appointed suffering & how we are missing the boat

[Driven1]

I'm reading the amazing work of "Desiring God" by John Piper. Read the amazon reviews. They say it all. I'm in agreement with the reviewers who state it is the most influential non-canonical book they've ever read. Skipping around in it right now. Several of us are also doing a small study on it from front to back. Anyway - all I'd like to do today is give you part of the book where Piper talks about the appointment of suffering in the Christian's life. And how he is struck by the "unbelievable indictment against Western Christianity" that this verse has struck him as. Enjoy.

1 Cor 15:19 - "If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

"...Christianity as Paul understands it is not the best way to maximize pleasure if this life is all there is. Paul tells us the best way to maximize our pleasures if this life is all there is. Paul tells us the best way to maximize our pleasure in this life: "If the dead are not raised, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.' (1 Cor 15:32). He does not mean something as naive as sheer Epicureanism or debauchery. That is not the best way to maximize your pleasures, as anyone knows who has followed the path of alcholism and gluttony. Drunks and gluttons are to be pitied just like Christians if there is no resurrection.

But what he does mean by the phrase "Let us eat and drink" is that without the hope of resurrection, one should pursue ordinary pleasures and avoid extaordinary suffering. This ist he life Paul has rejected as a Christian. Thus, if the dead are not raised, and if there is no God and no heaven, he would not have pummeled his body the way he did. He would not have turned down wages for his tentmaking the way he did. He would not have walked into five whippings of thirty-nine lashes. He would not have endured three beatings with rods. He would not have risked his life in deserts and rivers and cities and seas at the hands of robbers and angry mobs. He would not have accepted sleepless nights and cold and exposure. He would not have endured so long with backsliding and hypocritical Christians (2 Cor 11:23-29). Instead, he would have simply lived the good life of comfort and ease as a respectable Jew with the prerogatives of Roman citizenship.


When Paul says, "If the dead are not raised, let us eat and drink," he does not mean "Let's all become lechers." He means there is a normal, simple, comfortable, ordinary life of human delights that we may enjoy with no troubling thoughts of heaven or hell or sin or holiness or God - if there is no resurrection from the dead. And what stunned me about this train of thought is that many of the professing Christans seem to aim at just this - and call it Christianity.

Paul did not see his relation to Christ as the key to maximizing his physical comforts and pleasures in this life. No, Paul's relation to Christ was a call to choose suffering - a suffering that was beyond what would make atheism "meaningful" or "beautiful" or "heroic". It was a suffering that would have been utterly foolish and pitiable to choose if there is no resurrection into the joyful presence of Christ.

In Paul's radically different viewpoint I saw an almost unbearable indictment of Western Christianity. Am I overstating this? Judge for yourself. How many Christians do you know who could say "The lifestyle I have chosen as a Christian would be utterly foolish and pitiable if there is no resurrection"?

I say it again: The call of Christ is a call to live a life of sacrifice and loss and suffering - a life that would be foolish to live if there were not resurrection from the dead.