Is Christian Hedonism a new idea?

Far and wide people are seeing these truths in the Bible. They are discovering that there is nothing new about Christian Hedonism at all, but that it is simple, old-fashioned, historic, biblical, radical Christian living. It is as old as the psalmists who said to God, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Ps. 51:12) and “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love” (Ps. 90:14).

It’s as old as Jesus, who gave to his people this virtually impossible command for the day of their persecution: “Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Luke 6:23).

It’s as old as the early church who “joyfully accepted the plundering of [their] property,” because they “had a better possession and an abiding one” (Heb. 10:34).

It’s as old as Augustine who described conversion as the triumph of sovereign joy:

How sweet all at once it was for me to be rid of those fruitless joys which I had once feared to lose…! You drove them from me, you who are the true, the sovereign joy. You drove them from me and took their place, you who are sweeter than all pleasure, though not to flesh and blood, you who outshine all light, yet are hidden deeper than any secret in our hearts, you who surpass all honor, though not in the eyes of men who see all honor in themselves…. O Lord my God, my Light, my Wealth, and my Salvation.

It’s as old as John Calvin, the great Reformer of Geneva, who said in his 1559 Institutes of the Christian Religion that aspiring after happiness in union with God is “the chief activity of the soul.”

If human happiness, whose perfection it is to be united with God, were hidden from man, he would in fact be bereft of the principal use of his understanding. Thus, also the chief activity of the soul is to aspire thither. Hence the more anyone endeavors to approach to God, the more he proves himself endowed with reason.

It’s as old as the Puritans, like Thomas Watson, who wrote in 1692 that God counts himself more glorified when we find more happiness in his salvation:

Would it not be an encouragement to a subject, to hear his prince say to him, You will honor and please me very much, if you will go to yonder mine of gold, and dig as much gold for yourself as you can carry away? So, for God to say, Go to the ordinances, get as much grace as you can, dig out as much salvation as you can; and the more happiness you have, the more I shall count myself glorified.

It’s as old as Jonathan Edwards, who argued with all his intellectual might in 1729 that “Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites.” Rather, they ought

to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures…. Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can’t be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value…. [Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement…. There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.

It’s as old as Princeton theologian Charles Hodge who argued in the nineteenth century that the true knowledge of Christ includes (and does not just lead to) delight in Christ. This knowledge “is not the apprehension of what he is, simply by the intellect, but also…involves not as its consequence merely, but as one of its elements, the corresponding feeling of adoration, delight, desire and complacency [= contentment].”

It is as old as the Reformed New Testament scholar Geerhardus Vos, who in the early twentieth century conceded that there is in the writings of the apostle Paul “a spiritualized type of hedonism.”

Of course, it is not intended to deny to Paul that transfigured spiritualized type of “hedonism “ if one prefers so to call it, as distinct from the specific attitude towards life that went in the later Greek philosophy by that technical name. Nothing, not even a most refined Christian experience and cultivation of religion are possible without that…. Augustine speaks of this in his Confessions in these words:

“For there exists a delight that is not given to the wicked, but to those honoring Thee, O God, without desiring recompense, the joy of whom Thou art Thyself! And this is the blessed life, to rejoice towards Thee, about Thee, for Thy sake.” Conf. X, 32.

It’s as old as the great C. S. Lewis, who died the same day as John F. Kennedy and had a huge influence on the way I experience nature worshipfully.

Pleasures are shafts of glory as it strikes our sensibility…. But aren’t there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them “bad pleasures” I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean “pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.” It is the stealing of the apples that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory…. I have tried since…to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I meant something different…Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says, “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!” One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun…. If this is Hedonism, it is also a somewhat arduous discipline. But it is worth some labour.

Lewis was so influential in my understanding of joy and desire and duty and worship that I will add another quotation from him as a tribute to the greatness of his wisdom. I hope my enthusiasm for Lewis will set you to reading him, if you haven’t. He, of course, had his flaws, but few people in the twentieth century had eyes to see what he saw. For example, few saw, as he did, the proper place of duty and delight:

Provided the thing is in itself right, the more one likes it and the less one has to “try to be good,” the better. A perfect man would never act from sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people), like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times; but of course it’s idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits, etc.) can do the journey on their own!

The point of citing all these witnesses is that lots of people, with good reason, are being persuaded that Christian Hedonism is simple, old-fashioned, historic, biblical, radical Christian living, not some new spiritual technique. They are discovering that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. Which means they are finding that their desires, not just their decisions, really matter. The glory of God is at stake. And many, with tears, want to know: What do I do when I don’t desire God? God willing, I would like to help.

When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy.