Enoch Burke Explains John Piper's Christian Hedonism

We have Enoch Burke with us today, and I'm excited to talk to Enoch a little bit about John Piper and perhaps Salmalberry as well. Enoch just wrote a book on the views that Salmalberry has on homosexuality and his living out work, and then also John Piper and his Christian hedonism.

He brought them together in a book called The Hedonism and Homosexuality of John Piper and Salmalberry, Turning the Grace of God into Lasciviousness. This is interesting. I started reading the first few chapters, and I thought, I've got to talk to this guy because Enoch, one of the questions I've been getting lately is, what do you think about John Piper?

The social justice movement is in full swing in the United States at least. I'm assuming it is in Great Britain and Ireland as well. Where's John Piper? Why hasn't he come out against this from people who like John Piper?

When I was reading your book, I had some of my own thoughts on this, but I thought actually you had some similar concerns. I'm someone who likes John Piper, used to like him a lot, I read a lot of his books.

Some of the things that I've realized looking back, you encapsulate so well. Welcome to the program. If you wouldn't mind, just tell us a little bit about yourself, what motivated you to write this, and where can people go to purchase it?

If you have a website, go ahead and plug that as well.

Thank you.

Yes, no.

John Piper, Christian Hedonism, and the Book on Homosexuality

This book, the title of it is The Hedonism and Homosexuality, as you just said, of John Piper and Sam Ulbricht, Turning the Grace of God into Lasciviousness. That's the subtitle that I put on the book.

Like you just said, I think that a lot of people are taken up with John Piper and have been now over the past, I suppose, 15 years or so, even though Piper wrote this book back in 1986. For me, initially, as a young person, I would have been somewhat taken with John Piper and with his doctrine of Christian hedonism, as he calls it.

Through a number of different, I suppose, guidance from older Christians and so on, I came to see that it really wasn't a good doctrine. It really wasn't something that was in the line of faithful Christian teaching when you look back over the years.

And that prompted me first to write a book a couple of years ago on John Piper and then to come out with this book again recently. And I think really, while Piper has a lot to say on different things, as you mentioned yourself, when it comes to the practical issues, like the issues that we face at the moment today, I'm writing about this issue of Sam Albury and this new term, same-sex attracted, which, as we know, is leading to a sea change amongst a lot of people on this key issue of homosexuality.

And you mentioned other issues there. When it comes to those practical issues, it's becoming increasingly clear that Piper isn't in the stream of traditional, old-fashioned biblical Christianity. That's what prompted me to write this book.

I suppose the verse that comes to mind is that verse in Proverbs 20, verse 11, even a child is known by his doings. It is trendy to talk about things. It's trendy to chat about things and to pick apart people's doctrines and ideas and philosophies.

But at the end of the day, as Christians, it's very important to come back to what people do. And this is something that people should take heed of and should examine. And that's what I'm doing with this book that I've just written, encouraging people to look beyond maybe the doctrine, definitely look at the doctrine.

And as you know yourself, the start of this book, the opening chapter is all about that. But then to go on to see what's the fruit of his teaching. So that's it in a nutshell.

The Influence and Availability of the Book

Yeah. And people can go and find it on Amazon. Is there anywhere else that you would want them to go?

Yeah, this the book looks like this. It's just a short little book. It's about 150 pages long. You can find it on Amazon. You can also find that I have a website, the PiedPiperBook .com, that's dating back to my first book.

But you can also find it, I believe, in most Christian booksellers and major booksellers. Yeah.

Why Christian Hedonism Shifts the Center Away from Scripture

Let me ask you this directly. Christian hedonism. If you had to encapsulate in a nutshell what your issue with it is, what would you tell someone who comes to you and says, you know, I wasn't enjoying God.

I lived in a legalistic kind of Christianity, and this really helped me to see that I should take joy in God, which seems biblical enough. Right. But but then but then the whole entire philosophy of Christian hedonism comes with that.

So so what do you have to say about that? If you give me a little critique.

Yeah, well, first of all, it is very important to be a joyful person. We we know that and we know that I suppose that's a that's a weak point to strike out for any if anybody says to a Christian, you're not joyful, you're not happy, you're not satisfied.

And that's that's the problem. I mean, the fruit of the spirit, one of the fruits of the spirit is joy. But in a sense, what's the great danger is that we take one thing which has been lacking, you could say, and is lacking in every Christian's life to some extent, and you make it the only thing or you make it the central thing, which is simply what Piper has done.

