Sam Storms - Pleasures Evermore: The Life-Changing Power of Enjoying God

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2000 by Sam Storms

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ISBN 1-57683-188-4

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Storms, Sam.

Pleasures evermore : the life-changing power of enjoying God / Sam Storms.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 1-57683-188-4 1.

1. Pleasure--Religious aspects--Christianity. 2. Christian life. I. Title.

BV4597.59.S76 2000

248.4--dc21

00-024972

Printed in the United States of America

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 08 07 06 05 04

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Lovingly dedicated to
Melanie and Joanna

(Psalm 127:3-5)

and

Ann

(Proverbs 31:10)

CONTENTS

By Dr. Larry Crabb

Oscar Wilde was sentenced to prison for committing, as the old English court put it, acts of gross indecency.

Wilde was an avowed aestheticist, one who lived to indulge his passion for beauty. Rules were justifiably broken if they interfered with the experience of pleasure. That was his philosophy. Wherever he found beauty, wherever he discovered an opportunity to bring a sense of pleasure into his life, he indulged himself.

For Wilde, those opportunities included the company of young men. Victorian law referred to the homosexual activity he enjoyed with those men as gross indecencies. Those who stood against him in court raised high the banner of morality, a morality that properly declared violations of lawful decency as wrong. The choice facing citizens in that culture was either to pursue pleasure where you found it or to abandon the pursuit of pleasure in favor of doing what was right.

It never seemed to occur to advocates of either view that doing right and pursuing pleasure might not be incompatible. Many of us still think there is a choice to be made between these supposed contradictions.

The conservative church has long stood on the side of the do-righters and condemned those who long to experience pleasure as sensualists given over to their base nature.

Hedonists! we sneer. Pleasure-seeking, narcissistic selfists who care nothing for the holy law of God and live only for immediate feel-good sensations.

As I think about Oscar Wildes dilemma and the typical response of the Christian world, I find myself wondering what Jonathan Edwards might have said had he been asked to testify at Wildes trial. Would he have begun by holding his Bible high, opening to Pauls letter to the Romans, and censorially quoting, God gave them over to shameful lusts. They abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another?

Would he have walked over to the defendant and, again quoting Paul, have declared, Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty of their perversion?

I think so. After all, these are words inspired by God. Homosexual activity is a gross indecency. Edwards believed the Bible. He believed that Gods standards are moral absolutes and that all violations are sin.

But I dont think he would have stopped there. I dont think he would have then returned to his seat in the courtroom, enjoying the approving nods of the pharisees whose self-righteousness by then would have been strengthened by the belief that they were not guilty of any gross indecency. I envision Edwards turning to the judge and saying, If it please the court, I must say more.

And then, to the irate bewilderment of the prosecutors, I think he might have said something like this: Although I believe Oscar Wildes behavior is morally wrong and grossly indecent, I do not quarrel with his desire to pursue pleasure. I quarrel with his understanding of where pleasure is to be found.

Real pleasure, the only kind that satisfies the human soul and, at the same time, transforms a man into a marvelously decent person, is the sheer pleasure of living for the glory of God. Its what each of us was designed to do. As the eagle finds pleasure in soaring through the heights, so a person finds pleasure in knowing God and doing Gods will. There is no choice to be made between the pursuit of true pleasure and obedience to a holy God. They are one path. Oscar Wildes greatest sin is unbelief. He does not believe there are pleasures evermore at the right hand of God.

Perhaps more than ever, we need to hear the wisdom of Jonathan Edwards. In our postmodern world, we have even more sharply separated the choice to become whole through authentic living from the choice to buckle under imposed rules. Too many Christians struggle against sinful passions (which we should do) by running away from