Desiring God - Review
This is my final review for Desiring God by John Piper. The book is subtitled “Meditations of a Christian Hedonist.”
Overall, I thought this book was very good. I found the biggest weakness to be that Piper often goes into too much detail. I found myself getting bogged down in the first half of the book as Piper was working to defend his thesis. I found the second half to be much more enjoyable and fruitful. The second half involved more application and how this affects our lives in areas such as marriage, money, and suffering.
John Piper has also written a much shorter book entitled The Dangerous Duty of Delight. It is a condensed version of Desiring God. It is rare that I find the shorter version of a book better, but I think in this case that I like the condensed version better. Perhaps that comes from the fact that I already respect John Piper, so he does not have to convince me of his thesis.
The main message of the book is that “God is most glorified in me when I am most satisfied in Him.” Piper begins with defining exactly what he means by a Christian Hedonist. The main verse that Piper uses to sum up the book is Nehemiah 8:10 (The joy of the Lord is your strength). Piper teaches us to be thoroughly and completely satisfied in God and God alone. Piper’s ultimate goal is for us to find our joy and true happiness in God.
You can not argue with Piper’s theology. He has a very high view of God and His sovereignty. He firmly believes that God controls all things. Piper is more than willing to tackle tough topics in his book such as the problem of evil and face it head-on. Piper’s greatest strength is that he explains things in such a way to make sure that he is not misunderstood. However, that does cause the book to get lengthy as I stated above.
Piper also does a good job in his book of correcting many misunderstandings in the present church. We have a tendency to take thinking to the extreme and into error. Piper elegantly walks a tightrope in order to keep beliefs and practices in proper balance. Some examples of this are that it is okay to want to feel happy, but he also makes sure that we are looking to the right source for that happiness. He tells us it is okay to want to enjoy serving others instead of thinking it is not service if we enjoy it. I could give you many examples.
Piper really hammers the reader that we are not to worship and serve God out of mere duty. We are to worship and serve out of love and an overflow of joy in our lives.
Piper ends the main text of his book with a chapter on suffering. I found this point very convicting. Piper says that we should be living our Christian life in such a way that if Christ is not real that our life was a waste. That is very interesting. A lot of what we hear from modern Evangelicalism is that we should give Christ a try. We hear that He will make our life better. It is really a “what could it hurt” type of thing. Piper says that based upon 1 Corinthians 15:19 that our Christian lives should be lived in such a way that we are making sacrifices and going through pains that we would never endure if Jesus were not the Christ.
Piper finishes up his book with several appendices to further expand on some of his points in this book.
If you are looking for good theology, I would recommend reading this book. Piper is an excellent theologian. I would rarely disagree with his interpretations and conclusions. He is always ready and prepared to back up any statement he makes with plenty of scripture.
Finally, Piper suggests revising the great statement from the Westminster Catechism to read, “The chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.” This pretty much sums up the book.