Pleasure: The Greatest Idol of Our Time
From The Forum Magazine, Fall 2014 - view the full issue here
The First Commandment requires us to worship God and nothing else. Jesus warns against trying to love and serve both God and money (Matt. 6:24). Paul challenges the idolatry of the Athenians (Acts 17:16-23) and condemns worshiping and serving creatures rather than the Creator (Rom. 1: 23-25). These admonitions are necessary for people of all times and cultures—certainly ours.
Our culture worships many idols— wealth, power, freedom, science, technology, pop culture, sports, sex. Most of us want our idols to make us feel good. So perhaps our greatest idol is pleasure or enjoyment, whether it makes us mellow or gives us a rush. Consuming as much as we can of whatever makes us feel good becomes our “only comfort in life and death.” A technical term for this way of life is hedonism.
We Christians have been freed from idolatry and hedonism to love and serve the Lord by the saving and sanctifying work of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. But we are still tempted to love ourselves and the things of this world more than we should—sometimes even more than God. We have not outgrown Scripture’s warnings against idolatry or its calls to seek first God’s kingdom. We ought to cultivate a lifestyle that finds pleasure in what is good and pleasing to God. We should help our children to live this way, and we should reach out to those who are trapped in hedonistic idolatry with the Gospel of true happiness through Jesus Christ.
Pleasure and the Idols of Our Time
Postmodern people are not so different than the Roman and Athenians idolaters about whom Paul wrote. In Greco-Roman religion, Zeus, also called Jupiter, was the greatest god who ruled the gods and goddesses of wealth, fertility, pleasure, war, love, imperial power, luck, nature, and the like. Modern secular culture worships these powers too, but without the mythology that symbolizes them. Like polytheists, we idolize many things—affluence, power, science, technology, social status, food, drink, sex, drugs, pop culture, sports, recreation, and leisure. But above all we worship Pleasure—good feelings, enjoyment—as the high god over the other gods. Cultures of other times and places value religion, community, tradition, power, wealth, knowledge, or reputation most highly. But in postmodern society we focus primarily on our feelings. More than anything, we want to be happy, feel good, enjoy pleasure, and be excited about life with as little pain, sadness, frustration, and boredom as possible. We do not value things primarily because they are healthy, good, true, beautiful, or right but because we like them. Common expressions suggest that feelings determine what we think: “I’m comfortable with that proposal.” Advertisers and politicians manipulate our emotions. Parenting is a non-stop (and often unhappy) effort to keep kids happy and feeling good, especially about themselves. We work for the weekend and labor for leisure. “TGIF”!
“Have it your way!” “Supersize me!” Fast-food ads invoke the spirit of the age. The economy flounders without over-consumption, advertising manipulates our desires, and community values encourage a self-indulgent lifestyle. From made-to-order coffee and hamburgers to customized apps and playlists, to online dating services and church growth strategies—everything is tailored to our tastes. The whole culture reinforces the illusion that we are entitled to life just the way we want it. And if this world does not please us, computers or drugs can access better ones.
Hedonism is not limited to the usual suspects—food, drink, sex, drugs, and consumer goods. Every aspect of life is a source of pleasure. We also want religion, morality, politics, relationships, work, and recreation to make us feel good, especially about ourselves. Hedonism is not specific to one social class. Elite connoisseurs of fine art, sophisticated conversation, and gourmet cuisine can be just as self-gratifying as tailgaters who gorge on beer and barbeque at football games and auto races. Many who are not able to live the hedonist’s dream envy it. Many who advocate for social justice confuse it with the greatest pleasure for the greatest number. The obesity epidemic is not merely physical but symbolic of gluttony in every area of life. Our hearts, minds, and souls are as bloated and diseased as our bodies from overindulging on all kinds of pleasures.
According to the U.S. Declaration of Independence, the pursuit of happiness is the God-ordained purpose of life. If God does not exist, then evolution has wired us for happiness. If happiness is feeling good, as hedonism claims, then feeling good is the purpose of life—the standard by which all other obligations and values should be judged. Thus hedonism is a world and life view shared by theists and atheists alike. Consider the implications for religion and morality.
