A podcast listener named Daniel writes in to ask this, Pastor John, how does Christian

hedonism avoid making joy into an idol?

Well, the short answer is, Christian hedonism doesn't make a god or an idol out of joy because

Christian hedonism says we make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. That's the short answer.

So find your greatest joy in God and thus be done with all idolatry. But his question is,

how do you avoid making that mistake? It's not as though the mistake can't be made. In fact,

that would be my first statement about how to avoid it is to say admit it can happen.

I admit it can happen not just because Daniel asked me how not to let it happen,

but because the Bible says it actually does happen in 2 Timothy 3, where Paul says in the last

days, men will be lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. Now when I read that, I say,

really, that's amazing. The fallen human heart is capable of suicidal illusions because,

I call it an illusion because if you make pleasure the object of your love, it's like making love

the object of your love. It's like making being pleased, the object of being pleased,

its self-contradictory, its self-defeating, my capacity, my faculty for delighting

was made to delight in something. Delighting wasn't made to delight in delighting. Delighting was

made to delight in something. If you delight in the delighting, you're like a hunter who aims to

shoot his bullet. He's not going to get any deer that way. He's going to go hungry,

which is why I said it's suicidal. It's an illusion. And yet, it's true. I mean, it's a good

question. It's not a stupid question because Paul says, men will be lovers of pleasure. Men will

be so stupid and so insane and so drawn in on themselves. They will commit the suicidal

hunting of trying to shoot the bullet in their gun. But here's another safeguard. I mean,

we could talk about this all day, but let me just give you a few. Christian hedonism says,

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