Worship, The Feast of Christian Hedonism

On Chapter 3 of John Piper's Desiring God

I once heard Pastor John Piper say in his lecture “Pastor as Scholar”, that he is a slow reader.  He may read slowly but his writing pace is about a book a week.  Yet his writing forces us to do as he does, read slowly.  There is a lot to think about in every line, so many poignant paragraphs.  In a book like this I bleed a lot of ink; and as I read, it sounds like someone is punching me in the ribs as I often utter guttural, “mmm”’s.  Every “mmm” is a pause for the brain, a challenge to the soul, a moment of introspection.

This chapter is full of underline worthy material.  Rather than cite it all I encourage you to get your own pen, your own book, and mark it up.  This chapter is a great thought and deals with a pertinent issue to the argument for Christian Hedonism.  What should I do with all that I feel?  I feel lots of things.  I can scratch them but they are destined to return.  I can indulge them, but doing so in sinful things only serves to create an unfulfilled monster that doesn’t know what else to do but eat himself to death.  What should I do with all that I feel?  I feel alone, and excited, and joy, and pain, and anxiety, and curiosity.  Some days I feel like learning.  Some days I feel like teaching.  Some circumstances are overwhelming.  Others are empowering.  I feel differently in the morning than I do at lunch.  I feel.  What am I to do with all of this?

Pastor Piper implores the reader to take all that he feels and allow those feelings to find their ends in God (90 - 92).  This he says, is worship.  With this chapter he revisits a problem he raised in the introduction or the preface, which of the two I can’t remember, but it is the problem that most people are given to believe that when we worship God it should be absent of any seeking of relief, satisfaction, pleasure, or feeling.  It is the idea that worshipping God and seeking after joy is somehow selfish and irreverent.  I would contend that indeed it could be in a certain context.  Piper would agree and so he guides us in this so that we can avoid such danger.

He is intent to hold us to scripture, in particular the idea that true worshippers approach God with two plumb lines, spirit and truth.  Preachers are usually good storytellers.  Piper does a masterful job of exploring the themes of the woman at the well in John 4 and teaching us what Jesus means when he says, “spirit and truth.”  I would be of the opinion that when Jesus says spirit that he is talking more about the Holy Spirit than the human spirit.  I argue this because of the context.  Jesus speaking of a new hour in which worship is not geographically localized, but personally localized, as in the indwelling of human souls with the Holy Spirit of God.  Piper acknowledges that while this may be true, the interpretations are, in actuality, not that far apart (82).  He says that the spirit of a Christian (Hedonist) is after all a Holy Spirit quickened Spirit.  This simply means that the human spirit is now given life by the Holy Spirit.  Piper teaches on page 89 that the result of the Holy Spirit giving life to the human spirit is, “The heart is changed.  And the evidence of it is not just new decisions, but new affections, new feelings (89).”  This being the case then worshipping God in spirit and truth is an affair of the heart (the human spirit quickened by the Holy Spirit) and an affair of the mind (the pondering of the reality of God as revealed in Scripture) (83).     

Piper is not only concerned with what worship is but also with what worship does.  As I have previously alluded, Piper is concerned in this chapter with what we do with our natural capacity to feel and our propensity to seek pleasure.  He argues that both of these can be satisfied in the worship of God.  “Strong affections for God, rooted in and shaped by the truth of Scripture - this is the bone and marrow of biblical worship (104).”  So let me lay out, in order what I think Piper is saying:

1)   God seeks His own glory because as the perfect/ultimate being He could do nothing less.

2)   God’s creatures were designed to do what He does, bring Him glory.

3)   Because God is satisfied in Himself it is only natural for all that He has created to also be satisfied in Him.

4)   Because we have sinned, we no longer reflect God’s glory and that fact that we now seek to satisfy our pleasures in things other than God reveals that something is horribly wrong with our soul.

5)   We need to be converted, born again, which happens when God brings us to the realization that we need to seek God’s glory and satisfy our pleasures in Him and results in new affections and desires to find pleasure in God and seek His glory.

6)   As creatures with new affections we will be satisfied in God when we seek their end in Him (an affair of the heart) but do not do so thoughtlessly, but rather thoughtfully dwelling mentally on the reality of God and the truths about Him revealed in Scripture (an affair of the mind).

I think it is important, before we move further to say that worship is not a Sunday morning service with music (only or primarily).  “The first thing we learn is that worship has to do with real life.  It is not a mythical interlude in a week of reality.  Worship has to do with adultery and hunger and racial conflict (77).”  This means that the very real things I feel and face throughout the day can always find their end in God.  This is the essence of the Psalms and probably why Piper quotes them so much.  The Psalms are full of feeling.  They are full of satisfaction and starvation, light and darkness, anger and joy, questions and answers, pleasure and pain.  The Psalms are full of feeling and we cannot deny that most of the time they were also used as the anthems of worship.  My day should be full of these anthems because my life is full of feelings that desire an end (satisfaction) and my desire is for God.  My feelings should bring me daily into conversation with God.  This is worship. 

I believe Piper is right about this because it is the teaching of Scripture, after all much Scripture is born of these sorts of feelings in conversation with God, and it is the reality of human experience.  I would agree with all of the balances Piper provides in this chapter, be careful to observe them.  In worship, spirit without truth is shallow emotionalism and truth without spirit is dead orthodoxy (81).  Worship with motion and emotion without agreement to truth is hypocrisy (88).  People who express gratitude without feeling are ingrates (92).  To worship God we need conversion and new affections because we are too easily pleased (99).  If we worship God only as a matter of duty, it is not worship but duty (93).  I would further argue that people that relate to God only out of duty will not last very long in His worship or service.  This is why people who go to church, serve, or read the Bible only because they think they should; it is not long before they quit or endure in misery (which is something you would feel). 

There is a lot here.  Read slowly.  Use ink.  Use spirit.  Ponder truth.  Worship God.

My New Body (sermon audio: Sunday a.m.)

