true happiness; his wisdom knows how to procure that happiness while respecting our freedom. He wants to win our love by demonstrating his great love for us. 

But equally he looks on us assessing the real seriousness of our sin, our disobedience to his will, our indifference to his love and our many transgressions of his holy law. Our sinful conduct incurs his righteous condemnation. He is a God of justice and that means he punishes disobedience to his commandments. Indeed, he expresses not only his calm, objective condemnation; he is stirred to righteous – but well-controlled – anger by our wilful disobedience.

These two aspects of his nature appear to be in conflict; but in his infinite wisdom, God knows how to show mercy in harmony with his justice.

Exactly 250 years ago, John Newton, who had been a worthless and wicked slave trader before his radical conversion in a storm at sea, penned the much loved hymn, “Amazing grace”. He had certainly deserved God’s judgment by his foul lifestyle on the high seas for many years. He admits he was a “wretch”. But – ah, the grace of God reached him, saved him, changed him into a saintly wise old preacher and hymn-writer, a much respected church leader and an inspiring spokesman of the movement that brought an end to slavery in Britain.

What then is this amazing grace of God that can save a wretch like Newton? It is a glorious theme in the Bible: it means that God is so loving, he is even kind to his enemies – to wicked, hell-deserving sinners – to the extent that he sets in motion a grandiose plan of salvation whereby those sinners, living in rebellion against God and flouting his law, can be brought to an enduring and radical change of life and inherit eternal life. Newton testified, “Grace… saved a wretch like me”. He once was lost, far from God, a blaspheming immoral sailor; but God found him and drew him into his loving arms and transformed his whole existence.

Grace means that even when we think we’ve sinned away all chances of mercy and forgiveness, and however heinous our sins may have been, there is still hope that God is willing to receive us back with love. Indeed, he has gone before us and done all that is necessary to allow him – in a way that fully respects an honours the requirements of his justice – to pardon sinners such as me and you.  

How he does that is the most wonderful news the world has ever heard!

Clive Every-Clayton

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The character of God

A man of God once wrote that what enters into a person’s mind when they think of God is the most important thing about them. What comes to your mind when you think of God? What kind of character do you think he has?

I’ve written about his goodness and his kindness and his love, but maybe when you think of God, you would not normally think of those attributes; perhaps you think God is all about condemning people – a God of judgment. We really need wisdom and balance here. Twice the Bible says, “God is love”. But twice it also says, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord”.

An aspect of God’s goodness is his holiness: his very nature upholds truth, purity, justice, as well as kindness and absolute goodness. His will, expressed in his precepts, defines what holiness is for us, his creatures.

One of the most mind-bogglingly profound pieces of writing ever penned, in my opinion, is the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel, where we have God the Son speaking in prayer to God the Father. I ask myself, who could ever have invented such a conversation? What mere mortal mind could conceive the deep concepts that are shared within the Godhead? John and the disciples eavesdropped on this astounding conversation where Jesus prays for the fulfilment of his mission to the world. Read it and ponder!

Jesus declared that he knows the Father (John 8.54-55). In that prayer, Jesus uses two striking adjectives in addressing his Father: “Holy Father” (v11) and “Righteous Father” (v25). Jesus knows, and teaches, the holiness and righteousness – or justice – of God. Elsewhere he teaches God’s goodness and love, of course, but these two attributes are also essential to God’s perfect nature. Together they guarantee that all that is done in God’s creation will ultimately demonstrate the justice and perfection of God’s will.

We don’t often think of holiness. I have just sent to the publishers a book on the subject, because I believe it is not only a fundamentally important aspect of God’s nature, but we human beings are supposed to be holy, as image-bearers of God. My book is in French, but the title translates as “The holier you are, the happier you are” – and I really believe that is true, because that is what the Bible teaches. To be holy is in our best interests!

God wants his moral creatures to share his passion for holiness. It is thus that we will be most like him, as creatures made originally in his image. And it is thus that we will find the greatest fulfilment. 