The purpose of religion is to promote the healthy, happy, successful lives that God wants for each of us. Worship must always be upbeat and exciting. The presence of the Spirit is measured by emotional intensity. The staging and music must cater to our tastes and get our juices flowing. The service might be trite or disorderly, but it better not be boring. Evangelism advertises the benefits of salvation without mentioning sin and repentance. We want the happiness that religion promises without taking up our cross. The spiritual disciplines take too much time and effort, so we dabble at them like we diet and exercise. If our children give us too much hassle about church or catechism, we wave a white flag. “Pick your battles.” Reformed Christians are not alone. People of all faith traditions face these challenges. Culture is transforming religion, not the reverse.
Pleasure and enjoyment determine morality as well. Hedonism affirms that all people have the right to seek happiness and enjoy life as they see fit, as long as they do not harm others. Concern for our own happiness need not be selfish but should make us want others to feel good too. Empathy (feeling others’ feelings) makes us feel good when others feel good. Also, if we help others feel good, then they are more likely to do the same for us. The Golden Rule is to grant others the same freedom and opportunity for happiness as we want for ourselves. This principle gives inclusivism and political correctness the status of moral absolutes in our society.
Changing attitudes about sex are a clear example. Everyone has sexual desires whether or not they are married and want children. The pleasure principle implies that all adults should be free to seek sexual satisfaction as they see fit as long as they don’t harm others. Thus we should permit all genuinely consensual sex—male-female or same-sex, free or purchased, casual or in relationship, married or not. But we should oppose sex with non-adults, involuntary prostitution, and cheating on commitments. This perspective does not abandon morality but affirms hedonism instead of Judeo-Christian morality. (Christians who favor more progressive sexual ethics on the basis of “Christ-like compassion” or “unconditional love” should ponder the worldview supporting it.)
Space does not allow us to consider how hedonism pervades education, popular culture, the economy, politics, recreation, and the other dimensions of postmodern culture.
Idolatry in Scripture
According to Scripture, idolatry is an inevitable result of rejecting God. We were created in God’s image in a relationship of love and obedience, which means that relating to God is as necessary as breathing air. When our first parents tried to break away from God, they opened a “God-shaped void” (C. S. Lewis) that we have been trying to fill ever since. We attach ourselves to God-substitutes, like lungs suck in water or poison gas instead of air. Paul saw and confronted the idolatry of the Athenians, who even worshiped an Unknown God (Acts 17:16-23). He understood what happens when humans turn away from God: We worship creatures rather than the Creator—humans, animals, birds, and reptiles (Rom. 1:25), food (Phil. 3:19), money, self, and pleasure (2 Tim. 3:2-4). The idolatry of hedonism is not a recent development.
Idolatry steals from God, undermines human well-being, and distorts whatever is idolized. In the case of hedonism, it makes true and lasting pleasure, enjoyment, and happiness impossible by cutting us off from their real source, by expecting more from them than they can give, and by twisting everything else in life to produce them. Let’s consider these consequences
Idolatry robs God by failing to give him what we owe. He created us in his image, which means that we ought to love, honor, trust, and obey him. When we substitute a creature for the Creator, we love, honor, trust, and obey that creature. We rob God of what he deserves.
We also give an idol what it does not deserve, and expect from it what it cannot deliver. Isaiah 44:6-20 ridicules the folly and futility of idolatry. Humans make gods from what is obviously not divine—a tree in this text. Half the tree is used for construction and fuel, and the other half is made into a god. How silly, the Prophet asserts. Even worse, humans act as though the idols made us even though we make them. But idols do nothing because they are nothing, so the whole project is a colossal failure of self-deception. We waste time and talent serving things that cannot give us life or blessing. As a result, we must work even harder to make up the deficit caused by their failure to deliver. Idolatry is not a sustainable lifestyle, much less the key to flourishing. Hedonism is no exception.
