Not every hedonist is stretched out in the sun, skin as orange as Hulk Hogan’s, quaffing endless daiquiris
and enjoying the unwavering attention of blondes in bikinis. Not at all.
The red-eyed, coke-nosed, nightclubbing roué
is always easy to pick out of a crowd. Blatant dissipation has a certain look to it. It’s a look often accompanied by pickled livers, deteriorated septa and a pressing need for drugs with names that end in -cillin.
But there is a less-talked-about and much
more amiable variety of hedonism that often goes undetected. The neighbour who
just shoveled your driveway may have hedonistic leanings. Your hard-working
best friend might be a closet hedonist too.
That lady who’s always fundraising for the church
down the street? A total hedonist.
Amiable hedonism doesn’t obviously erode the fabric of society; on the contrary, it may appear to support it. It doesn’t declare its self-interest with fanfare and neon displays. Sure, a hedonistic lifestyle may be fun for the person living it, but it is not necessarily indolent. It’s possible to be hedonistically hard-working, hedonistically athletic or hedonistically sociable. It’s possible to pass for an altruist or a religious obsessive, yet still be be rankly hedonistic at heart.
By definition a hedonist is anyone whose life is devoted to the pursuit of pleasure and self-gratification.
It comes from the Greek hedone,
meaning “pleasure”, “delight” or “sweetness”. The English word “hedonist” was coined to describe the follower of ethical systems (such as
Epicureanism) in which any sort of pleasure ranks as the highest good.
Think about that for a bit. Pleasure, by
definition, is in the eye of the beholder. You get to say what the word “pleasure”
means to you. Nobody else can define it for you. The thing that gives you
pleasure may not be the thing that gives me pleasure. An activity that makes me
feel gratified and gives me a sense of well-being may be something entirely
socially acceptable, even frequently praised. The thing that gives you the
greatest gratification and pleasure may be something I consider trivial, tedious,
stuffy or old fashioned and pointless.
Hedonism is about motivations, not actions.
Amiable Hedonism and the Will of God
Amiable hedonism is not about what particular
activity I’m engaged in at any given time; it’s about the fact that I’m engaged
in it primarily because it suits me.
For the amiable hedonist, the will of God
doesn’t enter into the major decisions of daily life. If the hedonist appears outwardly
decent and moral, it is because it pleases him to live that way or because the
reaction of others to his apparent morality and decency gives him a good
feeling. He may not deliberately order his life in opposition to the will of God; it
simply doesn’t occur to him to take God’s purposes for him into serious
consideration.
The Not-So-Amiable Hedonist
Hedonism starts with the words “I will”.
In prophesying against the king of Babylon,
Isaiah aptly illustrates the thinking that led to the spiritual downfall of the
original Day Star, Lucifer:
“How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!
How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!
You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven;
above the stars of God I will set my throne on high;
I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north;
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’ ”
That’s a lot of “I wills”, and it’s a lot more ambitious than most human hedonists are inclined to be. But at some point
Lucifer decided that the thing that would give him the most pleasure in all the
universe — the thing that would be most personally gratifying to him —
would be for Lucifer to be Number One.
What God might have wanted from him instead
never entered into it. And so he became the prototype for every human hedonist
to follow.
Satanic hedonism is the farthest thing from
amiable. It is transparently self-interested, power hungry and willful, and naturally
so: Isaiah is giving us God’s righteous perspective on Satan’s rebellion. From
Satan’s perspective, the same thought process would surely be portrayed in a much
more flattering and apparently reasonable light.
That’s what you’d expect from a serpent, after all.
That’s what you’d expect from a serpent, after all.
The Practical Hedonist
The amiable hedonist channels the same Luciferian spirit, but in a much more socially acceptable way. Still, the prioritization of personal gratification is just as repellent to God in human beings as it was in the guardian cherub.
Luke records the Lord’s parable of a rich fool:
“The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”
Do you notice he’s got only one less “I will” in his monologue than Satan himself, despite his intentions seeming (to us) a lot less obviously offensive?
After all, from our human perspective, this
amiable but very practical hedonist is not doing anything really wrong, is he? He’s not a rebel.
He’s not starting a spiritual insurrection. He’s kind of a proto-capitalist,
actually. He’s working hard, to all outward appearances blessed by God in his
business and even showing foresight by planning for the future.
And yet God calls him a fool. His
priorities are backward. He thinks the goal of all of life is to be described
with the words, “Eat, drink, be merry”, and in this he is sadly mistaken.
“I will” doesn’t have to be set directly
and intentionally against God to be worthy of judgment. Amiable hedonism is still
just as hedonistic at its core.
Recognizing the Amiable Hedonist
Can this be you? Can this be me?
I’d like to think it isn’t, but I’m not all
that confident. Far too much of my life is concerned with what I’d like and how
I feel. Far too many of my decisions are made with my own interests at the
forefront. Far too much of my time is spent on things that, five minutes
after I leave this life, will be of no consequence not only to me but to anyone
else in the world.
That’s not a comfortable thought.
How do you recognize
an amiable hedonist? He or she becomes notably less amiable whenever the
suggestion is made that a different set of priorities might be in order.
No comments :
Post a Comment