Why I Don't Read John Piper Anymore

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Hey everyone, John here with a quick thought on why I don't read John Piper books anymore and why

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I think Christian hedonism was a net negative for me. So starting off, I was a big

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Piper fan in a very transformational time of my life, college into early seminary.

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I read everything I could get my hands on from John Piper. It started with Don't Waste Your Life. I actually led that study three times on the college level because I loved it so much.

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I listened to John Piper. I would go if there was one time John Piper was near me and I went to see him firsthand and actually

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I think when I saw him, that was kind of the beginning of the end for me because he made a statement in a Q &A that he thought driving a car that was new or buying a new car was a sin and I was like, what?

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And this started having this set me on a course to ask questions about what is it he really believes?

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So let me just give you a nugget, what I was getting from John Piper during this very transformational time of my life when

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I was a young man who had a lot of open questions. Who am I going to marry? Where am I going to live? What job am

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I going to have? And I wanted to be at the center of God's will. And I struggled with thinking that I wasn't spiritual enough and that's the reason that I'm not getting an answer from God on what his will is.

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And so Piper in Don't Waste Your Life gives a story about retirement and collecting seashells and how that's a wasted life.

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And I thought, I don't want to have a wasted life. I don't want to just be picking up seashells. I don't want to do things that are meaningless.

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I want to do things that have meaning, as a lot of young people who are idealistic think.

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And so I read the book and I adopted this

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Christian hedonist approach, which is that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

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And so I was constantly trying to be satisfied in God, trying to worship God, putting every activity, every thought, everything

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I did through this narrow channel of evaluation and looking at myself, navel gazing all the time.

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Instead of looking to God directly, I was always evaluating, am I really worshiping?

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Am I really satisfied in God? And often the answer was no. There was a few times it was yes.

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I felt like I had this great emotional, spiritual experience. And, you know, you live for those times.

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You want that high back. But so often I felt like I was short and I was apologizing all the time.

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Just confession all the time, because I thought if I was brushing my teeth and I wasn't thanking

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God in that moment, I was in sin. Now, you could say I didn't get that from Piper.

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Maybe not. Maybe, maybe I've taken things too far. Maybe that's what my problem was. But but I don't think it was just that.

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I read the book When I Don't Desire God. That really, I remember, resonated with me because I related to it.

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I thought, yeah, I don't feel like I desire God as much as I should. And I should just want God all the time and kind of like,

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I don't know, like live in this heightened spiritual euphoria. And I didn't sense that all the time.

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And I had already been influenced by thinkers who convinced me that everything was an act of worship, essentially, that there was no sacred, secular distinction at all.

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And so I think this was a recipe maybe for disaster in my own life, because I was constantly trying to be in a state of heightened spiritual experience and very frustrated with myself for not being there.

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And thinking I was enjoying maybe even the pleasures of the flesh by going fishing and not thanking

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God as I'm fishing, right, or, you know, activities that were commuting to work or even working, you know, became not important.

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I just had to do it to survive. And it was kind of like a necessary evil. But I was constantly looking for this, this higher level of being.

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And this is where I think the Christian hedonism can be, at the very least, an on -ramp to a form of gnosticism.

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And I know that term is thrown around way too often and too loosely. But I really think that if you are looking at the flesh and you're looking at the routine experiences of life as a negative, that's a problem.

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And this is, I think, partially what got me out of it is I did come to the conclusion that, you know, actually, a lot of the things

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I do in life are going to have a temporal purpose. A lot of the things like this morning, I was cleaning, my wife has a rabbit,

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I was cleaning the cage, I'm cleaning poop. And I'm not in deep prayer as I'm cleaning this poop, I'll be honest with you.

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I'm just going to say I'm a sinner. No, I don't think it was a sin. I mean, I'm a normal guy, right? I'm serving,

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I'm fulfilling a purpose. Now, you could try to stretch this and say, well, you're worshiping God because you're loving your wife and that's a command of God.

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OK, well, sure. But what about, I don't know, something I'm doing for myself directly?

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It's not even for my wife. You know, I'm cleaning my office out or something.

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I don't know, something that's routine, mundane, something that's a habit, something that, you know, it might not even be necessary, right?

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I have a little model I want to put together. Is that wrong? Is it wrong for me to be engaged in things that I just maybe enjoy?

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But so these questions years ago eventually got to me.

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And, you know, I realized that a lot of things I do in life, I do to the glory of God, but it's because I'm I'm doing them as an act of as an act of carrying out his general will.

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So taking dominion over the earth, creating culture, creating a an atmosphere in my own home.

