Delighting in the World Without Being an Idolator

An idol is any person, power, object, or spirit that you rely on instead of God for satisfaction, security, accomplishment, or honor. So how can we delight in the world around us – last night’s moonrise, friendships that last for decades, clear crisp days abounding in fall colors, and so many more – without their becoming idols: the source of our satisfaction, our joy?

In “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C.S. Lewis provides us with an image that helps answer that question:

I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

John Piper uses this image to understand the opening verses of Psalm 19, explaining how we can avoid making an idol of the beauty of the heavens:

We can say that when we ‘look along’ the heavens and not just ‘at’ the heavens, they succeed in their aim of ‘declaring the glory of God.’ That is, we see the glory of God, not just the glory of the heavens. We don’t just stand outside and analyze the natural world as a beam, but we let the beam fall on the eyes of our heart, so that we see the source of the beauty—the original Beauty, God himself.

This is the essential key to unlocking the proper use of the physical world of sensation for spiritual purposes. All of God’s creation becomes a beam to be ‘looked along’ or a sound to be ‘heard along’ or a fragrance to be ‘smelled along’ or a flavor to be ‘tasted along’ or a touch to be ‘felt along.” All our senses become partners with the eyes of the heart in perceiving the glory of God through the physical world.

Rather than an idol – with our adoration focused on the object – we look along the object and adore the source of its beauty.

C.S. Lewis elaborates on this idea at length in Letters to Malcolm. The author writes a letter to a friend who had influenced his view of the world around him. Anything in the world – including any pleasure in the world – is no idol if we look “along” it, up towards God Himself. This quotation helps us to do just that:

You first taught me the great principle, ‘Begin where you are.’ I had thought one had to start by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and’ all the blessings of this life’. You turned to the brook and once more splashed your burning face and hands in the little waterfall and said: ‘Why not begin with this?’

And it worked. Apparently you have never guessed how much. That cushiony moss, that coldness and sound and dancing light were no doubt very minor blessings compared with ‘the means of grace and the hope of glory’. But then they were manifest. So far as they were concerned, sight had replaced faith. They were not the hope of glory; they were an exposition of the glory itself.

Yet you were not – or so it seemed to me – telling me that ’Nature’, or ‘the beauties of Nature’, manifest the glory. No such abstraction as ‘Nature’ comes into it. I was learning the far more secret doctrine that pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility. As it impinges on our will or our understanding, we give it different names-goodness or truth or the like. But its flash upon our senses and mood is pleasure….

I have tried, since that moment, to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different. How shall I put it?

We can’t – or I can’t – hear the song of a bird simply as a sound. Its meaning or message (‘That’s a bird ‘) comes with it inevitably-just as one can’t see a familiar word in print as a merely visual pattern. The reading is as involuntary as the seeing. When the wind roars I don’t just hear the roar; I ‘hear the wind’. In the same way it is possible to ‘read’ as well as to ‘have’ a pleasure. Or not even ’as well as’. The distinction ought to become, and sometimes is, impossible; to receive it and to recognise its divine source are a single experience. This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany [that is, ‘manifestation of God’] is itself to adore.

Gratitude exclaims, very properly: ‘How good of God to give me this.’ Adoration says: ‘What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations [‘flashes of brilliance’] are like this!  One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.

If I could always be what I aim at being, no pleasure would be too ordinary or too usual for such reception; from the first taste of the air when I look out of the window–one’s whole cheek becomes a sort of palate – down to one’s soft slippers at bedtime….

One must learn to walk before one can run. So here. We-or at least I-shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have ’tasted and seen’. Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight‘ in the woods of our experience.

So I encourage you: Notice today something particular in the world around you – something pleasurable, beautiful, encouraging. By all means, thank God for it. But then look along the beam, up the beam, back to its source. And so adore the source. In doing so, you not only guard yourself against idolatry. You also fulfill the purpose of your creation.

