The text reminds us...
Illustration
Object:
The text reminds us how skilled we are in doing evil, in sinning. Seventeenth-century French intellectual Blaise Pascal well describes our misery:
Sometimes when I set to thinking about the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles they face... I have often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room... The only good thing for men therefore is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion... What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition... but the agitation that takes our mind off it and diverts us.
(Pensees, pp. 67-68)
The more we live with this understanding of ourselves, the more important God becomes. It is like Martin Luther once wrote: "... we never correctly praise God unless we first disparage ourselves" (Luther's Works, Vol. 10, p. 162).
Famed 20th-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr then describes the joy this insight brings: "This means, don't be so morbid about the fact that you're selfish; don't deny that you are self-regarding, but work in life and hope that by grace... you will be redeemed" (Justice and Mercy, p. 43).
Sometimes when I set to thinking about the various activities of men, the dangers and troubles they face... I have often said that the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room... The only good thing for men therefore is to be diverted from thinking of what they are, either by some occupation which takes their mind off it, or by some novel and agreeable passion... What people want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition... but the agitation that takes our mind off it and diverts us.
(Pensees, pp. 67-68)
The more we live with this understanding of ourselves, the more important God becomes. It is like Martin Luther once wrote: "... we never correctly praise God unless we first disparage ourselves" (Luther's Works, Vol. 10, p. 162).
Famed 20th-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr then describes the joy this insight brings: "This means, don't be so morbid about the fact that you're selfish; don't deny that you are self-regarding, but work in life and hope that by grace... you will be redeemed" (Justice and Mercy, p. 43).