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These are things even relaxing and enjoying recreation. I mean, these are things that don't have to be a super spiritual thing for them to be

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OK and even right to do. And a lot of things in life are like that, a lot of things in life are going to have purposes that aren't super spiritual.

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A lot of the time you're living, you're in fact, that's what makes the spiritual experiences seem so great, right, is the fact that you don't you're not always in them.

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You are you experience them at certain moments. And so it's like this, like life is kind of like you're driving and you're you're on the road and you're focusing on the road and you're driving and you're focusing on the road and it all kind of it can all look the same at times.

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And then you turn a bend and you see this beautiful mountain and it's you've gone to to to a different place in your mind.

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And maybe you're thanking God and you're seeing the glory of God and and you're reminded of who God is.

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And then you go back to driving, right? That's what a lot of life is like. There is a lot of mundane.

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There is a lot of habit. There is a lot of work to be done in the temporal world, physical work.

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There's nothing wrong with any of that. In fact, God wants us to have a good work ethic.

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He wants us to provide. He wants us to look to the ant, right? There's there's so many things that we do that aren't going to be the highest form of spiritual expression.

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And so I used to be so frustrated that I I couldn't live in that euphoria all the time. And I thought

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John Piper must have found out how to do it from, you know, maybe not all the time, but but a lot of the time.

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And if I just followed his example and didn't buy new cars, I might get there myself.

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And so I realize now that's just not the case, that that's a figment. And even the the people in the

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Bible that we read about, that their full time ministry, their job, essentially, they've given their lives like Paul to ministry.

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That wasn't even his life. He made tents at times. You know, there were there's a lot of time in the life of someone that is not going to be used for prayer and studying the scripture and in doing these these more spiritual things.

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And I think there is there is, in a sense, a secular sacred, not secular in the modern way it's used, but there is there is a difference.

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We'll put it that way between these activities we do that are routine that we do in the temporal world and then things like like one day out of seven we rest.

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That's the Sabbath. Right. Or the Day of the Lord, we call it. We you know, we we read at certain times of the day.

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I mean, what's the example David laid down? Right. I meditate day day and night. Right. There's there's a regularity to it, but it's not going to be.

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Look at David's life. It wasn't every moment. So if I could make a rule that just said not a rule, but like if I could if I could boil this down into a principle, it would be just be normal.

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I know that's really, really self -explanatory. And maybe maybe

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I could think about it deeply and come up with a better way to phrase that. But that really is where I came down.

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I realized just be normal. Come on. Like when I'm brushing my teeth, what am I doing? I'm trying to take care of the body

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God gave me. That's why I'm doing that. Do I have to be pressing it all through this narrow channel in my mind of like, thank you,

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Lord, so much for my teeth. And thank you, Lord, for this toothbrush and the means to buy the toothbrush. No, I could be thinking about what

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I want for dinner tomorrow as I'm brushing my teeth. And you know what? I'm still doing a good thing. So I don't know if that encourages or resonates with anyone.

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But that that was my my couple year, however many years it was, three, four years that I was very influenced by John Piper.

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And I had kind of an up and down ebb and flow. If I felt like I sinned too much, you know, I'd listen to Piper.

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I'd listen to Paul Washer and I'd have him yell at me so I could basically, I guess now I'm realizing, do penance so I could feel like I was yelled at and I had paid for it somehow, which is so terrible.

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Right. This is I realize now the grace of God covers the sin. It's it's Jesus Christ.

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And I want to look to him in those moments and not look to myself and be evaluating myself and whether I'm looking to him, if that makes sense.

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So it's not about trying to police myself so I look at him. It's actually just looking at him.

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Kind of like for justification, it's not believing in your belief. It's actually just believing in Christ.

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And and that may seem so simple, but it took me a few years to figure that out.

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And I'm in a much happier place and a much more stable place now having figured that out. I had some bouts with depression that I think were partially accelerated.

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By this, you know, not severe, severe, but just I really felt like God had abandoned me.

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He wasn't telling me where I should go work, who I should marry or where. Why isn't he telling me these things?

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And I had an expectation that just wasn't really that realistic. God gave me all the resources

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I needed to make those decisions. And he gave me a lot of different good options. I could have chosen a lot of different ways and it would have been perfectly fine.

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I think I mean, I think I'm in the will of the Lord. You look back and you realize you're the course

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Providence has taken you. But but I think that there was a number of non sinful choices that I could have made.

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And yeah, hopefully that helps someone out there who might be struggling with the same things. God bless.