I have said that fulfilment comes from a harmonious, loving relationship with God. For that to come about, we need to be on the same wavelength as God, on this issue of holiness. Our human problem – what hinders our true fulfilment – is that we are not holy; we are sinful.

Now “sin” is another word that deserves clearer thinking, because, unlike the more general term “evil”, sin is defined in relation to God and his will enshrined in the Bible’s commandments: “Through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3.20). Indeed, “sin is lawlessness” or, “the transgression of God’s law” (1 John 3.4). 

The glory of the Christian gospel is that it brings an answer to our human sin problem – a remedy not merely in theory but in our personal experience.  I’m eager to share that with you.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Why life’s meaning is elusive

I have sought to show that Jesus, affirming and demonstrating that he had come into the world from God his Father, is the key to getting authentic God-given answers to our essential questions about life, the universe, God, human fulfilment – and everything. 

I have shared, on that basis, that a harmonious relationship with our Maker is the key to the true purpose of our existence as persons made in his likeness – and this is the way to true human fulfilment because God loves us very much.

But why is this life-purpose so elusive? Why do so few people enjoy a loving relationship with God? Why do so few seem to show it in their lives?

Well, I have broached the subject of good and evil, and therein lies the problem. How can a good and holy God show his love for people whose lives are attached to their self-centred, godless, evil ways? Or rather, how can we, shameful transgressors of God’s commandments, ever reach any kind of agreement or connection with a pure and holy God? We intuitively realise there is a barrier obstructing that relationship, so it is not friendly as it should be, but rather fraught, anguished, fearful – if there is a relationship at all.

If only we could approach God knowing that he longs to put his loving arms around us and welcome us into his intimacy! We may sometimes hunger for such divine love, but at the same time we realise he must disapprove of us; so we prefer to keep God at a distance; we don’t want him to disturb us. This is the practical outworking of the sin principle within human nature since the Fall. 

Somehow this barrier must be overcome if we are to find true fulfilment; but how? Can we work our way into God’s good graces? Can we earn his friendship by our religious practice? Many have tried in the various religions of the world, and would like to think they are doing well. However, we cannot buy God’s forgiveness by doing good. Although many nourish that hope, it is ultimately of no avail.

Why is God so hard to find? Why does our search for fulfilment turn out to be so frustratingly elusive? Because there is only one way for the barrier to be broken down, and it is not something we can do “from our side”. The initiative comes from the God who loves us very much. 

We must realise that God is extraordinarily good and kind! His generous love is called “grace”: it’s the lovingkindness he shows to undeserving sinners. “Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1. 17). This is what Jesus brought at the cost of his life; it is only his coming and death for us that provides the way to remove the barrier that sin makes between us and God. 

So Jesus said, “I am the way… No one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14.6). That is the only way. Jesus says that if we try to find God’s life-fulfilling purpose without trusting him, we will never attain it! We must turn to him; he is the Saviour we need. Through him we can find forgiveness and enter into life which is truly fulfilling.

How grateful we should be that the insoluble human dilemma has an authentic, valid, real, effective answer! “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,” says Jesus, “and”, he promises, “I will give you rest” (Matthew 11.28).  

Clive Every-Clayton

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Good and evil

Everyone agrees that a nurse who kills seven babies under her care in a hospital is guilty of horrible evil. Other examples of evil come readily to mind. Evil is real. But so is good. We all know some really good people, like the kind, reassuring and efficient nurses that have been taking care of me these last few days. 

Everyone knows the difference between good and evil; our conscience gives us this moral intuition. But when we complain about the wrong someone has done to us, they do not necessarily agree that what they did was wrong. They have a moral code different from ours. Indeed, with the rise of moral relativism, many think that what was considered immoral 50 years ago is perfectly okay now. Who is to say what’s right? Do good and evil alter over time? Can the individual just decide for himself? Are there no objective standards? 

The problem with moral relativism is that it tends to favour the easiest, most lax moral code for oneself – though one may have harsher standards when judging others! When a society as a whole has only relative standards to guide it, the tendency is therefore towards greater permissiveness. And if it continues unchecked, moral chaos will result. 

