6 Things That Christian Hedonism Is and Is Not
God’s Reality
Many objections rise in people’s minds when they hear me talk about Christian Hedonism. Perhaps I can defuse some of the resistance in advance by making a few brief, clarifying comments.
First, Christian Hedonism, as I use the term, does not mean God becomes a means to help us get worldly pleasures. The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God himself. He is the end of our search, not the means to some further end. Our exceeding joy is he, the Lord—not the streets of gold or the reunion with relatives or any blessing of heaven. Christian Hedonism does not reduce God to a key that unlocks a treasure chest of gold and silver. Rather, it seeks to transform the heart so that
the Almighty will be your gold
and your precious silver. (Job 22:25)
Second, Christian Hedonism does not make a god out of pleasure. It says that one has already made a god out of whatever one finds most pleasure in. The goal of Christian Hedonism is to find most pleasure in the one and only God and thus avoid the sin of covetousness—that is, idolatry (Col. 3:5).
Desiring God
John Piper
John Piper’s influential work on Christian Hedonism, Desiring God, challenges the belief that following Christ requires the sacrifice of pleasure. Rather, he teaches that “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
Third, Christian Hedonism does not put us above God when we seek him out of self-interest. A patient is not greater than his physician.
Fourth, Christian Hedonism does not argue that an act is right because it brings pleasure. There is a kind of hedonism that says that.1 That’s not what I am saying. My aim is not to decide what is right by using joy as a moral criterion. My aim is to own up to the amazing and largely neglected fact that some dimension of joy is a moral duty in all true worship and all virtuous acts. I am not saying that loving God is good because it brings joy. I am saying that God commands us to find joy in loving him: “Delight yourself in the Lord” (Ps. 37:4). I am not saying that loving people is good because it brings joy. I am saying that God commands that we find joy in loving people: “[Let] the one who does acts of mercy [do so] with cheerfulness” (Rom. 12:8).2
I do not come to the Bible with a hedonistic theory that says we decide what is right by whether it gives pleasure. On the contrary, I find in the Bible a divine command to be a pleasure seeker—that is, to forsake the two-bit, low-yield, short-term, never-satisfying, persondestroying, God-belittling pleasures of the world and instead to sell everything with joy (Matt. 13:44) in order to have the kingdom of heaven and thus “enter into the joy of your master” (Matt. 25:21). In short, I am a Christian Hedonist not for any philosophical or theoretical reason but because God commands it. The label Christian Hedonism is mine. The reality is God’s!
The pleasure Christian Hedonism seeks is the pleasure that is in God himself.
Fifth, I do not say that the relationship between love and happiness is that “true happiness is the result of loving God and loving people.” That’s an oversimplification that misses the crucial and defining point. The distinguishing feature of Christian Hedonism is not that pleasure is the result of virtue but that virtue consists essentially, though not only, in pleasure. I know that will take some explaining and biblical support.
The reason I came to this conclusion is that I have to come to terms with biblical commands which don’t merely say that joy is the byproduct of virtue but that it is part of virtue. For example, the Bible commands us
- to “love mercy,” not just do it (Mic. 6:8 KJV),
- to do “acts of mercy, with cheerfulness” (Rom. 12:8),
- to “joyfully” suffer loss in the service of prisoners (Heb. 10:34),
- to be “a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9:7),
- to make our joy the joy of others (2 Cor. 2:3),
- to tend the flock of God “willingly” and “eagerly” (1 Pet. 5:2), and
- to keep watch over souls “with joy” (Heb. 13:17).
When you reflect on such amazing commands, the moral implications are stunning. Christian Hedonism attempts to take these divine commands with blood earnestness. The upshot is piercing and radically life changing: the pursuit of true virtue includes the pursuit of joy because joy is an essential component of true virtue. This is vastly different from saying, “Let’s all be good because it will make us happy,” as though God were indifferent to the state of your heart while your body went through the motion of good deeds.
Sixth, Christian Hedonism is not a distortion of historic Reformed catechisms of faith. This was one of the criticisms of Richard Mouw in his book The God Who Commands:
Piper might be able to alter the first answer in the Westminster Shorter Catechism—so that glorifying and enjoying God becomes glorifying by enjoying the deity—to suit his hedonistic purposes, but it is a little more difficult to alter the opening lines of the Heidelberg Catechism: That I, with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ.3
The remarkable thing about the beginning of the Heidelberg Catechism is not that I can’t change it for hedonistic purposes but that I don’t have to. It already places the entire catechism under the human longing for “comfort.” Question 1 asks, “What is your only comfort in life and death?” The pressing question for critics of Christian Hedonism is Why did the original framers of the four-hundred-year-old catechism structure all 129 questions so that they are an exposition of the question “What is my only comfort?”
Even more remarkable is to see the concern with “happiness” emerge explicitly in the second question of the catechism, which provides the outlines for the rest of the catechism. The second question is “How many things are necessary for thee to know, that thou in this comfort mayest live and die happily?” Thus, the entire catechism is an answer to the concern for how to live and die happily.
I am puzzled that anyone would think that Christian Hedonism needs to “alter the opening lines to the Heidelberg Catechism.” The fact is, the entire catechism is structured the way a Christian Hedonist would structure it. Therefore, Christian Hedonism does not distort the historic Reformed catechisms. Both the Westminster Catechism and the Heidelberg Catechism begin with a concern for man’s enjoyment of God or his quest to “live and die happily.” I have no desire to be doctrinally novel. I am glad that the Heidelberg Catechism was written four hundred years ago.
Notes:
- One of the most extended and serious critiques of Christian Hedonism to appear since Desiring God was first published is in Richard Mouw, The God Who Commands (University of Notre Dame Press, 1990).
- Additional texts revealing the God-given duty of joy in God include Deut. 28:47; 1 Chron. 16:31, 33; Neh. 8:10; Pss. 32:11; 33:1; 35:9; 40:8, 16; 42:1–2; 63:1, 11; 64:10; 95:1; 97:1, 12; 98:4; 104:34; 105:3; Isa. 41:16; Joel 2:23; Zech. 2:10; 10:7; Phil. 3:1; 4:4. Additional texts mentioning the divine command of joy in loving others include 2 Cor. 9:7 (cf. Acts 20:35); Heb. 10:34; 13:17; 1 Pet. 5:2.
- Mouw, God Who Commands, 36
This article is adapted from Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist by John Piper.
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