Rick Segal: In this session, we’re going to talk about the future of Christian Hedonism. When we conceived of Godward Life, our talented graphic designer, Bob Goebel, created this image. There’s intentionality in that wood slab, that section from a tree, where all the generations of that tree’s life were represented there. Is this a movement? Is this a following? We’re having a hard time putting definitions on that, but what we do know is that God used his servant John Piper from this pulpit. Some of you have been exposed to this teaching for forty years. Some of you are encountering it for the first time.

We have with us three important leaders: Marshall Segal, the president and CEO of Desiring God Ministries; Dr. John Piper, the founder-teacher of Desiring God Ministries and the chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary; and Dr. Brian Tabb, the president of Bethlehem College and Seminary. And we have Richard A. Segal, MD (which stands for “Marshall’s dad”).

History of Christian Hedonism

Pastor John, this is a gathering for serious joy, and as we were just talking, serious joy emerges as kind of a shorthand for the perhaps more complicated expression of Christian Hedonism. So, it’s reasonable to say that this is a gathering of people who have been influenced, moved, engaged, changed, and mobilized by your teaching on this idea. And there are those in the audience today who may be encountering it this weekend for the very first time. Now, we’ve spoken to it throughout this conference, but could you help us briefly understand what Christian Hedonism is, how this notion came to you, and what you’ve sought to do with it with your ministry?

Piper: Hedonism is a term that, if you look it up in the Webster’s 11th Collegial Dictionary — which is what I was given in 1963 — has a definition that says, “A life devoted to the pursuit of pleasure.” I said, “That’s it, that’s my life.” Another one was, I think, “A life or principle that believes that nothing should be pursued other than if it gives pleasure.”

Now that sounds really controversial for a lot of people, but nobody walked out when Brian Hansen said that it is a Christian duty to pursue contentment, which is exactly the same thing — unless you have a fancy definition of contentment that rules out the pursuit of pleasure. I don’t. All these words — glad, pleasure, happy, joy, satisfaction — to me they all refer to the same thing. Try to do a biblical study on the language of pleasure and think, “Oh, happiness is a thin, light, temporary thing — and joy, that’s a deep abiding thing.” That’s a lot of baloney. They do not make those distinctions. They are all wonderful, durable, good feelings if you put Christian on the front of it, which I did with the phrase Christian Hedonism. So, I believe that it is a Christian’s duty to purse happiness. C.S. Lewis wrote that to Sheldon Vanauken in A Severe Mercy: “You know, Sheldon, that it is a Christian duty to be as happy as you can be.”

Now I think that must take eternity into account. I don’t think your goal is to be as happy as you can be today leaving out eternity, because you may have to die today to be happy in eternity. You may have to deny yourself many things today to be happy in eternity. And so, self-denial is a huge part of Christian Hedonism. But Jesus’s argument — and C.S. Lewis made this really clear in the life-changing quotes — is that you don’t deny yourself ultimately; you deny yourself temporary, short-lived satisfactions in order to gain your life. The argument in Mark 8 on self-denial is “Deny yourself this in order that you might save your life forever.” So that’s what I’m after. One of Edwards’s resolutions was, “To provide for myself as much happiness as I possibly can in the other world.”

So, the fundamental premise and teaching of Christian Hedonism is that it is a Christian duty to never renounce the pursuit of joy in life. And to put it negatively, if you try to renounce the pursuit of joy, you will make worship impossible, and you will make love for people impossible. That’s vertical hedonism and horizontal hedonism. You’ll make worship impossible because God is most glorified in you when you are most satisfied in him. If you try to knock on heaven’s door and he says, “Why should I let you in?” and you say, “Because I dutifully went to church every Sunday,” or whatever, it won’t happen. Or if you say, “I believed in Jesus,” he might say, “What do you mean you believed in Jesus?” If you don’t say, “He was my treasure. He was my all. I want to be with him,” or something like that, you won’t go in. You won’t get in. If Christ is not your treasure, if he’s not the thing that will make you happiest, you won’t get in.

