A Reformed Look at Christian Hedonism-2

“DESIRING GOD: MEDITATIONS OF A CHRISTIAN HEDONIST”

In his book Desiring God, Piper contends that the chief end of man’s existence is to enjoy the God of our creation.¹ Piper begins his book by quoting the Westminster Shorter Catechism which states, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever”². He then proceeds without any analysis of what the Westminster Divines meant by “glorify God and enjoy him forever”, and takes the reader through a series of personal eisegetical (biblical) principles that are intended to aid the reader in finding pleasure in God. Piper would have done well to investigate what the seventeenth century Puritans meant by the phrase in question as it would have had a profound effect on his thesis. As we shall see later, the Puritans and Piper have very different understandings of what it means to enjoy God forever.

In Desiring God, Piper has missed the mark of what should be a very profound point. By making pleasure the overarching theme of the Christian life, Piper has oversimplified the Christian experience and jettisoned the equally profound duties of self denial, sanctification, and obedience to the law. Piper says, “The distinguishing feature of Christian Hedonism is not that pleasure seeking demands virtue, but that virtue consists essentially, though not only, in pleasure seeking”.³ The Christian life however, is not about seeking or even finding pleasure (see Mark 8:34; Romans 6:4-6; Galatians 2:20, 5:24, 6:14). Rather, the Christian life is about the Christian being dead to self and to the world, and being made alive in Christ. Piper has missed the point not only in degree but in kind by making man the center of the Christian experience instead of Christ. Dr. Peter Masters of the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London notices the same problem when he writes,

One of the great problems with this ‘delighting in God’ scheme of spiritual advance is that it unwittingly puts self-interest right at the heart of the Christian life. Dr Piper clearly would not intend this, but it is inevitable. Pursuit of joy in God has always been embraced as a Christian duty, but it must never be elevated above others so as to detract from their inherent virtue, nor must it eclipse the negatives of the Christian life – the ‘thou shalt nots’.⁴

Likewise Richard J. Mouw’s Treatment of Christian Hedonism in his book The God Who Commands asks of Piper’s thesis, “Is it helpful to view the Christian’s relationship to God as under girded at every point by the pursuit of pleasure?” He answers for himself, “such an account does not seem to capture the sense of the loss-of-self themes in the Scriptures. To construe the Christian life as a continuous pursuit of pleasure fails to address the significant changes that the self undergoes in the pilgrimage of discipleship”.⁵

Within the Presbyterian and Reformed tradition there is a clear understanding that the chief object of the Christian experience is holiness not happiness. Happiness is the unavoidable consequence of the long and often painful process of sanctification. Even then, the pleasures that are unveiled in Christ are not of this world. Sanctification by entomological definition (hagiázo) means “a cutting away of the flesh and making one pure by washing”⁶. Piper has no section regarding sanctification in his book, and only mentions the subject once in passing in either of his books on this subject .⁷ The Puritan Richard Sibbes on the other hand, understood that sanctification is the great bulwark of our preparation for heaven when he insists, “Those that look to be happy must first look to be holy”.⁸ This is a glaring weakness in Piper’s thesis that should not go unnoticed. Again Masters concurs,

It is not surprising that believers find Christian Hedonism or ‘delighting in God’ interesting and attractive. To delight in the Lord is a magnificent and biblical exercise. But Dr Piper’s formula for its use undoubtedly alters the understanding of sanctification long held by believers in the Reformation tradition, because it elevates one Christian duty above all others…Whatever the strengths of Dr Piper’s ministry, and there are many, his attempt to oversimplify biblical sanctification is doomed to failure because the biblical method for sanctification and spiritual advance consists of a number of strands or pathways of action, and all must receive individual attention.⁹

Peter Masters’ point is well taken. One should not blindly walk into a proposition without testing its premise against the whole counsel of God’s Word, making sure that one is not creating doctrines of imbalance by magnifying one truth to the neglect of others. And there should be a question of the general profitability of morphing the words Christian and hedonism into a new philosophic paradigm. True, the Apostle did so with the logos theology of John, but he was inspired by the Holy Spirit. It is far better to keep as close to the language of the Bible as possible when speaking of it’s several and many themes.

The question must arise then, how can one set “enjoying God forever” within the right context of the Christian life as part of the mosaic of the Christian experience? Surely it is a good and noble desire.

