That thought is reworded to say that the goodness of any moral action is lessened to the degree that pleasure is a motivator. He thought that if he did something good because it would make him happy, the goodness of the act would be lost. While in college, Piper had a philosophical notion that so many people are burdened with.

The longing to be happy is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful.

Maybe it is just the way they were raised! This is a cycle of gloom that could be detrimental to a curious unbeliever, so I say that it is paramount that these church families lock arms and have a revival of praise!Īs the book progresses, Piper will show that it is both unbiblical and dangerously arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in Him.Ĭhristian Hedonism is a philosophy of life built on the following five convictions:

They may not truly desire to be there, for whatever reason, or perhaps they feel that a somber stonewalled look is the most appropriate expression for worshiping God. I have never visited any church that didn’t have somebody there who looked grumpy. With that knowledge, rest assured that John Piper hasn’t changed anything by changing the wording to “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.” All he has done is clarified the semantics for a generation of believers who grew up watching their parents attend church out of the obligations to them as their children or to avoid disappointing the generation before them. Glorifying God and enjoying Him are one end, not two! They used singular terminology in this catechism. These scholars did not say that “the chief ends of man are to glorify God and then to enjoy Him forever” as if they were two separate things. An entire sermon (and more) can depend on the tense of a verb or the choice of one word over another, when both words mean almost the same thing. How can we say this so boldly? The scholars who assembled these foundations made it their life’s joy in the subtleties of language. Many people separate those two fundamental ends of God in their own understanding, when their separation was not the intention of the scholars who wrote the catechism. You can add your comments on either site and join what should be an exciting and edifying journey.Īccording to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever. Just find a copy of the book (available online or through any Christian bookstore) and follow along with us.

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