How John Piper Became a ‘Christian Hedonist’

Ask Pastor John

Desiring God

John Piper, Unknown, 163859, Pastor, Ask, Theology, Desiring God, Religion & Spirituality/christianity, Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Questions

4.8 • 3.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2018

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How does our passion for happiness fit with God’s passion for glory? Pastor John lived with this tension for years, until he found Christian Hedonism.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we talk about the various stages of progress in John Papers becoming a Christian
0:07.7	hedonist and the excellent question comes in the form of an email. Hello Pastor John,
0:12.1	my name is Atlanta. Can you retell the story of your own journey into Christian hedonism?
0:18.0	I recall you mentioning CS Lewis being a major influence on you through one of his books.
0:23.4	But what has been the defining moments for you in this pursuit of the all-satisfying
0:27.8	joy in Jesus? I've got ten steps in the story and I'll try to say them quickly.
0:34.7	Number one, my father was the happiest man I've ever known. I grew up in that home. No doubt
0:44.0	it had an impact. Number two, my father and my mother constantly cited 1 Corinthians 1031
0:52.2	whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. So I knew I've
0:57.7	got happy parents and they're telling me constantly to pursue the glory of God. Number three,
1:05.3	no one made the connection for me between my joy and God's glory in any biblical or theological
1:13.2	way that I can remember. They just kind of dangled. Number four, unresolved tension all through
1:21.0	college, between I want to be happy and I could no more desire the want to be happy than I could
1:30.7	stop myself from getting hungry. I think God put the desire for happiness in the human soul
1:37.6	as a good thing rooted in our very human nature. So there it was, I couldn't do anything about it.
1:44.8	And I had in the Bible and in my parents' memory, God demands that he be glorified and those two
1:53.5	things were in constant unresolved tension. Maybe I'm just weird, but they were. How does my
2:01.2	passion be happy and God's passion be glorified fit together? Number five, the fall of 1968,
2:10.2	first year in seminary, a 22 years old fall of 1968, a process of discovery was opened that
2:18.7	lasted several years in which C.S. Lewis, Daniel Fuller and Jonathan Edwards conspired to make
2:25.8	me a Christian hedonist. Number six, it was the first step of that process. Actually the first step
2:34.4	was seeing the pointer to this in Daniel Fuller's syllabus on the, on hermeneutics, but here's
	...

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