Section 1
Few figures in literature merit both genuine admiration and profound pity as much as Oscar Wilde. He was a genius. Yet sadly, he floundered and struggled with habits and propensities that ultimately crushed him beneath their weight. As I read and re-read his biographies, at times my heart ached for him in his struggles, and at other times I marveled at the sheer folly with which he threw his life away. Like an object caught in the tension of two opposing forces, his body and mind were torn between the love of God and the enticement of the sensual.
Playwright, dramatist, poet, critic—he was all of these things. But perhaps more than anything else, in his style and his intoxicated autonomy, he symbolizes the spirit of our age (though he died about a century ago in November 1900) because he was obsessed with art and pleasure for their own sakes. Such preoccupation reveals not only a pursuit, but also a struggle—that of finding a home for the imagination and the emotions. In such a pursuit there is a subtle jettisoning of absolutes. The aesthete is “Lord of the universe” and needs no other justification. Wilde castigated anyone who tried to take away his right to live with sensual abandon and enjoyment. He took charge of any conversation in any gathering and would draw the attention of everyone whenever he walked into a room. His attire was purposefully selected for each occasion, and arrayed in a riot of color, he would balloon into a room and take center stage. He truly could have sung the song “(I Did It) My Way.”
Some people elicit a cultic following because they pursue such adulation. Others live with great arrogance and redefine everything in their wake. Their carefree iconoclasm attracts followers who idolize their free spirit. It was said of Wilde that he went to Oxford to pit himself against the most ancient university in England. The truth is that he was pitting himself against the most respected virtues throughout time.
At the same time, his was a dark and scary personality because the admixture of truth and error mangled his mind, and he suffered much from it. His death at forty-six was attributed to the destruction he brought upon his body through an indulgent lifestyle. Only recently have some discounted that his death was brought on by a syphilitic condition. That aside, the description of his death would grieve and possibly nauseate even his most hardened critic.
If there is one of his works that captures both his dream and nightmare life, it is The Picture of Dorian Gray. So profound is that book that it merits being described as one of the most true-to-life stories ever told. I have drawn from it in the dramatic narrative.
For these reasons, I selected Oscar Wilde as the conversationalist with Jesus. Pleasure was everything to him, but grief and pity followed his pleasure-mad ways. This is something that we need to understand in our times. But I have also introduced Blaise Pascal as a third member in this discussion. When I first selected Pascal, I did not know that one of the books Wilde read when he was imprisoned was Pascal’s Pensées. My original reason for bringing Pascal into the conversation was that both Wilde and Pascal are buried in Paris and share a connection with the same church in Paris, Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
Pascal, as some may recall, is known as the father of the modern computer. A brilliant mathematician, he came to a conversion experience quite dramatically, such that he penned the story on a piece of paper and sewed it into the lining of his jacket. The one word that captured that conversion was fire. That description and that coat are kept in the archives of the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It was in the same church that Wilde’s memorial service was held, some two centuries later. It is nestled in one of Paris’s busy quarters and surrounded today by Parisian freedoms and, yes, various indulgences that Wilde would have loved and Pascal would have mourned. And it provides a backdrop to their two lives and to the differences in thinking between one who abandoned himself to the body and the other who was passionately devoted to matters of the soul. Pascal said, “It is in vain, oh men, that you seek within yourselves the cure for all your miseries.” Wilde heard his mother say to a younger man, “When you are as old as I am, young man, you will find out that the only thing worth living for is sin.” He embodied that pronouncement and, in his own words, found it to be bitter gall.
In this imaginary conversation, I hope you will carefully think through what is being said by each one. The words of Pascal and Wilde are not hard to imagine. They are borrowed either directly from what they said or clearly implied by their writings. In Jesus’ case, I have used not only His words, but also words from other Scripture writers such as Solomon, who would have found some of Wilde’s thinking similar to some of his own.
There may be no more important question in our time than the question of pleasure as it relates to life’s purpose and meaning. You will have to judge whose words prove to be true in their reflection of reality.
One more thing: God is not against pleasure. His Word says that at His right hand are pleasures forevermore (see Psalm 16:11, NKJV). Let us begin this journey and see what He meant by that.