God wants to be made much of by being treasured above all things, and that means being your supreme pleasure. That’s the vertical argument. After the sentence, “It is the Christian duty to be as happy as you can be forever,” everything else is argument. And the first argument is, “God is most glorified in you when you most satisfied him.” So, if somebody says to you, “Why are you a Christian Hedonist?” you should say, “Because I live for the glory of God.” But don’t say, “When I live for the glory of God, that makes me happy.” That’s not it. It’s “When I seek happiness in God, he gets glory.” It’s my rose story. You knock on the door and your wife wonders why you brought her flowers for your anniversary. And if you say, “It’s my duty. That’s what husbands are supposed to do — bring flowers,” that’s not a good answer. But if you say, “Nothing makes me happier than to spend the evening with you,” she likes that answer, and she doesn’t call you selfish because it honors her. It’s the same thing with God.

If you knock on God’s door, and you offer him flowers, and he says, “Why did you?” and you say, “It’s my duty because I read it in the Bible,” he won’t like that answer. But if you say, “Nothing makes happier than just being in eternity with you,” that will be an honor to him, and you will be admitted, and he’ll have a very good evening with you. So that’s vertical.

Here’s one more comment, and I’ll stop and see if you want to go further. The horizontal hedonism came later. So, in 1968, I went to seminary, and the first edition of Desiring God was published in 1986. Dr. Fuller assigned us to read The Weight of Glory by C.S. Lewis. This is Lewis:

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that is a notion crept in by from [Immanuel] Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (26)

In the fall of 1968, that sentence changed my life. I thought, “Oh, all my issues, all my problems in my life are not owing to wanting to be happy.” I really had the notion my problem was that I was selfish. I wanted to be happy, and I couldn’t stop wanting to be happy any more than I could stop wanting to eat. And he says, “No, no, your problem is not that you want to be happy. Your problem is that you’re too easily made happy.” So true. We’re fooling about with mud pies in the slums because the world cannot imagine God. It can’t. You try to show them that you have more pleasure in God than in the mud pies of the world, and they don’t get it. They just can’t get it. And you’ve got to pray that their eyes would be opened.

I published an article in HIS magazine, which is gone now. It was an InterVarsity magazine, and I think it was 1977 or so when I published this article called “Dissatisfied Contentment.” It was about horizontal Christian Hedonism. Because somebody would say to me, “Oh, so you’re just calling people to find satisfaction in God — vertical hedonism. Go sit out under a tree and let the world go to hell in a handbasket. You and God are happy as you can be, but you don’t give a rip about anybody. Just you and God. Happy, happy, happy.”

That is a very serious criticism because, if anything, the Bible — which is the most important book — is all about how to become loving people toward people. And so, the last piece that fell into place for me was the discovery that “it is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35) — more blessed to give than to receive. You will be a more deeply happy person in God if you draw other people into your enjoyment of God. Here’s the picture. I don’t know much about meteorology, but I picture a high-pressure zone and a low-pressure zone. And the high-pressure zone is me and my happiness in God. The low-pressure zone is people who are dying and going to hell, and they are in need. They’re in the low-pressure zone.

When a high-pressure zone comes near a low-pressure zone (in my meteorology), wind happens. If there’s this high-pressure zone, it goes whoosh. Now what is that? That’s called love. Because what the high-pressure zone is trying to do is fill up the low-pressure zone with what it has. Which is why, if you try to say, “I’m not pursuing joy,” you won’t love people. What do you have to give them? If you don’t find supreme pleasure in God, what are you offering? But if you have supreme pleasure in God, and you know that God’s pleasure is the kind of pleasure that grows as it includes others in it, then you have horizontal hedonism as well as vertical hedonism. I’ll stop there. I did write a paper about this, you know. I knew that question was coming.

R. Segal: But not from me. You didn’t know it from me.

Piper: I have a lot of other things to say, but I know you want to talk about the history and the future.

Drawn into a God-Centered Orbit

R. Segal: Right. I think eighteen years ago I was reading a book by Newt Gingrich in which he made the statement that Jonathan Edwards was the least respected or least appreciated among the American founding fathers. And that struck me at the time as strange. I would never have put Edwards among the other American founders. And I had enough respect for Gingrich as a historian to say, “Well, he must mean something by that. I obviously need to learn more about Jonathan Edwards.”

About all I knew about Jonathan Edwards at the time was his authorship of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which was served up to me in an American literature course in a public-school system — I think (in retrospect) only that I might despise the Puritans all the more by the time I got to The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible. And so, providentially, the very next week I walked into the old Borders bookstore, and there on the New Arrivals table was a book entitled God’s Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards, by John Piper. It was an author of whom I’d never heard anything.

