In His Name Devotionals
HEDONISM
In His Name Devotionals
HEDONISM
Webster defines “hedonism” as “the doctrine that pleasure is the principle good and should be the aim of action.”
Hedonism encourages people to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. As a philosophy, its rudimentary elements might be traced back to a Greek materialist named Epicurus. Remember the Epicureans of Athens (Acts 17:16-18)?
In his “Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus wrote: “Wherefore we call pleasure the Alpha and Omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge every good thing.”
Consider those words carefully. “Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice.” In other words, we live for the pursuit of pleasure. Accordingly, the way we feel is the standard by which we determine our conduct.
Sound familiar? Think of all the “powder-keg” issues today that are determined by the way people feel. Most of us don’t stop to think that all that is leading us to Hedonism.
Maybe it’s time we reminded ourselves that to fulfill the “desires of the flesh and of the mind” results in the death of spiritual zeal and puts our eternal soul in harms way (Eph. 2:1-3; cf. Rev. 21:8).
“But she who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.” (1 Tim. 5:6 NKJV)
