Some of my Twitter friends of a Reformed persuasion have been wondering why I have such a problem with the philosophy known as “Christian Hedonism,” as articulated by John Piper in his book Desiring God. Rather than trying to answer that question in 140-character increments I decided to write a series of blog posts instead. This will be somewhat open-ended.
Christian Hedonism is summarized by Piper in this way: “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.” It’s a slight tweaking of the answer to the Westminster Shorter Catechism’s question, “What is the chief end of man?” A: “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” In other words, glorifying God and enjoying God are not separate pursuits.
He expands upon this with the following:
Christian Hedonism is a philosophy of life built on the following five convictions:
1. The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.
2. We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead, we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction.
3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God.
4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it is shared with others in the manifold ways of love.
5. To the extent that we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people. Or, to put it positively: The pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. (DG, p. 28)
So what kind of problem could I possibly find with this? In and of themselves, these things may be true. Luther himself summed it up in his explanation to the First Commandment (“You shall have no other gods before Me”) in the Small Catechism: “We should fear, love and trust God above all things.” Loving God above all things certainly includes delighting in God and taking pleasure in Him.
When I first read Desiring God a number of years ago, my first reaction went something along these lines: “What wonderful news that God wants us to obey Him out of pleasure and delight and not simply out of duty.” Many people seem to have this reaction – a sort of wonderful liberation from an all-too-common view in certain Christian circles that pleasure in and of itself is wrong or to be avoided. If all Christian Hedonism entailed was the idea that delight and pleasure are good things and that God wants us to delight in Him, I don’t think I would have much of a problem with it.
But, as I would later discover to my dismay, this is not all it entails. What I first saw as “wonderful news” I eventually came to see for what it really was – the Law kicked up several notches. And this Law is presented as something true believers can keep. In this way Piper ends up confusing Law and Gospel.
One of my Twitter friends commented that Desiring God is not a work on soteriology (i.e. how one is saved). However, the more I think about this and mull it over in my mind, the more I think I have to disagree. In fact, the main problem that I have with the philosophy of Christian Hedonism lies in how Piper connects it to salvation. This will be the subject of Part 2.
thanks for doing this, I do appreciate the time you are taking.
I too have a problem with Christian Hedonism. It’s not really talked about in scripture. Christ is the treasure, our faith. But that does not equate to happiness and fulfillment.
Courtney – “It’s not really talked about in scripture” isn’t exactly a fair assessment. The book Desiring God is saturated with scripture and examples supporting Piper’s premise. At the very least we should see Desiring God to be an honest work, not an intentional attempt to create some extra-biblical concept.
Now, to say Piper is misusing the countless scriptures he cites, and that his message of Christian Hedonism goes against the flow of the whole of scripture may be a good assessment, and I imagine that is what Dawn is going to do here. However to say “it is not really talked about in scripture” as though Piper’s book is some mere ‘new’ idea that completely disregards the bible is wrong.
In my discussions we people I have found the common theme with those against Christian Hedonism is that they approached the book looking for comfort or some sort of new help (nothing wrong with this approach, this is often why we read books). When they read it they eventually saw that ‘what they had to do’ was be happy… eventually being met with the reality that they couldn’t make themselves happy, therefore xtian hedonism became a law to them.
I did not approach the book looking for anything, I did not even totally know what it was about before I picked it up. As I read it, it resonated with me. It never came across to me as a “you better get happy to be a Christian.” I read the whole of it to be that an inward drive for happiness is common in all man, and that drive should be fostered not suppressed in our drive for the Christ.
I still content as I did on twitter that this book is not primarily a book on sorteriolgy but a book that highlights the desire in believers for sanctification. The book says that conversion “Is the creation of a Christian Hedonist” in the sense that conversion creates the desire for sanctification, not that conversion makes you happy all the time.
Anyway, I have to go to work. I am really looking forward to these posts, and I am more than open to having my mind change if the Lord wills.
Piper totally confuses law and gospel.
I have heard many of his sermons. Flowery adjectives do not make a good sermon (and he has a boatload of them).
‘We ought feel this way’, ‘you ought feel that way’…’shoulds’, ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ carry the day. The gospel is there, make no mistake about it. But it gets so covered up by ‘you’ and what ‘you ought be feeling’ that it is a weak flicker at best.
Hey, what else would you expect from a Baptist/Calvinist?
I would agree with you here, Jay. You’re right about how I would see it – I would characterize it as more of a misuse of Scripture.
I didn’t really come to read Desiring God expecting anything either. I was very into Randy Alcorn’s books at the time and he mentioned that John Piper was one of his favorite authors, so I decided to check it out.
It’s not so much that I felt like “I have to be happy to be a Christian.” It was “if I do not have certain feelings about God then I am not saved and I might not have any hope of being saved.” This took a little bit of time after reading the book to sink in fully.
But more about this later!
Steve – I agree with you regarding confusion of Law and Gospel. These teachings can lead to very morbid navel-gazing.
I have a really big problem with preachers who give the Gospel with the one hand and snatch it away with the other by pointing you to your feelings, emotions, or obedience instead of Christ FOR you.
To be fair, there are some Calvinists who are better than others in this regard. Non-pietistic Calvinists like Michael Horton are all about the objective, external Gospel. For some reason they don’t take their Calvinism/Reformed theology to its logical conclusions.
“‘We ought feel this way’, ‘you ought feel that way’…’shoulds’, ‘oughts’ and ‘musts’ carry the day.”
Steve,
When I use to be in the thick of this stuff, Piper, and I was deep in it, these always were the terror. It took a personal exchange with Dr. Rosenbladt to pull me out of it. One day in helping me out he reminded me that such stuff is Law. He quoted a brilliant insight of CS Lewis on this regarding “joy”. Lewis once said there is one sure fire way to make someone NOT have joy. That way? Tell him he should have joy.
Dr. Rosenbladt was spot on, a rank confusion of Law and Gospel, which happens, inevitably and of necessity, when one must find assurance other than the sacraments.
Larry