Neither atheism, nor science is able to move in and alter that downward trajectory. Moral reformers are generally religious people. In their efforts to uphold higher moral standards, they invoke God. It takes a prophetic voice to bring spiritual revival and ethical improvement. 

People in our generation in the West who enjoy the liberalising effects on moral values don’t want to listen to the challenge of Christian morality. But that is what is needed to stop the rot of a society where statistics show, in so many areas, the detrimental effects of liberalising moral norms.

We need both moral light and moral authority: God alone provides both. Whether we like it or not, we must face the fact that we are created by a good God to have an inner sense of good and evil. We have a God-given conscience that makes us understand that we ought to do good, and turn away from evil. Wisdom dictates that we listen to what God has to say in the area of good living.

It is a striking fact that Jesus’ first public preaching, recorded in Mark 1.15, is his call to “repent”. To repent means to rethink one’s moral situation, and to turn away from what is wrong. Or as Jesus also said, “Sin no more” (John 5.14). The call of the Christian gospel comes as a challenge to change one’s life-style, to commit to a better, purer, kinder and more righteous way of life, as Jesus defines it. The Gospel is much more than that – it centres on Jesus who, out of loving kindness towards us wayward sinners, came to give his life for us so that we might be forgiven. But the gracious offer of forgiveness is promised to those who repent and believe in Jesus as Saviour and Lord. Maybe that’s something you need to do? Think about it. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Only God is good

To say that God is good is fairly commonplace: if there is a God, most people would agree, he ought to be good. But Jesus had a different angle on this. This is his riposte to someone who called him “good Master”: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Luke 18.18-19). No one is good! Only God is!

This is a profound insight, and a vital clue to answering many of our ethical questions. The first important thing Jesus teaches here is that no-one is good. On two occasions in his teaching, speaking to a perfectly ordinary group of listeners, he refers to them as “evil”. In his famous “Sermon on the Mount”, for example, he says, “If you, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7.11 and again in Luke 11.13).

These words communicate two truths: first, that people are essentially classified by God as “evil”; yet, they are also capable of doing good, like giving good things to their kids. What may seem shocking to us, however, is Jesus’ insistence that “no one is good” in the absolute sense – or as the Bible teaches elsewhere, “There is no-one righteous, not even one… for all have sinned” (Romans 3.10, 23).

The second thing taught by Jesus is that God is good – indeed, he alone is good. Now these two fundamental truths revealed about both God and humans form the foundation enabling us to get clarity on issues relating to morality.

We all face moral questions every day: what should I do? What is right or wrong here? How am I to decide? According to my family tradition? According to the majority opinion? By the light of my conscience? One’s conscience needs a reference for its judgment, and that reference can vary – it is not stable.

“Only God is good”: here, then, Jesus would say, is the only proper source for understanding what is good and what is evil. This is a service that “only God” can render to humanity – for we are all tainted with evil to some degree, and therefore disqualified to pontificate on moral truth. God alone – who is our Maker, after all – is wise and good enough to inform us correctly about how his creatures are to be good.

And God has rendered us this service – beginning by laying down the famous Ten Commandments which he gave to Moses for his people to obey. Jesus reinforced those commandments and Christians hold to them as defining right human behaviour. To disobey them is wrong. So adultery, theft and murder, for example, are wrong, as are coveting (lust), perjury (lying), and putting other things as “gods” in the place of God himself. These are the minimum basics for truly good human living. And Jesus fills out the very demanding “spirit” of these commandments in his Sermon on the Mount. Have you ever read it? It is revolutionary! You will find it in Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 5 to 7.

There’s more to say on our need for moral guidance, but the key is – God is good, and it is he who can (and does) tell us. And it is to him, after all, that we are answerable. If this highlights the very real problem of our misdeeds, we need to hear – and can know – that God forgives. That’ll be for another blog post.

Clive Every-Clayton

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God’s love and human freedom

Another difficult question needs to be answered as we grapple with the sad fact that God’s supreme creature has become so perverted as to displease his Creator: why didn’t God prevent the Fall from happening? Was it wise to allow the first man the freedom to sin?