[The Piper quote is from p. 185-186 of When I Don’t Desire God: How to Fight for Joy (Crossway, 2004). In addition to the link provided, the first C.S. Lewis excerpt is published on p. 212-215 of God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Eerdmans, 1970). The second, longer C.S. Lewis quote is from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963-64), chapter 17, p. 88-93. For a longer exposition of this idea, see the April 6, 2014 sermon “Enjoying What God Richly Provides”  text audio.]

Two Kingdoms: Our Rebellion Destroys True Pleasure

Consider once again the “Two Kingdoms” Gospel presentation:

Here is a truth I have come to know.  God created the world as His Kingdom, and all was very good. But Satan rebelled, desiring worship that only God deserved. He set up his own kingdom, at war with God’s kingdom of light. The first man and woman, deceived by Satan, chose to rebel also. Since then, all of us have joined that rebellion against our rightful king.

Satan’s kingdom is the kingdom of darkness. He deceives people, saying, “You don’t have to serve me, just serve yourself!” Yet as we serve ourselves, we end up destroying all that is good, even all true pleasure. That is Satan’s goal.

God’s kingdom of light has overcome the kingdom of darkness. For God sent Jesus to earth to live as man should live. Jesus then died on a cross, suffering to pay the penalty we deserve for our rebellion. But God raised Him from the dead, showing that Jesus has authority even over death and the kingdom of darkness. Jesus will reign forever and ever.

God commands all men to turn from their rebellion against Him. He invites all of us to leave the kingdom of darkness and to become citizens of the Kingdom of light. We must turn from our selfish ways and acknowledge that Jesus is our rightful King. We must let Him tell us what to do. By God’s mercy on account of the cross, we can receive His forgiveness and escape from the kingdom of darkness, gaining love, joy, and peace in the Kingdom of light forever.

We live in this little bubble called life for 70 to 80 years. When it pops, we join whichever king we served for all eternity. Which king are you serving?

In a series of blog posts, we are looking at different key points in this presentation. Today: The destruction of true pleasure as we rebel against God and serve ourselves.

We have seen that sin is not like breaking a speed limit. On a clear day with few cars on the road, we may be able to achieve the purposes of the traffic regulation – safe driving – while speeding. So, if we can avoid getting caught, there is no downside to safely driving above the limit. But breaking God’s Law is not like that. Whenever we sin, we are rebelling against the wise God, our rightful King. We are saying that we know better than He what is in our own best interest. We are acting as if He is not good, not all-knowing – we are acting as if He is limiting our pleasure and fulfillment.

Today, let’s look further at our motivation for sinning: While we think that rebelling against God will bring us pleasure – and Satan encourages us to think this way – in fact, our attempts to serve ourselves end up destroying all true pleasure. Thus, thinking ourselves wise – thinking that we’re smart enough to know better than God how to pursue our greatest joy – we become fools; we destroy all that is good, all that leads to joy.

Why is this the case? Two reasons.

First, because God’s commands are given for our good (Deuteronomy 6:24, 10:13). In following the wisdom of God we find life. As Proverbs 12:28 says, “In the path of righteousness is life, and in its pathway there is no death.”

Similarly, in Proverbs 8, Wisdom says

Take my instruction instead of silver, and knowledge rather than choice gold, for wisdom is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her. (Proverbs 8:10-11)

She concludes:

Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors.  For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD, but he who fails to find me injures himself; all who hate me love death.” (Proverbs 8:34-36)

Jesus echoes this claim:

All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.  The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:8-10)

To choose riches rather than Scriptural wisdom and obedience to God is to lose out. Whatever we desire apart from wisdom leads to less joy, not more. Indeed, true life is found only in following God. Rebellion leads to our hurting ourselves. And so we in effect love death – as we rebel, thinking we are pursuing pleasure, we are rushing headlong into the destruction of pleasure.

Jesus is even more explicit. All others claiming to know the way to God or the path to joy steal and kill and destroy pleasure. They are deceivers – thieves and robbers. But Jesus offers us true life, abundant life, real pleasure. Indeed, later He will say that eternal life is knowing God the Father and Him (John 17:2).

