So You Want To "Bet" With God?

Several factors may account for indifference to life’s big questions. Deep and complex, these issues make many people feel inadequate to form opinions about them. Answers have been so hotly disputed over the centuries that people are tempted to believe no genuinely satisfying answers exist. Or some people fail to recognize any practical significance of these questions to their daily lives.
The seventeenth-century Christian thinker Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) came up with a provocative and controversial approach to shake people from their diversions. In his “Wager” argument, Pascal developed a line of practical reasoning with the very purpose of challenging anyone seemingly unconcerned with the perplexing issues of life.
An accomplished scholar in many fields, Pascal is probably best known for his presentation of the Wager. This argument appeals more to prudent and materially existent considerations of the human will than to reason per se.

What is the “Wager”?

Pascal designed the Wager for his skeptical friends who remained simultaneously unconvinced by the claims of atheism and of Christianity. He said that the uncertainties and risks inherent in the human predicament force individuals to make up their minds about God’s existence, and that the truthfulness of God and Christianity cannot be decided by an appeal to reason alone. Therefore people must make a prudent wager about whether God does or does not exist. You can’t get away from it - you must make a bet.
Pascal suggests only two possible choices or bets: 1) Belief in God and the making of a religious commitment (he speaks, of course, about commitment to the Christian God). Two possible outcomes can result from this choice: A person’s belief can be correct or incorrect. If a person believes in God and He actually exists, then according to Pascal the believer stands to gain everything. The payoff, so to speak, for a correct wager would involve infinite gain (eternal life with God in heaven). On the other hand, if a person chooses faith and God does not actually exist, then the believer loses nothing. In terms of a cost-benefit analysis, the person who wagers on God has everything to gain and nothing to lose.
The second recourse is to wager against God by disbelieving in Him and refusing to make a religious commitment. Two possible outcomes can also result from this choice. A person’s disbelief can also be correct or incorrect. If an individual does not believe in God and God does not exist, then the unbeliever gains nothing. On the other hand, if a person does not believe in God but God does actually exist, then the unbeliever stands to lose everything. The loss for wagering incorrectly would involve an infinite loss (eternal exclusion from the life of God). In terms of a cost-benefit analysis, the person who wagers against God has nothing to gain and everything to lose.
In light of these two scenarios, Pascal asserts that the prudent wager is on God. Adopting Christianity over atheism is a judiciously rational decision.
The Wager was never intended to function as a rational proof for God’s existence, nor as a substitute for Christian evidences. Also the Wager targets a specific audience, namely those who have suspended judgment on ultimate issues - as a device to help awaken people who are indifferent to God, death, and immortality.
A number of criticisms have been raised against the Wager through the years by skeptics and Christians alike.
1.) The Wager diminishes love for God, and makes faith into a cold, pragmatic gamble.
Response: It does reach an unbeliever at a realistic starting point. Maybe the Wager should be viewed as a common sense appeal that helps a person mentally prepare for faith (itself a divine gift). Thinking in strongly practical terms about one’s relationship with God isn’t necessarily unspiritual.
2.) Performing a religious task as a bet does not make a person a Christian.
Response: While this is true, it is also true that certain actions are a discipline of grace (reading the Bible, attending church, prayer, etc.). These activities work to change the human heart, and this change is central to developing a day to day trust in God.
3.) The Wager fails to recognize that the believer loses a great deal by wagering on God if He doesn’t actually exist. In fact, the believer loses his autonomy and wastes his life on religious nonsense.
Response: It may be more accurate to say that the person who wagers on God has everything to gain and, in comparison, little to lose. The “pleasure of sin” may appear, for the moment, to be some gain, but in actuality the built-in consequences far outweigh any short-term pleasure.
4.) The Wager provides no guarantee, so why wager at all?
Response: People are forced to choose, but life’s experience provides no absolute guarantees of anything. Every choice made in life is some kind of wager.
5.) The Wager only works if a person bets on the right (or true) religion. What if you gamble on the wrong God?
Response: Pascal recognized other religious alternatives, but he believed that Christianity was the most probably true religion in light of prophecy, miracles, and its unique explanatory power. The Wager emerged within a given historical context that no God other than the Christian God is real. This gamble may not have the same force (or as broad an appeal) in a modern pluralistic age. Today, the Wager may be more appropriately used after a person has conceded the superiority of Christianity’s truth-claims as compared to other religions, in the crucible of objective testing.
6.) The Wager will not convince the hardened or committed atheist.
Response: No argument will convince anyone (apart from the work of God’s grace). The Wager was not intended for a hardened, atheist audience in the first place. Other Christian arguments are available for those who deny God’s existence such as a complexly designed creation, proofs of the Bible, etc.
7.) The Wager promotes intellectual dishonesty. A person can’t pretend to believe when he or she really does not.
Response: The Wager can promote reflective thought about what lies ahead (death), not dishonesty. Skeptics sometimes overestimate the quantity and quality of human intellect. To open one’s mind to being persuaded is not dishonest.
8.) Wouldn’t a just God prefer honest skeptics to purely gambling believers?
Response: Skeptics fail to see, from a biblical perspective, that “hardness of heart” keeps a person from believing in God. Unbelief is rooted in rebellion and arrogance, which essentially is false worship. God has given everyone signs of His existence, but some skeptics ignore and/or repress them.
9.) Why gamble a certain finite good (human independence) for an uncertain infinite good?
Response: All gamblers risk what is certain for what is uncertain, especially when the benefit significantly outweighs the cost. So much good results from belief in God - even in this life (virtue) - that any independence sacrificed seems comparatively insignificant.
10.) Doesn’t the Wager entice people to believe by appealing to a threat or harm (that is, believe so as to avoid hell)?
Response: Some threats are real - the necessary and logical consequences of a person’s actions. If God is in actuality the Creator and Sustainer of the universe, then He legitimately sets the rules. Many material things that we do in human life are done by fear of a threat or harm. The good or harmful consequences of a God or no God decision are just in line with the overall effects of choices.

Conclusion

Pascal’s “Wager”, though open to criticism, is still worthy of careful consideration on the part of believers and unbelievers. In our modern culture where “gambling” has been changed to “gaming” to make it more socially acceptable, there might very well be a place for fence-sitting skeptics to place a bet ON GOD.

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