God, Pleasure, and You
If you do a quick search on what the Bible has to say about pleasure an interesting thing happens...you may already suspect what I’m about to say...most of what comes up are verses and passages that seem to condemn pleasure. Prohibitions. Restrictions. Watch out for pleasure! It’s dangerous! That’s the general feeling one gets. That Puritanical stereotype personified in the Church Lady (played by Dana Carvey) from SNL where she looks down on all of her guests with her self-righteous abstinence. Warning you away from the old corruptors of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. This is predictable. It’s pretty well-worn territory. You can hear it in every era of church history...Christians worried that the moral fabric of society had frayed beyond what any of our faithful ancestors could have imagined and that everything is going to fall apart any moment.
While it is certainly true that we are in a phase of secularization in our country and the west and much of the bedrock Christian principles in our country are taken for granted or ignored or increasingly derided, it is also true that this is nothing new in history. I am currently reading David McCullough’s (a Pittsburgh native!) excellent biography of John Adams, and I was amused to read Adams lamenting in his letters to his wife Abigail about the same thing: religion had gone out of fashion and the moral fabric of the infant country was already questionable as evidenced by the heavy partisan spirit in politics. Sound familiar? That was in the 1780s! The United States had existed for scarcely a decade! Adams’ reference point was the good old days of literal Puritanism in the colonies in the previous generations. Adams makes it sound like the late 18th century was wild, fast, and loose…and he has a point considering the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror happened at that time. But the fact of the matter is that it was no better or worse than now. The same is true of our era’s common reference point of “the good old days” of postwar America in the 50s when everyone went to church and was full of patriotic sentiments. The plain truth is that every generation ever since Genesis 3 has been full of nothing but sinners. Sometimes they veer a little more moralistic and legalistic, sometimes more rebellious and licentious, and most often a mix of the two, but regardless all sinful. All in need of the good news of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.
So instead of falling into the typical trope of the Church Lady I wanted to actually consider the place of pleasure in life. Is there such a thing as a theology of pleasure? We are after all in a series about play on our blog. Where does pleasure fit in with faith? Does it at all? As with any blog post this will not be exhaustive. It’s not a book. But hopefully it will be a helpful introduction, and we will find that pleasure has a lot to do with creativity.
To begin with, we probably need to define what we mean by pleasure because a common mistake would probably be to get stuck in the sex category. After all there are a lot of verses in the Bible that warn against sexual immorality and orgies and the like. And we live in a culture when almost everything in existence is basically boiled down to sex or sexual preference in some way. It seems the only basis for anyone’s identity. Thankfully, there is much more to each of us than our sexuality as we will see when we consider the place of pleasure in our faith. Sex is certainly part of the picture when it comes to a theology of pleasure. God is the one who invented sex and the pleasure that comes with it so there’s got to be a place for it. The Song of Songs has a lot to say about the pleasure of sexual intimacy, and praise God for that! But it is not the whole picture. When we talk about “pleasure” we are referring to the sense of joy really. That which pleases you or brings you joy. Dictionary.com adds pleasure is “enjoyment or satisfaction derived from what is to one's liking; gratification; delight.”
This very idea is repeated throughout the Bible as God’s point of view about us, you and me. “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing” (Zephaniah 3:17). “He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me” (Psalm 18:19). “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married” (Isaiah 62:4). For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation (Psalm 149:4). “[L]et us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:1-2). There are many more. It is obvious that God finds pleasure in us, he delights in us, and he delights in saving us. We see it also implied in creation when he calls everything “good” and us “very good” (Genesis 1). What he has made pleases him.
It is clear that pleasure does not equate sin otherwise it would not be said of God himself. God is not a stoic, and he did not create us to be either. Pleasure is not inherently bad...far from it. Now, this does not mean that we don’t often take pleasure in things that are in fact bad for us. We certainly do. Some of the atrocious stories coming out of Ukraine right now prove that as sinners we often take pleasure in the pain of others. We get some kind of twisted satisfaction in watching others suffer even to the point of their destruction. And lest you think this is limited to Russians and war in general consider the tabloids in the supermarket checkout. They are built upon our thirst for seeing others fall. Yes, there are often stories about celebrity romance and such, but the vast majority of them are about the horrible break ups, scandalous discoveries of infidelity, and tragic accounts of our idols crashing and burning. it is true that the one thing we like more than idolizing the rich and famous is seeing them fall apart, destroyed.