One of the many things we as humans anticipate in the resurrection is our new body. For most, we are thrilled with the prospects of this extreme makeover. But, how extreme will it be? Paul gives us some insight in 1 Corinthians 15:35-49. He tells us that our new body will come from our current body, much like a flower comes from a seed. Our new body will not begin to compare to the old one, for this we are most thankful, but will be fully redeemed. We draw some conclusions also from the risen Christ who was seen in the physicality of his human body, but with one which was clearly different in its capabilities. Like all of creation, our bodies will one day be redeemed and made-over and we will be like Him!

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Siran Stacy

I have been to a lot of conventions, conferences, revivals, and churches to hear preachers preach. Never have I heard or witnessed the move of God through a man as I did last night with Siran Stacy. God certainly has His hand on this man and I believe we all need to covenant together to pray for his strength as he ministers, that he be a clean, holy man of God, and that God will continue to fill Siran with His Spirit and His Word. I believe God is using Siran to bring about an awakening in the midst of His people and to call the lost to salvation.


As I drove onto campus this morning there was still smoke from the fire that began last night. We were here until 10:45 while family after family came to Siran and he prayed with them. In 13 years of ministry, I have never really seen such great hunger and faith exhibited together in one place. Perhaps I should be sad that this is true. Yet, I am still feasting this morning on what God is doing in our midst. Let us rejoice in His glory and be faithful to kindle these flames in prayer. We have had a great month of evangelism, of prayer on Wednesday nights, of growth, and given what happened last night – this month I believe has been a first fruit of what God is about to do in our church and city. Lately I have been strongly led to pray for revival. Everything I have observed in the last few weeks resonates that God is ready to answer this prayer. Let’s stay on our face during this holy week and beg God to awaken His church and to save the lost. May our hearts be filled with awe and expectation.

Chapter 2, Conversion

Reflections on John Piper's Desiring God, Chapter 2 - Conversion, The Creation of a Christian Hedonist

When I read silently I hear my own voice.  I suppose that I should count it joy that when I read I do not hear the voice of a woman, or someone speaking another language, or that of an all boys choir.  If I were to read and think in any of these dialects I suppose I would be a candidate for numerous mental health studies and perhaps a movie deal.  But this will not happen, for when I read I hear me.

Sometimes this is the problem with reading, we only hear ourselves.  This being the case I think it is expedient that we clear the air, in chapter 2, of what Pastor Piper is NOT saying.  He is NOT saying that people no longer need to be converted to Christ but rather to Christian Hedonism.  He is NOT saying that people no longer need to believe in Christ in order to be born again.  What he IS saying is that the ideas he has labeled Christian Hedonism are the logical and biblical result of someone who is converted to Christ and rightly believes in Jesus for salvation. 

I agree with Pastor Piper that the word “believe” is all but empty of meaning in the English language.  We have done the same to the word “love.”  The more we use a word the more we erode its meaning.  Less common words seem to have a sense of preservation about them.  I have often said that everyone who dies in Alabama goes to Heaven.  The foulest cuss in town is afforded a pretty funeral in our state.  He may have raised pit bulls, divorced five women, stolen cars, drank whiskey, and killed a man; but he believed in Jesus and so he goes to Heaven- dog, wives, cars, drunk and all.  The onlookers of the pastor for hire’s eulogy are skeptical, but in their hearts they hope for the same because after all they are believers too.

Piper is not calling for us to change the method of conversion, but rather to restore its meaning.  “My responsibility as a preacher of the gospel and a teacher in the church is not to preserve and repeat cherished biblical sentences, but to pierce the heart with biblical truth (55).”  When he says his responsibility is, “not to preserve and repeat cherished biblical sentences,” he does NOT mean he is going to change the configuration of Bible verses.  Rather it means he is going to cut through the muck of what our eroded cultural dictionary has caused the Bible to mean in certain places and seek to restore the intended truth of the text.   

The gospel is at the heart of Piper’s message.  We have come to a day in which the gospel is not at the heart of much Christian writing and preaching.  It is psychology, leadership, prosperity, happiness, recovery, church growth, the church purpose statement, the church building, the church program, or the pastor or author’s personality, but it is not the gospel.  We use the Bible as a guide to the survival of life and have forgotten that its original intent was to convert the unregenerate, lost, sinful soul. 

To recover the message of the gospel Piper calls for us to consider four questions.  “Why is conversion so crucial?  What is there about God and man that makes it necessary?  What has God done to meet our desperate need?  And, what must we do to enjoy the benefits of his provision (55)?”  It is clear from Scripture that not everyone enjoys God and thus not everyone will enjoy the benefits of His salvation.  Lest one trust in empty “belief,” Piper bolsters his argument that the word “believe” has lost its meaning and that there is more with his list on page 69.  The list reports the various ways Jesus answered the question, “What must I do to be saved?”  The breadth of what Jesus meant when He used the word “believe” is plain here.  Jesus’ variety of answers is also the heart of Piper’s argument.

If the thing of which we take most pleasure is our god (367) then in naming our pleasure we reveal what has gone horribly wrong with the human soul.  Sin has defaced our desire and ability to glorify God.  Piper shows us two sides of the same coin.  Delighting in God (Christian Hedonism) is necessary for salvation and it is also the necessary result of salvation.  People who do not delight in God (Christian Hedonism) are not saved.  The fact that God is not uppermost in their affections is proof that they do not rightly “believe.”  We are converted when God becomes to our soul what He is, God without rival (Exodus 20:3). 

What does this mean for the church?  It means that most of its members are unconverted.  I “believe” we all know this to be true.  There is an actual church and there is a paper one.  The paper one is created by human perception.  The actual one is created by the Holy Spirit of God.  They meet together but they are not the same.  The actual church is the converted people of God and their delight is in the Lord.  Piper calls them Christian Hedonists.  That is what he is saying.

What Do I Think About The New Health Care Legislation?