I brought the book home, and as is our practice, Adrien and I were sitting in chairs next to each other, reading our books. This was a thin little book. Half of it includes some observations by Pastor John; the other half is a sermon by Edwards. I’d been in the faith for eighteen years at that point, but it was a book that caused me to keep stopping her from reading what she was and saying, “Listen to this. Listen to what he says here.” And then she’d be reading, and I would say, “Hold on a second; let me read this to you.” And this went on through the evening until I finally said, “Why has no one told us? Why has no one told us any of these things?” And I was drawn into an orbit. I was drawn into this orbit at that time. President Tabb, how were you drawn into this orbit?

Brian Tabb: I was drawn into this orbit and first became exposed to Christian Hedonism through my college pastor, who was preaching through Philippians and talking about joy and who used the language of Christian Hedonism. And then I picked up a number of titles by Pastor John, including Don’t Waste Your Life. It was really the little book The Supremacy of God in Preaching that really did it. I meant to bring my ugly mustard-colored copy from my office, but I forgot. The book starts and concludes by saying people are starving. There is a famine. They’re starving for God, and they don’t know it. So, it’s the duty of preachers to tell them. They must say, “Behold your God. I’ve been in the sanctuary beholding his power and glory. Here he is.” I said, “I want to do that with my life.” And then a couple of years later I moved to Minneapolis and started studying here, and one thing led to another.

Piper: Now you’re president.

Tabb: And I’m still here. And I still love it.

R. Segal: Marshall, what about you? How did you get drawn this orbit?

Marshall Segal: Well, my father was reading Newt Gingrich. He respected him as a historian . . . No, at the same time, I was at Wake Forest University when this was happening, as a college student. My first interaction was at the Passion conference, which is a big part of the history, I think, of how this vision of God has spread. It’s Pastor John’s presence there and other college events. But I went to Passion with some friends from Wake Forest, and Pastor John gave a message on how God sovereignly works through our suffering for his glory. Christian Hedonism was in there, God’s sovereignty was there, and suffering was there — a lot of these pieces that worked together in this vision of God. It was the first time I’d ever heard anybody preach like that or talk about the Bible that way. He was talking about incredibly severe texts and things going on in the world at that time, but his joy in the Lord was so manifest, almost tastable, if you felt it again last night. I knew I wanted to learn more.

And so, I picked up Desiring God the book and tried to read it but couldn’t get through it. I don’t know if anyone has had that experience. I mentioned that to somebody that I knew was a Piper appreciator, and they said, “Oh, you should read God Is the Gospel.” So, I read that book instead, and everything clicked into place for me there. And I still have a page dog-eared in that original copy I had, where he’s talking about heaven. I won’t get it exactly, but to paraphrase, he said, “Christ is the prize of heaven. He’s what makes heaven heaven. And anyone who would be happy in heaven if he weren’t there won’t be there.”

I just remember, at nineteen or twenty years old, reading that and thinking, “Would I be happy if it was my friends, and my family, and basketball, and great food, and all my favorite shows and movies, and Jesus just bowed out?” And it was devastating and then thrilling because it was the truth that this God meant to satisfy me, not just save me. I just knew in this gospel I was supposed to live for God’s glory, and I fell short of that glory. Christ came and died for me so that I could be forgiven and then empowered to obey. And then one day I would go to heaven and be happy. And now that happiness was just wrenched into everyday life from here until glory. And so that was my first interaction with it.

Magnetic for the Young

R. Segal: Related to your responses, I would say that as one who has sought to observe what has been going on during the time I was drawn into all of this, there’s something about this idea that through it all has been particularly magnetic to the young. And maybe you can start on why you think that is so. You guys are still younger fellows than we are, and it was magnetic to you as younger men and it continues to be magnetic to young people today. Why do you think that’s so?