This brings us to the second reason our rebellion leads to the destruction of pleasure. We are eternal beings, and our rebellion has eternal consequences. In choosing to rebel, we often calculate the expected pleasure from sinning against the possible costs. We’ve seen above that even in this life, we actually lose pleasure – the costs far outweigh the supposed benefits. But when we incorporate the eternal consequences of rebellion, the costs pile up higher and higher.

Again, Jesus Himself makes this clear:

An hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. (John 5:28-29)

We all will have a resurrection. The question is: A resurrection to what? To life, or to horrible judgment? A life lived in rebellion against God will inevitably lead to that horrible judgment – the end of any possible pleasure.

Furthermore, the Apostle Paul says that Jesus, when He comes again,

will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9 NIV).

Shut out from the only source of goodness, from the only source of joy. That’s where rebels end up. But those who are His, those who are saved by His grace, those who joyfully obey Him, can say with confidence,

You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)

So, consider:

  • How often do you give in to temptation, thinking this will bring you joy?
  • How often do you think of God as a spoilsport, hindering what will bring you fulfillment and pleasure?
  • How often do you think of God as a taskmaster, giving you a long list of tedious, frustrating rules to follow?

To act or think in these ways is to believe Satan’s lies, to rebel against God, to despise His wisdom and goodness – and ultimately to destroy your own pleasure.

So look to the source of all true life! Bow down before your King – and in that bowing, in that submission, in that worship, you will find fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.

Pleasure to the Glory of God

What is the great commandment, according to Jesus?

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).

When are we to love God in this way? During a Sunday morning worship service? Yes, but not only then. Surely Jesus means, “Love God with all your being every minute of every day.”

The Apostle Paul commands us, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

What is to be done to the glory of God? All that we do  – even mundane, daily, seemingly trivial activities like eating and drinking. All is to be done to the glory of God.

Love God with all your being every minute of every day. Do everything to His glory – from eating toast to studying math to working at the office.

With those imperatives in mind, consider these questions:

  • How do I love God with all my being while watching Kentucky play UConn, or while watching Downton Abbey?
  • How do I climb Crowders Mountain  to the glory of God?
  • How do I sit on my back porch, enjoying the cool evening to the glory of God?

The Apostle Paul tells Timothy, “God richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Timothy 6:17). Isn’t it then good, right, and proper for us to enjoy what God has given us?

The answer is “yes – but.” We’ll look at both the strong Scriptural support for enjoying God’s good gifts, and the accompanying Scriptural qualifications.

In this series, “Where Do You Find Identity, Security, and Joy: A Scriptural Understanding of Money, Giving, and Material Possessions,” we’ve seen that all we have, including every possession, every skill, every ability, even every minute of time, is a grant from God to be used for His glory. If this is so:

  • Should I buy a flatscreen TV?
  • Should I buy new car?
  • Should I buy tickets to Panthers game?
  • Should I watch the NCAA basketball men’s championship game tomorrow night?
  • Should I hike Crowders Mountain?
  • Should I sit on the porch and enjoy the evening?

As we’ve said time and again, you can’t possibly get the right answers unless you ask the right questions. I aim here to help you ask the right questions, and thus to be able to answer questions such as those above for yourself.

1) God Richly Provides Us With Everything

Let’s begin by considering more closely the Apostle’s phrase from 1 Timothy 6:17: “God richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” What does “richly provide” mean?

It means, in part, that He provides us with an abundance. In particular, He provides us with much, much more than we deserve – for we deserve death. He instead gives us:

  • Life itself
  • Air
  • Food
  • Sleep
  • Brains
  • Purpose
  • The ability to work
  • Whatever material possessions we have
  • Most of all, He gives us the Gospel, the invitation to be reconciled to Him forever, to find our true identity as His children, His heirs.

But “richly provide” means more than “to provide an abundance.” He provides this abundance to a good end.

Consider these passages:

  • Psalm 103:5 [God] satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s.
  • Matthew 7:11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
  • James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

To provide for us richly is to provide abundantly, for our good. Thus we can say with David:

My cup overflows. Surely goodness and lovingkindness will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever (Psalm 23:5b-6 NAS)

So that is what it means. But why does God do it? What does He intend to accomplish by providing for us richly?

Four answers:

First, He rejoices to do His children good. God rejoices in our joy in receiving His gift.

We see some of this in our own families. Those of you who are parents of older children, think back to Christmases with a four-year-old. Such Christmases are always delightful. The child has enough memory of the previous Christmas to be really excited about it, but these memories are vague and shadowy enough that everything is sparklingly fresh. Beth and I had great joy those six Christmases in sharing the joy of our four-year-olds.

Scripture speaks specifically of God’s great joy in doing good for His people. Of the many passages we could look at, let’s turn to Jeremiah 32. The book of Jeremiah as a whole emphasizes the coming destruction of Jerusalem because of the hard-hearted disobedience of the people. Yet God promises that He will bring the people back to the Land – and, even more than that, He promises in chapter 31 that He will establish a New Covenant in which He will write His Law on the hearts of His people. Chapter 32 echoes these New Covenant promises:

And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. 39 I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them. 40 I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me. 41 I will rejoice in doing them good, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul (Jeremiah 32:38-41, emphasis added).

God richly provides us with all things to enjoy because He rejoices in doing us good

Pause there. That may seem obvious. But let it sink in.

The God of the universe, the Creator of the vast expanse of the heavens, the Creator of the 7 billion people alive today, delights to do you good. He not only does you good. He rejoices to do so.

Before we look at other reasons God has for His rich provision, consider briefly one way God does us good: He restores our energy. He refreshes us. Again, as Psalm 23 tells us: “He leads me beside quiet waters. He restores my soul.”

This has implications for the questions we posed at the outset. For while God may restore our energy through the Scriptures, or through a wonderful time of prayer, He may also do that through some form of enjoyment or recreation: Reading a good book, watching a movie, going on a hike, going out to dinner.

A second reason that God provides for us richly is to spark gratitude and thankfulness. The Apostle writes Timothy:

Everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving (1 Timothy 4:4).

Everything God created can and should spark thanksgiving on our part. The same Apostle tells us elsewhere that we eat in honor of the Lord – that is, to the glory of the Lord – when we truly give thanks to Him for the food (Romans 14:6).

Jesus Himself lived this out. He consistently gave thanks to the Father. Nine verses in the New Testament refer to Jesus giving thanks for food.

So we have part of the answer to the question: How do we eat and drink to the glory of God? We acknowledge that everything morsel we eat is a good gift from Him, that we are completely dependent on Him for life and every provision, and so we give thanks.

A third reason that God provides for us richly is to spark adoration and praise. He gives to us so that we might praise Him.

Now, we must be careful here. Scripture does not say, “He gives to us so that we might adore Him instead of enjoying the gift.” Rather, the Bible emphasizes time and again that there is no conflict between our joy and our adoring Him. Indeed, the two are closely intertwined. As the psalmist says,

The peoples must praise you, O God,
all the peoples must praise you.
The nations must be glad and sing for joy. (Psalm 67:3-4a, own translation)

Psalm 35 is especially helpful here”

Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, “Great is the LORD, who delights in the welfare of his servant!” 28 Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long (Psalm 35:27-28).

When we recognize that God Himself delights in our welfare, we rejoice in what He has done, and we rejoice in Who He is – we tell of His praise all the day long.

So C.S. Lewis, reflecting on such biblical truths, writes:

I have tried . . . to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. . . .

Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says: “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations [that is, flashes of light] are like this!”  One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.” (Letters to Malcolm, p.89-90)  

Think of these first three reasons for God’s rich provision together: God rejoices to do us good, He richly provides to spur thanksgiving, and He provides so that we might praise and adore Him. A key dynamic in moving from His gifts to our right response is to see everything good in our lives as tokens of His love.

Here is my wedding ring. It has some value simply because it is made from gold. I could take it to one of these shops offering to buy gold, and they would give me some money in exchange for it.

But I’m not tempted to do that! Why not?

For me, the value of the ring is far, far greater than the value of the gold it’s made of. The ring is a token of Beth’s love for me, a picture of 34 years of her faithfulness to our marriage covenant, a reminder of who she is and how deeply she loves me.

