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It Is Okay To Enjoy Your Life

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  • It Is Okay To Enjoy Your Life

    Is it a sin to have fun?

    The link can be found here.

    --------

    Can enjoyment help spread the Kingdom? Let's plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

    When I did my senior sermon in Bible College, I chose to talk about the theme of wonder. Why is it that we don't seem to have wonder in anything? Christian philosopher once said the great tragedy for the ancients was that they worshiped the sun, moon, and stars. Our great tragedy is we're not even tempted to.

    Don't get me wrong here. I'm not opposed to the scientific enterprise, but we've reached a point where if we think we can explain anything scientifically, it loses its fascination with us many times. Dan Barker relates an experience in Godless where he is riding with a relative who is trying to convince him of God and points to the beauty of the mountains. Barker responds by giving a scientific explanation of how mountains are formed. The relative takes this as a defeater. Why should it be? Cannot the mountains be the beautiful work of God that hold us in wonder and still be the result of a scientific process?

    When I preached the above sermon, someone beforehand hearing about what I was speaking on had told me about a then recent cover of Moody magazine with the question "Is it right to enjoy my life?" Yes. Someone had to honestly ask that and someone had to honestly write an article saying it is no sin to enjoy your life.

    Of course, this doesn't equal traditional hedonism. Don't go and do something just because it's fun. At the same time, don't think something is sinful just because it's fun. Dare I say it, but one of the great slams you could give to the evil one would be to rightfully enjoy your life?

    Why? Because we believe every good and perfect gift comes from God. That means that we ought to enjoy these things. 1 Tim. 6:17 even says this explicitly. God supplies us with all things richly for our enjoyment. This applies to the natural world that we see, but it also implies to the things that we create. We can enjoy a good movie, book, TV show, artwork, hobby, etc.

    When we enjoy them, we are delighting in the gifts of God. There is so much around us every day and we are showing the proper gratitude for them. Boredom is not the idea of God. Boredom is more the idea of the evil one. It is the idea of saying that there is nothing here worth being excited about.

    It's odd because we think the devil is behind pleasure. He's not. Pleasure is a tool for the enemy only if it will keep us from the greatest pleasure, knowing God. This is because we usually see God as a killjoy who is opposed to our fun. If there's any area of life where this is shown clearest, it's in sexuality.

    Something about sex is that while it has many purposes, one such purpose is pleasure. Sex was meant to be enjoyable for a man and a woman. A woman even has a clitoris just for the purpose that she can enjoy sex. I remember hearing years ago the saying that the devil will do anything he can to make a couple have sex before they're married, and after they're married he'll do anything he can to keep them from having sex. Loving sex in a committed marital union that binds the man and the woman together is something that builds up trust and intimacy and something the evil one would not want. One of the best gifts you could give the Kingdom of God if you're married is a happy and thriving marriage.

    Sadly, Christians have earned the reputation of being opposed to anything enjoyable. How many of us have heard this kind of testimony? "Well, I used to go out and party, get drunk, hang out with beautiful women and have a lot of sex, but now I am a Christian and I don't do any of that stuff." A lot of non-Christians in the audience would be saying "Sounds like you lost out." They're not right, but can we understand how when we phrase it that way, that they could have a point?

    To this day, I can remember being in a Sunday School class with a friend of mine and hearing the teacher say with a finger pointing and in the most monotone way that I can imitate to this day "The Christian life should be the most exciting life of all." He was right in what he said, but horribly wrong in how he said it. There was nothing exciting about it. The dry tone made us think that he couldn't have been listening to himself.

    I'm not at all advocating a materialistic hedonism or anything like that, but I am saying we Christians need to do some serious thinking about the role of pleasure in our lives. It is no sin to enjoy the world God created. It is no sin to delight in the things He has made. We could say if anything is sin, it is the opposite. It is sin to not appreciate and delight in what He has made.

    So for me, I want to make it that part of my witness to the world is that I enjoy being a Christian and I delight in it. I love what I do, including being in the field of Christian apologetics, and I love that I'm married to the woman that I love. These give me enough reason to wake up and be thankful every day. My life has meaning because I am part of the grand story that God is creating and my life is not a punishment. It is a gift.

    I think I'll treat it like one.

    In Christ,
    Nick Peters

  • #2
    I've heard it said as a joke that Christians don't approve of fun, but it is hard for me to believe that a Christian would take that position. I enjoy life so much more now that I am a believer. I have said to people on occasion, "I was without Christ for the first 30 some years of my life, I know how much better life is with Christ having lived without him so long.

    Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
      Christian philosopher once said the great tragedy for the ancients was that they worshiped the sun, moon, and stars. Our great tragedy is we're not even tempted to.
      There is a middle ground : having the kind of view of them that the ancients had and consider them, very resolutely, as servants.

      NOT crediting them with angelic movers will not help an atheist who really wants to worship them, see the videos of philhellene and also, notably, Lawrence Krauss "a star died so that you can live".

      As to the question in general, as a Catholic I agree.

      After sin the worst thing which can happen to your soul is sadness./St Francis of Sales.

      - What would you do if you knew you would die within an hour? - Go on with the ballgame and play as well as possible./answer by St Aloysius Gonzaga

      AND : Enjoy yourself as much as you like - if only you keep from sin./St John Bosco
      http://notontimsblogroundhere.blogspot.fr/p/apologetics-section.html

      Thanks, Sparko, for telling how I add the link here!

      Comment


      • #4
        I misread the title - I've already been enjoying my wife!
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • #5
          Proverbs 5:18
          Micah 6:8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
            I misread the title - I've already been enjoying my wife!
            It is definitely okay to enjoy your wife!

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
              Proverbs 5:18
              Every Christian husband has this verse memorized.

              Comment


              • #8
                LeoGats.jpg

                Comment


                • #9
                  Life is a gift. Gifts are meant to be enjoyed and appreciated.
                  sigpic

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Did you say life or wife?

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Lifeebas. I am not married.
                      sigpic

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Okay. Wife. Got it.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Apologiaphoenix View Post
                          Did you say life or wife?
                          yes
                          The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            One influence in Christian history that I think contributes to the notion that Christians should not enjoy life is the writings of the church father Clement of Alexandria. Harold Roellig (who I largely disagree with) picked out a few excerpts from his writings that illustrate this:


                            (Food) is to be simple, truly plain... We must therefore reject different varieties, which engender various mischiefs, such as a depraved habit of body and disorders of the stomach, the taste being vitiated by an unhappy art, that of cookery and the useless art of making pastry...
                            Dyeing of clothes is to be rejected. For it is remote both from necessity and truth, in addition to the fact that reproach in manners spring from it...
                            He then went on to write an extended essay about the appropriateness of smiling and laughter, concluding that a stern look was generally more appropriate, and specifically giving rules for how hiccuping was to be done.

                            Also of interest:
                            But above all, it seems right that we turn away from the sight of women. For it is sin not only to touch, but to look, and he who is rightly trained must especially avoid them. "Let thine eyes look straight and thine eyelids look right."
                            All of these are from Clement's The Instructor, reprinted in Roellig's The More Excellent Way.
                            "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                              One influence in Christian history that I think contributes to the notion that Christians should not enjoy life is the writings of the church father Clement of Alexandria. Harold Roellig (who I largely disagree with) picked out a few excerpts from his writings that illustrate this:






                              He then went on to write an extended essay about the appropriateness of smiling and laughter, concluding that a stern look was generally more appropriate, and specifically giving rules for how hiccuping was to be done.

                              Also of interest:

                              All of these are from Clement's The Instructor, reprinted in Roellig's The More Excellent Way.

                              Comment

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