Those who have permitted pleasure to lead the van… lose virtue altogether; and yet they do not possess pleasure, but are possessed by it, and are either tortured by its absence, or choked by its excess, being wretched if deserted by it, and yet more wretched if overwhelmed by it; like those we are caught in the shoals of the Syrtes, and at one time are stranded on dry ground, and at another tossed on the furious billows…  As we hunt wild beasts with toil and peril, and even when they are caught find them an anxious possession, for they often tear their keepers to pieces, even so are great pleasures; they turn out to be great evils, and take their owners prisoner.

-Seneca, in a letter to his brother Gallio

Taken strictly by itself, pleasure is the sensation that comes with the declaration of what is Mine in the most avaricious sense of the word.  It is my heart greedily fingering an ill-gotten possession, telling itself that I did not receive it, that I have always had a right to the kind of feeling it bestows, and I need not ever return it.  Pleasure in this way is the murmuring of the soul to itself that everything is all right now that this one desire has been momentarily satisfied, and that happiness in the future can be ensured so long as I am able to maintain my grip – be that clutch ever so tenuous.

Knowing that this is not a perspective informed by the Gospel and rejecting it in our everyday life can be two very different things.  There is a self-serving aspect to the human psyche which is so prevalent as to be ubiquitous.  And this position is not entirely without merit.  God himself appeals to us through the Gospel on the basis of our own well-being (Isaiah: Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.  Deuteronomy: You shall walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you, that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you shall possess.  Matthew: O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you would not!)  If we would simply pursue what is truly in our own best interests according to God’s will and not our own, we would quickly find ourselves glorifying God and serving others and laying down our lives and furthering the Kingdom: that is to say, we would soon find ourselves living like Christ did.  But I need not tell you that is not our tendency.  In reality we want to experience the feeling of sitting down to rest without the day of hard work that is supposed to precede it, and we want to enjoy sexual gratification without the covenant unity that alone gives truth to its meaning, and we want to reap the rewards that come with accomplishment as though God did not actually bestow that success on us, and we want the power of being able to pass judgment on others without the transparency of love; and the list goes on.

And yet to go the other direction would be an equally ruinous mistake.  If pleasure is not to be pursued for its own sake, neither is it to shunned for its own sake.  God designed the world to afford us pleasure at certain intervals in the course of everyday life.  You only see a sunset once a day, and sometimes not that often if it is raining and overcast.  The problem arises when we decide to take over the controls of the system and make that sunset happen over and over again, metaphorically speaking, all day long, purely for our enjoyment.  When I can stuff that genie into the bottle of my iPhone and force it to deliver my canned dose of delight upon demand, I no longer feel any need for God and I certainly no longer feel the need to live the kind of life he intended me to.  I am now insulated from the divinely instituted necessity to interact appropriately in order to experience pleasure.  The world around me has been wrested from its purpose as a structure upon which the kingdom of God was to built, and reduced to being the handmaiden of my emotional indulgence.  And an ugly one it is at that.

Did you ever go out at night to look at the Pleiades, the Seven Sisters?  When it’s really dark out and the Milky Way is visible you can see the constellation very clearly.  Six stars are visible to the naked eye and the seventh one takes a telescope.  But I find that in order to pick out those six I have to shift my focus slightly to the right or left.  If I look directly at them I can only see four or five.  And I have found pleasure to be the same way.  When I have set out on an endeavor with no greater aim than to make myself happy, I have found only misery.  But at the times when I have dutifully set about the things God has given me to do, even though I didn’t feel like it, along the way I have “stumbled” on some of the deepest and most abiding sources of joy that have ever come my way.

Reflecting on all this is about as meaningful as looking at Lichtenstein’s Peace through Chemistry.  I am sure there are those who can derive artistic significance from it, as certainly as there are those who enjoy listening to Schoenberg.  It’s just that I am not one of them.  I look at the way this world is set up, where you can reach out and take hold of whatever pleasure you want only at the cost of your soul, and where those who do so look down pityingly on the ones who do not, and then we all die together, and it makes absolutely no sense to me.  Why didn’t God just make it so the most enticing feelings are the ones that lead us to Calvary, and the most desirous goals in life are those in line with the Gospel, and the most exciting thrill in the world is to lay down your life for a friend?  Instead it is all backwards, and to follow Jesus you have to turn all your emotions on their heads.

But then again, maybe it’s not really backwards; maybe these things merely come in their proper time.  You cannot read the words Paul wrote at the evening of his life, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith without seeing the smile on his face and the look in his eyes.  The prospect of leaning for the last time into those arms which had sustained him through so many trials was doubtless the most welcoming one he had ever known.  Who can recount the Nunc Dimittis of Simeon and not hear the tremble in his voice at the thought of what it means to truly depart this life in peace?  Who can listen to David and not be moved by the passion of his request: One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.  For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.  And now my head shall be lifted up above my enemies all around me, and I will offer in his tent sacrifices with shouts of joy; I will sing and make melody to the LORD.  These are not people who were out of touch with their inner being, blindly sacrificing their feelings on the altar of devotion.  These were people who had found their heart’s desire and were willing to give up everything for it.  And with the glorious vision of their sunset came whispered the promise of One who would surely rise with healing in his wings.

To be governed by the anxious possession of that wild animal we’ve worked so hard to capture is backwards; to hold pleasure with an open hand is the way we were made to be.  And as we follow this road I think we will discover that the rewards for godly self-service are beyond our capacity to imagine.  Did you know that there are actually hundreds of stars in the Pleiades, even though you can only see six?  Let us not underestimate what God will do with our obedience.

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV