Proclaimer Blog
Why do kings have jesters?
The third of Carl Trueman's church history track talks from New Word Alive focused on Blaise Pascal. I confess that, other than as a mathemetician, I knew very little about him. Perhaps his best known saying is Pascal's wager, which goes something like this:
If you're a believer and it all turns out to be false you haven't lost very much. If you're an unbeliever and it all turns out to be true, you've lost EVERYTHING.
The problem with this, said Trueman, is not only is it not biblical, it also contradicts much of what Pascal wrote elsewhere, so we're probably reading it wrong. In fact, in context (!), Pascal means this: "you live your whole life as a percentage game – everything you do is based on outcomes and logic – except this one question, which would look like this if you spelt it out. But you don't spell it out. Why? Because belief is ultimately a moral issue." Thus, Pascal's wager is not an apologetic for Christianity as it has sometimes been proposed – rather it is a rationale for why people reject God.
Along these lines, one of Pascal's most interesting questions was, "Why do kings have jesters?" In human terms they have everything they could need or aspire to. They want for nothing. We could modernise the question. Why do we always need entertainment? Why does every waking moment have to be filled when we have so much? The answer is, says Pascal, because the jester prevents the king from thinking about the one issue he really needs to face up to – death.
This is a profound insight into the modern culture. Entertainment, sport, music are ultimately distractions that prevent us from having to think about the real issues of life and death.
And that's why kings have jesters.
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