Salem Baptist Church, Salem, NM

BeforeI saw these things in the Bible, C. S. Lewis snagged me when I wasn'tlooking. I was standing in Vroman's Bookstore on Colorado Avenue inPasadena, California, in the fall of 1968. I picked up a thin blue copy of Lewis's book The Weight of Glory. The first page changed my life.

Ifthere lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own goodand earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submitthat this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no partof the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promisesof reward and the staggering nature ofthe rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord findsour desires not too strong, but too weak. We are halfhearted creatures,fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy isoffered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud piesin a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of aholiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Never in my life had I heard anyone say that the problem with the world was not the intensity of our pursuit of happiness, but the weakness of it. Everything in me shouted, Yes! That's it!There it was in black and white, and to my mind it was totallycompelling: The great problem with human beings is that we are far tooeasily pleased. We don't seek pleasure with nearly the resolve andpassion that we should. And so we settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.[16]

The Dangerous Duty of Delight.

John Piper