Christ - The ReeseSource

Let me state right up front that I do not gamble for money. Let me tell you why. I played poker during my brief tenure at the University of Georgia, which cured me of gambling and contributed to the demise of my academic pursuits at that great institution of higher learning. I learned some important lessons about gambling at that time. The number one lesson was that you should not gamble with money that you cannot afford to lose,For me, that was my weekly food allowance. Losing puts you on a diet of Kool-Aid and grits! The next lesson I learned was that I had zero ability to bluff with a bad hand. People know me for “wearing my heart on my sleeve” even now. However, It was particularly unhelpful in midnight poker games in the dorms. My roommates later told me that people could “read me like a book!” The other lesson I learned was that, unlike my roommates who were excellent students with high I.Q.’s, I could not stay up all night playing poker and be successful in the classroom. This resulted in “the powers that be” suggesting quite strongly that I pursue my academic career elsewhere.

Even with my history of being a bad gambler, you must know that I very much enjoy watching televised poker tournaments. Primarily, I watch them in the afternoons while I am working out on the elliptical trainer. I also enjoy the differing personalities who compete. I enjoy seeing the strategy involved in the decision-making process of wagering. It is very exciting when a player declares “all-in”, meaning that he is betting everything he has on the table.

Blaise Pascal, the famous French philosopher and mathematician, had a famous wager known as Pascal’s Wager. Wikipedia states that “Pascal's Wager (or Pascal's Gambit) is a suggestion that even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because living life accordingly has everything to gain, and nothing to lose.

Pascal begins with the premise that the existence or non-existence of God is not provable by human reason, since the essence of God is "infinitely incomprehensible". Since reason cannot decide the question, one must "wager", by either guessing or making a leap of faith. Agnosticism on this point is not possible, in Pascal's view, for we are already "embarked", effectively living out our choice.

We only have two things to stake, our "reason" and our "happiness". Pascal considers that there is "equal risk of loss and gain", a coin toss, since human reason is powerless to address the question of God's existence. That being the case, we then must decide it according to our happiness... by weighing the gain and loss in believing that God exists. He contends the wise decision is to wager that God exists, since "If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing", meaning one can gain eternal life if God exists, but if not, one will be no worse off in death than if one had not believed.”

Here is the dilemma:
Do you go “all-in” and bet everything you have and everything you are on the existence of God as Pascal stated. Furthermore, will you wager your eternal destiny on the truth of Jesus’ claim that He is the Way, The Truth and The Life and that no man comes to the Father (God) but by Christ. What do you have to lose? Eternal life with God or without God. Think about it. Let’s talk.

MINISTRY NEWS:
I attended the 22nd annual reunion of a group of men who have the common bond of involvement with Young Life in years past. We meet yearly for prayer, sharing, laughter, and good food. One of our members drove seventeen hours from upper New York state to be with us! Another, who is now a pastor, drove from Cincinnati to join us.

Our Friday Morning group has decided to meet for lunch one Friday a month instead of our morning meeting that day so that two of our members could be with us. They were unable, for health reasons, to come to our early morning meeting. We met at Johnny and Brenda Gaskin’s home this month and will be back there on April 16th. We would love to have you join us, guys, if you would like to attend a lunch meeting instead of getting up so early! Let us know by calling me at 678-986-4814. It is B.Y.O.L. (Bring Your Own Lunch). We will still meet at Marshall Dye’s office on Marble Mill Circle at 7:00 a.m. the other Fridays.