The Danger of Pleasure

October 27, 2006

Lar,

Here are some thoughts for you.

“Surprising to us perhaps, Jesus’ demand for vigilance is directed more often at the pleasures of life than the pain. Some people are driven away from God by their pain, but more are lured away by their pleasures. Pleasures seldom awaken people to their need for God; pain often does. So Jesus is more concerned to warn us about the dangers of prosperity than the dangers of poverty.”

These words are from John Piper’s new book, What Jesus Demands from the World. I read them the other night and thought they would speak to almost all of us (or maybe all). For the most part, I think we as American Christians are ignorant of this reality–that the comforts of this life can be deadly to our souls. Well, actually that is not perfectly accurate, because the comforts themselves must not be blamed. It is how we tend to trust in those comforts that kills us. Something within is the real problem.

If all we do is take away the comforts (and maybe we should think about a few), we fail to deal with the real problem–the inner problem. In fact, I think it could be said that many times we tend to deal with these external things in order to not have to deal with the inner realities that make us trust in those things. We can burn all our comfy furniture if we so desire, but that won’t kill our self-sufficiency. In fact, it might make us worse by fueling some sort of religious self-sufficiency within.

Instead, the hard road (in one sense) is living a diligent, faithful, death-to-self Christian life within the comfortable confines of America. It’s hard work to have the pleasures and be so riveted with Jesus Christ that those pleasures are as rubbish. Like I said, it doesn’t mean we go build big mansions. But it also doesn’t mean that we go build huts and live in someone’s backyard either. It just means we need to fight the fight of faith by fighting against the sinful tendency within out souls to trust in anything but God. And that is hard work, no matter where we are.

Pray for me Lar, I need grace to be vigilant and diligent for the sake of my soul and the glory of my God.

Seeking the comfort that can only be found in Jesus,

Joe

Posted by Joe | Filed Under Quotes, Random Musings 

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