I have been asked more than a few times over the last several months about the health care debate, which has now resulted in new health care legislation in America.  I wish I knew all of the ins and outs of the current legislation, but frankly it is 2,000 pages long and I do not have a law degree.  I do not have the time to read it nor the education to understand it.  So I will comment based on what I do understand:

1.      Christians have always been concerned with health and healing.  The gospel has ever called us to exercise compassion for the sick and to care for our bodies as the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  Christians have historically been at the forefront of medical care and medical missions.  Historically Christians have also practiced self-control, abstinence from alcohol, the belief that gluttony is sin, as is sex outside of marriage.  These ideas and practices are a proven recipe for better social health.  That being said I am concerned at the absence of the Christian voice in the current debate.  It seems we have exchanged our Christian voice for merely a conservative one.  Conservatism is not the salt that Christianity promises to be.  Being politically conservative and Biblical may often intersect, but they are not the same.  No matter the policy of congress, Christians must return to their emphasis on medical missions, care for the sick, and the practice of a moral lifestyle that exhibits the truth that life lived in obedience to the Creator is the best preventative medicine.  The new health care legislation does not change our mission.  Christians throughout history have expressed the gospel in environments far more godless than our current state.  Yet, sadly gluttony and prosperity has become our mission.  As long as the Christian church is gluttonous, lazy, concerned with prosperity, and biblically illiterate I am not sure we will regain our voice in the culture.  Many of the nation’s current hospitals were founded by the church.  Sadly, most of them no longer have anything to do with the church for various reasons.  Yet, I am inclined to believe that if Christians tithed and churches exercised better stewardship and lived with less debt, most American cities would still have a hospital that is based on the gospel ministry.  If this were so, Christian based hospitals would certainly salt the health care debate.  Yet we have seemingly left our mission and our morals and as a result have been tossed out and trodden under the foot of men (Matthew 5:13).

 

2.      Christians are unapologetically, uncompromisingly, and unmistakably pro-life.  I know that President Obama included an executive order that assures the health care system will not use federal dollars to fund abortion.  Given his beliefs and platform I have no confidence this executive order will endure.  If protecting life were important to our current administration I believe decidedly pro-life measures would have been included in the initial legislation and would not have required an executive order.
 

3.      Exchanging corruption for corruption only leads to more corruption.  The government’s argument for taking over the health care system was to demonize the rich and the insurance companies.  In the government taking over health care I see one demon handing the baton to another demon.  The business of government is to create laws that will protect peace and life.  It is not the business of government to issue welfare, assure its citizens of social security, or to legislate its health.  I have no reason but to believe that the current laws that govern the new health care legislation will result in the collapse of the private sector, result in government run health care, and in turn result in all sorts of atrocities toward human life and morality that will greatly conflict with Biblical truth.
    

4.      I am not as disheartened with this new legislation as I am with the current moral state of our legislators.  I find most of them vile, godless, careless, greedy, self-serving, hypocritical, and evil.  I think Vice President Biden’s f-bomb during what was supposed to be a very stately moment is only evidence of what is in our current leadership’s heart.  Why would a man think of such a word at such a moment?  I can only imagine.  Comedians and talk show hosts thought it was funny.  I thought it was vile and offensive.  I loathe the disrespect I am seeing in our current government for the office of the American President, for fellow senators, and for fellow representatives.  Both sides of the aisle prey on fear and in doing so have yet to demonstrate to me that they can produce one piece of intelligent legislation for the good of the American people.  I found the whole process appalling, the disregard for the voice of the American people alarming, and the intentional disregard of the constitution astounding.

 

5.       My hope is not in our current King, or the next King, but in the risen, returning King.  My hope is not in human government, but in the righteous rule of Jesus Christ.  This does not mean that I will position myself to be useless while waiting for Jesus to return.  As followers of Christ we cannot help but be perceived as radical simply because the proper expression of the gospel is so counter-cultural.  I will vote, debate, and participate in our government.  I love America.  I will also be careful to be more than simply conservative.  I will follow Christ, participate in His mission, and submit to His Lordship over my life and family. 

The Happiness of God

(On Chapter 1 of John Piper’s Desiring God)

In lending commentary to someone else’s book there are three dangers.  The first is misunderstanding.  Pastor Piper has already warned us about this in his introduction (27).  The second is overcomplicating what is being said.  In working on this project I have tried to put myself in Pastor Piper’s shoes and pretend that there would be some possibility that he would read my posts.  What if he read my posts and was frustrated by them?  What if he was frustrated by the fact that I am trying to write a “laymen’s guide” when he felt his book was “laymen enough” as it stood on its own two feet?  The third danger is worse than the first two.  It is the danger of changing what is being said.  Whether that be change from dumbing down the text, or change birthed from misunderstanding, or change birthed in disagreement, it is straying from the author’s intent; an offense of which I do not desire to be guilty.

Yet in reading chapter 1 of John Piper’s Desiring God, “The Happiness of God” I believe I am safe to say that I know exactly how you feel.  Your mind is in knots, as is your soul.  Your theological foundations are experiencing aftershocks.  You are frustrated.  You are afraid.  You are seriously considering bouncing this book off the floor.  Hang on.

One reason you may be frustrated is because we have come to believe that books are not supposed to make us think.  Books are supposed to tell us what someone else thinks and we simply vote, “yea” or “nay.”  But Piper is talking about someone infinitely important to us, God.  Furthermore, he is dialoging with us on paper.  His style is to walk us through all of our various mental roadblocks, fears, and frustrations.  He forces us to think.  Just at the moment we are about to “bounce the book”, he calls for us to think through our objections.  For example, Piper shared with us the frustrations of Jonathan Edwards over the sovereignty of God.  Your experience here is not unique.  Contemplating the sovereignty of God from an autonomous soul is difficult.  We believe we are autonomous, sovereigns of our own destiny, and that we provide the wind for our own sails.  To hear that God is sovereign is the loss of autonomy and we become fearful.  Like Edwards, our mind is “full of objections against the doctrine of God’s sovereignty (38).”  From my own experience I did not understand worship, I did not trust in the security of my salvation, and my soul had no peace in such an evil world until I wrestled through and came to rest upon God’s sovereignty.  Does this mean I, or Edwards, or even Piper fully understands it all without questions?  It is naïve to think that anyone could exhaust all of the questions.  We do not need to have all of our questions answered before we believe and trust certain things.  We do it every day.  Yet I think it is important that we at least get to the place Piper presses us toward, the place where Edwards found rest, “Edwards did not claim to exhaust the mystery here.  But he does help us find a possible way of avoiding outright contradiction while being faithful to the Scripture (39).”  Let’s agree to do the same.