Well, what was the alternative? To create a robot? God is perfectly capable of creating parts of the world that act mechanically; but he is personal, he is a lover. He created little persons in his image to be able to enjoy personal relationships. Human beings are not automatons: Professor of psychiatry Glynn Harrison informs us: “Human beings are fundamentally lovers”. We are so gloriously constituted that not only can we delight in relationships with other people – we can also have a personal relationship with God himself! 

But here’s the basic issue: love relationships must allow freedom. It’s part of the deep pleasure that love is mutual and consented freely. So God made Adam and Eve in his image, as persons with intelligence, emotions like love and a free will – the capacity to choose. And this included the very real possibility that they could choose – as indeed they did – to disobey God’s will. Yes, our freedom is that real!

But our freedom is not autonomy; we are never independent of God. Autonomy would mean that we are a law unto ourselves – we would make our “law” which would replace God’s law. This was the essence of Adam and Eve’s sin. The law we would choose for ourselves is not the best – we are not as wise as God in our ethical choices. God as Creator has supreme authority in the universe: he remains in ultimate control and we remain answerable to him. He has the right to impose his wise and best will on us, demanding our obedience for our highest good. And he has the ultimate right to exercise just judgment and also to inflict final punishment where it is deserved.

So our human free will is grounded on the fact that we are true persons, made with a view to enjoying a loving, warm relationship with God.

But did not God foresee that mankind would rebel? Yes, he surely did. So why did he still go ahead with it? Here we are in the profound depths of God’s unfathomable infinite wisdom: God’s design was to reveal to humankind the most mind-boggling aspect of his glorious love for us. The technical word for this amazing love is “grace”, which has the meaning “God’s undeserved loving-kindness and favour” – shown not merely to the undeserving, but to the hell-deserving! 

When Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that we should “love our enemies”, he said that if we did we would be like his heavenly Father who is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. What an amazing concept! In other words, God loves even his enemies. So the Bible encourages believers by telling us that “while we were God’s enemies we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son”. And again, “God proves his love towards us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5.8, 10). The immensity of God’s love is revealed in that he cares deeply even for those who live in rebellion against him; it is also revealed in the greatness of the sacrifice he made to show the fullness of his love. Before Jesus died, he said, “Greater love has no-one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15.13).

It is as we take in the full wonder of His love revealed in the Cross, that we are overwhelmed by his amazing grace and can gladly accept his offer of pardon and reconciliation and begin to love him in return.

And thus we enter into the purpose for which we were created!

Clive Every-Clayton

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A fall you can recover from

The Bible’s first three chapters recount what Christian theology refers to as “the Fall of man – how a pure creation became contaminated by evil. The original ancestors of the human race, created positively good, yet free to choose, were given one simple prohibition: not to eat of one particular tree in the Garden of Eden. God warned of serious consequences in the event of disobedience to this one commandment: “The day you eat of it, you will die”. Adam and Eve chose to disobey. The New Testament comments: “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin” (Romans 5.12). Sin “came into” human existence; it was not there before. But now humans have become sinners, subject to all kinds of evil and death.

Because of this, Jesus describes human depravity in our inner being, when he says: “From within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness” (Mark 7.21-22). Quite the opposite of the first couple’s holiness before the Fall! A great tragedy – but one from which we humans can be saved and healed.

The New Testament adds, in Romans 5.19, “By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners”. In other words, sin entered as it were into the bloodstream of humanity, and we are all infected with it. Thus we are vestiges of the original glory, tarnished by inherent corruption. That is how we are to understand our human reality. That is the Maker’s diagnosis – the true facts about our condition. And the Maker subsequently set in motion the means of redemption, restoration, healing, and forgiveness – we will come to that in due course.