Just so with all pleasures, with all God’s good gifts. Yes, each has some value in and of itself. Sitting on the porch on a spring evening is a joy! But the value of that pleasure is far, far greater when we see it as a token of God’s love, as a gift from Him symbolizing His lovingkindness, and all that entails.

The fourth reason God provides for us richly is a bit more challenging to see: Our joy itself can be adoration of Him.

To flesh this out, and to distinguish this fourth reason from the third, imagine sitting on my porch this evening. There’s a light breeze. The birds are chirping. We’re enjoying a beautiful sunset.

If we then subsequently think, “God is behind all this. This evening, these chairs, the breeze, the birds, the sunset are gifts from Him for us! What type of God grants such gifts to His children!” That’s an example of the third reason. The pleasure leads to adoration of Him.

The fourth reason is different. Lewis argues that ideally the adoration should be automatic: Not, “The sunset is startling beautiful,” and then, “I adore you God for creating such a joy.” Rather, he compares the right response to reading: I look at a printed page and observe the word “cat.” I am not at all conscious of a series of thoughts such as, “This pattern of dots is pronounced C A T,” and only then, “That stands for a furry, quasi-domesticated animal one of which I have owned for 17 years.” That’s not how it works. Instead, I see “cat” and immediately think of the animal – indeed, I immediately think of Madison jumping up into my lap.

Something similar should happen whenever we experience pleasure, suggests Lewis. Adoration of God is to become so natural to us that we adore Him as we experience any pleasure. Thus he writes:

This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany [that is, the tiny experience of God] is itself to adore. (Letters to Malcolm, p. 90)

I believe Lewis is right. While I can’t point to a verse of Scripture that says this explicitly, I encourage you: Read the Gospels with this idea in mind. In particular, look at Jesus. Consider the way He lived. Note His consistent adoration of God the Father. I think Lewis has captured a key element of Jesus’ life.

Indeed, this is a key part of what it means to do all to the glory of God, what it means to love God with all our being: To be so wired that we see God’s hand behind even the simplest joys, and so to adore Him in every experience.

So God richly provides us with all things to enjoy. He delights to do us good. We are to respond with thanksgiving, adoration, and praise.

2) The Pleasure Trap

But pleasure often does not prompt thanksgiving, adoration, and praise to God. Instead, pleasure can be a dangerous trap. The very gifts God provides to generate thanksgiving and adoration can turn our hearts away from Him, away from our greatest good.

Let’s consider four ways that pleasure can work to our detriment instead of to our good.

First, pleasure can be a distraction.

Pleasure, entertainment, amusement obviously can dominate our spending, and thus lead us not to save enough, not to give enough, not to provide enough for our families. That is a form of distraction.

But also, pleasure can distract us from the reality of the world around us. Astute cultural observers have commented on this danger from a secular viewpoint for decades. George Orwell in 1984 and Ray Bradbury in Fahrenheit 451 both imagine societies in which the government seduces large segments of the population with amusements so that they don’t recognize their slavery and rebel. In non-fiction, Neil Postman’s prophetic 1985 book Amusing Ourselves to Death highlights factors which have only grown stronger in the last two decades.

We see similar points in Scripture. For example, the Preacher in Ecclesiastes writes:

Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them. I kept my heart from no pleasure. . . . Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:10-11)

We do this, don’t we? We experience sorrow, and we try to distract ourselves from that painful reality. Through amusements or drink , we pretend the events didn’t really happen, and succeed in fooling ourselves for a  time.

The most important distraction is away from God Himself. There is an irony here, for as we have seen God intends all pleasures to point to Him. Yet one way we often avoid thinking about God, about eternity, about our obligations to Him, about our status before Him, is to distract ourselves with pleasures: a video game, a sporting event, a novel, a movie, a TV show.

Pleasures can be a distraction from reality.

Second, pleasure can lead to nothing else.

We’ve seen that our pleasures should be pointers to God, tokens of his love, leading to thanksgiving and adoration. But often they do not. We easily become so enamored with the pleasure, we miss what the pleasure should point to. We, in effect, delight in looking at our wedding rings – rejoicing in the gold, in the shape, in the sparkle – and forget all about our spouses.

