Question 32.
So Piper pushed the pendulum back to the other side, away from dead unemotionalism, what’s wrong with bringing some emotional balance back to the churches?
Answer 32.
When this question comes up, and it comes up a lot, the Christian Hedonist most often explains to me that the only way to correct the dull, boring, dead, joyless church services of today are by energizing them with a new peppy philosophy of ministry and life. "Sure," they tell me, "Dr. Piper has taken liberties with certain Bible texts and invented a few new shocking phrases, but it is for the purpose of correcting the joyless attitude in churches today. In this case, an infusion of joy-seeking and pleasure-craving that will drive the church forward." They then tell me, "You see, it’s like a clock pendulum, it has swung all the way to the side of being anti-emotional and all Piper has done with hedonism is to swing it back to the other side."
Let us proceed with that analogy for a bit. If we were to go into a clock maker’s workshop and tell him:
"Hello. My grandfather clock runs quite rapidly and so it keeps poor time. Can you correct this for me?"
The clock maker congenially answers back:
"Well, yes, I can add a bunch of extra weight to the pendulum and that will really slow the thing down, heh, you won’t see it strike but 4 hours in any given day."
That’s not what we want at all! That’s not what anyone wants. We don’t want to add so much weight that the pendulum is unbalanced in the other direction. What we want is perfect balance. Precisely accurate time keeping. We only want to add what was missing, not force the pendulum to swing wildly back the other direction.
Hedonism is so extreme (pursue pleasure with all your strength) that it swings the pendulum of doctrine so hard the other way in such an unbalanced fashion that it fairly well smashes through the clock’s cherry cabinet and ruins the entire thing.
Theology is not a clock mechanism. Theology is not tuned by use of exaggerations and hyperbole. Exaggeration and hyperbole when made about Scripture are really just inaccuracies and falsehoods, unsound doctrine. One cannot correct the behavior or doctrine of the church universal by overemphasizing the need for some other quality because eventually it too will need correcting. And once bad doctrine becomes believed and entrenched, it is notoriously difficult to unseat, even with the best of teaching.
Accurate Bible exposition is required. Always. It is required by book writers, by pastors, by Sunday School teachers. If joy seems to be lacking in a congregation it cannot be "restored" or "balanced out" by inventing hedonism and imposing that philosophy as if it were just another run-of-the-mill doctrine. Christian Hedonism is an imprecise, inaccurate caricature of the doctrine of "rejoicing in the Lord." As such it can do nothing to bring real joy to the congregation and will ultimately lead to other imbalances and problems.
If joy seems to be sincerely lacking (and how would someone even know with any degree of certainty?) it becomes necessary to embark on a truthful and painstakingly accurate study of the concept of joy and emotions in the Word. What emotions are described in the Bible? How are emotions to be used? Why did God give us emotions? After such a careful and in depth study, and only then, should the congregation be more properly instructed. And when this occurs, the effects of legitimate study will be manifested because the Word, when correctly studied, accomplishes its mission and changes the believer from the inside out. The Word has power to change men for righteousness; hyperbole and exaggeration have the power to confuse and eventually destroy.
Has the pendulum swung too far in one direction? It cannot be corrected by overcompensating. It can only be repaired by precision balancing, adding back only that weight that was missing. So it is with doctrine and behavior. Poor behavior can only be rightly corrected with sound doctrine accurately taught from the very Word of God. Once precision has been restored the pendulum will not swing wildly to any one side or the other.