But I want to refer again to Pascal’s brilliant explanation of this – what theologians call “original sin”, and he calls “the mystery furthest from our ken” (§131/434). It is so dense, I will have to summarise and simplify it. He says:

As a result of the Fall, all humans are born with an inner disposition to evil. He acknowledges that this doctrine – that we should suffer from the effects of our ancestor’s disobedience – offends our proud sensibilities. “Nothing jolts us more rudely than this doctrine,” he says. Yet – get this: without this revealed explanation (that none of us likes nor could have invented, but which was there in the Bible from the first) we are unable to explain the essential duality of good and evil in our nature. “But for this mystery, the most incomprehensible of all”, he wrote, “we remain incomprehensible to ourselves”! Only by grasping this revealed truth which appears so contrary to proud human reason, he concludes, only then “can we really know ourselves.”

Profound!

He sums up therefore “two equally constant truths. One is that man in the state of his creation… is made like unto God; the other is that in the state of corruption and sin, he has fallen from that first estate and has become like the beasts”. But he alludes also to a third state, “the state of grace”. This refers to the restoration of sinful man by the redeeming work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sinful men and women can be forgiven by God’s grace, through the Cross of their Saviour; and they can be made new by the converting power of the Holy Spirit, becoming beloved children of God, saved from the consequences of their sins, welcomed by God into a warm ,loving relationship with him, for which they were designed.

Clive Every-Clayton

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The deep human malady

Are people essentially good, basically corrupt, or somewhere in between? How to assess our human reality? By our own opinion? Our evaluation would tend either to hubris or low self-esteem, because, bizarrely, there is in our nature both good and evil. Our pride would emphasise the good; our realism may recognise the bad also. 

The difficulty is, you cannot truly understand yourself by yourself. This is the eternal conundrum already long before Blaise Pascal, he who excelled in “showing how vile and how great man is” (§119/423). He also had deep insight into the real cause of both our nobility and our baseness. The dual nature of man, he saw, has its explanation par excellence in the Bible, and he expresses it as if God was telling us: “It is I who have made you, and I alone can teach you what you are. But you are no longer in the state in which I made you. I created man holy, innocent, perfect… He was not then in the darkness that now blinds his sight, nor subject to death and the miseries that afflict him. But… he wanted to make himself his own centre and do without my help. He withdrew from my rule, setting himself up as my equal in his desire to find happiness in himself, and I abandoned him to himself” (§149/430).

In other words, our positive glory comes from being part of the unique species that was created in the image of God; our deep depravity comes from the fact that humankind has fallen away from that original holiness. This is the light from God that we need to make sense of our dual reality. God’s glorious creation is in ruins; and the fault is not God’s! Man has become a rebel: “men are the devils of the earth” (Schopenhauer). “Humans have a great capacity for wrong-doing,” wrote Jordan Peterson, a “proclivity for malevolent actions. Every person is deeply flawed. Everyone falls short of the glory of God” (12 Rules for Life, p.55 and p.62). And Malcolm Muggeridge stated, “The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time the most intellectually resisted fact”. Yes, we resist it, don’t we? Yet in our sober moments, we must acknowledge it is true. “All have sinned”, says the Bible: “None is righteous” – in the sense of being perfectly good in God’s eyes (Romans 3.10, 23). And if we think we are the exception, the Bible brings us back to reality: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1.8).

We have said that God is our Creator, but he did not make us inherently evil; he made humankind in his image, in the likeness of a holy, good and loving God. That is the source of our inherent greatness. The source of our inherent sinfulness is due to a primeval rebellion, the disobedience of the first human couple, Adam and Eve.

That deserves separate treatment.

Clive Every-Clayton

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Diagnosis of human nature

“What is man?” is an age-old question. Another question we should also ask is, What’s wrong with man? Because we are fraught with trouble that we cannot easily grasp. Things are not right with human nature, but how to make sense of our psychological ills – that is the question.

Blaise Pascal had an astute understanding of this human dilemma; indeed, few had the penetrating insights that he expressed with such incisive prose: “Man is neither angel nor beast, and it is unfortunately the case that anyone trying to act the angel acts the beast” (§678/358).

Speaking of the unity in man of mind and matter, Pascal writes: “This is the thing we understand least; man is to himself the greatest prodigy in nature, for he cannot conceive what body is, and still less what mind is, and least of all how a body can be joined to a mind. This is his supreme difficulty, and yet it is his very being. The way in which minds are attached to bodies is beyond man’s understanding, and yet this is what man is” (§199/92).

