Joe: The meaning of life is to be as happy as you can be.
So says a paraphrased John Piper.
But the key part of that is as you can be.
Don’t settle for something that doesn’t make you fully happy.
“The great problem with human beings is that we are far too easily pleased. We don’t seek pleasure with nearly the resolve and passion that we should. And so we settle for mud pies of [drink and sex and ambition] instead of infinite delight…Based on ‘the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak.’”
-John Piper, The Dangerous Duty of Delight.
The book is all about what joy/delight/emotion is in terms of Christianity.
It’s funny, because I just wrote an essay talking about how motive is the most important thing, and a motive for pleasure is wrong, and that only a pure motive makes a good action.
John Piper totally disagrees.
“[People] say things like, ‘Don’t pursue joy; pursue obedience.’ But Christian Hedonism responds, ‘That’s like saying, ‘Don’t eat apples; eat fruit.” Because joy is an act of obedience. We are commanded to rejoice in God. If obedience is doing what God commands, then joy is not merely the spin-off of obedience, it is obedience…The Bible does not teach that we should treat delight as a mere by-product of duty”
-John Piper, The Dangerous Duty of Delight
I got me some thinking to do.
