Blaise Pascal was a 17th-century, French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer and Christian philosopher. His classic work, Pensees, is less like a treatise than a notebook—a collection of thoughts expressed in brief, disconnected bits. Pensees never fails to send me into deeper thought. Here is one of his comments: 

When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving, as on board ship. When everyone is moving toward depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point. (Blaise Pascal  Pensees §699)

Culture is much like “everything moving at once,” like a great river. We are washed along with its movement, but seem to be standing still relative to everyone else. This relative stillness comes from our preference for going along with the herd. We move with the herd as the herd moves, and gauge our distance to and from “normal” based upon our movement among others. 

Anyone who stands out from the crowd is likely to be either standing as a fixed point against the flow or moving in a direction that is not determined by the rest of the crowd. Many who stand apart from the crowd have things to say about the movement of the herd, and we may do well to consider their perspective from time to time. Do we like the outside voice and the contrary perspective or do we prefer the flow of the herd? 

To my ears, insight rarely—if ever—comes from voices that are simply going with the flow. It is the outliers, the contrarians and the prophetic voices that serve me with fresh inspiration. In fact, insight and inspiration are chiefly those things that make me aware to what degree I’m just going with the flow, usually without much thought.  

300 years after Pascal comes a Swiss philosopher named Max Picard who echoes this same notion with theological meaning. Picard says that our whole world—all of creation and its human institutions—is in a frantic, desperate flight away from God. To be a human being is to be born into a marathon race of people fleeing God, but the runners do not know they are running away from God or why. The herd and the great flow are in fact directed by their flight from God. 

God is clearly in pursuit, and the good news is chasing after humankind, bur to the herd, faith is motion in the opposite direction. Faith is a fixed point against the tide and rush of humanity. To be a person of faith means that we do attend to those special voices—from prophets, from scripture—that are relatively backwards, but only because they do not go with the flow. 

Have you had times when you were required by your faith to be the fixed point? In a churning world, have you ever had to go against the flow and stand firm? I certainly hope so, for these are our moments of witness, integrity, and faithfulness. 

The problem with those who simply go with the flow is that they will soon be gone with the flow, and probably in a direction that they would not have knowingly chosen. 

May God empower us as his fixed points in a churning world. May we see one another standing firm, and strengthen and encourage each other for standing upon solid rock. And let us beware that when the world around us seems peaceable and still, it may be because we are lost in the flow and blind to our complicity in its direction. †