It is critical, despite how we feel, to make sure that our faith does not rest in ideas that are in “outright contradiction” with Scripture.  Last night, while listening to Christian radio, I heard a man say, “God needs you.”  On the surface his statement sounds so evangelistic, inviting, and perhaps even Biblical, but it is an “outright contradiction” with Scripture.  God does not need us.  This is the point of Piper’s first chapter.  God’s ultimate delight is not in us, but in Himself.  He does not seek our glory, but His own.  He does not need us.  He does not exist because we believe and He is not glorious because we said so.  Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1 - as does the entirety of the Biblical corpses replete with the failures of man - proves God does not need us.  Yet it is the ego-centric, humanistic, shallow, heretical theology that we cling to that helps us become so comfortable with making statements like, “God needs you,” without any fear of being in “outright contradiction” with Scripture.

So what are the meat and potatoes here? 

1)  With this chapter I believe Piper finds a better place to start.  I would insert his opening refrain that, “God is uppermost in His own affections” as precept #1 back on page 28.  For me, beginning the argument here helps to qualify and define the rest.    

2)  Everyone struggles with the sovereignty of God.  We truly struggle with the idea of a prideful God.  In seeking His own glory is God a “second-hander (46)?”  God being selfish for seeking his own glory makes for a seemingly egotistical God; which for humans is very hard to stomach.  Yet Piper dialogues with our troubled soul and walks us through the complaints and questions (45).

3)  What if God did not seek His own glory?  We would find no place for true joy and He would be unrighteous (47).  This goes back to my argument from a negative that I discovered in Appendix 5.  If I do not place God uppermost in my own affections then He is not my God.  I have made a god out of whatever I take most pleasure in.  If God did not seek His own glory, I would be more interested to know what it is He seeks, than I am in Him.    I would then be given to pursue that which satisfies God – thus, He would no longer be God and I would not find a place for true joy in Him.  What if God did need us and sought to delight Himself in man?  If He sought the glory of man before His own, then I would worship man; that would be miserable, not joyful.

4)  It is not as important for us to satisfy all of our questions as it is for us to make sure we are not in “outright contradiction” with Scripture.  Even so, this is a tough pill to swallow, especially when you find that you enjoyed a phrase on the radio that sounded orthodox but was outright heretical.  It is also a tough pill to swallow when you find that you cannot supply the wind for your own sails.  Demoting the self and resting in the sovereignty of another is not initially delightful, but it is, in Piper’s argument the only path to the proper place of the soul.

Surviving the Resurrection (sermon audio: Sunday a.m.)

Jesus’ resurrection was the inauguration of an ongoing process, not merely an event that happened at one point in history. It was the dawning of a work that continues, the “first fruits” of more to come. However, the resurrection results and ends when the world is returned to right and God is “all in all” (I Cor. 15:28). Now is the time to be born again and spread the gospel until that day when we too will be resurrected and redeemed by the power of God.

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Should You Pay For Christian Counseling?

People are given to believe that if a Christian service such as counseling, a travelling evangelist, or support of a pastor, requires payment, then it is less sincere than if it had not.  I will concede that the love of money and poor accountability will lead to evil and corrupt ministry, but this is not necessarily so in every case.  Unfortunately perception becomes reality, and most people perceive that payment for Christian service is a negative simply because the worst amongst us often get the most press.  Paul suffered from the same problem.  He was in constant defense of his apostleship before the early church, and one sacrifice he chose to make in order to better validate his ministry was to refuse monetary support, though he was under no Scriptural warrant to do so.  I Corinthians 9:3-14:

³ This is my defense to those who would examine me. ⁴ Do we not have the right to eat and drink? ⁵ Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? ⁶ Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? ⁷ Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?

⁸ Do I say these things on human authority? Does not the Law say the same? ⁹ For it is written in the Law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.” Is it for oxen that God is concerned? ¹⁰ Does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. ¹¹ If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? ¹² If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more?

Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. ¹³ Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? ¹⁴ In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

Pastors, most often offer counsel for free to families as a part of their expected pastoral ministry, as well they should.  I would think it odd for a pastor to receive a wage from a church and also charge by the hour for pastoral counseling.  While the counsel of a pastor may be beneficial, pastoral counsel should be, and most often is, limited and short term.  It is limited with regards to ability.  After a certain point there are just some issues of the mental soul that pastors are not trained to handle.  It is limited also by the mere fact that after a certain time, pastors need to move on, and be available to others.  People do not need to become addicted to their pastor’s attention.  This is both dangerous and emotionally/spiritually draining.  He is gifted to the church to “equip the saints for the ministry (Eph. 4:12)” and to “preach the Word of God (Acts 6:2).”  For him to consume his time with only visiting, counseling, and administration is wrong and detrimental to the spiritual health of the church (again consult Eph. 4:12, Acts 6:2).

There will come, then, a time when the wise pastor will make a referral to a Christian counselor.  This will require, in most cases, money.  Some ministries have the liberty of offering free counsel to those who need it.  Yet, it should be noted that they can do so only because someone behind the scenes is funding it.  Again, someone is paying.  Also, it has been proven that when people have a monetary investment in counseling and education they respond better than if they had no investment in the same. 

Here is the real question.  What is it worth to you?  What is the condition of your family, your marriage, or your loved one worth to you?  Some people will buy a nice pair of jeans, but will not pay for Christian counsel.  People will buy a pair of pants and it never enter their mind that Levi and Strauss is somehow evil because they will not clothe the world for free.  Some people will fund a trip to Disney World hoping that it will relieve family stress, when three appointments to a trained counselor would have been much cheaper and much more effective than Mickey.  An investment of time and money in professional Christian counsel can be life changing.  It is a worthwhile, Biblical, and solid financial investment.  A wise Christian counselor once pointed out to me as we were discussing this very issue, “Divorce is much more costly than counsel.” 

