I just finished re-reading the first chapter from John Piper’s Desiring God, “The Happiness of God.” By way of some background: I first read Piper when I was 18 or 19 years old deployed with the National Guard on the Sinai Peninsula. That was about 9 years ago now. Piper was the first real theologian I was ever exposed to. Up to that point, I’d spent most of my time reading with guys like Max Lucado and Charles Swindoll (not that I have anything against those authors; Lucado in particular provided me with much needed, good reading for the first two years of my Christian life). After that I was hooked and read just about anything else I could pick up by Piper, working my way from Future Grace to The Pleasures of God and then eventually to Jonathan Edwards’ Religious Affections.
What I’m struck by when I read Piper is how deadly serious he is about just about everything: sin, depravity, suffering, God’s sovereignty as well as His unwavering commitment to display His own glory and evoke praise from His people. Perhaps most striking to me (then as well as now) was how serious Piper is about joy.
It’s fun to go back and re-read, to see how much I missed the first time through and to laugh at how skillfully Piper “tricked” me into caring about both theology and joy by simply moving from Scripture to Scripture to Scripture.
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Dorothy Sayers
The Christian faith is the most exciting drama that ever staggered the imagination of man—and the dogma is the drama.
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1 comment:
The seriousness you found in Piper catches my eye. I am reading through a book about dealing with sin in one's life. No magic formulas are found. Work hard and pray till you sweat, the author recommends. Nothing glamorous. But it is all predicated on one needing to fundamentally begin with the same seriousness regarding sin that Jesus expressed while with the twelve -- a seriousness the author does not find generally in the church. Of course, a fundamental challenge in becoming serious about one's own sin is remaining compassionate, not hard, toward others regarding their sin. How does one retain Jesus peculiar inclusiveness? I'd guess it begins with the following view. Though one has the sensation of seriousness and working hard, one knows that fundamentally the work is that of the Spirit through the crucifixion and resurrection. Thus haughtiness, which can arise from viewing one's seriousness with great approval, is continually undercut by the awareness that one's own "wonderful" seriousness arises from grace.
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