Pleasure Misplaced – ChurchEdge

In THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS, C.S. Lewis writes an imaginary exchange between a senior devil and his pupil on the subject of pleasure:

He (God) made the pleasures: all our research so far has not
enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the
humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at
times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden. Hence
we always try to work away from the natural condition of any
pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of
its Maker, and least pleasurable. An ever increasing craving for
an ever diminishing pleasure is the formula.(1)

Any pleasure — whether good or illegitimate — will enslave us when we turn it into our life’s utmost pursuit. Hunger for even the simple pleasure of food can become a life-dominating drive. The first temptation of Jesus in the desert was to fulfill a perfectly legitimate bodily need. He was naturally hungry, having fasted for forty days and nights, when Satan suggested that he turn stones into bread. Today, we wrestle with the same suggestion from Satan: WHAT’S WRONG WITH FULFILLING NORMAL BODILY NEEDS? DIDN’T GOD MAKE YOU THIS WAY?

Yet Satan’s temptation is to reduce humans’ ultimate pursuit to merely one of pleasure — the idea that sensual pleasure drives all of our motivations and needs. Jesus responded with Scripture: “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (Matthew 4:4). By reiterating this truth, Jesus replaces Satan’s view with the proper WILL TO MEANING view. As humans, we cannot live on food alone. We must have meaning and purpose to survive. In his experience in a Nazi concentration camp, psychologist Victor Frankl discovered that when men lost meaning they quickly died. Mankind needs a transcendent reason to continue striving against the struggles that life presents.

Now this is not to say that there is no value in pleasure or that pleasure is not a legitimate goal. But pleasure can become a distraction or digression in the serious quest for life. When pleasure or the pursuit of it begins to distract us from life’s ultimate goal, it can become an idol of the heart — not just something we might worship, but something we rely on to give us some sense of security, however fleeting.

A problem that has emerged along with the growing affluence of society is the desire for immediate gratification. Short-term pleasure is given priority over lasting satisfaction. The expectation of immediate gratification not only moves us beyond genuine needs, it also just as quickly lowers our threshold of thrill. As a result, we are on a constant search for the next high that comes from either a pleasurable experience or the acquisition of something new.

Yet clearly the route of unbridled pleasure is not the course that will lead us to where our souls seek to go. In his book HERETICS, Chesterton remarks, “The carpe diem religion is not the religion of happy people, but of very unhappy people. Great joy does not gather the rosebuds while it may; its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw.” Any pleasure, however good, if not kept in balance will distort reality and lead us into believing that pleasure is the ultimate end we are seeking. Some of us who are aware of this danger have instead gone to the other extreme of denying ourselves of the sheer delight and pleasure that God has made possible for us. Ravi Zacharias rightly concludes that, “The closer we get to legitimate pleasures the closer we are to God. In fact, all legitimate pleasure is a gift from God.”

The pleasures of everyday life, if received rightly and accepted as God’s gift to us, can point us towards the transcendent, towards God Himself. What we need is the wisdom in dealing with that which can so easily seize our hearts. The point is not to avoid or deny desire (as Buddha would teach), but to desire and enjoy pleasure in its proper context: pleasure is a means, not an end. Every pleasure that is sought as an end in itself ultimately ceases to deliver, and the aching void in our soul persists.

Joy is the greater end, the joy of knowing God and living for Him. It is also this joy that will give us the wisdom in keeping our pursuit for pleasure in check. God does not want us to be rid of pleasure (after all, he created it!), but to experience all things in view of who God is and what pleasure is according to the one who made it.

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1. C.S. Lewis, THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), p. 44.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #5015]