So he sort of struck at a weak point and he's he's magnified it and made it central really to the whole of the Christian life. And his doctrine, which, as you know, is that God is most satisfied, he says, when you're most glorified in him.

It's not something that arises out of the scripture. So to answer your question directly, what I would say is that accepting a philosophy like that is really to jettison and throw away what scripture places the emphasis on, which is that we would be renewed in our minds.

That great verse in Romans 12, verse 2, be not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And the scripture places the emphasis on the renewing of our whole, the whole man, the whole person.

And when it says mind there, it's speaking of your heart, mind, and then will and the obedience. So if somebody said to me they'd been blessed or been helped by his doctrine. First of all, I think a lot of what people might perceive as helpful about his doctrine, I, I could understand maybe why they might think that or why they might come from that perspective.

But I would have to go back to the fruit of the doctrine. And when I look at all the way back to the Reformation, you had Martin Luther and it was, he said in 1524, just seven years after 1520, 1517, where he, he nailed the 95 theses up on the border and the door of the castle church.

And then just a couple of years after 1521, he said that there's great danger in speaking of the things of God in terms that are not according to the scripture, in terms that God himself has not used.

So Luther realized that there was a great danger in using new language or different terms. But with Piper, it's in a sense the total opposite. He says he's discovered something. He says that everybody that wants to be, that wants to be a Christian has to become a Christian hedonist.

That's what he says. He says he's discovered a new doctrine.

And of course, he thinks he's reinterpreting Edwards or bringing, modernizing Edwards from what I've heard, at least.

Personal Testimony of Burden and the Problem of Joy as a Law

Yeah, he does say that.

Yes. Sorry.

Yeah, no, I just was, so Edwards never used the term Christian hedonism. So I'm, I'm wondering, I'll just give a quick testimony myself. Sorry, I cut you off a little. Sorry about that. I just, I want to insert this though and then get your reaction before you move on.

You were talking about emphasis and Piper, in his doctrine of Christian hedonism, puts the emphasis, it seems like on man, you know, and I think I saw that in your book as well. And so I adopted this, I would say about 12 years ago on some level.

I thought, you know, I'm not very joyful. I need to be more joyful. And so it became another burden for me, like another law, like the Pharisees, really. I started navel gazing and just putting everything that I encounter through this grid of, was I joyful enough?

Was I really enjoying that in worship or did I fail? And of course, I fail just like all humans fail. You can't perfectly have joy like Jesus did. So it became another burden. And I realized that over time, I think the wake up call was I was at a conference, ironically, it was Rick Warren's church.

John Piper was doing this Desiring God 10th or I guess at that point, 20th anniversary conference. And he says to the whole audience that it's a sin to buy a new car. He's asked about it and he says, yeah, it's a sin.

And that was the wake up call in my mind. I thought, wait a minute, scripture doesn't say this. And and so so anyway, I saw an addition, adding law and emphasizing our emotional state over, I think what scripture calls us to emphasize more is to look to Christ, to emphasize his character and attributes.

So is that a fair, I don't know if you've heard similar testimonies, but a fair assessment and a common story that you hear of Piper?

Yes, it is. I suppose a lot of people also have got in touch and they would, there's that, there's a personal story. And I think there are a whole host of reasons why people might be taken up with Piper.

I think initially when I was introduced or came across Piper by somebody else, for me, it may have been more that, you know, he was trendy, he had a huge following. And as we all know, Christianity is a, it's the narrow road, it's a narrow road, the scripture says, that leads to life, few to be to find it.

And that can be an attraction that, you know, here's this person who has a huge following, seems very popular, you know, is using the Internet and seems to have a great measure of success. But whatever the reason that that's one group of people, I've also been contacted by people who would, you know, be saying that their family or that, you know, their sons or their daughters have become sucked into Piper's ideas.

And they're very critical now of the older generation or they're critical of their parents. So they've left their parents' church and these tragic stories, because really, you know, this is introducing division and really leading to the collapse of a lot of old, you know, conservative Bible-believing churches.

But, yeah, that's a fair comparison. I think that I would say that with Piper, it's really a departure ultimately from the scripture. And that's what I, that's the sort of what I bring it back to in my book.

Certainly, it's, it makes somebody more introspective in a wrong sense. It makes them to start, you know, being preoccupied with their emotions or with, with mysticism, you know, a form of mysticism in a way.

And the opposite of this, of course, was the reformers went back to the scripture and they said, we need Christ and that it was in the scripture that we find Christ wonderfully and gloriously presented.

