So there Maggie and I were on a hot day in Florida in June
on holiday when who should walk past us but Dr John Piper. He is one of my
modern day heroes of evangelicalism, the former pastor of Bethlehem Baptist
Church in Minneapolis, and I have enjoyed his books and also watched some of
his sermons. His book on marriage called
“This Momentary Marriage is an absolute classic that every married couple
should read. Why? Because it affirms marriage as the deeply biblical covenantal
relationship that it is and elevates marriage to its proper lofty heights as an
earthly depiction of the relationship between Christ and his bride, the church.
But Piper’s real contribution to evangelicalism is in the
term “Christian hedonism” – which was
coined in his classic book “Desiring God.”
In its most succinct form he summarises
it like this
"God is most glorified in us when we
are most satisfied in Him"
Our greatest pleasure
and our greatest treasure is to be found in Christ. He is the centre of the gospel
as well as its outcome and everything in our lives should be determined by the
gospel. God’s highest pursuit ("his glory") and man's deepest and most
durable happiness come together in one pursuit—namely, the pursuit of joy in
God. That’s it in a nutshell!!
Christian hedonism is diametrically opposed to the philosophy
of Immanuel Kant, who argued that an action is only moral if you have no desire
to perform it, nor gain any benefit from it. By contrast, Piper argues...
“But not only is disinterested morality (doing good "for
its own sake") impossible; it is undesirable. That is, it is unbiblical;
because it would mean that the better a man became the harder it would be for
him to act morally. The closer he came to true goodness the more naturally and
happily he would do what is good. A good man in Scripture is not the man who
dislikes doing good but toughs it out for the sake of duty. A good man loves
kindness (Micah 6:8) and delights in the law of the Lord (Psalm 1:2), and the
will of the Lord (Psalm 40:8). But how shall such a man do an act of kindness
disinterestedly? The better the man, the more joy in obedience”
Anyway, we couldn’t believe that this formidable Christian
scholar and preacher should be in our vicinity, so we did what any self
respecting admirers would do – we followed him (!) until we were sure it was really him and then
thanked him for his work and contribution to the kingdom. We were pleased that we
were able to do that personally this side of eternity.
He graciously allowed us to be photographed with him. As you
can see, Maggie and I were in real holiday mode!! But it made our day!!
Here’s another one of his quotes I read recently......
“One of the great uses of Twitter and
Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day
that prayerlessness was not from lack
of time.”
Think about it!!
