PLEASURE
Where your
pleasure is, there is your treasure; Where your treasure is, there is your
heart; W here your heart is, there is your happiness.
[We should]
choose the leisure activities that bring us closest to God, to people, to
beauty, and to all that ennobles.
J.I. Packer
God's Plans for
You, Crossway, 2001, p. 84.
The only way
you can get pleasure, sexual or any other kind, is to
get it as a by-product of pursing something else – like the true good of
another person. So: Do you want true and lasting pleasure? Then you have to
stop chasing pleasure. Start pursuing love.
J. Budziszewski
Copied
from How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski copyright 2004, p.104. Used
by permission of NavPress (Think Books) - www.navpress.com. All
rights reserved.
Human nature
is indeed in the grip of an overwhelming army of occupation. Its natural aim,
it can truthfully be said, is pleasure; and when we consider the amount of
time, energy, money, interest and enthusiasm that men and women give to the
satisfaction of this aim we can appreciate the accuracy of James’ diagnosis;
and Christians can use it as a reliable yard stick by which to measure the
sincerity of their religion. Is God or pleasure the dominant concern of their
life?
R.V.G. Tasker
Troubled by
the non-problem of pain, most people do not feel the real problem. The real
difficulty is the problem of pleasure. While in a sinful world, pain is to be
expected, and pleasure is not to be expected. We should be constantly amazed at
the presence of pleasure in a world such as ours.
John Gerstner
The Problem of
Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 3.
In this
light, we see the problem of pleasure. Manifestly, as sinners against an
infinitely glorious God, we deserve an immediate and infinite, condign,
irremediable punishment from His holy, powerful hands. Nothing that we have
ever received, that anyone has ever received, in all this
world, has even approximated an adequate punishment for the crimes we commit in
any one moment. How, therefore, do we continue to live? Why are we not plunged
into eternal torment now, immediately?
John Gerstner
The Problem of
Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 15.
What irony
that sinners consider the greatest problem they face in this world to be the
problem of pain. The ultimate insult against God is that man thinks he has a
problem of pain. Man, who deserves to be plunged into hell at this moment, and
is indescribably fortunate that he is breathing normally, complains about
unhappiness. Instead of falling on his knees in the profoundest possible
gratitude that God holds back His wrath and infinite fury, the sinner shakes
his fist in heaven’s face and complains against what he calls “pain.” When he
receives his due, he will look back on his present condition as paradisiacal. What
he now calls misery, he will then consider exquisite pleasure. The most severe
torment anyone has ever known in this life will seem like heaven in comparison
with one moment of the full fury of the divine Being.
John Gerstner
The Problem of
Pleasure, Soli Deo Gloria, 2002, p. 15.
Can it be, that the chief object of existence is to sing, and play,
and dress and dance? Do not these things, when we reflect upon them, look more
like the pursuits of butterflies and grasshoppers, and canary birds – than of
rational creatures? Is it not melancholy to see beings with never-dying souls,
sinking to the amusements of children; and employing time as if it were given
them for nothing but mirth; and using the world as if it were created by God
only to be a sort of playground for its inhabitants?
J.A. James
The
Great End of Life, 1825.
The real
problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do
not.
C.S. Lewis
The only path
to pleasure is in pleasing God.
Richard Owen Roberts
The fall of
man has created a perpetual crisis. It will last until sin has been put down
and Christ reigns over a redeemed and restored world. Until that time the earth
remains a disaster area and its inhabitants live in a state of extraordinary
emergency. To me it has always been difficult to understand those evangelical
Christians who insist upon living in the crisis as if no crisis existed. They
say they serve the Lord, but they divide their days so as to leave plenty of
time to play and loaf and enjoy the pleasures of the world as well. They are at
ease while the world burns.
A.W. Tozer
We do not
make a god out of pleasure; we make a god out of whatever we take pleasure in
most. Pleasure is not the object of worship; pleasure is the worship.
John Piper
The Blazing Center
– The Soul Satisfying Supremacy of God in All Things, Q&A, 2005, www.DesiringGod.org, Used by Permission.
All that
pleases for a while is not real pleasure.
J.C. Ryle
Thoughts
for Young Men.