Piper: I hadn’t thought that it was more magnetic to young people than older people, so I’m just trying to process that. I do know that I was invited for twenty years to speak at Passion for some weird reason. I’m the only person who wore a color like this. I was the old guy every year, and I wondered, Why did they have me? Because nobody else is old here. There must be something to that because they kept inviting me back. So, here’s the guess: I awakened something in them because as a college student you are craving to figure out life, and at the center of the craving is the craving to be happy. That’s the craving of all cravings. You might crave a wife, or you might crave a job, but really, you want a wife that makes you happy, and you want a job that makes you happy. Happiness is the craving of all cravings. And it felt wrong. It lay in the air that to be driven — people thought, “This is just bad. You’re bad, Piper.”

So, you’re constantly trying to subdue it because Jesus said, “Deny yourself.” You’re trying to push this thing down as an eighteen- or twenty-year-old. You push it down, and it just pops up again. There’s just no way you can push down the desire to be happy. It is as much a part of human nature as the hunger for food. I had to have an answer, and God gave me that when I was 22. It took me till 22, and the pieces began to come together.

So, my guess is that as I unfold this deep sense of, “You know God lives for his glory. That’s what your mom said. That’s what it says in 1 Corinthians 10:31: ‘Whatever you do, whether you eat, whether you drink, do it for the glory of God.’ You know that, and you have no idea how it fits together with your craving to be happy.” And they say, “That’s right, I don’t. But because I know that’s what the Bible says, and I know that’s what my stomach says, and I don’t know how they go together, I want to know.” I have spent my life trying to put the glory of God and the craving for happiness together, and maybe that’s why it had a special power.

R. Segal: Why don’t you two jump in there, because you get a lot of young people still subscribing and following the messaging from Desiring God. You get a lot of young people lining up to be part of the school. What are your observations? Apart from what John said, do you have any observations regarding why it’s so magnetic to the young?

Tabb: I think it relates to that quote from C.S. Lewis that Pastor John read earlier about how we’re half-hearted creatures. I think as young people see that — the shallowness, the frivolity, the here-today-gone-tomorrow mentality. There’s a desire for something that’s more substantial, more lasting, and more purposeful, along with grabbing hold of God as he really is, as he’s revealed himself in his word.

There’s also I think a growing ambition to do something great with our lives, to live for what matters, to live for what counts — not just to default pursue the American dream or something else, but to spend them for something. So, I think that that gospel ambition tied with the awakening to the greatness of God has been a part of that. Certainly, we see it with Bethlehem students. That’s certainly part of my own story of “I want to give myself to that.” And I’d love that to be thousands of people’s stories.

M. Segal: Yeah, I think that ambition point is a really good one. My wife and I have done ministry now for our ten years of marriage with college- and post-college-age folks, and they are wrestling with some of the biggest questions. “What I’m going to invest in my life in?” They want something big enough to give their life to, so I think there’s an appetite there. But they’re just open to learning in a way that I think as we get older, you see less and less. There’s less of an appetite to learn and have your mind changed and redirected. And part of what I’ve admired is that, as much as Don’t Waste Your Life is a book that’s done so well among high school graduates and college graduates, that’s a book for fifty-year-olds, sixty-year-olds, and seventy-year-olds. And we’ve heard the stories — some of you are the stories — of having this vision break into your life and totally redirect it to the mission field, to the pastorate, to some other ministry in a powerful way.

So, I do think that there’s a crossroads in that early part of life where we’re trying to answer so many things, and you get a compelling vision of God, and that changes all the roads, all the decisions, and all the commitments. All the relationships are impacted by this kind of vision.

Piper: One more thing that came to my mind while they were talking is that I’m a really serious guy when I talk. I’ve preached for fifty years and never once told a joke in a sermon — not one. When I went to the Campus Outreach annual meeting and I signed on with Louie and said, “Okay, I’ll come,” my first impression was that they didn’t do any skits. There were about twenty thousand college students and no skits. Then there were forty thousand and no skits. They weren’t funny. They sang God-centered worship songs, and they had God-centered preaching — one old guy — and it was all happily serious. I think young people are tired of skits. They think, “Stop treating me that way. All you youth leaders think you’ve got to do rah-rah fun and games, and you don’t give me anything to die for.” I think young people want, “Could you tell me what’s worth dying for?” Maybe that’s part of it.

Becoming John Piper

R. Segal: You’ve told us about how this vision came to you, this vision of God, this vision of happiness in God and a God-centered life for God’s sake and for his glory, and for the joy that comes to us in that kind of life. You went into a classroom at Bethel and started to teach that idea. Tom Steller is wandering around with the typewritten page that says, “Here’s when he first shared it. It was in this paper with his class.”

