What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

I have one friend on the mission field in impoverished Mongolia. Every time she enters a home, the hosts are eager and polite. They bend over backward to show her honor and listen carefully to what she has to say. She often finds them ready to accept the gospel message, perhaps too ready — it takes time to know whether they’ve really understood and embraced Christ or were simply being polite to important guests.

I have another friend who has ministered in Paris for many years in a small evangelical church. The tents, eager faces, and humble hospitality of a sparsely populated region contrast sharply with the upscale apartments, bored faces on the subway, and chic displays of urban sophistication.

When each friend describes her experience, it’s exactly what I would expect. It’s often easier to minister to people in the likes of Mongolia, who tend to think of you as their social superior. But how do you minister to those who are looking down long noses at you in places such as Paris?

Resolved — and in Bondage

When I was a teenager, I remember settling a firm resolve in myself, just in case God called me to the mission field: I would be happy to work in a remote village in Africa, an overflowing orphanage in India, or a backwoods town in the States. But I never would work among people who were rich, good-looking, and sophisticated. In other words, I’m happy to reach “downward” with the gospel but, Lord, don’t ever make me reach “upward.” Don’t make me share the gospel with people who make me uncomfortable with their external blessings.

I didn’t realize this as a teen, but my resolution about where God was allowed to call me revealed a heavy yoke around my soul, one that I would later identify and name: I was in bondage to envy.

In my twenties, the Lord did a lot of surgery on me to extricate envy from my closest relationships with sisters and friends. But it wasn’t until recently, when I began comparing the callings of my two missionary friends, each spreading gospel hope in two very different contexts, that I realized I had never thought seriously about the way envy might be hamstringing ministry in my life.

If an envious disposition once made me shy away from the idea of big-city missions, does an envious disposition ever affect the way I do ministry now, as an ordinary church member in small-town America?

Sin of the Inferior

Envy exists because inequality exists. We live in a world made by a glorious Father who has sprinkled his glory all over creation and imbued human souls with a special portion of this glory. Because of sin, the people he has made are cracked mirrors, walking around in T-shirts and jeans, but we are still made in his image and so possess trace amounts of his glory.

C.S. Lewis observed that “the dullest, most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which — if you saw it now — you would be strongly tempted to worship” (The Weight of Glory, 45). This has been my exact experience of life among humans. I bump into glory all the time. I meet another woman who is beautiful or charming or intelligent or wealthy or well-connected — and I simply have to respond. Glory demands response, even the fleeting human glories that are only faint reminders of our origin.

I may respond with admiration, the impulse to get close and warm my hands on the glory, or with covetousness, resentment, and even hatred. The latter response is called envy. Envy is seething discontent over glories that God gives to other people. It is offense over inequality, a burning awareness that someone nearby is your superior in some area of life that you particularly value.

It usually strikes among peers. Sisters. Coworkers. Two girls at the top of their class. Two men in the same field of expertise. If envy is given free rein in our hearts, it can lead to broken relationships with those most intimate to us, as well as to further sins, ranging from gossip to murder (Matthew 27:18; Genesis 4:1–16).

But the envious heart could change the shape of your life’s story in another, subtler way. It could affect where you choose to minister, whom you choose to befriend, and how powerful you believe the gospel to be. Indeed, it could hamstring your effectiveness in telling people of Christ.

Reach Up, Not Just Down

What if we become so nearsighted that the borrowed glories of man obscure our vision and appetite for the original source of glory? There is a reason why so many of the New Testament Epistles contain warnings for the early church about covetous cravings for material glories.

“You desire and do not have, so you murder,” says James. “You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:2–3). And Paul asks, “While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Corinthians 3:3).

The implication of these warnings is that, obviously, it is only human to get all coiled up over the glories we see with our eyes. Our appetites for glory are strong. But to mistake our ingrown need for God himself with the powerful craving to see glory distributed equally to ourselves and our neighbor — this is to live according to the flesh. It thwarts our ability to walk by the Spirit and obstructs the power of the gospel.

