Does Joy in God Touch All of Life?

I was wet concrete, drying quickly.

It was 2017. My wife and I had just spent a year in New Zealand doing ministry with Calvary Chapel Bible Institute. As we left the Kiwis, our minds turned with wonderful memories (we visited all the filming locations for The Lord of the Rings) as well as a truckload of theological questions. Still grappling with many of these, we moved to Molokai, Hawaii, where I became a full-time pastor for the church I grew up in.

In this malleable state, I encountered two books that forever shaped me. The first was Desiring God. In it, John Piper unpacks the truths that undergird Christian Hedonism, chief among them the indispensable reality that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. It was almost too good to be true. You mean my irrepressible desire to be happy is not something I should try to suppress but to sate? You mean God commands me to enjoy him? You mean the pursuit of pleasure is not optional but imperative? Pastor John’s insights opened up a whole new world for me; I’m eternally grateful. The sun had risen for the first time, and everything looked different in that dawn.

Two years later, I was still exploring the extent of that dawn’s reach when I read The Things of Earth. In this application of Desiring God’s happy theology, Joe Rigney takes up Christian Hedonism and seeks to press it into every corner of life. What does the pursuit of pleasure in God look like when it encounters my wife and my kids, my neighbors and coworkers, bacon and coffee, baseball and good books? How does joy in God relate to his inescapable gifts? Building on Pastor John’s foundation, Joe helped me see that God intends for me to delight in him all the time and in everything.

In short, Pastor John convinced me that I should live for the joy in God; Joe helped me do this in all of life. Desiring God made me a hedonist; The Things of Earth schooled me in hedonism.

Theology Leaves Fingerprints

Alongside these life-directing discoveries, another truth landed on me with almost as much force: Theology leaves fingerprints. Whether you are an atheist or a Christian, what you believe about God bears fruit in your daily actions and affections. Theology is radically, irreducibly practical. What you do, how you do it, and (perhaps most relevant to Christian Hedonism) why you do it reveals your thoughts about God, his ways, and his designs. Just as I can tell what my toddlers had for dinner based on the smudges they leave on the sliding glass door, theology leaves fingerprints.

Bringing these discoveries together, I began to suspect the pursuit of joy in God touches everything. If my chief end — the ultimate goal of everything I was made to be — is indeed to glorify God by enjoying him forever, then should I not see the fingerprints of that theology everywhere?

Joy as the Path of Life

Scripture confirms the all-pervasive, practical nature of the joy pursuit. Consider two pillar texts for Christian Hedonism. The first is Psalm 16:11:

You make known to me the path of life;
     in your presence there is fullness of joy;
     at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Twin truths emerge from this verse. First, God is the source of full joy. Everything good, true, and beautiful is found in his presence as gifts from his right hand. Moreover, we can’t improve upon this joy. It overflows the bounds of our creaturely capacities (cf. John 15:11; 7:38–39). It never expires, diminishes, or grows old. You cannot trump the happiness God offers.

“Everything good, true, and beautiful is found in his presence as gifts from his right hand.”

Second, God reveals this pursuit of joy and calls it “the path of life.” The biblical authors love to use the metaphor of walking (or running, as we’ll see) to capture the totality of a person’s life. When you take a walk, all of you heads in a particular direction; no part can opt out. In the same way, the metaphor of walking indicates the orientation of your entire life. Thus, Psalm 16:11 implies that a person’s whole life ought to be on the path to joy in God’s presence.

And what does that holistic hedonism look like? Hebrews 12:1–2 tells us:

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Now we see the walking image heightened to the intensity of running. And the paragon (and prize) of this joy-oriented way of life is none other than Jesus himself. He did the hardest thing in the history of the world as an unabashed hedonistic act, magnifying his Father as a result. His whole earthly life aimed at that end. Jesus deemed the full joy and forever pleasures his Father offered worth his life and death to obtain. He ran “the path of life” to and through the cross, opening the way so that we might follow in his footsteps. And he calls us to imitate him as we run.

Together these two passages formed the bedrock for everything I had read in Desiring God and The Things of Earth. They make this happy theology inescapably practical. They call us to travel along the holistic, hedonistic way of life that Jesus models, seeking to glorify God by enjoying him. Christian Hedonism contends that as we follow in the footsteps of our jovial King, all of life falls under the banner of “for the joy.” We not only should but must pursue our joy in God everywhere and in everything.

Joy as a Discipline

For me, the concrete set some years ago. “For the joy” is etched in stone. Still, walking the path requires a lifetime of effort; running as Jesus did involves the difficult discipline of seeking real joy, not the world’s tinsel toy substitutes. That pursuit requires sober-minded wisdom, godly examples to follow, and much practice. It demands an iron resolve not to be too easily pleased.

The convictions of Christian Hedonism, paired with the imperative “Do all to the glory of God,” mean the hunt for happiness in God excludes nothing. For the joy in all of life. We constantly face the question: What fingerprints does Christian Hedonism leave in our lives?

This month at Desiring God, we will dust for those fingerprints in areas of life that many of us leave overlooked or unexplored. In an effort to press this happy, deep theology into every corner of life, we will take a tour through the kitchen and the book nook, into the classroom and the bedroom, down street corners and over playgrounds. We will find that joy in the triune God remains ever relevant. It leaves nothing untouched. It changes everything; God means it to.