And then you came to this pulpit and preached for all those years, sharing it Sunday after Sunday after Sunday, in different ways, from the word of God. And something happened. Something happened from that that transcends this local congregation and this local pulpit. I remember —maybe it was in the context of talking about coming to answer the calling here to serve. I remember you saying to me one time that you’re the last guy in the world who ever expected to become John Piper. Something happened. What happened from your point of view when you unleashed this idea on the church? What happened?

Piper: My call to leave academia in 1980, teaching at Bethel, was a call to preach the God of Romans 9. I was just finishing that book The Justification of God, and God was saying through that chapter, “I will not just be analyzed; I will be heralded.” And I gave up resisting that idea — because I loved teaching. We’re in a downtown church with the poorest neighborhood in the city nearby, the business district, light industry and tech and now high-rises, and the university. That’s just a glorious place. I love this place. What would happen if I heralded a big God across the generations? Because for me it was just a question: “What would happen?” Because I didn’t know except for maybe Martin Lloyd-Jones what it sounded like. So that was the goal.

I think the supremacy of God in preaching is what people were hungry for. My premise is that every human being is created to know God. And every human being does know God, according to Romans 1:21: “Although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.” Every human being knows God, and they’re made to know him. They’re made to love him, they’re made to admire him, they’re made to be happy in him, and they don’t know it. How would you then awaken them to that? I think the answer is this: Lift him up. Lift him up in what I call expository exultation. I have to exult in him so that you can see that he’s worthy of being exulted in, and if you see that, perhaps you would join me in exulting in him.

And what happened was that the shoeboxes in the library that held the cassettes began to be rented from Olive and Arnie Nelson, and they couldn’t keep up with people asking for the cassettes. So, I said to Jon Bloom, “Why don’t you take over that ministry of the cassettes and the printed-out manuscripts?” We were selling them for ten cents in the file cabinets outside the office. I said, “You take it over.” Jon was the president of Desiring God for the first ten or fifteen years. So, Jon began to be very creative in giving out sermons and manuscripts. And that grew. It eventually became Desiring God.

M. Segal: It was originally called the Christian Hedonism Expansion Fund.

Piper: There’s a little piece missing before we get to CHEF, and it is this: Steve Halliday, the editor with Multnomah Press, was a graduate of Bethel. He showed up in 1983, and he said, “What are you preaching on?” I said, “I’m preaching a series of messages called Christian Hedonism.” He said, “What’s that?” So I described it. He said, “Can I see them?” I said, “Sure, you can see them.” So I sent him whatever manuscripts I had, and he said, “How about if we make a book out of this?” This was Steve Halliday at Multnomah. I said, “Pfft, whatever.”

So for the next three years — I didn’t get any sabbatical to do this — during weekends and nights, I turned those nine sermons of that series in the fall of 1983 into Desiring God. And it was published in 1986. So that happened. This book sold a lot of copies. And I said, “Oh my goodness, I’m an author.” And I thought, “Oh my goodness, I could be rich.” So immediately we put the governor on that (which we have done with all the books) and created CHEF (Christian Hedonism Expansion Fund). I live under the Bible, which says, “Those who desire to be rich pierce themselves with many pangs” (1 Timothy 6:10), and “It is hard for a rich man to get into the kingdom heaven” (Matthew 19:23). This church paid me plenty. I didn’t need royalties. So, we plowed all the royalties back into the ministry, and that’s still what we do at Desiring God so that everything can be free.

So Desiring God took off and the books took off. And when you write a book, of course people invite you to come to a conference and speak, so conference speaking took off. And some of those were big, like Passion, and I became John Piper. And it was just a totally terrifying thing. I think probably the most common question I get asked is, “How do you handle pride?” Everybody sees that, right? Everybody sees the danger. If you’re an author, if you grew a big church, if you speak in front of a group, and they would come hear you, how do you deal with that? So that’s a constant danger that must put to death. Is that the kind of thing you were asking?

Birth of Institutions

R. Segal: It’s the kind of thing I was looking for. You tease up a whole bunch of different directions we don’t have time for. Maybe another day. But I’ve heard you talk about a mission like this: “Spreading a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ.” The propagation of the idea that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him requires institutions. You’ve been intentional about that. So, tell us a little bit about that idea of institutions.

