An Invitation to do Nothing

“‘And throughout all Eternity       
I forgive you, you forgive me. 
As our dear Redeemer said: 
This the Wine, and this the Bread.”

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An Invitation to do Nothing

What are you doing & why? Thinking about why I do what I do, my memories turned to reading Pascal as a teenager. Reading a passage like this isn’t something one can just ignore at such a sensitive age as 17—

When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact— that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.

But on further consideration, when, after finding the cause of all our ills, I have sought to discover the reason of it, I have found that there is one very real reason, namely, the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely.

Whatever condition we picture to ourselves, if we muster all the good things which it is possible to possess, royalty is the finest position in the world. Yet, when we imagine a king attended with every pleasure he can feel, if he be without diversion, and be left to consider and reflect on what he is, this feeble happiness will not sustain him; he will necessarily fall into forebodings of dangers, of revolutions which may happen, and, finally, of death and inevitable disease; so that if he be without what is called diversion, he is unhappy, and more unhappy than the least of his subjects who plays and diverts himself… (Pensées, 168)

Pascal’s thoughts constitute some one of the most profound psychological explorations I have ever witnessed. What he says specifically about royalty is especially prescient. How many of us today live as royalty? Live with something in our pockets that can erase any trace of boredom in an instant? Pascal continues his thoughts on those self-entitledly irreligious—

So, what do they [self-entitled unbelievers] say?

‘Do we not see’, they say, ‘animals living and dying like men, and Turks like Christians? They have their ceremonies, their prophets, their teachers, their saints, their holy men like us,’ etc.

If you scarcely care about knowing the truth, that is enough to leave you in peace. But if you profoundly want to know it, the details have not been looked at closely enough. It would be enough for a philosophical question, but here, where everything is in question? (Pensées, 183)

Passages he writes such as these are so brilliantly convicting. Perhaps he is attempting to convict the kind of sloth or distraction that he identifies in one of his aphorisms—

Human sensitivity to little things and insensitivity to the greatest things: sign of a strange disorder. (Pensées, 525).

Pascal’s first two thoughts are revelatory for the human condition. The third thought, commenting on the common inversion of our priorities, seems to me not to be so much a strange disorder as much as what was clearly identified by Paul—

For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do. (Romans 7:19)

There is some inner voice within us, perhaps the conscience, which wants us to do good. Why then do we, with St. Paul, do evil? I have found something quite fruitful recently. May I share it with you?

It seems that much failure to do the Good (and who doesn’t want to avoid this?), though by no means all of it, consists in eliding a simple theological distinction. Perhaps then would knowing about this distinction would be helpful for employing its fruits? Let us see. I speak here of the distinction between the theology of human potentiality and the theology of human poverty.¹

In the theology of human potentiality (e.g. Vedantic Hinduism), man is a divine being who wants to vindicate himself as a divine being (i.e. the best). The world depends on me. My reputation is paramount to me. I want to create the next magnificent opus. I want to achieve. My prayer is ‘lead me to be tested that I may conquer’. 

This is an especially prominent cultural attitude in the West, where one’s productivity was thought to be proportionate to one’s holiness— itself an attitude which emerged from Calvinist Christianity.²

The passionate megalomania of human potentiality is not unlike one I have struggled with in some of my readings of Hegel. Quixotic young men beware. The shortcomings in the theology of human potentiality rests in being totally ill-prepared when it makes a mistake– for which mistakes are more habitual than the ones which we are not attentive to? Is not the worst in us that which is buried deep within us? Perhaps too embarrassing to even want to pay much attention to?³

In the theology of human poverty (e.g. Christianity), man is an ultimately good yet error-laden being who prays ‘lead me not into temptation’. When I see another’s failure, I only remind myself that I am just as much capable of committing the same mistake by sundown, and that I must keep vigil on myself. I am never surprised by how miserable, how selfish, and how small I am– though I don’t wallow in this either.⁴

What I want to do is make the space to acknowledge my inner poverty— yes, that inner voice & its anxieties which I constantly unconsciously obscure through entering into all kinds of distractions, obligations, and positions. I sit still with this inner voice. I make space to acknowledge my inner poverty through actively doing nothing (Hesychasm, Kenosis).

My goal then is to get out of the way. In a word: repent. I want to remember that nothing depends on me, for the Father desires only my own self-surrender. This way, the grace of God– which is everywhere present and fillest all things– may overcome its sole obstacle in coming to fill me, the obstacle of my own high & busied walls.

In repentance, in praying unceasingly, some small aperture begins to open by which grace gently comes, that He may do Good through me, that I may say with St. Paul—

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

1. All credit must be due, that I by no means have come up with this distinction. In fact, I got it from the Schelling scholar Sean Mcgrath, who speaks about it here in greater eloquence and edification than I could ever manage.
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2. Calvinist Christianity believed this to be the case for the reason that through working more, you were avoiding the sexual temptations that Calvin took us to be vulnerable toward. Hence, the more you worked, the less likely you were to be a sinner. Weber writes about this in Protestantism and the Spirit of Capitalism. Perhaps this is the origin of our overwork culture, which has spread to the whole world. Lord have mercy.
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3. Jung’s theory of shadow-integration is eminently relevant here- Unless you make the unconscious conscious, it will control you and you shall call it fate.
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4. Anyone who struggles with the kind of “sinner-language” found in much of Christianity may find abundant help in Bouteneff’s book, How to be a Sinner.
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