And they had these four things, as we know, the four qualities of scripture, the authority, the sufficiency, the clarity and then the necessity of scripture. And I would say ultimately with Piper, what it, what it really comes down to is that people who follow him and he has a huge following, there isn't a revival of interest in the, in the scriptures.

There isn't, there aren't people. And when I say in the scriptures, I don't mean just as an academic exercise. I mean, people actually obeying the scriptures, like a return to things like I can think in my own country here at this side of the world, you know, that when there was revival in Scotland and the Hebrides and in the 1859 revival here in Ireland, there was a revival of, you know, the families were put together, public houses were closed, gambling houses were closed.

And there was a revival again of respect for the Lord's day and Sabbath day and all of these practical doctrines that are associated with, with Christianity. But with, with Piper, it's exactly the opposite.

I mean, in the last, I did it in my book, there's sort of a little, a chapter towards the end where I just talk about his influence and how I think it was 2000 and 2009, he started with 7000 followers on social media and then he dug, went on to 70 ,000 and now he has a million as we speak.

But this has, when you look at the state of Christendom, even in, tragically, even in the US at the present time, it's lower than ever, as it were, the clarion call to truth on a whole host of issues.

The state of the church is lower than ever and we can't hide our faces in the sand, if you know what I mean, and pretend that there's no relation between all of these things. There is a very specific, like the person who has the influence like Piper is actually introducing a whole army of activists to the church who are against almost everything the church ever stood for.

Christian Hedonism, Social Justice, and the Normalization of Sexual Deviancy

Yeah, I want to create a bridge, if you will, to the issue of social justice, but specifically what you write about, which is the normalization of sexual deviancy. Tell me if I'm tracking right on this, because I think I picked this up when I was reading your book as well.

But since the emphasis, as you were just saying, is more on experience, right? Instead of on scripture, what seems to happen is instead of going to the scripture for your joy and your assurance and these kinds of things, you're looking at yourself and trying to see if you measure up.

And because of that emphasis, it almost creates a new hierarchy of sin and it flatlines sin so that the, and this is where I think Sam Albury comes in, the thing that, the worst thing you can do is possibly not have joy and not have, and in Piper, of course, conflates joy and happiness and all these synonyms all mean the same thing to him.

And so it lends itself to this emotional state of, well, that's the highest good is having this emotional experience. And so then things that God actually says are wrong, aren't as quite as important as having joy.

And so that's where like same-sex attraction, which is of course this new term, a same-sex attracted Christian or a homosexual Christian or whatever term they want to.

Use.

As long as that person's having joy and not technically breaking God's law in the sense of acting upon it, then all is well and they can be platformed as an ideal.

Christian.

And it seems to me it's inserting a competitor, it's a different law. Instead of looking to the scripture and what does scripture say about desires and God's created intention, it's looking towards instead whether or not the person who has those desires is still having joy in God and having this experience.

As long as they have that, they're good. Am I, is the DNA of this thing, am I diagnosing it correctly here?

Yeah, I think you have it spot on there in terms of, yeah, that is it. I mean, what I've studied is, as you said, Sam Albrey and this whole, this new label of same-sex attraction. But yeah, you're right.

I mean, with this, like you said, the worst possible thing you can be sort of in Piper's false philosophy of the world, which I call out in my book as heretical, is somebody who's a Pharisee. And that's somebody who might be keeping the, have really a genuine God-given concern to be obedient to God's word and to practically put those, put scripture into practice in one's life.

But can be criticised maybe as being joyless. I mean, this is the worst possible person in Piper's sort of view of the world. So when you make emotion or when you make sort of a very elusive idea of joy, the pinnacle of spirituality, you open the door, like you say, to a whole host of new ideas and a whole host of new reinterpretations of what's acceptable in a church and what's acceptable in Christianity.

And walking straight in the door comes this issue of homosexuality and same-sex attraction. And people sometimes say, well, what is the link between, I mean, why do I have in the front of my book linking these men, John Piper and Sam Albrey?

And the reason is that Piper, with his influence now, has introduced these people and given them a platform to the church. So his Designing God website features Sam Albrey. And not only that, but also other activists who are in a similar vein would promote this idea of same-sex attraction.

That is, you know, placing a sort of a divide between somebody's desires and actions which are emphasised in scripture, as we know, with Romans 1 and so on. And this has been introduced to the church.

And it's not just me saying it, one of Piper's followers at Bethlehem College and Seminary, he credited it with making him to go public, he said, on his same-sex attraction. And he goes on, he has articles on Designing God's website also criticising, quote unquote, homophobia in the church.

