Follow Up Post

As I promised before in a previous post, here is the passage from John Piper's book God is the Gospel, pages 12-13.

Most modern people can scarcely imagine an alternative understanding of feeling loved other than feeling made much of. If you don't make much of me, you are not loving me. But when you apply this definition of love to God, it weakens his worth, undermines his goodness, and steals our final satisfaction. If the enjoyment of God himself is not the final and best gift of love, then God is not the greatest treasure, his self giving is not the highest mercy, the gospel is not the good news that sinners may enjoy their Maker, Christ did not suffer to bring us to God, and our souls must look beyond him for satisfaction.

This distortion of divine love into an endorsement of self-admiration is subtle. It creeps into our religious acts. We claim to be praising God because of his love for us. But if his love for us is at bottom his making much of us, who is really being praised? We are willing to be God-centered, it seems, as long as God is man-centered. We are willing to boast in the cross as long as the cross is a witness to our worth. Who then is our pride and joy?

Our fatal error is believing that wanting to be happy means wanting to be made much of. It feels so good to be affirmed. But the good feeling is finally rooted in the worth of self, not the worth of God.

. . . soul-health and great happiness come not from beholding a great self but a great splendor.

I recommend reading this book, but be prepared to be challenged. As you can see from the brief passage above, this is not a self affirming book. The passage above is just from the preface and it's definitely worth the cost of the book just to read the preface.

Toodles!