{"id":2218,"date":"2014-09-17T22:12:10","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T06:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/?p=2218"},"modified":"2014-09-17T22:12:10","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T06:12:10","slug":"an-interesting-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2014\/09\/17\/an-interesting-point\/","title":{"rendered":"an interesting point"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alex Guggenheim raises an interesting point at his blog, here<\/a>. A video has been circulating around the internet where Joel Osteen\u2019s wife Victoria exhorts<\/a> Christians to be \u2018happy\u2019 because when you are happy, God is happy.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just Victoria Osteen who thinks this way.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

John Piper on defining his bizarre notion of Christian hedonism<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The longing to be happy<\/u> is a universal human experience, and it is good, not sinful<\/u>. <\/li>\n
  2. We should never try to deny or resist our longing to be happy<\/u>, as though it were a bad impulse. Instead we should seek to intensify this longing and nourish it with whatever will provide the deepest and most enduring satisfaction. <\/li>\n
  3. The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. <\/li>\n
  4. The happiness we find in God reaches its consummation when it expands to meet the needs of others in the manifold ways of love. <\/li>\n
  5. To the extent we try to abandon the pursuit of our own pleasure, we fail to honor God and love people<\/u>. Or, to put it positively: the pursuit of pleasure is a necessary part of all worship and virtue. <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And then there is this<\/a>:<\/p>\n

    \n

    By Christian Hedonism, I do not mean that our happiness is the highest good. I mean that pursuing the highest good will always result in our greatest happiness in the end. But almost all Christians believe this. Christian Hedonism says more, namely, that we should pursue<\/em> happiness, and pursue it with all our might. 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<\/strong><\/u> – that’s what makes Christian Hedonism controversial.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    (All emphasis is mine.)<\/p>\n

    What are we to make of all this? Alex suggests that Victoria Osteen may be reading Piper. She is at least \u2018channeling\u2019 him.<\/p>\n

    Many people have criticized and mocked Mrs. Osteen. Will they say the same of Piper? Is his notion substantially different from hers?<\/p>\n

    \"don_sig2\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Alex Guggenheim raises an interesting point at his blog, here. A video has been circulating around the internet where Joel Osteen\u2019s wife Victoria exhorts Christians to be \u2018happy\u2019 because when you are happy, God is happy. But it\u2019s not just Victoria Osteen who thinks this way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[155,63],"tags":[156,163,161],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-zM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2219,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218\/revisions\/2219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}