Preaching Pleasure

To the broken and the battered—which is all of us to some degree—hedonism[1] can seem like a reasonable approach to life: avoid pain at all costs and seek pleasure. To make things even more attractive, we’re hardwired for it: Achieving pleasure brings us chemical rewards. Extravagant meal? Dopamine hit. Sex? Dopamine hit. Drugs? You get my point.
As a formal school of thought, hedonism is usually attributed to Aristippus of Cyrene, a disciple of Socrates. We don’t have much of what he wrote, except for what other philosophers and historians have said about him. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Aristippus excused his excesses by saying, “If it were wrong to be extravagant, it would not be in vogue at the festivals of the gods.”[2]

He may be long dead, but Aristippus appears to still have modern-day disciples, even though few of them (apart from maybe some philosophy majors) would recognize his name. Even if they did know who he was, they’d likely be surprised by the way he attempted to temper his philosophy by issuing warnings to those who might be tempted to take things too far. When he saw his servant struggling to carry a large sum of money, for example (paper currency was still far in the future), he told him, “Pour away the greater part, and carry no more than you can manage.”[3]

His was a measured hedonism, if there is such a thing.

Here in the West, after several decades of modern-day Jacobins[4] mindlessly tearing down societal structures without asking why they were established in the first place, we are faced with a population that doesn’t have the same ethical foundations their ancestors enjoyed. Our generation doesn’t like to hear it, but most of our moral values in the West did not originate with the Enlightenment—they are founded in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Or to be more precise, in the Bible. Our key moral concepts—the sanctity of life, marriage, and honesty—can be found in other cultures, to be sure, but in the West we pulled most of them from the Bible.

As the twentieth century progressed, however, faith in Scripture was largely undermined, leaving us with an interesting problem: If we assume the Bible isn’t true, we are tempted to believe that the moral guidelines found in its pages are somewhat irrelevant. As Western Christianity fell into disrepair, we were left with an essentially rootless generation, one that is now required to sort out its own notions of morality.

What Made Nietzsche Panic

Famous skeptics such as the philosopher Nietzsche saw it coming. In his famous “Parable of the Madman”he describes his own angst at the idea that God had been removed from Western thought, portraying himself as a madman who runs into the town square with a lantern, screaming, “I seek God!”[5]
The crowd mocks him, not understanding his concern. He continues:

We have killed him—you and I.

All of us are his murderers.

But how did we do this?

How could we drink up the sea?

Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?

Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving?

Away from all suns?

Are we not plunging continually?

Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions?

Is there still any up or down?[6]

Nietzsche concludes that if there is no God, we have lost our foundations and will have to become gods ourselves to remain balanced and moral. In other words, the thought of a world without a moral God panicked one of history’s most notorious atheists. Not to confuse causation and correlation, but it is interesting to note that his life did not end well; he died while institutionalized for mental health problems.

But that, of course, was the opinion of an infidel. What did you expect? And when it comes to modern-day hedonists, who seem to think that life is entirely about maximizing pleasure while minimizing pain . . . well, they don’t really acknowledge the moral authority of God, so again: What did you expect? That’s what you get from atheists and hedonists!

When Hedonism and Christianity Meet

Not so fast. The pursuit of pleasure is not really limited to atheists. It has wormed its way into corners of Western Christianity, too. All you really have to do is turn on the TV on Sunday morning and watch some of the prosperity preachers at work. It’s a distinctly American version of Christianity—birthed by the likes of Norman Vincent Peale[7]—that often feels more like a pep talk by multilevel marketing scammers than biblical preaching. The “sermon” often promotes the power of positive thinking and promises listeners unimaginable prosperity.

In the late twentieth century one variant of this hedonistic Christianity came to be known as the Word of Faithmovement, or as its critics called it, the “Name It and Claim It”movement. Slick, plastic preachers with thousand-watt smiles assured audiences that God’s highest desire is for all of us to be wealthy, successful, powerful, and perhaps even good-looking. “God is fixing to bless you!” they promise . . . but only, of course, if you send in your “seed of faith” money.

Over the years I’ve seen it all: miracle prayer cloths, pendants microscopically inscribed with the text of the entire Bible, vials of anointing oil or water from the Jordan River. And of course, these are not just souvenir items; they are supposedly imbued with spiritual power—a sort of Protestant version of sacred relics. Or, to put it more bluntly, they are talismans, and talismans do not belong in Christianity.

Genuine contentment is found in one place only: in healing the painful rift between you and your Creator. And that healing comes only through the ultimate act of extravagance: Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary.

In a broken world in which many people struggle to make ends meet, the promise of easy street can be incredibly appealing. And for those who really hurt, it can be nearly irresistible. People living on the edge of desperation—the impossibly poor, the chronically ill, the deeply depressed—will often find themselves susceptible to the claims of these supposed miracle workers, sending dollars they can scarcely afford to ultimately help someone buy a mega mansion or private jet.

In the pursuit of ill-gotten gain, these hedonistic preachers are selling a lie: If God really loves you, you’ll be living a comfortable life. And of course, the skeptics laugh, assuming that these charlatans are inherent to Christian belief.

Honestly, it’s embarrassing. I’ve had non-Christian friends challenge me with it, assuming that all believers are alike. Like it or not, in the non-Christian world we’re all getting a black eye from these hucksters.

