I asked permission to post this question from a good friend about faith in Christ.
“What if I want to want to glorify God? Does that count as wanting to glorify God? What if I want to be a Christian, not because I really want to glorify God, but because I want to be happy, like Christians are? Is that a wrong motivation for wanting to be a Christian?”
Forgive me if I seem to skirt your questions. I have learned that conversations between people are best served with a helping of context. This will provide clarity into my response. I first am going to talk about “happy”. What is happiness? To one person it may be swimming but to the other, that may be his most passionate fear. Happiness is not always what it seems to be. For a genuine follower of Christ happiness takes on a very different role. My whole life, it seems, I have loved to make music, even before I was redeemed. Music was a passion, a reason, a motivation, it was everything to me, it was the reason I did not drop out of high school and it was the reason I stayed up so late at night. I played music because it made me feel good about myself; it was the one place where my artistry could not be denied. When my life was redeemed music became something different. I still loved it but I loved it less when it was for myself, and I loved it more when it was done for the lord.
For the Christian happiness is this, Hedonism. Hedonism “is a doctrine from ancient Greece stating that the pursuit of pleasure is life’s greatest aim”. What ever makes you most happy is what is most important. But for a follower of Jesus “Christian Hedonism teaches that the desire to be happy is God-given and should not be denied or resisted but directed to God for satisfaction. Christian Hedonism does not say that whatever you enjoy is good. It says that God has shown you what is good and doing it ought to bring you joy (Micah 6:8). And since doing the will of God ought to bring you joy, the pursuit of joy is an essential part of all moral effort. If you abandon the pursuit of joy… you cannot fulfill the will of God.” (Piper)
If my desire to love my wife Laura was based solely on the need to feel better about my self, to be happy, then I have left our relationship, if you can call it a relationship, lacking, void of any real love for the other person. If your happiness is directed at anything else other than satisfaction, love, happiness in Christ then you have lost the point of being happy as a Christian.
In short a “want to want” is not really a want at all. The happiness of a Christian is completely intertwined in their satisfaction in Christ. You cannot be a follower of Christ, a Christian, and not be satisfied in him. If you can not find satisfaction in Christ then you can not be happy “like a Christian”.
Scripture to dwell on:
“Delight yourself in the Lord; and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). And he demonstrates the kernel of Christian Hedonism when he cries out, “As a deer pants for the water brooks, so my soul pants for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God” (Psalm 42:1–2). Moses was a Christian Hedonist (according to Hebrews 11:24–27) because he rejected the “fleeting pleasures” of sin, but “considered abuse suffered for the Christ greater wealth than all the treasures of Egypt, for he looked to the reward.” The saints in Hebrews 10:34 were Christian Hedonists because they chose to risk their lives to visit Christian prisoners and joyfully accepted the plundering of their own property since they knew that they themselves had a better possession and an abiding one. The apostle Paul commended Christian Hedonism when he said in Romans 12:8, “Let him who does acts of mercy do them with cheerfulness.” And Jesus Christ, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, set the greatest standard of Christian Hedonism because “his delight was in the fear of the Lord” (Isaiah 11:3), and for the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2).” (Piper)
So I guess since I dont find complete satisfaction in him, and dont think I will anytime soon, it’s a lost cause.
For a person so concerned about gaining happiness I would think that they would want the truth to compel them towards it. The truth is you cannot want this on your own, no one can. My prayer for you, and the prayer that needs to be held tightly to your heart, is that Christ Jesus, the rescuer of souls, the saver of the lost, the one who brings passion and desire to people who have none, will bring these things to your soul. Remember… to be a follower of Christ is not defined by the great and easy times, or the mountain top experiences, it is defined in the mundane, normal, difficult, ruthless times of life. Christ Jesus is your only shot at true happiness.
Complete satisfaction is a hard thing. This is the goal of a lover, a christian. But it is a goal tainted by the inadequacies of flawed men, sin. So our complete satisfaction turns into a fight. A fight towards complete satisfaction fueled by the Holy Spirit and made possible by Christ Jesus. With out them we can not come close to complete satisfaction.The truth is that in this life we will never achieve this. But it is our goal, it is our aim and it is our purpose as believers to fight toward it; and on that day when we are brought before the Lord in eternity “oh how complete it will be then.”
Don’t you mean Moses was a Jewish Hedonist? “Christian” is a fairly recent label.
Reader… I am not sure I understand your question. Why is Moses being a Christian Hedonist relevant to what I wrote, and why is a new title or label an important fact to bring up?
Because for the sake of historical context it doesn’t make sense to refer to someone with a phrase- invented by your friend or adopted by the masses- that sounds silly when applied. I suppose if your audience is just American Christians it doesn’t matter though, but to make sense to a greater reader set with an understanding of timelines/cultures outside of your own it would be wise to consider such things as “titles and labels” or the message can be easily lost.
Are you referring to Christian Hedonism as the phrase that needs context? It should be plane that I am addressing American Christians being that the category of this entry is “American Christianity”. Be that as it may your dilemma seems to be hung up on the fact that the term “Christian Hedonism” is not the original historical term used. I’m not even sure where to begin with this, because I am almost certain that you just don’t care. But for fun’s sake Ill say this… Context is everything. If you do not have context then you have failed miserably in understanding. We seem to agree on this. But to say that new titles betray context is a very broad statement to make, so broad in fact that you would be wrong on many accounts. With the changing of time, so changes the way people see and feel and understand the world. New ways of describing things come into play and for the sake of context new sayings are made. Christian Hedonism does not betray the context of the bible, in fact it drives a greater truth home. delighting in Christ is the only true source of satisfaction we can ever really have. I think Moses would agree.
Is this at all any where close?
Though it doesn’t affect the point of the blog, the term “Christian Hedonist” can be aptly applied to Moses because his righteousness was attributed to him due to his faith in God and God’s promises, which included the coming Messiah, Christ and salvation through Him.
If one finds it difficult to delight in Christ, he or she must question his or her salvation… work it out with fear & trembling.