How can we love our neighbors when we’re too busy looking at their houses? How can we tell our friends that Christ is a spring of water welling up to eternal life when we’re salivating over their Instagram profiles, replete with perfectly matched children’s outfits and marriages to capable men? How can we climb over fences to tell people the good news when those fences are erected not by poverty, but riches?

How heartbreaking when our love is big enough to offer hope to those who have less than we do, yet we have no love for those with more. Is the gospel too small for these people? Is it so small in our eyes that the size of our neighbor’s paycheck is enough to obscure it?

Even Among Siblings

What about inside the church? Is inequality interfering with our ability to love and speak truth to one another inside our communities? Remember James’s warning: “If a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing . . . have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?” (James 2:2–4).

But for someone with an envious heart like mine, sometimes the opposite impulse is at play. I would prefer to put distance between myself and the person who is richer than me, in whatever exterior glory, than to creep close to them for leftovers. Either of these forms of materialism — preferring the rich because you hope to benefit from proximity, or preferring the poor because inequality makes you uncomfortable — demonstrates a painful blindness to the kingdom of God.

Instead, we are to see rich and poor alike as human souls in need of refreshment and exhortation. The longer we live in this world, the clearer we see God’s work through the giving and taking of material blessings. His plans demonstrate to us, over and over, that he provides our every need and intends nothing short of freedom from sin. His sovereign caretaking teaches us, with Paul, how to be brought low and how to abound, how to face plenty and how to face hunger — thanking and praising him all the same (Philippians 4:12).

In other words, we need to get comfortable with the idea that God works according to his pleasure, to give and to take at will, and always for his glory and for our good. He calls us not only to weep with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice. God is Lord of us all.

Eyes on the Glory

There’s only one way to learn to face plenty and hunger, abundance and need alike with serenity, joy, and self-forgetful love. We feast our eyes and our appetites on glory himself. In Christ, we are no longer cut off from the source of glory. We no longer have to unsettle ourselves over the derivative glories possessed by the little kings and queens he has made. Their glories are only ever whispers, made to draw our eyes to the thunderous noise of God’s pleasure in his own glory.

With our bellies full of his mercy and grace to us, with our eyes enamored by the beauty and splendor of Christ’s humility and might, we no longer have to stay hungry for our neighbor’s house or enamored with our neighbor’s husband. Inequalities are not flattened in the presence of God, but they trouble and distract us less and less. In him, we are all wealthy beyond our wildest imaginations. In his presence, the most intimidating individual we’ve ever tried to love becomes creaturely and dependent. Our envious hearts, once they are satiated on this God, are free to reach upward with the gospel, and not just downward.

We Christian Hedonists have a complicated relationship with duty. On the one hand, with our emphasis on the centrality of affections and desire in glorifying God, we are at war with duty-driven approaches to the Christian life that regard the affections as optional add-ons. To do a righteous act purely from a sense of obligation — because it is the right thing to do — is not morally superior to performing the same act with a deep sense of desire and gladness. Desire does not ruin the moral worth of good actions. Indeed, the right kind of desire establishes the true moral worth of our actions.

On the other hand, we Christian Hedonists, far from setting duty and desire at odds, instead bring them together by insisting that we are obligated to delight in God. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). We are called and commanded to desire God, to treasure God, to want God, to find our highest joy in God.

So again, we have a complicated relationship with duty. And as such, it’s worth taking a few moments to consider this relationship more carefully. The question is this: Is there a good, wise, and Christian Hedonistic way of celebrating the value of duty in the Christian life?

What Is Duty Anyway?

To answer this question, let’s first untangle a potential ambiguity. What do we mean by duty? On the one hand, duty might simply be a synonym for obligation. Anytime we use the word ought, we are dealing with duty. In this sense, duty and delight, far from being at odds, coincide. We ought to delight in God. We ought to love him with all of our heart. Included in all of our obligations is the duty to find our highest satisfaction in God. Thus, if we equate duty and obligation, then Christian Hedonists clearly value duty. That’s why we talk about “the dangerous duty of delight.”

“Duty refers to fulfilling one’s obligations in the face of obstacles.”

But duty often has a more particular and narrower meaning. Often, duty refers not merely to obligations, but to obligations that we find difficult to fulfill for one reason or another. In this sense, duty refers to fulfilling one’s obligations in the face of obstacles. When obligation meets impediments, then we talk about duty. Put another way, duty (in this narrower sense) is when the want to and the ought to don’t match.

That’s why duty has so often been praised as a virtue. To do the right thing in the face of the various obstacles that hinder us, to persevere in willing the good even when it’s hard, even when we lack the spontaneous delight that would make doing the right thing enjoyable — these have led many to praise duty as not merely virtuous, but as the pinnacle of virtue. The moral effort involved in overcoming impediments seems to give duty a beauty and luster and value that unimpeded, spontaneous goodness seems to lack.

What do we, as Christian Hedonists, make of this seeming superiority of arduous moral effort that overcomes all obstacles to doing good?

Impediments of Various Kinds

First, let’s understand what we mean by impediments. It seems to me that impediments might be either natural or moral, and either internal or external. Natural, external impediments are the high mountains and long distances we endure to fulfill our obligations. The time it takes, the monotonous repetition of our obligations, the heavy loads we must carry, and the inconveniences we undergo — all of these lie outside of us and are simply features of living in a finite (and fallen) world.

Natural, internal impediments are those bound up with our finitude and embodiment. Any impediment flowing from bodily weakness and natural aversion to pain and suffering would be included here. Sometimes duties are heavy, not because the obligation is so heavy, but because we are so weak. To do the right thing when we are tired or hungry or sick, or when the consequences of doing the right thing will be pain, discomfort, and even the possibility of death — this is what it means to do our duty in the face of natural, internal impediments.

Moral, external impediments include the evil that we must overcome in others. Loving my neighbor who is kind and pleasant is easy. Loving my neighbor who is quarrelsome, bitter, envious, and ungrateful is harder. Their ingratitude and bitterness are impediments that I overcome to fulfill my obligation. The same is true of the mockery, scorn, and rejection by others that sometimes occur when we do the right thing and maintain our integrity. So also with the obstacles posed by dark spiritual powers, which seek to undermine our obedience (though frequently the obstacles they erect take the form of the other kinds of impediments).

“Even the simplest of obligations can feel impossible in the face of our own pride, anger, sloth, and fear.”

Finally, we have the moral impediments that lie within us. Our besetting sins and disruptive passions — these are the impediments that we most frequently have to overcome. Even the simplest of obligations can feel impossible in the face of our own pride, anger, sloth, and fear. Or we might consider how our desires for other good things turn our obligation to love others into arduous exertions. The love of money (and all the desires it could fulfill) kept the rich young ruler from doing the one thing Christ called him to do. That inordinate love was his greatest impediment, and he went away sad (Mark 10:22).

In our daily lives, these impediments are almost always mingled. Making a time-consuming meal for a bitter neighbor when you are tired after a full day’s work brings three of the impediments together in one major obstacle (and no doubt presses on our own abiding sinfulness, thus bringing all types of impediments together). So we must not artificially divide the kinds of obstacles that we face.

What, then, do Christian Hedonists say about duty in the narrow sense in the face of these kinds of impediments?

1. Duty exists to be transcended.

The narrow sense of duty is owing to the various natural and moral impediments that we face, and these are owing to our pilgrim condition in a fallen world. Someday, most of these impediments — at least the moral ones and the natural, internal ones — will pass away. It seems possible to me that natural, external impediments may still have a place even in the new heavens and new earth; heaven may have its ardors and exertions, its severities and steep ascents. However, in our glorified condition, our natural limitations will not in any way hinder our joy in doing good; indeed, they will increase our joy.