This myopia, this forgetfulness, is characteristic of children. When receiving gifts, it is easy for kids to delight in the gift itself, forgetting even to give thanks to the giver. Children often need to be trained to be thankful. Just so, we need to leave such childish ways behind, recognizing the One behind every pleasure.

Third, pleasure can lead to dissatisfaction.

This trap comes about when, instead of rejoicing in the moment, thanking and adoring the God behind the gift, we long for more of the same, and worry that we won’t have it in the future. We considered this lack of contentment a few weeks ago, citing Ecclesiastes 5:10 among others:

Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income (NIV).

Finally, even seeing the God behind every pleasure can lead to the trap of spiritual pride.

I can sit on my porch, rejoicing in the day, thinking, “These fresh smells of spring, that light breeze on my cheek, lead me to praise God. Isn’t that wonderful!  I am so much more spiritually attuned than those around me!” Such pride is a close kin to that exhibited by the Pharisee in Jesus’ story about him and the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14).

3) Pleasure to the Glory of God: Asking the Right Questions

Here, then, are questions to ask yourself to help you to make the right use of the pleasures in your life, while avoiding the traps:

  • How can I cultivate from every pleasure thanksgiving to God and adoration of God? Do I recognize every pleasure as a gift I don’t deserve from the One who loves me more than I can imagine?
  • Have I used pleasure and entertainment as distractions from reality, even from God Himself? Can I instead plan enjoyable events that will ground me in reality, and serve other purposes God has for my life?

For example, if I tend to live in a Christian bubble, having little contact with non-Christians, can I spend some of my time devoted to recreation doing what I enjoy with non-Christians?

Or, if I am having a hard time finding time to be with my children, can I share some of my recreation or exercise time with them?

  • The budgeting question: How much time and money am I spending on pleasure and entertainment? Is that overall amount consistent with what the Bible teaches? Do I really believe Jesus’ statement, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35), and does my budget reflect that?Is the way I’m spending that budgeted amount the most effective at prompting thanksgiving and adoration, building up my relationships with family and friends, and restoring my energy so that I can effectively serve where God placed me

Beware of cultural pressures and expectations in this area, especially when planning big events like weddings and graduations. Entire industries exist to try to get you to spend lots of money when you are not considering the opportunity cost of those expenditures. In such situations, don’t worry about the expectations others may have. Decide what would be important and meaningful to you, what will help you to make lifelong memories, and spend money in those areas. Then save in other areas.

The point is not necessarily, “Spend less on entertainment.” Rather, spend your entertainment budget wisely.

Conclusion

Close your eyes. Think of some specific pleasure you experienced in the last couple of days. Acknowledge that that pleasure was completely undeserved. For Scripture tells us that God created us for His glory, yet we turned our backs on Him. Indeed, the first sin, the most fundamental sin, was thinking we know better than God how we can find joy, fulfillment, and pleasure. And wages of that sin – the just response to the sin we all have committed – is death, the absence of everything good. Yet God in His mercy gives us life, breath, and everything – including that recent, undeserved pleasure.

So thank Him for that pleasure. Adore the One who created and offered you that pleasure.

Then respond to His invitation. For He calls you:

  • “Come to Me, where you will find pleasures forevermore.
  • “Come to Me: And you will find right now, in this life, in relationship to me, more joy than you ever thought possible.
  • “Come to me via the sacrifice of my Son on the cross, and His death will pay the penalty for all your sins, so that you can be the object of my delight. And I will rejoice to do you good forevermore.”

That’s the God we have.

That’s the God we are to love with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength.

That’s the God we are to glorify in all that we do, even in eating and drinking.

So come to Him – and may every joy then lead to – and be –  adoration of Him.

 

Joy is the Serious Business of Heaven

[This Sunday we consider Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy 6:17 that God “richly provides us with everything to enjoy.” No one has influenced my understanding of this phrase more than C.S. Lewis. What follows are excerpts from chapter 17 of his Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (if this sounds familiar, I included about two-thirds of these excerpts in a post last fall honoring Lewis on the 50th anniversary of his death). Ponder these ideas – and then make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. – Coty]

It’s comical that you, of all people, should ask my views about prayer as worship or adoration. On this subject you yourself taught me nearly all I know. . . .