Piper: Well, it’s remarkable that you think I’ve been intentional. Maybe I’m not a good self-knower. I just do things. I read my Bible, and I say what I see. I try to say it as passionately as I can. Tom Steller is the reason this school exists, not me. That’s a little bit of an overstatement. I mean, I preached, but Tom thought institutionally. I just love this guy to death. I mean, Tom and I served together for 33 years here. He’s still here and I’m still here. He was a student of mine at Bethel.

Tom would hear me preach, and he would gather young men around him and take what I said and push it in their face and in their lives and in their ministry. He created the internship program. He created BITC. He created TBI. And then he created the school. He went fishing for Tim Tomlinson. I just preached, Rick. I don’t think I’m a very institutionally intentional person. I like to encourage people who are.

R. Segal: You’re good with acronyms though.

Piper: That’s what I mean. There may be elements of promotion that I’m good at that I don’t even think about as promotion. But for Desiring God, I just followed Jon Bloom, and if he said “Do this,” I just did it. So Desiring God is a ten-million-dollar global truth-telling organization where all I do is teach. I just teach, and I’m surrounded by these organizational geniuses.

R. Segal: There are several institutions that are interconnected. I think of Training Leaders International. I think of Truth78. I could probably get to some others if I struggled, but there are two important ones here, as we think about the future of Christian Hedonism — and both new leaders who have been recently called to leadership of this. So, Marshall, as you’ve started to acclimate to your new role, what are you beginning to see as the institutional role of Desiring God in the future of Christian Hedonism?

M. Segal: Yeah, that’s a big question. Ask me that one in a year or two. I’ve been with Desiring God for twelve years now — first as John’s assistant and then as managing editor and now as president and CEO (but just for five months). Traveling with John for three years all over the world, and to events large and small, gave me a much greater appreciation for what God was doing. I knew what God had done in my life. I knew what he’d done in my friends’ lives. But to get to see it multiplied across churches and countries and languages was its own thing.

I think from the beginning the goal has been to get these truths, these realities, into as many eyes and hands and hearts as possible, and as freely as possible. And that was revolutionary at the time, to pour those book royalties back into the ministry to say, “We want to do that so that we’re able to give it away.” And we still do that today. If you can’t afford anything at Desiring God, we’ll give it to you. We don’t really sell anything. But if you want to get a book of Desiring God and you can’t afford it, we’ll give it to you. And that’s just been part of the DNA all the way from the beginning.

I think what the role has played over thirty years has been to travel across different mediums and technology. We started with tapes (though some of you don’t know what cassette tapes are; I can explain that to you afterward). It’s wild that that’s the way we did it. It was cassette tapes to the first version of the website, and then to radio for a season and spending money to get the programs on to the radio to get these truths out that way. And then there was a decision at some point to move away from radio and to invest in the website. We decided to put all the sermons on there and make them all available for free when nobody, or very few, were doing it at the time. Then we have tried to think through social media and YouTube and other ways of getting the truths out.

I had no part in any of those decisions over thirty years. We were just always aggressively, generously looking for ways to get the truth out. And it was done excellently. The teaching was excellent. The execution was excellent. To get it out free and let as many people use it as possible — that’s still what we’re trying to do today.

R. Segal: What about the school, Bethlehem College and Seminary? What is it as an institution on the map of Christian Hedonism?

Tabb: I’d like to think of us as the principal training house of Christian Hedonism. In many ways, if Desiring God is trying to get the word out as broadly as possible, we’re wanting it to go as deep as possible in the lives of men and women who are here. Because we believe that education isn’t mainly about information transfer, but it’s about being formed into a certain kind of person. That’s why we have that peculiar slogan, “Education in Serious Joy,” which sounds a little bit like an oxymoron, but it’s not. We’re serious about God. We’re in our studies, not light or frivolous, but feeling the weight of it. We have a weighty joy. We want to see that take deep root in people.

Even just at this conference, these conferences have something of a reunion component as we see graduates that come back to town. And we hear the stories from the field of gospel faithfulness and preaching the Bible, enduring suffering with that sort of contentment that we heard about today — sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. It’s the gospel ambition to plant a flag in a particular church, in a particular neighborhood, in a place across the world or just down the street. We’re wanting to see our graduates do that, to be sort of hubs or outposts of Christian Hedonism.

