Desiring God

So this blogging thing hasn’t really taken off like I had hoped. I just started reading Desiring God by John Piper and so I’ve decided to blog about what I read and what I am learning. I don’t really care if anybody reads this because it is more for myself anyway.



Preface
“This is a serious book about being happy in God. It’s about happiness because this is what our Creator commands: “Delight yourself in the LORD” (Psalm 37:4).”

That is really what this book is about. The main message of this book is that God is most glorified in us when we are most glorified in Him. Piper calls this Christian Hedonism.

In another article Piper wrote this “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.”


Introduction – How I Became A Christian Hedonist

First, I think it wise to give you the definition of Hedonism: : the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life. So Christian Hedonism is basically pursuing our pleasure in God.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism says,

“The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

They said that the “chief end”, not “chief ends. So, glorifying God and enjoying Him are one end, not two. That is what this book is about.

And so, Piper changed the old saying to:

“The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.”

Blaise Pascal wrote,

"All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”

So, everything that we do is motivated by our desire to be happy. It is our human nature.
There is a quote from the sermon “The Weight of Glory” by C.S. Lewis that I think describes our current culture so well.

“If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. 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.”

What Lewis is saying is that, it is not a bad thing to desire our own good. That way of thinking is no part of the Christian faith. The last part of the quote is my favorite part. Piper says, “In fact, the great problem of
human beings is that they are far too easily pleased. They don’t seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that they should. And so they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.”

So we try to find our satisfaction in all the things of this world, when God is offering us infinite joy and satisfaction. We are far to easily pleased.


Praise should be solely motivated by the happiness we find in God and not by some sense of duty.

When C.S Lewis was beginning to believe in God, a great stumbling block to him was that all throughout the Psalms it seemed that God is craving “ for our worship like a vain woman who wants compliments.” He struggled with this because all throughout the Psalms God is saying ...Praise the Lord, and since the psalms were inspired it is as if God is saying, praise me, praise me. Lewis, in his book Reflections on the Psalms shows why he was wrong:

“But the most obvious fact about praise—whether of God or anything strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise. The world rings with praise— lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game. My whole, more general difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation.”

In essence what Lewis is saying is that our joy is not complete until it is expressed in praise. Praise is the expression of joy.

This is another quote from John Piper at Passion ‘97,

“If God is to love you, what must he give you? He must give you what is best for you. The best thing in all the universe is God. If he were to give you all health, best job, best spouse, best computer, best vacations, best success in any realm, and yet withhold himself, then he would hate you. And if he gives you God and nothing besides, he loves you infinitely.”

What a great truth John Piper has shown me. Our life vocation is to pursue our pleasure and Joy in God.

In your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore” (Psalm 16:11).