On John Piper and Christian Hedonism
John Piper is probably most famous for promoting so-called Christian Hedonism. In case you are wondering, a hedonist is one who lives a life devoted to finding and experiencing maximum pleasure or happiness. Sounds incompatible with Christianity, does it? Wrong, says John Piper.
Here is his logic, very simplified but hopefully still true to the original.
- There is nothing wrong with the desire for pleasure, but there are many wrong ways to go about achieving it.
- Since God is our creator, he intended that ultimately we achieve this desire by taking pleasure in Him
- God has created the world and us for His own glory
- These two things (God seeking his own glory and us seeking pleasure in God) must go hand-in-hand. We find the deepest pleasure - God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him
When I first heard these ideas, I readily accepted points 1 and 2, due to my familiarity with numerous C.S. Lewis notes on these, see my earlier post. But point 3 came to me as a big surprise. What? God is so selfish as to seek his own glory? If you have a similar issue, you might want to to take a look at a long list of scriptural references that supports this view.
If you are interested in learning more, read Pleasure of God, by John Piper, where all these ideas are presented in much greater detail. The first three chapters are also available as a free download here.