Biblical Wisdom and the Experience of Pleasure
Pleasure is a wonderful aspect of God’s creation and our relationship with him (Ps. 16:11). He created us able to enjoy the goodness and beauty of his presence and of everything he made, as long as it works as designed. Food and drink, love and sex, family and community, nature and culture, productive labor, creative leisure, Sabbath rest—all are God-ordained sources of good pleasure as we love and serve him and each other. In addition, God created us so that our senses and feelings as well as our minds and spirits can help us discern what is right and good. We can taste whether food is good or bad, feel that we are well or sick, sense whether a relationship is wholesome or not, and intuit right from wrong. We even have a sensus divinitatus, a sense of God. But if we make good feelings our basic guide and ultimate goal of life, we will suffer instead.
Human experience agrees with the wisdom of Scripture. Pleasure cannot give us the lasting happiness and satisfaction that we crave. Food, sex, music, sports, money, fame, love, and success might make us feel good for a while. But our desires return, and we must satisfy them again and again. Pleasures that were once exciting and gratifying become boring or distasteful. Our capacities for pleasure wane with sickness and age. We wonder what playboy Hugh Hefner can still enjoy in his eighties. Even if life is pleasurable, can one enjoy death? Everlasting life and joy are gifts of God that cannot be provided by anything in creation.
The feelings and desires of fallen humans are often unreliable and deceptive. We can feel well in spite of undiagnosed cancer or an impending heart attack. Health-destroying amounts of salt, sugar, and fat make our food taste delicious. We can crave substances that make us feel wonderful while they kill us. One person can feel certain about another’s feelings (“s/he loves me”) but be completely mistaken. Morally wrong acts can feel so right and good. Human experience confirms the truth of Scripture that sin affects our whole being, including our feelings, desires, and even our compassion. Good feelings cannot be a reliable guide to life.
Good feelings also cannot be the purpose of life. God created the world so that happiness, enjoyment, and pleasure result when we love and obey him, love one another, and relate to nature as he intended. They are not the goal of life but outcomes of pursuing the goal. When we make them the bottom line, we work against God’s design, which makes it so much harder to achieve them. Consider some examples. Eating for pleasure rather than health undermines health, which reduces pleasure. Being good to others in order to feel good about ourselves diminishes our moral character and gives us less reason to feel good about ourselves. Serving God so that he will make us happy is loving ourselves more than him, which undermines the joy of a real relationship with him. By bending all of life toward pleasure, hedonism imperils human welfare by undermining the divinely-designed benefits of marriage, family, education, the economy, justice, morality, and religion. Hedonism is not a sustainable lifestyle. It consumes more than it produces, lives off the work and wealth of other people and previous generations, and it fails to maintain a sound natural, social, economic, moral, and spiritual environment for future generations.
Pleasure in the Christian Life
God has freed us from the power of idolatry by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. But we still wrestle with our sinful nature and its unruly desire for pleasure. The temptation to serve idols or serve idols along with God remains a challenge for us, as it was for the people of God in Scripture. Even if we do not idolize worldly pleasures, we often desire them in ways that do not fit God’s good will for creation and redemption. We want pleasurable experiences far too much, spend too much time and money pursuing them, and allow them to absorb too much of our mental and spiritual energy. We pursue them in wrong ways and expect too much happiness from them. They squeeze out more important things. Our lifestyle suffers from internal tension, spiritual laziness, immature discipleship, poor stewardship, and failure to seek first God’s kingdom.
In a pleasure-obsessed society, Christians ought to live counter-culturally. We ought to cultivate lifestyles which truly enjoy the good things that God gives us in ways and proportions that he intends. We can even take pleasure in avoiding the hedonistic excesses which tempt us. Empowered by God’s Word and Spirit, we can learn to enjoy choices that are motivated by love, justice, and stewardship, as well as our own satisfaction.
Asceticism—suppression of enjoyment—is not the answer. We are created for enjoyment. The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that our ultimate purpose is “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” The Heidelberg Catechism points to Jesus Christ as the source of our true comfort and happiness in life and death. Real pleasure and happiness are aspects of the shalom that benefits all creatures in God’s kingdom and reflects his good pleasure and glory. We can radiate this joy in our own lives, our families, churches, and in the public square. Then our children and hedonistic neighbors can see that real happiness does not come from idolizing pleasure but practicing the wisdom of Psalm 37:4: “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart."
(John Cooper, Professor of Philosophical Theology, emeritus)
