Question 15.
What is the most frequent criticism you receive regarding your articles on Christian Hedonism?
Answer 15. About half the comments I receive are positive or neutral, and about half are critical. By far, the most common complaint is, “Sure, you quoted Piper alright, but he does not mean in that quote what you say he means.”
Many of those issuing complaints also have made comments which make me realize that sometimes we read, or assimilate, only what we want to believe and put out of mind those things which we wish had not been said in print. For example, one associate pastor with whom I talked a year ago, who supported Christian Hedonism, denied that Piper even wrote some of the actual sentences he actually did write in Desiring God. During the conversation the associate pastor refused me the opportunity to open the book and quote aloud the debated passages. On another occasion a young man, now a seminary student, was having a conversation with my wife and I and also denied that Dr. Piper wrote some of the material in the book Desiring God. When my wife picked up our copy to read some of the paragraphs which the young man staunchly affirmed were not actually printed there, he left the room quickly so as not to hear the quotations, loudly stating over and over, “I disagree, I disagree, I disagree…”
Such situations continue to occur. Some have written stating that Dr. Piper never said that “pursuing pleasure in God is our highest calling” (page 21, The Dangerous Duty of Delight), or that the “aim of life is to maximize our joy” (page 19, Dangerous Duty), or that worship is a feast of emotionalism because the goal of worship is to experientially feel joy and have pleasurable sensations in God (“Christian Hedonism does not put us above God when it makes the joy of worship its goal.” “I came to see that it is unbiblical and arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in him.” — Desiring God, bold emphasis added).
It is one thing to disagree with how to interpret what someone else writes (a topic for a later FAQ) but is another thing to deny that what is written does indeed exist. To me, this is an odd type of apologetic. Dr. Piper clearly writes that Christian Hedonism is about the pursuit of one’s own pleasure with all one’s strength as one’s highest calling and chief end which is a prerequisite for salvation, yet, some who desire to adopt the general philosophy of hedonism find it uncomfortable to acknowledge some of its plainly stated tenets.
It is possible that some feel that these more extreme statements of hedonism push the philosophy just slightly beyond the outside edges of orthodoxy and simply desire that they had not been penned, or, they desire them to be inaccurate representations of the philosophy. One Christian author wrote to me and explained that he felt the above statements, along with others I have quoted, while accurately quoted, were only hyperbole and purposeful exaggerations by Dr. Piper and that Dr. Piper did not mean them to be taken as summary statements of the philosophy. In his mind, this allowed Christian Hedonism as written in Desiring God to remain an acceptable philosophy and a set of doctrines in total without having to lend credence to the “hedonistic” aspects of Christian Hedonism.
In short, such folks prefer to think of Christian Hedonism as merely a reminder that God sometimes calls us to express joy rather than understanding Christian Hedonism to be hedonism, an actual call to elevate very highly the attainment of pleasure for one’s own benefit and to make pursuing pleasure “our highest calling”. Such an approach to “reading” Christian books and adopting new philosophies and doctrines is dangerously lacking in discernment.
“pursuing pleasure in God is our highest calling” (page 21, The Dangerous Duty of Delight)
“aim of life is to maximize our joy” (page 19, Dangerous Duty)
“Christian Hedonism does not put us above God when it makes the joy of worship its goal.” …
“I came to see that it is unbiblical and arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in him.” — Desiring God, bold emphasis added).
I feel that the above quotes from Desiring God and Dangerous Duty, while certainly carrying shock value for their attention-getting appeal, are also meant by Dr. Piper as accurate representations of Christian Hedonism, though admittedly only in part.
One must remember that hedonism by any name is still hedonism. This philosophy values the emotional experiences of pleasure as one’s highest calling. Even if this philosophy were called by another more mainstream name, perhaps such as Emotional Devotion, the statements of excess (excess meaning endorsing the pursuit of pleasure beyond what is called for in the Scriptures) would still be biblically inappropriate and would require the same red flag of warning.
Criticism of my interpretations of Scripture would be one matter. But to level criticism that I take the words of Desiring God and Dangerous Duty to mean just exactly what they actually say is another matter entirely. Let us not close our eyes to what is written in the philosophy of Christian Hedonism and say “it isn’t really there”, rather, let us open the Word and ask, “is it really in there?”