Jake on James

We took a few days off this week and made a visit to family and friends near my hometown of Ringgold, GA.  On Monday night we were able to reconnect with some college friends at Dave and Katie Delmotte’s house.  I first met Dave in a Greek class somewhere about 1993 or 1994.  He moved to Chattanooga from Michigan.  In order to communicate with one another Dave and I used a translator.  Dave drove a jacked up Toyota truck with huge snow tires on it - in Chattanooga!  Where I grew up, folks carried dead animals in the back of their truck.  Dave was the only guy I ever met who carried hockey equipment in the back of his.  Even when we drove up to his house on Monday afternoon I knew we were in the right place because Dave is the only person in the Bible Belt with hockey nets in his driveway.

Dave is now pastoring a church in rural Tennessee.  I am not sure any of the people in his congregation have understood a single word he has spoken in the last five years, but God is using Dave despite the fact that he still sounds Canadian.  It is Acts 2 all over again.  One thing I have always appreciated about Dave is that he is tenaciously disciplined.  He is a real student of the Word of God and carries through with implementing the Bible into his walk.  

Before we left his home, Dave and Katie’s son Jake, who is about 7, quoted some parts of the Book of James for us.  He didn’t quote some verses out of James, he was quoting James!  Katie has worked with their children, reading James to them repetitiously, to the point that now their oldest child has it memorized.  On the way back to my parent’s house Shannon and I talked about how we, as a society, don’t challenge our children enough, not just biblically, but academically as well.  God created children with DVR.  They naturally remember everything they see and hear.  As parents we should seek to fill their minds with God’s Word, pure thoughts, and great memories.  

So, if you are ever playing ice hockey in Tennessee and someone body checks you and quotes a Bible verse, it was probably one of Dave’s kids.

On Appendix 5: Am I Offended by the Term Christian Hedonism?

In his introduction to Desiring God, John Piper invited those who found the term Christian Hedonism “strange or troubling” to read Appendix 5 before they progressed to chapter 1 (27).  That is why I am still in nerdville - preface, introduction, and now an appendix.  Yet, I chose to read this short appendix next simply because I am curious, not so much because I am troubled.  I am sure that Pastor Piper has fielded a fair amount of criticism because he has taken an idea, “Hedonism,” that reminds most people of sin, and has lumped it together with something complimentary of people who would remind others of Christ, “Christian.”  Most Christians associate Hedonism with most of the grosser sins that people commit out of their fleshly thirst for pleasure.  Therefore, for some, Piper may as well be talking about Christian drug abuse, or Christian fornication, or Christian theft, or Christian idolatry.  They just can’t stomach two terms, one seemingly so dirty and one so pure, so intertwined that they describe one another.  

Am I offended by the term Christian Hedonism?  No.  Curiosity is more often my vice than offense.  Though I am not offended by the term, I was nevertheless educated by Pastor Piper’s defense of it.  Is it edifying for the church for Pastor Piper to strive to intermarry two terms that otherwise are so incompatible?  I think so, for it is the essence of his book.  I think it is also his contention that Christians should not take so much pleasure in their desire for non-pleasure as their ultimate act of worship.  We are guilty of being miserable “in Jesus name” and then inviting others to be as bored with it all as we are.

My question with the idea of Christian Hedonism, so far, has not been about the name, but rather is pleasure the proper place to start?  Pleasure seems awfully subjective.  As such I wonder if Pastor Piper is majoring on a Biblical minor.  True, the Bible teaches that people find pleasure and/or delight in God.  As Piper will reference often, all one needs to do is read some Psalms.  There we can taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8).  But can one bet the farm on a man’s pleasure, even if it is his pleasure in God?  I know some people who drink pessimism for breakfast.  I can honestly say I do not believe they delight in anything but their misery.  Yet, some of them, I would surmise by their testimony, are sincere Christians.  It is just that misery is their personality type.  Then there are those who are saved, but sad.  They have lost loved ones, experienced trauma, perhaps abuse, and pleasure is sincerely difficult for them to find.  If I think I know where Pastor Piper is going with all of this, I must ask.  Could a person who is seriously pleasure challenged make the case that there is no God if they sincerely can’t find pleasure in Him?  If a person loses their pleasure does this necessarily equate to a loss of faith?  I am sure the semantics of my question can be challenged, but my point is that the pleasure of man is not trustworthy.  I am not given to believe the pleasure of man is trustworthy in any context.  

That being said, I am enjoying what John Piper is saying and I really want him to render my concerns invalid.  I want Christian Hedonism to be entirely biblical and for what I see it promising, to be entirely mine.  I want to shed the weight of sin and rest all of my pleasure in God.  Which is probably the reason I found one statement in Appendix 5 so convicting.  “Christian Hedonism does not make a god out of pleasure.  It says you have already made a god out of whatever you take most pleasure in (367).”  Here I see the good in the idea of Christian Hedonism.  If I do not take most pleasure in God, I am guilty of idolatry.  Perhaps this is a breakthrough moment for me.  I see the negative revelation of Christian Hedonism, if I take “most pleasure” in something other than God, it is blatant sin.  In seeing the negative, I am now beginning to see the positive.  I am capable of determining what I take “most pleasure” in.  That, for me, is measurable - still subjective, but measurable.  It is entirely Biblical for me to take “most pleasure” in God.  There is no alternative that is not idolatry.  I think I am starting to see the light.  It is time for the body of the text, onward to chapter 1.

Desiring God Free Online

If you have been following along as I read through Pastor John Piper's Desiring God, I have good news.  You can download the book free online, here.  Dr. Piper's website desiringgod.org provides many of his books free through pdf download.  If you still desire a hard copy of Desiring God I have linked it several times throughout my posts via Amazon.

Why John Piper is a Christian Hedonist But I Love Mud

Before I move forward into Pastor John Piper’s Desiring God I want to make a clarification on style.  My desire in these posts is to have a conversation WITH Pastor Piper on the grounds of his book rather than a conversation AT Pastor Piper.  I find most reviews are monologues AT a book rather than dialogues WITH a book.  While it is the nature of review to share what someone thinks of a book, at some point we came to believe that all we want is one side of a thought, and that we are not interested in what the author of the book in question thinks about anything he has written.  Therefore, my style may not be accommodating to those who enjoy strict reviews, but after all, I write this for laymen, not scholars.  Thus my style will not be as tight or concise as some may desire.  It will be more free, introspective, much longer, and far less proofed as I normally like things to be.  It will be what it will be.  As Paul McCartney said, “Let it be.”  I want to write as most of us read books, page by page, thought by thought.