You first taught me the great principle, “Begin where you are.” I had thought one had to start by summoning up what we believe about the goodness and greatness of God, by thinking about creation and redemption and “all the blessings of this life.” You turned to the brook and once more splashed your burning face and hands in the little waterfall and said, “Why not begin with this?”

And it worked. Apparently you have never guessed how much. That cushiony moss, that coldness and sound and dancing light were no doubt very minor blessings compared with “the means of grace and the hope of glory.” But then they were manifest. So far as they were concerned, sight had replaced faith. They were not the hope of glory; they were an exposition of the glory itself.

Yet you were not – or so it seemed to me – telling me that “Nature,” or “the beauties of Nature,” manifest the glory. No such abstraction as “Nature” comes into it. I was learning the far more secret doctrine that pleasures are shafts of the glory as it strikes our sensibility. As it impinges on our will or our understanding, we give it different names-goodness or truth or the like. But its flash upon our senses and mood is pleasure.

But aren’t there bad, unlawful pleasures? Certainly there are. But in calling them “bad pleasures” I take it we are using a kind of shorthand. We mean “pleasures snatched by unlawful acts.”  It is the stealing of the apple that is bad, not the sweetness. The sweetness is still a beam from the glory. That does not palliate the stealing. It makes it worse. There is sacrilege in the theft. We have abused a holy thing.

I have tried, since that moment, to make every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don’t mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thanks, but I mean something different. How shall I put it?

We can’t – or I can’t – hear the song of a bird simply as a sound. Its meaning or message (“That’s a bird”) comes with it inevitably-just as one can’t see a familiar word in print as a merely visual pattern. The reading is as involuntary as the seeing. When the wind roars I don’t just hear the roar; I “hear the wind.” In the same way it is possible to “read” as well as to “have” a pleasure. Or not even “as well as.” The distinction ought to become, and sometimes is, impossible; to receive it and to recognise its divine source are a single experience. This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore. There need be no question of thanks or praise as a separate event, something done afterwards. To experience the tiny theophany is itself to adore.

Gratitude exclaims, very properly, “How good of God to give me this.” Adoration says: “What must be the quality of that Being whose far-off and momentary coruscations are like this!”  One’s mind runs back up the sunbeam to the sun.

If I could always be what I aim at being, no pleasure would be too ordinary or too usual for such reception; from the first taste of the air when I look out of the window–one’s whole cheek becomes a sort of palate – down to one’s soft slippers at bedtime.

I don’t always achieve it. One obstacle is inattention. Another is the wrong kind of attention. One could, if one practised, hear simply a roar and not the roaring-of-the-wind. In the same way, only far too easily, one can concentrate on the pleasure as an event in one’s own nervous system—subjectify it—and ignore the smell of Deity that hangs about it. A third obstacle is greed. Instead of saying, “This also is Thou,” one may say the fatal word Encore. There is also conceit: the dangerous reflection that not everyone can find God in a plain slice of bread and butter, or that others would condemn as simply “grey” the sky in which I am delightedly observing such delicacies of pearl and dove and silver. . . .

One must learn to walk before one can run. So here. We-or at least I-shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have “tasted and seen.” Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience. . . .

I do not think that the life of Heaven bears any analogy to play or dance in respect of frivolity. I do think that while we are in this “valley of tears,” cursed with labour, hemmed round with necessities, tripped up with frustrations, doomed to perpetual plannings, puzzlings, and anxieties, certain qualities that must belong to the celestial condition have no chance to get through, can project no image of themselves, except in activities which, for us here and now, are frivolous. . . . It is only in our “hours-off,” only in our moments of permitted festivity, that we find an analogy [to the joys of heaven]. Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for “down here” is not their natural place. Here, they are a moment’s rest from the life we were placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of ends.  Joy is the serious business of Heaven.

From Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1963-64), chapter 17, p. 88-93. Italics are in the original; boldface is my emphasis.