When that day comes, goodness will flow from us spontaneously, like songs from a lark and water from a fountain. Unhindered delight in doing what we ought will be the crowning bloom on our moral actions.

2. Humans have levels of will.

In the meantime, in our pilgrim condition, we embrace the worth and value of overcoming impediments in our efforts to do good. That worth and value will be embraced rightly if we recognize the different levels of “willing” that we are capable of as humans.

We see these two levels in Christ’s prayer in Gethsemane: “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). “Not my will” — this means that, at some level, the race set before Jesus was an unpleasant one, filled with various impediments: a long distance up Calvary’s road, a heavy cross upon his back, the natural weaknesses of a beaten body, the hatred, scorn, and mockery of wicked men, his abandonment by his friends, and the surety of an excruciating death. Jesus beheld all of these impediments to his calling to love his people and, at one level, said, “I don’t want to.”

But only at one level. At another, deeper level, his human will embraced the divine will. “Yours be done.” Despite all of the impediments in his way, Christ still fundamentally desired to do the will of his Father. And thus he did what he ought in the face of the external and internal obstacles in his way.

What can we say about this deeper willing and desiring that Christ displayed? First, it was animated by joy: “For the joy that was set before him [he] endured the cross” (Hebrews 12:2). Second, his experience of joy while enduring the cross differed markedly from his experience after his ascent to God’s right hand. The sufferings were neither pleasant nor enjoyable; they were horrific and painful. Nevertheless, we all know that there is a kind of satisfaction in doing one’s duty in the face of obstacles and in the midst of great pain, by looking forward to the reward (Hebrews 11:6, 26).

3. Even duties can become joys.

The two levels of our willing enable us to speak truly about the value of the narrow sense of duty. At one level, the want to and ought to don’t match; thus, we can talk about duty. But at another, deeper (or higher) level, they do match, because we actually persevere in doing the good, despite the lack of want to at the first level. Our desire or commitment to doing what’s right overcomes all external hindrances and internal reluctances.

This desire is what enables us to “count it all joy . . . when [we] meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2). The fact that we have to “count it” joy highlights the gap that we are exploring. We don’t have to count pleasant experiences as joy; they just are joy because we enjoy them at both levels. It is the trials, the unpleasant moments, the impediments that must be counted as joy because we know what the testing is producing for us — steadfastness, maturity, and completeness (James 1:3–4).

4. Some impediments require repentance.

Recognizing the different types of obstacles that the narrow sense of duty overcomes enables us to evaluate them rightly. When facing natural impediments or the moral evil in others, we need not feel guilt for the struggle. We can lament our bodily weaknesses and grieve over the evil done to us by other people, but we need feel no moral responsibility or conviction for having to overcome such obstacles.

When facing our own inner, moral obstacles, however, such as the passions that hinder our pursuit of godliness, we must both lament and repent for our remaining sinfulness. In such cases, we do our duty with a humble brokenheartedness because the gap between the ought to and the want to is owing to our own abiding corruption.

5. Doing our duty strengthens our will.

We labor to strengthen the deeper level of willing by cultivating habitual holy affections at this level. Seeking to do our duty in the broader sense (i.e., fulfilling our obligation to delight in God above all things) is what strengthens our ability to do our duty in the narrower sense (when the want to and ought to don’t align at every level). We want the fundamental inclinations of our will to be enduring, stable, and strong enough to overcome the temporary disruptions of our passions in the face of external impediments.

So, we Christian Hedonists do not disparage duty. Instead, we put it in its proper place. It is a crutch in our pilgrim condition, a deep and abiding resolve to overcome the various obstacles that keep us from fully rejoicing in doing good with joy unhindered. In this sense, doing our duty in the face of impediments is a crucial expression of our deep and enduring satisfaction in all that God is for us in Christ.