According to John Piper, the great business of life is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever. This is a twist on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which opens with "what is the chief end of man?" Piper, in his book Desiring God, says that the Christian does not need to feel a great tug-of-war between the duty of life and its delight. Rather, he says that delight is our duty. His phrase, Christian Hedonism, can be misinterpreted and then misapplied to one’s life, but he is making a good point.
Let’s break it apart. Piper asserts that all of life is about pursuing joy or true happiness. And, in doing so, he echoes C.S. Lewis’s Surprised by Joy. Lewis once wrote that God “finds our desires not too strong but too weak,” but we will come back to that later.In the Psalms, David encourages us to “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Psalm 37:4). Delight: that is not a word that conjures up drudgery in going through the motions of church and Bible study. It is our duty to find our joy in the One who can truly satisfy our deepest longings! Here is Piper again – "This was a stunning discovery for me. I must pursue joy in God if I am to glorify Him as the surpassingly valuable Reality in the universe. Joy is not a mere option alongside worship. It is an essential component of worship."
This "dangerous duty of delight" is just that – a duty. We must "enjoy Him forever." According to Piper, this is how we will glorify God in the highest. We find this idea of delight all through the Psalms. Here are some more examples: "As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God" (Psalm 42:1-2). There is a soul-satisfying quality to our seeking God. Nothing will truly fill our souls except the Holy Spirit. We find this exact truth elsewhere in the Psalms. "My soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water" (Psalm 63:1). How can this deep thirst of the soul be quenched? Men are to "drink their fill of the abundance of Your house; and You give them to drink of the river of Your delights" (Psalm 36:8).
C.S. Lewis asserted that humanity has no other way to satisfy their deepest longings (remember the weak desires referred to earlier?) than with God. He wrote in The Weight of Glory, "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." Indeed, there is one true object of human desire and happiness – God. It is not that all of our heart's desires are wrong, but that we try so many wrong things to satisfy these desires. According to the Christian mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal, "There once was in man a true happiness...which he in vain tries to fill from his surroundings...But these are all inadequate, because the infinite abyss can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object, that is to say, only God Himself."
As the venerable Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in Thee." We need God to increase and ourselves to decrease. In Hebrews, we are exhorted to “[look] unto Jesus … who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2). So, if Jesus is the greatest example of how to live life properly, and He delighted in the fellowship that He had with God, then so must we! Again, the Psalmist writes that, amazing though it may seem, “the Lord takes pleasure in His people” (Psalm 149:4). Piper’s message throughout the book is that “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.” My prayer in the early years after my conversion was that God would bring Himself glory through me. When I delight in my Christian faith and walk, then God will be glorified, and this brings me great joy. Scripture tells us that “The joy of the Lord is” – and in my experience must be – “your strength” (Neh. 8:10). Life is too difficult to rely on your own strength and too short to have no joy. Finding our strength, joy, hope, and life in God is the answer to both of these problems. The Bible and the Church have the answers if only we have the Spirit to illuminate our hearts and minds.
Joseph Crampton got his college degree in 2014 but apparently didn't get enough of college. He plans to enroll in the Masters program at Regent University to study Public Policy and Administration. In his free time he reads the news, literature, and theology books.