So this is a whole reinterpretation. And like you said, it's coming in the back door, under the guise, we would say, of Piper's doctrine of Christian hedonism. So there's a very close link between the two.

A Biblical Response to Same-Sex Attraction and Homosexuality

I want to get practical with you. So a young man comes to you and says, I have same-sex attraction. I'm attracted in the way that normally created order people are attracted to women. I'm attracted to men, they say.

Now, the basic answer that they'd get probably from a Sam Albury or someone influenced by Piper's teaching would be, well, you need to find your greatest desire in God and don't act on it. But it's OK if, you know, I'm not condemning you for having those desires, but you just need to find your greatest desire in God and that's the solution.

What would you say, biblically speaking, from a biblical anthropology, instead of what they're saying?

Well, I don't think it's any secret what I would say, and I think I would put squarely out there that these people, John Piper and Sam Albury and so on, they're the ones that have changed what the scripture really says on the issue.

What I would say is what Christians have been saying for all the way back, you know, 2000 years, and all the way back to the Old Testament, that the scripture is very clear on homosexuality, that it's a sin, but that, of course, people can be delivered from it gloriously through the blood of Christ and through knowing Christ.

And that's the invitation that Christ gives to all of us. And what I wouldn't do is, you know, to characterize people or entrap people or pretend that it's a lifestyle that you might be entrapped in, as it were, and that there's no deliverance from.

So what I bring out in my book simply is that I'm always in denial of three main things when it comes to the scripture's message on homosexuality. Firstly, he tries to say that, as you mentioned earlier, that there's no difference between different sins, that all sins, in a sense, are the same.

He used a lot of this language, we're all broken and so on, which to an extent, of course, all have sins, the scripture says, and fall short of the glory of God. So we know that all have sinned. But when you look at the scripture, whether it's, you know, Sodom and Gomorrah in the Old Testament, or when you come on to Romans chapter one in the New Testament, where Paul is underscoring the, you know, the heinousness of sin, the sin that Paul picks, and it's not an accident, is homosexuality.

And he mentions that in Romans chapter one, but always in denial of that. You know, he turns his back on that clear, traditional interpretation of the scripture. So I take issue with that. And he also turns his back on the individual responsibility.

This is the second thing that he does. You know, what I would say to anybody that comes to me is that we're all sinners and we're responsible for our sin. I mean, if I have a tendency, as we all have, we all know our faults, we all know our sins, our peculiar sins.

I have to take responsibility for that. I have to own up to that. But what Albrey does, and it's clear from his book, is he says that in Romans chapter one, Paul's indicting society, he's indicating society as a whole rather than individuals.

So, again, he's cleverly and heretically reinterpreting Romans to exclude any application to the individual sinner who you just mentioned would come to somebody for counsel or would come to a pastor for counsel.

That's the second thing. And that's really what it boils down to. And the third thing with Albrey is that there's really a denial with his doctrine. And it's tragic that it would be accepted at any level.

There's a denial of conversion and that there can be a glorious change in somebody's life when they come to know Christ and they can be freed. And there have been hundreds and thousands of testimonies of people who have been freed from any, from all types of sin, including homosexuality, and gone on to lead a life of victory, you know, of wonderful victory.

And I'm reminded of the, there's a great theologian that I lean on in my book. And he said, it's Anthony Hickman, he said that, you know, we shouldn't see ourselves as partly old selves and partly new selves.

This is the glory of salvation and of knowing Christ. He said, but we should see ourselves as new creatures in Christ Jesus, not as victims, but as victors who are living a life of victory. And if the church can't say that to people, it's not the church.

If a pastor can't say that to somebody, if a Christian leader, a Christian teacher like myself can't say that to somebody, then that's a denial of the gospel. And it's an abandonment of the faith once delivered to the saints.

Piper, Albury, and the Question of Why He Has Not Spoken More Forcefully

Yeah, that's excellent, Enoch. I think that you've tapped into something that explains at least an Achilles heel of some kind that that Piper has, that Albury has, and many who have been influenced by them, which I think helps answer the question that I get a lot is, why isn't John Piper fighting this more?

Where is he? And I know there may be many explanations. I know he's semi-retired, but the pastor who took over at Bethlehem Church is, as we, I don't know if they use this term in Ireland, but is woke, they call it here.

I know his son, from what I've heard, is that way. Piper has written a number of articles that strain towards a pacifistic approach as well. I know, I think it was the Washington Post that carried an article a few years ago where he said, hey, if someone came and tried to kill me or my wife, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I don't carry a gun.