“The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”  Is this a line from a movie, the conclusion of a poem by Robert Frost, or a quote from a preacher?  It is none of the above.  This line is the opening line to The Westminster Catechism (Shorter and Larger).  Catechisms are learning tools for teaching theological truth.  They are written in a concise question and answer format, thus making the exercise of systematic theology much like studying for a test.  Question one of the catechism asks, “What is the chief end of man?”  The concise response is, “The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”  Later Piper will mention the Heidelberg Catechism (27).  I am not sure if this question and response are found in the Heidelberg as well.  I am not familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism.  In scanning it I did not find the lines, but it really doesn’t matter if it is there or not.  Piper’s point here is the primacy of the idea that the enjoyment of God is the purpose of man.  Being the first thought, it becomes the theme of the Westminster and shapes every succeeding thought.  Like the Westminster Catechism, it is the place where Piper has chosen to start his argument for Christian Hedonism.  It is his theme as well.

So is the chief end of man to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever?  I take the idea of “end” to mean the purpose of our life, the reason we were created.  According to Piper and Westminster, this is our theme.  I would say that the Bible supports this idea if for no other reason than it is after all our chronological end, our final state.  After salvation, regeneration, and the recreation of “all things new,” man’s end is glorifying God.  The tone Scripture that reveals this end is joy.  The Bible sure makes it seem as if man will enjoy glorifying/praising/serving God forever.

Piper soon takes “and” out of the catechism and exchanges it for “by (18).”  In my mind the exchange here radically changes the meaning.  The word “and,” to me, means that the chief end of man is to glorify God “and equally” enjoy Him forever; as in the two are the same.  In substituting the word “by” I take it now to mean that enjoying God is the “means” to glorifying God.  To me this means that the only way to glorify God is to enjoy Him.  Is that correct?  If this is true, this means that I am not currently glorifying God if I am not currently enjoying Him.  I must admit there have been times I have not enjoyed God.  There was a massive amount of time in our church relocation that I did not enjoy God.  There were times when my parents punished me that I did not enjoy them, but I loved them and I honored them as my parents.  Is the criteria of human enjoyment far too subjective at this point?  The writer of Hebrews agrees, there will be times in which someone can be truly experiencing God in chastisement, but it will not be enjoyable (Heb. 12:11).  Someone could make the case that just because one is not enjoying chastisement does not necessarily mean that they are not enjoying God.  Such an idea seems like splitting hairs.  After all, the punisher and the punishment are intricately married.  Punishment is an expression of the character of the one carrying out the punishment.  Thus, while I am being punished I may not be enjoying the punishment nor the punisher.  Perhaps that is because I am finite and I do not understand the punishment is meant for my good.  At the moment I may feel only as a victim.  While this may be the case, let us not leave the premise here.  Is it true that I glorify God only “by” enjoying Him?  Jesus made it sound like following Him could become excruciating (Matthew 16:24-28).  Yet, in taking up one’s cross one is glorifying God not out of enjoyment, but out of obedience.  I am not sure that obedience and enjoyment are always the same.  Piper replaces the word “and” with “by” in the catechism.  Could I replace the word “enjoy” with “obey” or “sacrifice” or “love” or “surrender” and the meaning of the catechism, and Piper’s premise of Christian Hedonism still remain in tact?

I have heard Piper talk about his troubles with reading, mainly that he is a slow reader.  This being true I am amazed at how much he reads.  His introduction effectively names his sources, the men who have shaped his ideas.  Here we find two, Blaise Pascal and C.S. Lewis.  Later he will name puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards.  Blaise Pascal was a 17th century mathematician and philosopher.  C.S. Lewis was 20th century atheist philosopher who converted to Christianity.  He was one of Christianity’s greatest thinkers and writers.  I wish I knew more about Pascal, but I fear math.  Yet I don’t think we need a lesson in arithmetic to practice discernment on page 19.  The idea here is that since man seeks pleasure, pleasure can’t be all bad.  Perhaps the desire for pleasure is like gravity, a law of nature the reflects the handiwork of God.  For me, this needs to be massively qualified.  This makes God’s glory massively subjective and dependent on man’s pleasure.  The danger is that sinful things please man.  I need to hear more, so I will remain patient and curious.

Ah.  Page 20, and a quote from C.S. Lewis,

“We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea.  We are far too easily pleased.”  

I must love mud.  Here C.S. Lewis provides the balance and I find that I am a mud lover.  I am too easily pleased.  My desires are weak.  They are not what I could ultimately enjoy.  At this point the book calls for serious introspection.  Have I been missing the point of my salvation?  Have I exchanged the glory of God for mud?

We praise what we enjoy.  I agree with Piper on this (22).  My mom and dad ate dinner at a strange looking diner in a hotel.  All I heard about was the dessert.  It was a huge piece of cake they shared for three days.  They praised the diner for cake.  As a pastor and participant in many church worship services, I have often taken a look around and wondered, “Does anyone actually like this?”  Perhaps a few who are more expressive do, but as a whole, do most people enjoy what we claim to be the worship of the one true God?  Most people don’t look or act like it.  When people like cake they are far more passionate than I see people in church worship gatherings.  If I am understanding Piper so far, what he is getting at is that if we truly worship God, we will really like Him.  Worship doesn’t work any other way. 

“God is not worshipped where He is not treasured and enjoyed.  Praise is not an alternative to joy, but the expression of joy.  Not to enjoy God is to dishonor Him.  To say to Him that something else satisfies you more is the opposite of worship.  It is sacrilege (22).”

He goes on to say, 

“We have a name for those who try to praise when they have no pleasure in the object.  We call them hypocrites.  This fact - that praise means consummate pleasure and that the highest end of man is to drink deeply of this pleasure - was perhaps the most liberating discovery I ever made (23).”    

