Pleasure As An Intrinsic Good

In my most recent sermon at Chi Alpha I made a statement in the Q & A time that “pleasure is an intrinsic good.”

At least one student has been thinking about what I said and sent me an email:

I was reading Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy and a comment reminded me of something you said last week at XA. You said something to the effect of pleasure in and of itself is intrinsically good. Now I totally understand what you were saying and what you weren’t saying. But I was wondering if you could shoot me some Bible verses to back it up.

So I wrote up a reponse which I thought might be of general interest:

First, the Bible never explicitly teaches that pleasure is an intrinsic good. The Bible doesn’t really deal in such philosophical categories. Rather, the notion of pleasure as an intrinsic good is a presupposition throughout.

Verses that occur to me in this context:

Deut 14:22–27, where celebration is pictured as worship (see also Nehemiah 8:10 where celebration is portrayed as more appropriate response to God than fasting)
Psalm 104:14–15, where God created some things in the world for the sole purpose of pleasure
The book of Ecclesiastes in general. Especially a few passages like Ecc 11:7–10 and Ecc 9:7–10, where the Teacher encourages us to enjoy life. As with everything in Ecclesiastes you’ll have to spend some time studying to make sure you feel that he’s endorsing pleasure in the context of the whole book (the Teacher is confusing, to put it mildly).

And I see strong hints that pleasure is an intrinsic good in that joy is a Biblical virtue (Gal 5:22, Neh 8:11), that many passages presuppose (or command) our delight in God (John 15:11, Psalm 1:2, Philippians 4:4), and that pleasure is a shorthand for the goodness God offers us (Psalm 16:11).

In fact, there is a whole host of passages that command or presuppose our joy: Deut. 28:47; 1 Chr. 16:31,33; Ps. 32:11; Ps. 33:1; Ps. 35:9; Ps. 40:8,16; Ps. 42:1–2; Ps. 63:1,11; Ps. 64:10; Ps. 95:1; Ps. 98:4; Ps. 97:1,12; Ps. 104:34; Ps. 105:3; Isa. 41:16; Joel 2:23; Zech. 2:10; Zech. 10:7; 2 Cor. 9:7; cf. Acts 20:35; Philippians 3:1. Heb. 10:34; Heb. 13:17; 1 Pet. 5:2.

That latter list, incidentally, was mostly lifted from some essays by a pastor and theologian named John Piper. He has written extensively on “Christian Hedonism” and these two brief essays are excellent introductions to the subject: We Want You To Be A Christian Hedonist, Brothers, Consider Christian Hedonism!

And to clarify, the fact that the pleasure of even a sinful action is intrinsicly good does not make the action itself good. Nor does it even make the fact that you derive pleasure from it good (consider, for instance, laughing at a perverse joke or the less common case of necrophilia). All that I assert is that pleasure is intrinsicly good and that we need to appreciate that fact. Some Christians treat pleasure as somehow bad for you and are instantly suspicious of anything fun or entertaining. That’s just bad theology. The fact that something produces pleasure should cause us to give it the benefit of the doubt rather than assume it guilty until proven innocent.

This has been a public service announcment.