This happens on the playground too. Kids making fun of other kids, ridiculing, bullying, breaking others down to take the spotlight off of themselves, etc. As we said in our intro post, the playground can be rough. We haven’t moved on from it in the world of adults. This gives context to many of the passages in Scripture that give warnings about pleasure. It is less about pleasure itself and more about what you are taking pleasure in. As the law always does, it highlights and reflects back to us our broken love. We so often love things that are destructive. Thankfully, this accusing work of the law drives us to Jesus and his cross where new life is born. His grace moves us from the domain of destruction into the realm of creativity (Colossians 1:12-14).
When you hear the gospel, the good news of God’s forgiveness for you in Jesus, it brings something totally new to life out of the ashes of your sin – the forgiven you, the redeemed you, the free you (Galatians 5:1). As Paul says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” And again, “Sin will have no dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace” (Romans 6:4 and 14). You now belong to a different aeon. You are united with Christ. It is the moving from life lived under the law, which as Paul says very clearly was given because of sin (Galatians 3:19)...to show sin to be truly sinful (Romans 7:7-13)...to life in the Spirit (Romans 8). And part of this new life is new desire, the redemption of all that is you. The question ceases to be what should I do (law) and becomes what do I want to do (Spirit). What gives you life? Or another way of asking it: what are you passionate about?
Because we are addicted to justifying ourselves (aka: life under the law) we resist and fear this idea of freedom. We think people (read we) will go nuts and run headlong into licentiousness...like the crazy 80s...the 1780s! (thank you, John Adams😊) All that reaction reveals is a very anemic view of the power of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I’ve got great news: God is more powerful than you. He actually does transform us, but it is not some gradual improvement process, rather it is as dramatic as being raised from the dead. Life in the Spirit means total dependence on God’s grace in Jesus Christ. That’s what growth is: growing in your awareness of your complete need for Christ. The Spirit continually brings us back to Jesus and his cross in new areas of our lives. Our sin always wants us to move on from Jesus, to see him as a means to an end (our own greatness) as opposed to the end…the goal…the point (He is the Alpha and the Omega). And the worst part is we often veil it in holiness language. “The cross is a great place to start, but we need to move on to the serious work of sanctification” or “growing in holiness,” etc. But all this usually plays out to be is a return to life under the law...where it is all about what I do for God...all about my effort…and not about all that he has done for me. The difference again is nothing short of the difference between life and death. The Spirit moves us deeper and deeper into Christ. You need not be afraid of freedom. God is more invested in your freedom than you are. The Spirit has you and will not let you go (Romans 8:26-30).
So how would you answer that question then? What do you want? What brings you life? What are you passionate about? You can be sure the Lord is in that place. For me the list is growing, but at the top is still music and the good news. I want to share the good news of God’s grace in Jesus using music. For Kate it’s painting and drawing, among other things. He has set you free to be free (Gal 5:1). You will find that as you begin exploring the freedom he has given you, as you hear that freeing word that you are forgiven, you are loved, you are safe...there are no limits to the creativity that comes as a result. It may not be a specific art form, but that does not mean it is any less creative or important. It may be coaching your kid’s soccer team, it may be volunteer fire fighting, it may be fishing, or clothes design, or rescuing animals, or discussing movies. It is as varied as his body, the worldwide body of believers (1 Corinthians 12).
Whatever it is, if it brings life to you then there is someone else out there that it will give life to as well. He created you and has recreated you to be a blessing to this world. He has given you gifts that are uniquely yours to go and create beauty, which can’t help but bring him glory. Beauty is not always what is good looking, beauty is what is true. It is the fruit of the Spirit in our lives. And it begins with that liberating word of forgiveness from Jesus…and a question: What do you want? What delights you? What pleases you? I promise you the Lord will use it to show himself to you and to others. He will use your freedom to bring beauty into this world, to create new life. And I promise, he delights in the free you.
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