In his introduction Piper is sharing with us the reasons he converted to Christian Hedonism.  In citing his fifth reason he says, “Then I turned to the Psalms for myself and found the language of Hedonism everywhere (23).”  This addresses a couple of concerns I had in my previous post.  1) Does Piper have Biblical support for Christian Hedonism, and 2) what has been his own experience with the idea?  Piper will use the Psalms quite a bit in support of Christian Hedonism.  I know this sounds strange, but I need more than just Psalms to deem something Biblical.  Piper says that God commands “that we find joy in loving God (25).”  He then quotes a Psalm to support his statement.  If something is so important we should find it to be a constant theme in Scripture.  Christian Hedonism should be something found in God’s dealings with Adam, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, Peter, and John.  If it is so vital for us, we should find evidence that God pressed all of these men toward this chief end of finding pleasure in Him.  As far as Christian Hedonism being tested in Piper’s own life and experience, 

“I have now been brooding over these things for some thirty-five years, and there has emerged a philosophy that touches virtually every area of my life.  I believe that it is biblical, that it fulfills the deepest longings of my heart, and that it honors the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I have written this book to commend these things to all who will listen (23, 24).” 

I take this to mean that Piper has thought long and hard about these things.  He is living the idea.  It is working in His life to Biblical ends and he is going to expose his journey to us in his book.  Desiring God then should be not only an idea supported in Scripture, but also a testimony born in Piper’s life.  

Before leaving the introduction Piper gives us two lists to hold in one hand while we hold Desiring God in the other.  The first is a list of qualifiers.  It is found on pages 24 - 27.  For me, the first two are of utter importance simply because I have been asking the question, “Is pleasure a good place to start?”  I don’t trust my pleasure because I am sinful.  In this introduction I have already been found to be a mud lover.  Therefore I think it is important for Piper to qualify that the only pleasure that is valid in Christian Hedonism is pleasure found in God Himself and that Christian Hedonism does not “make a god out of pleasure.”  This should keep us from making more mud pies as we read.

The second list is equally important.  It is Piper’s argument.  He notes that he would rather not define Christian Hedonism until, “The end of the book, when misunderstanding would have been swept away (27).”  I will concede that I am carrying a few misunderstandings in my backpack already.  I don’t want to misunderstand, but it is inevitable for all of us.  Therefore I think it is important for all of us to trudge on with the desire to understand.  In my dialogue with the preface I called for definition, so I am thankful that Piper, although hesitant as it may be, has laid out his argument, and in so doing provides us a skeleton definition.  He does so on page 28 in something of a philosophical argument.  In reading this, I am again confronted with my concern.  Is pleasure a good place to start?  I understand that this list is laid out in this manner for the sake of logic.  It makes for a good argument, but does it make for good theology?  For me, I would think a better place to begin the argument would be at #3, “The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God.  Not from God, but in God (28).”  What if Christian Hedonism began there instead of with man’s desire for pleasure?  Think of our line of discerning questions.  Our utmost question would then be something like, “Is it true that the deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God?”  I would think that question could be answered much more soundly from Scripture and personal experience.  Yet with Christian Hedonism beginning with sort of a C.S. Lewis natural theology argument, “The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful (28),” we are forced to ask something like, “Is it true that the longing to be happy is good, and not sinful?”  Happy in what?  Is my version of happy truly shared universally?  Can it be proven Biblically and in praxis that it is not wrong for me to desire to be happy in a certain sense, as I understand it?  Here, “happy” must be carefully qualified and defined.  At least I would think so.  Moving number 3 to number 1, in my opinion helps with definition and qualification of “happy.”  Piper is wise.  He knew folks like me may have this sort of trouble, so he says, “For many (Brian Branam), the term Christian Hedonism will be new.  Therefore, I have included appendix 5:  ‘Why Call it Christian Hedonism?‘  If this is a strange or troubling term, you may want to read those pages before plunging into the main chapters.”  Thank you Pastor Piper.  I will indulge.  

Nerds Read the Preface (A Laymen's Guide to Desiring God)

Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist

I am a nerd. I read the preface of books. However, I am not a full blown nerd because I went apostate on math. When I declared that I would be a Pastoral Studies major I felt the immediate release from the burden of math. The Bible is full of 3’s, 7’s, and 40’s. You don’t need to take Calculus to preach the Bible, just a little bit of Greek and Hebrew.

What is the place of pleasure in the Christian life? Is it a sin to be very happy? I guess this is why we say chocolate cake can be so good it is sinful. I want to be happy and feel great. Is that wrong? My desire to feel good has often conflicted me and has inevitably led to my being a bit of a hypochondriac. Sometimes I feel so good I worry that I am about to die without symptoms. Last summer went to the cardiologist. They hooked me up to a computer, shot me full of radiation and then challenged me to climb a mountain. I guess they wanted to see if I am prone to have a heart attack on Everest. They kept asking me, as they increased the speed and incline of the treadmill, “Do you feel O.K.?” Now they are literally watching my heart beat. Do they really have to ask how I feel? They should know. So I would answer their question with a question, “Am I O.K.?” “Are you supposed to ask me this question as a hospital policy or am I about 3 seconds from a defibrillator?”

Piper says his book, Desiring God, is, “A serious book about being happy in God (9).” This book is about making the pursuit of pleasure in God one’s utmost concern. Is this the right place to start? Where most ideas/philosophies/theology, etc. go wrong is in the beginning – what is the premise? I do not doubt that God invites us to be delighted, happy, and to find pleasure in Him, but is this the utmost pursuit? It is an interesting premise. I have seen this flick before – the pages are already highlighted, so I know that on page 18 Piper is going to sympathize with my reservations, “I found in myself an overwhelming longing to be happy, a tremendously powerful impulse to seek pleasure, yet at ever point of moral decision I said to myself that this impulse should have no influence.” The desire for pleasure is tough to curtail, hence my question, what is its place in the Christian life? Is it a valid place to start in developing theology, doctrine, and praxis? What will be the logical conclusion, the dangers, if pleasure is the wrong place to start?

