Blaise Pascal, the 17th century philosopher, once proposed a wager to unbelievers about how they ought align themselves in relation to God. He said that the rational man, if he were to wager his eternal soul, ought to live as though God existed. If God does not exist, the man will only have lost temporal pleasures while living a virtuous life; but if God does exist he will receive infinite gains in eternity while avoiding infinite loss of hell. This came to be known as Pascal’s Wager.
As far as apologetics go, I wouldn’t put too much stock in this. Salvation comes through faith in the substitutionary atonement of Christ, not in hedging one’s bets. But taken for what it is, you have to admit there is truth to Pascal’s reasoning. One way of living, even if mistaken, yields good fruit in this life and in the next, and if there is no life after death, nothing is lost.
I would like to submit another kind of wager similar to Pascal’s. Lets call it Postmil’s Wager. And it has the benefit of alliteration and matchy syllables. It was like it was meant to be made.
Postmillennialism is the belief that through the Holy Spirit and the Church the nations will be baptized and taught to obey the Lord. The gospel has concentric effects on a life and those effects improve the conditions of one’s surroundings to include one’s family, city, and nation. This leads to a general improvement for everyone, as evidenced by the past two thousand years of history being made vastly more hospitable by the Christian influence. For a postmillennialist, he is thinking of planting trees in the public square in whose shade he himself will never rest, and building the Kingdom for his children and his children’s children.
Alternatively, other eschatological beliefs (premillennialism, amillennialism) see the event horizon of the end times as fast approaching. In general, people of this latter perspective tend towards the shorter term thinking, attempting to save as many as possible from the immanent eschaton. Of course, this is not bad – people are getting saved and the evangelism of the world is still the prime motivating of a Christian’s life on this planet. But in general this thinking does not lend itself very naturally to wanting to make things better here on earth so much as saving the lost from destruction and preparing themselves for some serious trib-time. With all due respect to the many that hold these beliefs, it is just the obvious consequence of the idea.
Consider Postmil’s Wager. A Christian ought to live as though Postmillennialism is true, as if it is our mission to grow the Kingdom of God throughout the earth. If it is not true, the man will have spent his life advancing the Kingdom of God, loving his neighbor, and making the world better, with a mistaken expectation that this was God’s intent. And he will be thinking of this while he is meeting Christ in the sky, or resting by the River of Life after a hearty “well done” from the Father.
But if Postmillennialism is true, and he instead lives like the Lord is returning sometime before his next oil change, he will have potentially spent his life with truncated expectations of growth, missed opportunities for institutional change, or spent his strength on the Chicken Little paranoia of which current world leader is the antichrist and how to best prep himself for the tribulation. Okay, okay, that’s a bit hyperbolic I admit, but the principle is true and has large representation in most churches in America. It is very difficult to see the point of thinking hundreds of years in the future if you think history ends in two. Again, this is not a knock on the belief, it is just the logical outworking of the idea.
And so what if we all take Postmil’s Wager? Is there any harm in believing it is the destiny of the Church to fulfill the Great Commission with billions and billions more to be saved? Isn’t there great potential for the Church militant, billions strong, to involve ourselves in the long term betterment of the world? Conversely, and hauntingly, what if the current malaise and decadence of the West is at least in part the direct result of the church not taking the bet?
Thought Butter 