I am a Christian hedonist

Welcome to everyone, believer or unbeliever, friend or...um...not friend, to this, my blog. I've had other blogs elsewhere in the past, abandoned for various reasons, but I have felt compelled in the course of my spiritual walk to return to the net.

I am a man who has been through a lot in the last year, at least in my heart. I grew up in church, in a Christian family, but only in the last year have I really come to an understanding of what that means, or what it means to make God ultimate in my life. I want to use this blog as a tool of accountability for myself: accountability in my Scriptural seeking, in my attitudes towards the things of life as I walk down the road each day, and accountability in my attitudes towards others whether they find themselves believers or not. I want to leave behind pride and selfishness and replace them with humility, service to others, and love.

By the same token, I know that there are a great number of people out there who will look at what I write here and find much disagreement with it, even outright offensiveness. If that is the case, I encourage all of you to comment, to discuss and disagree and I promise you all that I will engage you with the utmost of respect and intellectual honesty. However, I will say this also: those who come here to abuse and disrupt will not find me tolerant of such behavior.

I am not Ned Flanders. I drink, I dance, I curse when the moment calls for it. I enjoy my life, and I'm incredibly thankful to God for what He's blessed me with: a place to live, providence for the things I need in my life, a career that is growing and that I find enjoyable, and family and friends that love me and help me in my times of need. But one thing Ned and I have in common is a driving love for God and a desire to grow deeper in Him. That's why I am joyfully borrowing John Piper's descriptor "Christian hedonist" for myself. I am as big a fan of pleasure in life as any other man--but I've had enough experience with all the short-term pleasure givers to know that they don't last, and in the long run all they bring is pain and frustration. The only lasting pleasure comes from the true Author of joy.

One of my heroes, C.S. Lewis, put it thusly in his book The Weight of Glory:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that the Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

In this spirit I will inform all comers that you will not find fire and brimstone preaching here. No one can be scared into heaven, for heaven is not established for those who fear hell, but those whose deepest joy in life, whose ultimate thing, is God, and who find themselves fully in love with Him. A man who was not in love with God could scarcely stand to enter heaven; he is too concerned with himself.

In closing I will again address those who find this offensive, and I know both believers and non-believers will look at this and see nothing but sources of anger for them. I encourage you all, in a spirit of love and brotherhood, to talk it out with me and with each other. My belief in the unyielding truth of the Gospel is not going anywhere, but I will never use that as an excuse to mistreat anyone. I'm looking forward to seeing how this part of my walk goes, and I hope you will all walk with me in time.