Maybe my unease with pleasure is answered in the C.S. Lewis quote on page 9, “Who knew that the Lord ‘finds our desires not too strong but too weak.’” Given the choice between going to the dentist and going fishing –I fish. Given the choice between ice cream and having my head sewn to the carpet I choose ice cream. Given the choice to suffer for Jesus or safety – which would I choose? Sometimes suffering and Jesus hold hands.  Some choose pain because they are satisfied in Christ. Piper drives home this point by directing our attention to, “all the missionaries who have left everything for Christ and in the end said, ‘I never made a sacrifice (9).’” Perhaps my pleasures are too selfish and vain. Perhaps my pleasure is too shallow. Perhaps God has given me a desire that I am satisfying in idolatry instead of in devotion to Him. If my desire for pleasure is of God, maybe pleasure is a good place to start because if I satisfy that desire, God will inevitably be its end.

All of this turmoil over where to start, pleasure, or somewhere else, is challenged on page 12, second paragraph, second sentence, “I know of no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of a superior satisfaction in God.” If you keep reading this book, get ready for poignant and deep statements like this. Yet to be a discerning reader one has to continually keep the pursuit of truth at the forefront and ask, “Is that true?” Is it true that the only way to triumph long term over sin is to gain a distaste for it “because of a superior satisfaction in God?” Will Piper be able to support his premise Biblically? Is it congruent with the experience of life? When Piper says, “I know of no other way”, does he know this both Biblically and in his own walk? The paradigm of ancient discipleship was to not only listen to the teacher, but to observe him, so with Piper we must not only listen but watch. Will his book not only teach, but also provide a window into his soul? Has he tested his premise? What is his story? From my experience in misguided pleasure and sin, the premise of superior satisfaction in God as a long term triumph over sin sounds valid, and Biblical. It seems like it would work, yet I wonder whether or not I can do such a thing seeing that my pleasures can take me to strange places. I am after all sinful and have yet to be ultimately perfected. This being the case, is pleasure the place to start (an awfully ironic question to ask for a guy whose blog is titled Feel My Faith)?

I look forward to moving ahead, post preface, to higher nerd ground, the introduction. Nerds read intros! You should too, especially this one. I am not sure you could skip this intro and still “get” the book the way it is to be “gotten.” I have a feeling that my question(s) may be further answered there.

Pitiful Faith (sermon audio: Sunday a.m.)

Paul writes that if the Corinthians deny the resurrection, they are of all men “most pitiable.” The danger is when we detach from what Jesus has done in the resurrection, our faith becomes vain, empty, meaningless, worthless; and now Paul adds two more words - futile and pitiful. Doesn’t this sound vaguely familiar to the American church which is often immoral, ineffective, heretical, divided, and assimilating cultural norms and masquerading them as spiritual forms of worship? We have, as they, pulled the plug from our souls that holds us to the resurrection. Because of it, we should seriously consider our message, faith, doctrine, mission, and morals.

Listen to Audio

A Laymen's Guide to Desiring God

We made the decision, a tad over a year ago, to use the Masterwork series with several of the educational groups here at Ridgecrest. I must admit that the folks at Masterwork/Lifeway have caused me to sweat more than once. The most recent sweat came from their adaptation of pastor Ralph Douglas West’s interpretation of Ruth 3. I posted my response to this and have since moved on.

Though I have moved on, that moment caused me to enter into a new discipline as a part of my pastoral leadership, that is the discipline of seriously reading educational literature before anyone else does. This has caused me a few more hours of work away from sermon preparation, but at this time I feel it extremely necessary. I feel it extremely necessary because the philosophy behind the Masterworks series (which I think I understand and at this time endorse) is a good one, but it is far less safe for lay teachers. In adapting material written from a wide range of authors, from a wide range of convictions and doctrinal persuasions, lay teachers and students will be confronted by ideas that they may otherwise have never encountered if they do not make a habit of reading broadly. Most pastors read broadly, and as a by-product develop a good sense of discernment. In doing so they are able to be encountered by ideas, appreciate them, reject them, or assimilate them; turn to the next page of the book and move forward. No sweat. Discernment helps a Baptist appreciate the contributions of the Max Lucados, Jim Cymbalas, and N.T. Wrights of the theological world by tossing a few ideas here and there, but overall enjoying their work. Discernment helps a pastor say that just because someone is Church of Christ doesn’t mean they are going to Hell. Discernment (along with a fair amount of theological maturity, grace, and tact) helps Al Mohler and Paige Patterson become presidents of seminaries funded by the same denomination. Most laymen have not developed such a sense of discernment simply because they do not own the same library as most pastors. I own a few books. Therefore, I enter the fray. Maybe I can be a good shepherd and help.

I have said all of that to say this, “I feel another sweat coming on.” Beginning Easter Sunday the Masterwork series from Lifeway will begin a series of lessons adapted from Pastor John Piper’s book Desiring God, Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. To help this process along I will do two things. 1) I have started a discussion board available ONLY to our CLG leaders. There I preview the lessons several weeks in advance and post teaching tips that I hope will help them along, not only in teaching, but also in discernment. 2) With this post I will also begin a broader and more public conversation with John Piper’s book, Desiring God, not in its adapted Masterwork form, but with the book in its entirety. Hopefully this will provide fair context for discernment.

I read Desiring God several years ago. At the time it hit me as it will hit most freshmen to the thought of Christian Hedonism, this is radical stuff. Since getting over the initial shock I have been truly edified by Dr. Piper’s teaching and preaching. As with most books, I appreciated it, thought about it, was impacted by it, and moved on. I probably did not think about it as deeply as I will in this series of posts, so hopefully this will be a good exercise for me personally as well. Yet before I begin, I want to share these thoughts that seem to keep me in balance as I read books:

1. All of us believe something strongly.

2. None of us completely agree with one another in what we strongly believe.

3. No one is ever completely right.

4. No one is ever completely wrong.

5. People who disagree and get things right and wrong will end up in the same Heaven with the same God because they have been saved by the same Jesus and indwelt by the same Holy Spirit.

6. I have been wrong and will be wrong again.

7. People who write books have been wrong and will be wrong again.

8. I can believe something today, admit I am wrong, and believe something differently tomorrow.

9. That same sort of thing probably happens to people who write books.

10. There are lots of books in this world. None of them replace the Bible.

11. There are lots of books in this world. We should read them.

12. There are lots of books in this world. Yet, we should, in the end major on the Bible, not on books.

So now, in the days ahead, may we sweat together in love, with balance and with discernment.