When to Say When

Pleasure is something that our culture is very concerned with. And whether for better or for worse, that concern imposes itself on all of us. The advertising that surrounds us, the materialism that goes unquestioned, and casual way people look at debt all contribute to and derive from our longing for pleasure. Yet, this obsession with and longing for pleasure is... assumed. We feel like we have a right to pleasure, satisfaction, and personal, usually instant, gratification. Like somehow we've earned it.

C. S. Lewis is the one who started me thinking down this track. I just finished the first of his Space Trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet. In it, Ransom (the protagonist, and a human) is taken against his will to another planet. There, after escaping his captors, he meets a new species of intelligent life. As he learns their language, he begins to investigate the philosophy of this new race. Speaking with Hyoi (the alien friend he first meets), Ransom finds an unusual, and in my opinion, refreshing, view of pleasure. The conversation goes like this:

"But why? Would he want his dinner all day or want to sleep after he had slept? I do not understand." (Hyoi)
"But a dinner comes every day. This love, you say, comes only once while the hross (the alien race) lives?"
"But it takes his whole life. When he is young, he has to look for his mate; and then he has to court her; then he begets young; then he rears them; then he remembers all this, and boils it inside him and makes it into poems and wisdom."
"But the pleasure he must be content only to remember?"
"This is like saying 'My food I must be content to eat.' "
"I do not understand."
"A pleasure is full grown only when it is remembered. You are speaking as if the pleasure were one thing and the memory another. It is all one thing."

I can think of no better example of this than the joy that, as Christians, we are to find in our salvation. It happens at one instant in life, and in that instant, when a soul recognizes the corruption within the flesh, joy at our justification before God in spite of our sin should drive the new Christian to tears of joy. (Side note: It is amazing to me that there are those out there who deny that we live in a fallen world and that we are a species in need of a savior. I can understand that people see and seek salvation in different things, but in a world
where evil is a reality, where murder, rape, abuse, and more are so prevalent that we are seldom moved by report of them, and where death reigns, it is foolishness and a senseless denial of the reality of our condition to suggest that our highest calling is to be nice to people.) This salvation happens once. Christ's work is enough to make us right before God. But our joy in this salvation is made complete as we are sanctified. As we look back and see how we have grown in character, love for Christ, and love for others, we are to be thankful for the work of Christ in our lives and, as in that moment of conversion, overwhelmed with joy. The moment of pleasure ends, and the enjoyment of it continues forever.

This is also illustrated in the second book of the series (I started it this morning), Perelandra. Ransom arrives on a different planet, and within he first few hours, is faced with the challenge of finding food. He finds what a 'gourd' and drinks from it: the pleasure can only be described as other-worldly. Here is Lewis' narrative of what happens after Ransom finishes the first gourd:

"As he let the empty gourd fall from his hand and was about to pluck a second one, it came into his head that he was now neither hungry nor thirsty. And yet to repeat a pleasure so intense and almost so spiritual seemed an obvious thing to do. His reason, or what we commonly take to be reason in our own world, was all in favor of tasting this miracle again; the childlike innocence of fruit, the labours he had undergone, the uncertainty of the future, all seemed to commend the action. Yet something seemed to oppose this 'reason.' It is difficult to suppose that this opposition came from desire, for what desire would turn from so much deliciousness? But for whatever cause, it appeared to him better not to taste it again. Perhaps the experience had been so complete that repetition would be a vulgarity - like asking to hear the same symphony twice in a day."

I don't think that Lewis is saying pleasure is bad. The Father sends the Son to earth because it was His joy to save us. The problem comes when pleasure becomes our god. When our trust in God's provision over our lives becomes so weak that we obsess to the point of distracting anxiety, there is a problem. When, as a car commercial suggests, we have trouble settling for anything less than the 'best', there is a problem. When meditation on the work of the Son and the gift of the Spirit and the plan of the Father does not move us to overwhelming joy, even laughter, it should be a hint to us that we are seeking our joy in something other than the face of the Father. We need to learn to be content in the blessings God has given us, finding joy in the Giver and not the gifts.