Where your pleasure is, there is your treasure; Where your treasure is, there is your heart; Where your heart is, there is your happiness.
The only way you can get pleasure, sexual or any other kind, is to get it as a by-product of pursing something else – like the true good of another person. So: Do you want true and lasting pleasure? Then you have to stop chasing pleasure. Start pursuing love.
Copied from How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski copyright 2004, p.104. Used by permission of NavPress (Think Books) – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
What irony that sinners consider the greatest problem they face in this world to be the problem of pain. The ultimate insult against God is that man thinks he has a problem of pain. Man, who deserves to be plunged into hell at this moment, and is indescribably fortunate that he is breathing normally, complains about unhappiness. Instead of falling on his knees in the profoundest possible gratitude that God holds back His wrath and infinite fury, the sinner shakes his fist in heaven’s face and complains against what he calls “pain.” When he receives his due, he will look back on his present condition as paradisiacal. What he now calls misery, he will then consider exquisite pleasure. The most severe torment anyone has ever known in this life will seem like heaven in comparison with one moment of the full fury of the divine Being.
The Problem of Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 15.
In this light, we see the problem of pleasure. Manifestly, as sinners against an infinitely glorious God, we deserve an immediate and infinite, condign, irremediable punishment from His holy, powerful hands. Nothing that we have ever received, that anyone has ever received, in all this world, has even approximated an adequate punishment for the crimes we commit in any one moment. How, therefore, do we continue to live? Why are we not plunged into eternal torment now, immediately?
The Problem of Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 15.
Troubled by the non-problem of pain, most people do not feel the real problem. The real difficulty is the problem of pleasure. While in a sinful world, pain is to be expected, and pleasure is not to be expected. We should be constantly amazed at the presence of pleasure in a world such as ours.
The Problem of Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 3.
Can it be, that the chief object of existence is to sing, and play, and dress and dance? Do not these things, when we reflect upon them, look more like the pursuits of butterflies and grasshoppers, and canary birds – than of rational creatures? Is it not melancholy to see beings with never-dying souls, sinking to the amusements of children; and employing time as if it were given them for nothing but mirth; and using the world as if it were created by God only to be a sort of playground for its inhabitants?
The Great End of Life, 1825.
The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.
Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures; all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.
The Screwtape Letters
Pleasure from sex or a satisfying meal or a well-acted play is, of course, not sinful. God built within us the capacity to enjoy these things. The problem comes when the pleasure derived from these activities becomes our dominating goal. This is hedonism – and it is rampant among Christians.
2 Peter and Jude, Zondervan, www.zondervan.com 1996, p. 135.
One measure of humane, sustainable, biblical wisdom is not to take oneself so seriously that one becomes grimly self-focused but, instead, so to trust God that one retains a lifelong personal capacity for childlike fun, youthful play, hilarious frivolity, uncontrollable laughter to the point of tears and goofing off with a clear conscience. I believe this.
[We should] choose the leisure activities that bring us closest to God, to people, to beauty, and to all that ennobles.
God’s Plans for You, Crossway, 2001, p. 84.
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We do not make a god out of pleasure; we make a god out of whatever we take pleasure in most. Pleasure is not the object of worship; pleasure is the worship.
The Blazing Center – The Soul Satisfying Supremacy of God in All Things, Q&A, 2005, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
So how can you tell when a pleasure crosses the line from innocent to guilty? 1. The pleasure is plain wrong. 2. The pleasure captivates and captures you. 3. The pleasure is hidden. 4. The pleasure steals you away from the good. 5. The pleasure doesn’t deliver.
The lesser innocent pleasures come because the greatest pleasure, God Himself, is in His rightful place. Innocent pleasures don’t pretend to save you or protect you. They don’t promise you meaning and identity in life. They don’t take life’s fragility, pain, frustration, disappointment, and uncertainty and wash them away. They are not the giver of every good and perfect gift; they are just the gifts you enjoy. They are innocent because they don’t pretend to be anything more.
Breaking the Addictive Cycle, New Growth Press, 2010, p. 8, Used by Permission.
Human nature is indeed in the grip of an overwhelming army of occupation. Its natural aim, it can truthfully be said, is pleasure; and when we consider the amount of time, energy, money, interest and enthusiasm that men and women give to the satisfaction of this aim we can appreciate the accuracy of James’ diagnosis; and Christians can use it as a reliable yard stick by which to measure the sincerity of their religion. Is God or pleasure the dominant concern of their life?
The fall of man has created a perpetual crisis. It will last until sin has been put down and Christ reigns over a redeemed and restored world. Until that time the earth remains a disaster area and its inhabitants live in a state of extraordinary emergency. To me it has always been difficult to understand those evangelical Christians who insist upon living in the crisis as if no crisis existed. They say they serve the Lord, but they divide their days so as to leave plenty of time to play and loaf and enjoy the pleasures of the world as well. They are at ease while the world burns.
