God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

In 1797, William Wilberforce wrote A Practical View of Christianity in which he addressed the defective nature of the Christianity many middle and upper class people in England professed. Here is an excerpt that sounds as if it could have been written about today. It makes plain that affluence has a consistent effect on Christians in every age.

Yet thus life rolls away with too many of us in a course of shapeless idleness. Its recreations constitute its chief business…amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, to fill up the void of a listless and languid life; and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy. Even old age often finds us pacing in the same round of amusements which our early youth had tracked out. (99)

Individually, let’s pray, plan, and live in such a way that no one could use his words to describe our lives:

• “shapeless idleness”
• “listless and languid”
• “domestic dissipation”
• “unprofitable vacancy”

Collectively, let’s pray, plan, and live so that affluent American Christianity does not devolve into

a system of decent selfishness…a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness. (99)