Let the Nations Be Glad

R. Segal: It’s clear that what has happened has happened well beyond the banks of the United States of America. This was ignited here — I suspect partly enabled by a worldwide web that emerged along the way, but also a host of other just faithful gospel undertakings. What are your observations generally of what you’ve seen that’s happened around the world in relationship to this idea?

Piper: Well, I think Marshall should address that. But let me just preface it with this, which hasn’t been said yet. We are riding the crest of the young Calvinism, the new Calvinism, the Young Restless Reformed movement, who aren’t young anymore. I was part of the Young Restless and Reformed movement, and I’m not young anymore. And it is crested. So, there is a very close association between the global rise of interest in Calvinism, big-God theology,” Reformed soteriology, and Christian Hedonism. Christian Hedonism just flies in tandem with big-God theology, salting it with joy. We believe all that. And we say there is something they’re not emphasizing.

Some of the Reformed people are scared of it. They’re suspicious of me, like, “You are too subjective. You are too emotional. This is about doctrine and truth.” And I say, “Yeah, I love doctrine and truth, but as an end in itself it’s hell.” So, just to preface that, internationally that’s true. I’ve gone to Latin America, and I’m going on the back of Reformed theology and doing my Christian Hedonist thing — which fits perfectly, in my judgment. So, the reason I point to you is because we intentionally work at international partnerships.

M. Segal: Yeah, it’s a huge part of the ministry of Desiring God, and I’ve known about it and even been a part of that travel with John to Ethiopia and Dubai and Brazil, when I was his assistant. So, I’ve known about our global work for some time, but in these last five months, it’s been in education for me to get to know the strategy better. And it’s very encouraging along the lines of what you’re describing.

We have currently 833 Desiring God titles translated into another language. And that represents 48 languages. So when I met with our global team for the first time in this new role, they came into town, and I said, “Wow, that’s encouraging. There are 833 translations. What a blessing.” And they said, “Yes, that’s true.” But what they’ve learned over years now is that with some dollars you can get a translation of any book, and someone will do it for you. But the quality of that translation you have to figure out how to get tested. This is what, Rick who leads our global expansion, told me. The problem is that you get the book translated and then it just sits on a hard drive somewhere.

So, they realized really quickly that we get these projects done, and then they just get buried on a hard drive and no one reads them. So, we pivoted the strategy. We said, “No, the real ministry here is to find the people native to these languages in these areas who love this vision of God, who have been impacted and shaped by this, and it affects everything in their life, and they are dying to share it with people.” So not only will they help get the book translated, but then they’re going to make sure it stays in print and then that copies of it get put into the hands of actual people.

We now have seventy of those partners around the world, and I’ve gotten to meet several of them over the last couple of months. I met Ben in Poland, Alex in Austria, DeWitt in Ethiopia, and Dieudonné in Cameroon. And these brothers and sisters who are involved in this ministry love Christian Hedonism. They love Reformed theology. They would love to be in this room this weekend. And they’re championing this vision of God all over the world. And we’re trying to help them not just get translations out, but to build publishing ministries, local churches, infrastructure, and institutions that then give rise to new voices in those languages who are articulating these things freshly where they are. So it’s super encouraging. There are seventy, and we pray for hundreds more.

Piper: Yeah, and you two have a fresh take on how the school does its international work. Do you want to give a word about that?

Tabb: Well, we exist to spread for the joy of all peoples. We want to see the Psalm 67 “let the nations be glad” realized. And it has been a joy to commission graduates to every continent over the years. We have a huge map on the wall up in our office to just remind us to keep the nations before us. I think of names and hard places that are there, just to stir us to pray. And in recent years, as we got accredited and more established, we were able to host international students, like Brother Tamfu in Cameroon who was just mentioned. And then they get trained and want to go back and plant seeds that are going to grow into an oak tree of gospel faithfulness. So, we’re wanting to encourage some of those efforts. And in some cases that means sending more people over, or sponsoring some of the seminary students in Cameroon to stay in Cameroon, or supplying them with more resources, or having our teachers teach some intensive classes — that sort of thing. I mean, we’re even in the dreaming stage about, “Okay, how could that be furthered in Cameroon and perhaps elsewhere in the world, if the Lord wills?”

But it is tied to particular people that have been invested in at a deep level, that have grasped this vision of God and that have that gospel ambition and want to see it take root in a place where it’s not currently planted.

Christian Hedonism After John Piper

R. Segal: We have just a few minutes left. And this is probably the hardest question, and it’s for you two young leaders. The Lord will eventually call his faithful servant John Piper home. And here you are called to these particular mantles of responsibility and leadership. What are the things that you have begun to ponder about a post-Piper world at Desiring God and at Bethlehem College and Seminary?

Tabb: If Christian Hedonism is true, then it will endure. And it is not just about that phrase, that slogan, it’s about the reality of a big God that satisfies our hearts.

And as individuals and churches and institutions grapple with that big God and find him delightful and faithful through the hardest things, still saying, “He’s my portion,” then they’re going to tell others about that, and they’re going to preach about it, and they’re going to write about it. And it’s going to endure. We already see that. I mean if you go on the Desiring God website, it’s not just resources by John Piper; it’s resources by dozens of people that are writing about this glorious God and how this truth — that God is most glorified in us when we’re most satisfied in him — impacts all our lives. I think about the amazing teachers that are assembled at this school and the graduates that we’re so proud to send out year after year. It’s not just about one individual; it’s about a God that has captured our hearts, that is faithful to do his work, and we’re planting seeds and he gives the growth.

M. Segal: In February, I was in John’s house when he and a couple of other leaders asked me to consider this new calling. Having just turned 38 at that time, I wrestled with that exact question. And the question would be something like, “Is the work done? When John’s done, is the work done? And so why would I embark on that at this particular juncture?” And the work isn’t done. I don’t know about you, but I look around my neighborhood, our city, our nation, our world, and I’m not too concerned that we’ve over-rejoiced in this God. We’re desperate for this kind of satisfaction.

So, I see a great need. And what Pastor John has helped me see in the books, in the sermons, in the messages, changes everything for me: my marriage, my parenting, how I read the Bible, ministry in the local church, neighboring — everything I see differently through this lens. And I want everyone to see through that lens, through that window. So there is a monumental need. We haven’t scratched the surface yet on reaching the peoples with this news.

And then I look at my Bible, like I did this week in Isaiah 55:10–11, and the Lord says,

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

He’s done amazing things through this word. He’s succeeded marvelously through the ministry of John Piper, in my life and in life of millions of others. But it’s about the word. The word is a seed. God is still working through his word for his purpose. And he intends for it to succeed. It will succeed. And what struck me this week is that the very next verse says “for” (I learned that at Bethlehem College and Seminary). It says,

For you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall break forth into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle. (Isaiah 55:12–13)

So with God’s word, his purpose is that a million things are happening through the word, but the one that he says right here through the prophet is “I want the people rejoicing in me. I want them singing.” God is going to do that. There’s a great need in our neighborhoods, our cities, our nation and the world, but also God promises that he’s going to do the thing that we’re setting out to do at Desiring God and at Bethlehem College and Seminary. And then it says, “And it shall make a name for the Lord” (Isaiah 55:13). That joy shall make a name for the Lord.

So, I can sure give the rest of my short life, my brief spring here on earth, to being a very small part of seeing God’s word prevail and produce that kind of joy — and in that kind of joy, cover the earth with God’s glory as the waters cover the sea.

R. Segal: Amen. Pastor John, why don’t we stand? Would you lay hands on these two young leaders and pray for them and for the calling that they’ve been given?

Piper: “Do not be anxious for anything.” That’s what brought us together, Lord, for this conference. “Do not be anxious for anything, but by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving” — and I’m so thankful for these brothers: Marshall, Brian, and Rick — “let your request be made known to God, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). Would you guard their hearts? Would you guard their minds from sin of every kind? And would you fill them with peace that passes understanding? And would the wisdom from above fall upon them for leadership — humble, Christlike, visionary, creative, energetic, fruitful leadership for Bethlehem College and Seminary and for Desiring God?

And I pray that for all those in this room right now. They all have some measure of influence. Grant them to be fruitful. May everything that’s been true at this conference lodge itself in their hearts and minds so that it bears good fruit. I commend them to you and your grace, which is able to keep us from falling and to present us before your throne with great rejoicing. In Jesus’s name, amen.