I’m pages away from finishing a marvelous book by John Piper entitled, “Desiring God” and a few nights ago I stumbled across something tucked away in one of the book’s appendices that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about.
First, a bit of preface.
Without delving too deep, Piper defines what he calls Christian Hedonism as the way by which “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him,” furthering the idea that man’s chief end is to glorify God. He goes on to explain the following:
We all make a god out of what we take the most pleasure in. Christian Hedonists want to make God their God by seeking after the greatest pleasure — pleasure in him.
By Christian Hedonism, we do not mean that our happiness is the highest good. We mean that pursuing the highest good will always result in our greatest happiness in the end. We should pursue this happiness, and pursue it with all our might. The desire to be happy is a proper motive for every good deed, and if you abandon the pursuit of your own joy you cannot love man or please God.
The Difference Between Worldly and Christian Hedonism:
Some people are inclined to believe that Christians are supposed to seek God’s will as opposed to pursuing their own pleasure. But what makes Biblical morality different than worldly hedonism is not that Biblical morality is disinterested and duty-driven, but that it is interested in vastly greater and purer things. Christian Hedonism is Biblical morality because it recognizes that obeying God is the only route to final and lasting happiness. Here are some examples of this from the Bible:
Luke 6:35 says, “Love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great.” It is clear when Jesus says “expect nothing in return” that we should not be motivated by worldly aggrandizement, but we are given strength to suffer loss by the promise of a future reward.
Again, in Luke 14:12-14: “When you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your kinsmen or rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return, and you be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor… and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” That is, don’t do good deeds for worldly advantage; rather, do them for spiritual, heavenly benefits.
-John Piper
Beyond that, I’ll let you read the book for yourself and draw your own conclusions if you find yourself searching for deeper meaning. The subject of this blog entry is not about Christian Hedonism directly, but rather about a quote within “Desiring God” that I found ASTOUNDING and haven’t been able to get out of my mind since.
Piper writes:
In “The Simple Life”, Vernard Eller delights himself in some of the great parables of SØren Kierkegaard. One of his favorites is the parable of the lighted carriage and the starlit night. We could also call it the crisis of Christian Hedonism. It goes like this:
“When the prosperous man on a dark but starlit night drives comfortably in his carriage and has the lanterns lighted, aye, then he is safe, he fears no difficulty, he carries his light with him, and it is not dark close around him. But precisely because he has the lanterns lighted, and has a strong light close to him, precisely for this reason, he cannot see the stars. For his lights obscure the stars, which the poor peasant, driving without lights, can see gloriously in the dark but starry night. So those deceived ones live in the temporal existence: either, occupied with the necessities of life, they are too busy to avail themselves of the view, or in their prosperity and good days they have, as it were, lanterns lighted, and close about them everything is so satisfactory, so pleasant, so comfortable — but the view is lacking, the prospect, the view of the stars.”
This parable BLEW MY MIND. What a potent dose of perspective these words are! And furthermore, which man am I? Am I MISSING OUT completely on the beauty that lies around me because I choose to live in a temporal existence occupied with the pleasures/necessities of life versus an awareness and enjoyment of God?
Piper summarizes:
Eller comments, “Clearly, ‘the view of the stars’ here intends one’s awareness and enjoyment of God.” The rich and busy who surround themselves with the carriage lights of temporal comfort, or the busy who cover themselves with troublesome care, cut themselves off from what Kierkegaard calls “the absolute joy”:
What indescribable joy! — joy over God the Almighty… for this is the absolute joy, to adore the almighty power with which God the Almighty bears all thy care and sorrow as easily as nothing.
Wow.
If you really mull this over, it’ll have you tossing and turning in no time — and the more you think about it, the more profound it becomes.
I’m a thinker, not a talker. Mind pictures, exemplums and allegories hit home. This one was a grand slam.
I’m unbelievably excited about this.
