eternal truths?

"The Christian religion, then, teaches men these two truths; that there is a God whom men can know, and that there is a corruption in their nature which renders them unworthy of Him. It is equally important to men to know both these points; and it is equally dangerous for man to know God without knowing his own wretchedness, and to know his own wretchedness without knowing the Redeemer who can free him from it. The knowledge of only one of these points gives rise either to the pride of philosophers, who have known God, and not their own wretchedness, or to the despair of atheists, who know their own wretchedness, but not the Redeemer. Let us herein examine the order of the world and see if all things do not tend to establish these two chief points of this religion: Jesus Christ is end of all, and the centre to which all tends. Whoever knows Him knows the reason of everything.
Those who fall into error err only through failure to see one of these two things. We can, then, have an excellent knowledge of God without that of our own wretchedness and of our own wretchedness without that of God. But we cannot know Jesus Christ without knowing at the same time both God and our own wretchedness.
Therefore I shall not undertake here to prove by natural reasons either the existence of God, or the Trinity, or the immortality of the soul, or anything of that nature; not only because I should not feel myself sufficiently able to find in nature arguments to convince hardened atheists, but also because such knowledge without Jesus Christ is useless and barren. Though a man should be convinced that numerical proportions are immaterial truths, eternal and dependent on a first truth, in which they subsist and which is called God, I should not think him far advanced towards his own salvation.
The God of Christians is not a God who is simply the author of mathematical truths, or of the order of the elements; that is the view of heathens and Epicureans. He is not merely a God who exercises His providence over the life and fortunes of men, to bestow on those who worship Him a long and happy life. That was the portion of the Jews. But the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of Christians, is a God of love and of comfort, a God who fills the soul and heart of those whom He possesses, a God who makes them conscious of their inward wretchedness, and His infinite mercy, who unites Himself to their inmost soul, who fills it with humility and joy, with confidence and love, who renders them incapable of any other end than Himself."

I just started reading some Pascal the other night and he says some interesting things about Christ. Often times I wonder why I read so many accounts written by man concerning the nature of God, and I so very seldom read the bible. I can't answer the question completely, the bible is hard to fathom, and it is hard to apply. It is very distant and unreal to me when I read it. When I read of other people's understanding of God, it makes God real, maybe the literary technique, or maybe it's just the fact that if a normal person can gather these ideas, then why can't I? It's some sort of fallacy. It's like I don't know how to read the bible or something strange like that. I've been having a hard time making sense of anything, my mind seems to exist in some fog where any lead I have on a breakthrough merely ends up at a point of contradiction, nothing is connecting. I'm adrift in some current circling an absolute truth, which by definition itself can be understood as a paradox. The "leap of faith", the fact that God will never be understood, and yet, we are to have faith in him. We are to put faith in something we don't understand. I can say that I believe that God loves me, but those are merely words. Kierkegaard talks about the idea that having faith (by defintion of "faith") implies doubt at the same time. It would not take faith to believe in something you can not doub (like the objective), a rather rational way of looking at it perhaps. God is simple, and he is just as complex. I'm just a ball on the end of some tether in space, miles and miles of rope twist and knot and swirl all leading back to the one thing I can't deny...God as the center of reason and motive, and love. This cognitive awareness is a handicap.

"For after all what is man in nature? A nothing in relation to infinity, all in relation to nothing, a central point between nothing and all and infinitely far from understanding either. The ends of things and their beginnings are impregnably concealed from him in an impenetrable secret. He is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness out of which he was drawn and the infinite in which he is engulfed."