(Thus if one has no desire to be evil, one cannot be good if one has, one can.) Īgainst this Kantian morality (which has passed as Christian for too long!), we must herald unabashedly hedonistic biblical morality. A benefit destroys the moral value of an action.

Cynically, perhaps, but not without warrant, the novelist Ayn Rand captured the spirit of Kant’s ethic:Īn action is moral, said Kant, only if one has no desire to perform it, but performs it out of a sense of duty and derives no benefit from it of any sort, neither material nor spiritual. Any motivation to seek joy or reward corrupts the act. Acts are good if the doer is “disinterested.” We should do the good because it is good. Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who died in 1804, was the most powerful exponent of the notion that the moral value of an act decreases as we aim to derive any benefit from it.

“If you abandon the pursuit of your joy, you cannot love man or please God.”Ĭhristian Hedonism aims to replace a Kantian morality with a biblical one. The desire to be happy is a proper motive for every good deed, and if you abandon the pursuit of your own joy, you cannot love man or please God - that’s what makes Christian Hedonism controversial. Christian Hedonism says more namely, that we should pursue happiness, and pursue it with all our might. I mean that pursuing the highest good will always result in our greatest happiness in the end. What I Mean When I Use This Termīy Christian Hedonism, I do not mean that our happiness is the highest good. If we must sell all, we should do it, Jesus said, with “joy” because the field we aim to buy contains a hidden treasure (Matthew 13:44). with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:28–31). When he commanded them to leave all and follow him, he assured them that they would receive “a hundredfold now.When he warned them that discipleship means self-denial and crucifixion (Mark 8:34), he consoled them with the promise that “whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).When Jesus warned his disciples that they might get their heads chopped off (Luke 21:16), he comforted them with the promise that, nevertheless, not a hair on their heads would perish (Luke 21:18).My life is devoted to helping people make God their God by wakening in them the greatest pleasures in him. It says that we all make a god out of what we take most pleasure in.

Does Christian Hedonism make a god out of pleasure? No. Or: The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying him forever. My shortest summary of it is: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. But don’t miss the truth because you don’t like my tag.

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