Micah Confronted the Takers of His Day

One morning, in my personal worship, I noticed that the prophet Micah opens with a salvo leveled against supposedly faithful people who live for acquiring money. They weren’t guilty of being successful or of doing well financially. As much as some people appear to wish these were sins, they are not; some of God’s best friends were very wealthy. (Abraham, Nicodemus, and Job come to mind). Micah was condemning people who just take.

Taking is quite different from honest exchange. If you run a successful business, you are exchanging something of value for money, and people voluntarily make the exchange. If the weights are honest (the Bible roundly condemns dishonest weights), and the exchange is uncoerced, there is no sin in a merchant making a profit. It crosses a moral line, however, when people plot to take from others through force or deception:

“Woe to those who devise iniquity, and work out evil on their beds! At morning light they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand. They covet fields and take them by violence, also houses, and seize them. So they oppress a man and his house, a man and his inheritance” (Micah 2:1, 2).

Snidely Whiplash comes to mind: the dastardly and utterly self-absorbed villain in the American cartoon series Dudley Do-Right. If he’s not familiar to you, he’s the mustache-twirling rogue who ties innocent women to railroad tracks and drives the poor out of their homes by seizing the property. Google him, and you’ll meet a stereotype: he appears to have been deliberately cast in the image of nineteenth-century American industrial tycoons.

But the story in Micah’s opening verses isn’t about Snidely. It specifically addresses those who mask their fortune-seeking behavior with the Word of God:

“If a man should walk in a false spirit and speak a lie, saying, ‘I will prophesy to you of wine and drink,’ even he would be the prattler of this people” (Micah 2:11).

He’s practically describing a preacher. It might not be a professional preacher—but it’s still somebody who covers avarice with sanctity, painting over hedonism with a thin veneer of misplaced scripture. It almost certainly applies to prosperity preachers.

The real problem with the prosperity gospel is that it contains a tiny shard of truth: Nations that followed biblical Christianity have generally tended toward prosperity—mostly because the Bible promotes such values as honesty and hard work. (Paul was quick to point out, after all, that he wasn’t a freeloader and worked hard for his own living.)[8] Protestantism has traditionally taughtthat your work ought to be an act of worship: your honest effort becomes a daily tribute to God’s goodness. I grew up among Dutch Calvinists who drilled this into me when I was a boy, and apart from unforeseen mishaps, it generally works: It leads to general prosperity. (Faithfulness in tithing works, too. God doesn’t promise an exorbitant life, but He does promise enough.)

That’s not what the prosperity preachers are promising; the honesty part of the equation appears to have been discarded.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t support ministries that ask for financial help. There’s nothing wrong with honest, godly organizations asking for monetary contributions, and there’s nothing wrong with helping them. In fact, I believe that we often have a duty to help those who are sincerely doing the work of the kingdom.

That’s not at all what Micah is complaining about. The people he describes are stubbornly clinging to sin because they like the affluent lifestyle generated by idolatry and dishonest gain.

What God Actually Promises

So if God doesn’t actually promise material wealth in this life—at least not to everyone[9]—what does He promise? Contentment. In fact, that’s the point of a Bible passage the prosperity preachers frequently cite—painfully ripped from its context—as evidence that God will make you incredibly successful and wealthy if you only demand it of Him: “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me!” (Phil. 4:13).

But read the context: Paul is not describing material success:

“Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things, I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (verse 11-13).

Paul is talking about contentment. Our faith in Christ enables us to endure our circumstances, both good and bad. Contentment is a far cry from excess; in fact, contentment seems to elude a lot of the people who live excessively.

Think about it: If you had to choose between rich or happy, which would you choose? You can’t have both; you have to pick just one. According to God, they are not the same thing at all. Think back to the times when you didn’t have much (for some, it’s as recent as today), when you found yourself wishing, “If only I had . . .” But when you got what you hoped for—a pay raise, a bigger house, whatever—it generated positive feelings only until you noticed something else you were lacking. And unfortunately, the ever-present advertising industry is deliberately engineered to produce constant dissatisfaction; it’s how they convince you to buy more.

Genuine contentment is found in one place only: in healing the painful rift between you and your Creator. And that healing comes only through the ultimate act of extravagance: Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary. Your salvation is the most expensive thing you’ve ever possessed. The gods of the pagans? They partied, and even toyed with the human race for amusement—extravagant hedonism. But the God of Abraham? He’s been extravagant . . . toward you.

The TV preachers are lying, just like the takers in Micah’s day. Me? I’ll take content in Christ over rich without Christ any day.

[1] From the Greek hedone, or “pleasure.” Hedonism is the philosophy of pleasure-seeking.

[2] Diogenes Laërtius, Diogenes. Delphi Complete Works of Diogenes Laërtius (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics, Book 47), p. 108. Kindle Edition.

[3] Ibid., p. 110.

[4] The Jacobins were a violent group of radicals who, during the worst excesses of the French Revolution, attacked the monarchy and—by some accounts—executed roughly 17,000 suspected anti-revolutionaries by guillotine.

[5] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science (Mineola: Dover Publications, 2006), p. 90.

[6] Ibid.

[7] As a friend of mine used to say: “Paul is appealing, but Peale is appalling.”

[8] See, for example, 1 Thessalonians 2:9; 2 Thessalonians 3:7-9; Acts 2:33-35.

[9] It was one of the rewards offered to Solomon for requesting wisdom, after all (1 Kings 3:4-13).