Posts Tagged ‘John Piper’
John Haskins depicts the joy of a "holiday by the sea."
“12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Col. 3:12-14
A good blogger doesn’t ask people to read more than a paragraph or two. I’m not a good blogger today:).
I’ve been revisiting my tattered copy of John Piper’s Desiring God, in which he calls us to revisit an essential but often left-out part of the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of [humankind]?” “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Piper asks us to reconsider how enjoying God glorifies God, and begins by quoting the following portion of C.S. Lewis’ great sermon, The Weight of Glory. I promise you the challenge here is worth the five minutes it will take you to read it. I even broke one long paragraph up into shorter sections:). Read it and ask yourself — what can I learn about glorying God by enjoying God?
If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love.
You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.
I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
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.” C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
Saturday I picked up a book that’s been hiding on my shelf for a while. It’s about enjoying God. It’s called Desiring God. John Piper writes about “Christian Hedonism,” saying that Christians were made to seek pleasure, to desire God, to enjoy God, and in enjoying Him, to worship Him, to live for Him and in living this way, to take pleasure from life. Here’s a little snippet. I’ve broken Piper’s paragraph into sentences, so we can concentrate on each point.
7 But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28 He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29 so that no one may boast before him.” I Cor. 1:27-29
“Christian Hedonism combats pride because it puts man in the category of an empty vessel beneath the fountain of God. It guards us from the presumption of trying to be God’s benefactors.
Philanthropists can boast.
Welfare recipients cannot.
The primary experience of Christian Hedonism is need.
When a little, helpless child is being swept off his feet by the undercurrent on the beach and his father catches him just in time, the child does not boast; he hugs.”
Where do you feel strong today? What do you need?
Revisiting John Piper’s Desiring God.
“The great hindrance to worship is not that we are a pleasure-seeking people, but that we are willing to settle for such pitiful pleasures.
The prophet Jeremiah put it like this:
My people have exchanged their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord; for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:11-13)
The heavens are appalled and shocked when people give up so soon on their quest for pleasure and settle for broken cisterns.”
Dear Lord,
Help us to come before you, not just tomorrow, but every day, seeking the joys of being with you, of knowing you, of knowing how much you love us, how completely you have forgiven us, how fully you have graced us. Let us rest in the realities of who you are and enjoy you and all of your good gifts to us without wanting to replace you with them.
With the joy you grow in us, we pray,
Amen.