FINDING PLESURE IN GOD

In approaching the idea of finding pleasure in God there must first be an understanding of the kind of person seeking it. First and foremost this seeker is someone who has been translated from darkness to light; someone who has been converted by the power of the Holy Spirit and is enjoying the life of the new birth. There is no pleasure in God outside a saving relationship with His Son. If the natural mind, “receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned”¹⁰, then it follows that the natural man can not be the recipient of God’s special favour or pleasure.¹¹ Finding pleasure in God is the special privilege of believers. Believers however, are not free to find their own way of pleasure in God, but must recognize the set pattern regulated in God’s Word. Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says in his book The Life of Joy,¹²

The difficulty with many of us is that we are anxious to obtain the blessings of the Gospel, but we are not equally careful to observe the conditions. Everybody wants the blessings, of course; the world today, in a sense, is spending most of its time seeking happiness and joy, because nobody wants to be miserable and unhappy. We want the comfort and the happiness, but we want it on our own terms, we want it easily, we want it simply, we want it by just having it and nothing else. Now let me make it clear, before we proceed to any detailed consideration of this great epistle, that what Paul is talking about here can never be obtained on such terms. Unless we accept his foundation, we shall never be able to erect the building that he has constructed; unless we start with his presuppositions we can never draw the right conclusions.¹³

When answering the question, why has the modern Church lost her pleasure, joy, and sense of triumph in God, Lloyd-Jones rejoinders, “To me there is only one answer to these questions: we have forgotten the doctrine, we have not been careful always to base everything upon certain preliminary considerations without which there is not true comfort”.¹⁴ Finding pleasure in God is not a mystical experience based on subjective feelings, but, as Lloyd-Jones has so succinctly pointed out, is as a doctrinal foundation based on biblical knowledge and understanding. Ignorance of God and ignorance of His Word is the plague of the modern Church. And because there is so little genuine knowledge of God, there is little genuine happiness. The great delight of the times is to manufacture a sense of pleasure in God from the resources of our own imagination rather than the pages of the Word. Finding pleasure in God is the realization that God is pleased with you because you are in Christ, you delight in obeying His Word, and desire to reflect the image of His Son.

Relinquishing of Pleasure

When a soul is regenerated, there must be a new desire (be it ever so small at first) to please God by wrestling with sin, mortifying the flesh, and communing with the God of his salvation. As A.W Pink insist, the first experience the new believer will encounter in Christ is actually a relinquishing of pleasure. “God saves us from the pleasure or love of sin before He delivers from the penalty or punishment of sin. Necessarily so, for it would be neither an act of holiness nor of righteousness were He to grant a full pardon to one who was still a rebel against Him, loving that which He hates”.¹⁵ The regenerated heart’s first conscious encounter with God is the removal of sinful pleasure and an introduction to new, God-pleasing desires. And this repentance can not be self-centered simply to pacify the conscience. Jerry Bridges writes,

So often when we sin we are more vexed at the lowering of our self-esteem than we are grieved at God’s dishonor. We are irritated at our lack of self- control in subjecting ourselves to some unworthy habit…. God does not honor these self-centered desires. This is one reason we do not experience more of his enabling power in our day-to-day struggles with so-called besetting sins. God does not give us power so that we can feel good about ourselves; he gives us his power so that we can obey him for his sake, for his glory.¹⁶

For the Christian then, if the motive is pure, and the reasoning doctrinal, then the result will be pleasure grounded in the glory of God. When the Christian knows what is required, he can then pursue God’s wonder. And in pursuing God’s wonder, find genuine pleasure. Not for any independent selfish gain, but the necessary consequence of God being pleased.

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1John Piper, 33.

2Ibid.

3John Piper. Discovering God. (Sisters: Multnomah Books, 1996) 25.

4 Dr. Peter Masters, Christian Hedonism: Is it Right? (Sword & Trowel 2002, No.3).

5 Richard J. Mouw, The God Who Commands (Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1990) 35 .

6 Liddell & Scott, Greek- English Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990) 9.

7 See the Subject and Person Indexes of Desiring God and Discovering God.

8 Richard Sibbes quoted in I.D.E Thomas’s , A Puritan Golden Treasury (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1989) 158.

9For a critical evaluation of Christian Hedonism see Dr. Peter Master’s, Christian Hedonism: Is it Right? (Sword & Trowel 2002, No.3).

10 1 Corinthians 2:14.

11 In his book, The Life of Joy, Lloyd-Jones makes this very clear “Therefore, the first thing we have to consider is this: to whom does Paul offer the wonderful kind of life that he depicts here? Who is it that can be happy in all kinds of states and conditions? Who is the man who can say, ‘To me to live is Christ’? Who is the man who can say, ‘I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith [therein] to be content’? Who can speak like that? And the answer is that it is only the people who can conform to a particular pattern. The Apostle is writing his letter to Christian people, so unless we are perfectly clear in our minds about what constitutes a Christian, we can never derive the benefit that we should from a consideration of this great letter”. p, 24-25.

12 Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Life of Joy: An Exposition of Philippians 1 and 2. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995) 24.

13Martyn Lloyd-Jones. The Life of Joy An Exposition of Philippians 1 and 2. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1989) 24.

14Ibid.

15A.W. Pink, A Four Fold Salvation (Choteau: Gospel Mission Press, 1981) 10.

16Jerry Bridges. The Practice of Godliness. (Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1983) 158.

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