But there is another duality in our nature that Pascal points up: some, he says, are “exalted at… the sense of their greatness” while others are “dejected at the sight of their present weakness… If they realised man’s excellence [but] they did not know [man’s] corruption… the result [is] … pride, and if they recognised the infirmity of nature, [without knowing] its dignity… the result [is] that they… fall headlong into despair.” So he sums up: “We feel within ourselves the indelible marks of excellence, and is it not equally true that we constantly experience the effects of our deplorable condition?” (§208/435).

“Who cannot see that unless we realise the duality of human nature we remain invincibly ignorant of the truth about ourselves?” (§131/434).

So, is man good and glorious? Or is he weak and wicked?

“What shall become of man? Will he be the equal of God or the beasts? What a terrifying distance! What then shall he be? Who cannot see from all this that man is lost, that he has fallen from his place, that he anxiously seeks it, and cannot find it again? And who then is to direct him there? The greatest men have failed” (§430/431).

“You are a paradox to yourself” says Pascal – echoed by Professor of Psychology Jordan Peterson, “You are too complex to understand yourself”. We need help!

“Men, it is in vain that you seek within yourselves the cure for your miseries. All your intelligence can only bring you to realise that it is not within yourselves that you will find either truth or good” (§149/430).

“Know then, proud man, what a paradox you are to yourself. Be humble, impotent reason! Be silent, feeble nature! Learn that man infinitely transcends man, hear from your master your true condition, which is unknown to you. Listen to God.” (§131/434).

When we are seriously ill without realising it, a doctor’s diagnosis is hard to take. So also it is humbling to face up to our existential pain, when our pride is the main problem, and our pride is hurt. 

On the other hand, a doctor’s mistaken diagnosis can be very harmful for a patient, because the remedy proposed may actually be detrimental to the patient’s health. So it is with our human predicament: many a wrong diagnosis of our ills has only led people into further distress. So, what is wrong with us? Where is the doctor who can bring the right diagnosis?

“Listen to God”. Only our Maker can mend us. 

Clive Every-Clayton

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Our human predicament

Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was one of France’s greatest minds: inventor of the first calculating machine, and the first public transport (in Paris), he was a mathematician but most famous for his literary accomplishments; he was regarded by many as the greatest of French prose artists. He was an unconventional Catholic because he struggled against the Jesuits, calling their Society and the Inquisition “twin scourges of the truth” (Pensées §916/920). Also unusual for a Catholic layman in those days, he profoundly studied the Bible which was for him the source of absolute truth; so he was quite like an evangelical not only for his high regard for Scripture, but also because he underwent a profound experience of the risen Christ, which was a radical conversion, the essence of which he wrote immediately in his “Memorial” which has been described as the most sublime writing ever put on paper. 

Pascal thought long about the human condition: he compares mankind to a feeble plant, like a reed, then adds “but he is a thinking reed… All our dignity consists in thought” (§620/347). Well, he had lots of thoughts; he would be a blogger if he lived today, though some of his thoughts (pensées in French) are short like a tweet. They were considered so powerful and brilliant that they were published just as he jotted them down in his moments of inspiration and they are still in print today – 350 years later.

Here is an example of Pascal’s penetrating understanding of our human dilemma – which you will agree, as you read, sounds like it was written in our time.

“When I see the blind and wretched state of man, when I survey the whole universe in its dumbness and man left to himself with no light, as if lost in this corner of the universe, without knowing who put him there, what he has come to do, what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost and with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair. I see other people around me, made like myself. I ask them if they are any better informed than I, and they say they are not. Then these lost and wretched creatures look around and find some attractive objects to which they become addicted and attached. For my part, I have never been able to form such attachments, and considering how very likely it is that there exists something besides what I can see, I have tried to find out whether God has left any traces of himself.” (§198/693)

If his emphasis on man’s “wretchedness” sounds too negative, know that Pascal also emphasises man’s wonderfulness: “What sort of freak then is man! … glory and refuse of the universe”! (§131/434)

Clive Every-Clayton

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