Friday, May 26, 2017

Christian Hedonism, Part 2

"He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil--this is the gift of God." Ecclesiastes 3:11-13

As I went through my divorce, I was keenly aware of the counsel of Christians, as it was distilled through various means. I paid special attention to preaching, teaching, advice and music. I noticed something that I had not seen well before. I was utterly disillusioned with a common refrain from Christians today. It goes something like this: 

"All you need is Jesus. He will supply all the love anyone could ever want." The implicit idea as it resounded with me was that I can be whole and complete with Jesus alone and nothing else for all eternity. The entire universe is utterly superfluous. The more I heard it, the more it sounded to me like a lie. And the reason it seemed like a lie is because it took something away from Jesus.

Think of Genesis. There was Adam, whole as an individual, and God proclaims, "It is not good that man should be alone!" But he wasn't alone. He was there with God. He was among all of creation. He was keenly aware of God's glory in all things. It was Adam and God, and notice that it was God who made the astonishing claim that it was not enough for Adam. He was created for more than God. According to God, Adam was made for the glory of God, but God determined that His glory in creation is made manifest by His various creative acts. His image bearers magnify His glory when they enjoy the good within creation and not God only. Creation is not to be an idol, but neither is it incidental to our worship or purpose. 

God is the source and author, but He is not everything. And the story He tells is glorious, musical, beautiful, pleasurable. And it is all of these things precisely because He has made it that way.

Perhaps what people mean by "God is enough" is that He alone can supply salvation to fallen creatures, and that He alone is the source of all good and the author of the sovereign good plan for the universe. In sum, perhaps they only mean that they can abandon all for God's singular plan for them. If this is all that is meant by "God is enough," then surely there can be no issue. Such people would be the first to suggest that God is calling to us to abandon all for Him in order to save us to an entire universe of particulars rightly ordered by Him. They see the narrow gate as a wormhole through which we are transported into a dazzling, incomprehensible symphony of spiritual and physical pleasures that are not God, but are sourced in His creative design. 

On this side of eternity, what if I turn to Him alone in my desolation only to find that He supplies Himself and companions with whom I may enjoy abundant life? What am I to make of it when the theologians and the artists say that all I need is God, but God Himself says that I am made for more than God? They say I am made for God alone and for His glory alone. Yes, but when I turn to God in the singularity of this commitment, He insists on radiating His singular light through the prism of creation, and insists that the colors are for the expansion of His glory and for my enjoyment. 

What if heaven is that appointment with God that leads to an appointment with C.S. Lewis and Luther and Augustine and friends and flowers and hills and music and simple pleasures without end? 

Is pleasure a good in itself? It is clearly not a good by itself or for itself, but is it one of God's good creations that is not God?

To say that God may have created some Christians for misery, and these Christians must carry their crosses and accept their burdens, is perhaps more in line with Stoicism than with Christianity. The Stoic ideal was that one must accept one's place in the higher rational order of nature. If your life is one of pain, then you must detach from your need for pleasure and embrace the larger pattern of the glory of nature. To Christianize this sentiment, perhaps we can say it this way: "You are suffering now, Christian, but it is all in God's plan. You can be content trusting Him and His plan. It will all work together for the good." Without some understanding of the "good" to which this sentiment aims, the Christian is left to wonder if God is merely mechanically securing His plan. If His good really is all about Him and His glory and not about me at all, then surely I am left with an unholy marriage of Christianity and Stoicism, in which my individuality is crushed under the weight of the "system."

This is not to affirm some health and wealth gospel, where God exists to give you Your Best Life Now. John the Baptist and the persecuted saints, Old and New Testaments, knew that this world is a deeply broken place, where we can expect a fair share of misery, and they sought refuge in God, who for them was all sufficient. But when they turn to Him as refuge in this damned and fallen world, are we to assume that He leaves them in their suffering as an end in itself, only adding to their suffering the assurance that their misery will be used in the greater plan, and as such He does not assure for them any personal pleasure, but instead merely adds Himself to their suffering? Do we believe that John the Baptist heard the Spirit constantly assure Him, "It's not about you, John! Suck it up and deal with it. This is your life!" Does God aim to help the suffering by merely joining them in their suffering? If that is true, then a heaven filled with peace and pleasure is as good as a heaven filled with misery and pain so long as God's presence is there. Surely heaven is the final conquest of suffering, and the hope persecuted saints cling to desperately.

The Westminster confession claims that the chief end of man is to "Glorify God and enjoy Him forever." It is noteworthy that enjoyment is included in this pair. It brings glory to God when His creatures live as they were created to live. They were created to worship Him and enjoy Him. But enjoying Him includes enjoying Him for the creator He is, which necessarily includes enjoying the kaleidoscope of colors produced by the prism of creation. In the end, monomaniacy is not obsession with God only, but obsession with God's singular purpose and plan, which includes as an end the great wedding feast of The Lamb.

Let your hope and joy be full in the knowledge of the truth; in heaven, every simple moment of pleasure will be worshipful, and every moment of worship will be pleasurable.