A Reformed Look at Christian Hedonism-1

The Christian Church should never stand still. And while the Church must never leave the foundation of her Reformed heritage, she should always be looking at ways of strengthening it. The greatest body of uninspired Christian truth ever written was the result of the greatest revival ever to take place - The Protestant Reformation. However, it was never the intention of our forefathers that future generations should rest on their achievements and close the book on enlightenment. True, the Church will never discover new truth. As C. H. Spurgeon once said, “Rest assured that there is nothing new in theology except that which is false; and that the facts of theology are today what they were eighteen hundred years ago”. ¹ Improvements however, are always welcome.

One area of advancement in recent years is the rediscovery of finding pleasure in God. Many authors have written on this subject in the past such as Thomas Brooks (Heaven on Earth), Jeremiah Burroughs (The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment), and Lloyd-Jones’ (The Life of Joy, The Life of Peace). Thankfully we have been reminded in recent years by men like Lloyd-Jones that believers have a God who delights in his creatures, and indeed, we are to delight ourselves in Him.² Unfortunately believers do not enjoy God as they should. So much of the Christian life is consumed with the battle of indwelling sin, persecution from the world, and the general malady of living in mortal bodies, that one often loses sight of the fact that man was created for a higher purpose, designed to fellowship, love, and enjoy his Creator. Finding pleasure in God is the result of living a life of consecration, and knowing that if He is pleased with His children, His children find pleasure in Him.

Hedonism

Secular humanist Nathaniel Branden once said, “For the rational, psychologically healthy man, the desire for pleasure is the desire to celebrate his control over reality. For the neurotic, the desire for pleasure is the desire to escape from reality”.³ Branden has accurately described the psyche of the modern man. And if this happiness can not be achieved by the pursuit and gain of pleasure, society has fashioned an apparatus which simulates it by stimulants, depressants, antidepressants, and hallucinogenic drugs. Today one does not even need to labour to attain the euphoria of pleasure, all one needs are a few symptoms from any number of the newly discovered social, psychological, or physical ailments, and a doctor with a prescription pad.

According to Reuters Health, one in five Americans is depressed or unhappy and report high levels of stress, anxiety, and sadness.⁴ The tragedy of this statistic is only compounded by the fact that never in the history of the world has a society had a higher standard of living, greater disposable income, or longer life expectancy. Yet there is a glut of pleasure and famine of substance in North America. From the drug infested slums of our towns and cities to the whitewashed walls of corporate North America, there is common ground in the relentless pursuit of pleasure.

“Hedones" is the Greek word for pleasure, and was made popular by the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BC) who wrote, “We recognize pleasure as the first good innate in us, and from pleasure we begin every act of choice and avoidance, and to pleasure we return again, using the feeling as the standard by which we judge every good”.⁵ Hedon[ism], then is the pursuit of pleasure: if it feels good, do it. Yet hedonism is more than just a momentary pursuit of pleasure. It is by etymological definition a philosophy of life as ancient as time, with axioms and maxims found deeply embedded in contemporary culture. From Nike’s “Just Do It^®”, to Disney World’s “Feel the Magic ^®”, modern society is easily defined as a culture of self-indulgent, self-pleasured, self- aggrandized hedonists.

Vanity of Vanities and Vanity Fair

1000 years before Epicurus popularized the philosophical idea of worshipping pleasure, king Solomon wrote a sardonic book (Ecclesiastes) precisely on this topic. “I said in mine heart, Go to now, I will prove thee with mirth, therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also is vanity. I said of laughter, It is mad: and of mirth, What doeth it?” His point of course, was to proclaim the absolute meaninglessness of life as it is found in worldly pleasure, independent of a gracious and holy God. Wise Solomon, from observation in the first half of the book, to experimental acquaintance in the second half, preached a pan-human message cogently summed up in his opening thesis, “Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity ”.⁶

Since the dawn of creation the emphasis of self pleasure has proved to be an obvious vice common to all. From Eve to Elvis, the whole human race has sought the merchandise of Vanity Fair⁷, and indeed delighted in its wares. As Bunyan put it “This fair is no new-erected business, but a thing of ancient standing”.⁸ Nothing however, is more diametrically opposed to the Christian life than the hedonism. John commands believers everywhere not to follow, “all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life”⁹ but to follow in the footsteps of a self-denying Christ. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me”.¹⁰ Every Christian, in the first place, ought to be anti-hedonistic.

Christian Hedonism

Christian hedonism is an oxymoron. One might as well favorably coin the phrase “Christian selfishness”, “saintly self-absorption”, or “evangelical heathenism”. Christian Hedonism was a phrase coined in the mid 1980's by a popular Christian author named John Piper in his book, Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. In his well intended book Piper contends that, “The term 'hedonism' means 'a living for pleasure'. If the chief end of man is to enjoy God forever, then we should live our lives for pleasure -- the pleasure of knowing God”.¹¹ There is a sense in which one ought to be careful in accepting this idea of Christian Hedonism. While the believer is surely called to enjoy God (and indeed the Christian life itself), Christians are not called to live for pleasure (be it secular or religious) as a philosophy of life. Christianizing hedonism for the sake of a pure pursuit of pleasure over against an impure pursuit, has not alleviated the problem rife in Western culture---the pursuit of pleasure itself. All we have done is sanctify selfishness and exchange one kind of self absorption for another.

Contemporary Christian culture is a copycat culture. Instead of being the enlightening leaders of the world, the modern Church is trying to see how close she can get to the edge of worldliness and still remain “Christian”. In effect, this encourages the world to run after pleasure the more. Thankfully there have been times in history where Christianity “turned the world upside down”.¹² It was the other-worldliness of men like Paul, Chrysostome, Augustine, Jerome, Calvin, Luther, and Knox, with their unwavering dedication to an objective moral and theological foundation, that allowed the Church to dictate to the world what culture, style, and thought ought to be. Today however, like a pop star groupie, it is the Church which runs breathlessly after the world, hoping for some fanciful glance or wink. Our Churches are no longer the ekklesia (called out ones) of God, but a strange mongrel mix of worldly saints, and Christian hedonists. We have forgotten that “friendship of the world is enmity with God. Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God”.¹³ The Church should not seek to sanitize worldly philosophies born in sin, created to separate us from our Creator, in order to woo a generation of hedonists. Perhaps the Church has forgotten the antithesis she is to have with the world? That she is to confess with the faithful in Hebrews 11 that we are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth”?^{14
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1 Charles Haddon Spurgeon, An All Round Ministry, (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1960) 6.

2 See Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Life of Joy (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1995).

3 Nathaniel Branden. The Psychology of Pleasure. Reprinted in The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism by Ayn Rand (New York: New American Library, 1964.) 64.

4 Reuters Health, HealthCentral.com - Nov. 2000.

5 Epicurus. The Pursuit of Pleasure. Twenty Question: An Introduction to Philosophy. Exec. Ed. David Tatom. (Fort Worth: Harcourt College Publishers, 2000) 585.

6 Ecclesiastes 1:1,2.

7 In John Bunyan's work The Pilgrim’s Progress, Vanity Fair was a city which was the physical manifestation of the emptiness of wealth and pleasure described by Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1: 2.

8 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress (Heritage Press New York 1942) 231.

9 1 John 2:16.

10 Matthew 16:24.

11 John Piper. Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. (Sisters: Multnomah Books, 1996) 287.

12 Acts 17:6.

13 James 4:4.

14 Hebrews 11:13.