I would not resist that. Which I know that often goes with kind of a pietism as a pacifism. But there's all these little things here and there. And people have asked, and I wonder whether it goes back to this root philosophy, a lot of that, at least, of Christian hedonism and introducing this new hierarchy, which is really what it is, a new hierarchy of what the pinnacle of attaining spirituality is, to have this emotional experience.

So I'm grateful for you for exposing this. And any final thoughts?

Yeah, no, I suppose finally, that's just bottom line you said in terms of it being a departure. And it is a new, it's a new doctrine as well. And I think what happens is people get sucked into it and they're pulled away from the scripture and maybe they don't realise that until somewhat after the time.

And I suppose you mentioned there about, you know, him and, you know, whether or not he's responsible as well. I would say he is very responsible. I mean, I come down very clearly on him in the book. And the book, I mean, the book looks at Piper, my latest book, looks at Piper from a very clear doctrinal perspective.

I had written an earlier book two years ago where I looked at the issue, I suppose, in a sense, more simply. And one of the things I looked at was even Piper's own family and the legacy, you know, that he had in his own family.

And it's not good there either. You know, he has, he had a son, his eldest son, Abraham Piper, was living a life of immorality and drunkenness while John Piper was the pastor of, the so-called pastor of Bethany Baptist Church.

And, you know, there was no resignation. And there's there's a lot more even about Abraham Piper in terms of profanity and so on that is a very poor reflection on anybody who would claim to have a special insight into what the church should believe.

And another son of John, Barnabas Piper, you know, was recently in 2000, I think it was 2007, it was maybe 2017, filed for divorce after 11 years of marriage. And as I know it, I think it was a month ago, was remarried.

So these are, you know, and Piper himself in attendance, I believe, at the second marriage. And I mean, this is something that I believe is outrageous. It's a travesty. And what happens is a lot of people get sucked into Piper's doctrines.

They see the books, they see the writings, they see the maybe attractive, simplifying, you could say, of Christianity, but they don't consider the fruits and the practical effect of his teaching. And a lot of people, you know, it's proper these days to to downplay those things.

But one of the things I'm reminded of, even what God said to Abraham, he said, I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, that they will keep the way of the Lord and do justice and judgment.

And these things are important. That's why I wrote the book. I believe that that's what it comes back to, even in our own lives, a practical obedience and a love for God's truth should be seen in your life as well as what you say and what.

You rise. Yeah, I appreciate it. Yeah. And as you were talking about testimonies, I don't know his family or his children intimately at all. I've done the research you have, but I do know people that have been influenced by this teaching and were attracted initially thought this was a solution perhaps to their problems in life and were let down.

And and that can be a devastating thing when you think that you've tried the God's formula and God's formula didn't work for you. But in reality, it wasn't you weren't trying some kind of formula concocted by God or something in the scripture.

You're trying something foreign to that and now, you know, blaming the scripture for it. I've also seen people I do need to say this. I've also seen people who like Piper, especially for his Calvinism.

They they're attracted to that. And they it all they take away from Christian hedonism for some reason is, well, I should be more joyful. And they do fine because they haven't actually imported all of the teaching.

They just kind of say, well, yeah, joy is good. And so whether or not they are fully embracing Piper's whole teaching there, probably not. But but I've seen that range. I have the concerns that you're talking about, which is why I wanted to have you on.

And and I think this is a good start for people who are listening. They can, you know, don't we're not just trying to bring the hammer down on Piper just because we don't like Piper. But, you know, start looking into this, get the book and and you can get it again.

You can go to Amazon and get it. The Hedonism and Homosexuality of John Piper and Sam Albury, The Truth of Scripture. And there's a lot of references in here, a lot of scripture quotes, a lot of quotes from theologians.

I liked when you quoted the Westminster and showed how Piper reconfigures it and how he ignores the context. Good stuff, Enoch. I appreciate it. Yes. So God bless. And any any I know you had mentioned a website real quick.

Why don't you plug that again where people can go and find out more about your work?

Yes, thank you. The website is the PiedPiperBook .com and the book is available on on Amazon. Like you said, I suppose I wrote it because I I felt I had a responsibility to do that. Knowing what I know and the research that I had done and and other people also have, it's been endorsed by Dr. Riaz Williams in the UK.

He wrote a book on the New Calvinists. And yeah, I believe that it's a serious issue. I suppose that's where he wrote it. And I encourage anybody who's, I suppose, like you said, in any way involved with Piper or has been or has family members to to take it up and read it and hear what it has to say.

All right. Yeah, my pleasure. God bless you, Enoch. Have a good one.