In a sermon, Twenty-Five Years of Desiring God (March 25, 2011), preached at Ligonier Ministries National Conference, Piper claimed that God has hard-wired human beings to seek after happiness and pleasure. Having read CS Lewis’ sermon, ‘The Weight of Glory’, Piper was convinced that ‘it is not a bad thing to desire our own good… I had never in my whole life heard any Christian, let alone a Christian of Lewis’s stature, say that all of us not only seek (as Pascal said), but also ought to seek, our own happiness’ (DG, p20).
This is without exception.’ Piper writes: ‘This statement so fit with my own deep longings, and all that I had ever seen in others, that I accepted it and have never found any reason to doubt it’ (DG, p19).
He eagerly accepts the truism of Blaise Pascal: ‘All men seek happiness. As a Christian Hedonist, he openly expresses his overwhelming longing to be happy. John Piper, founder of Desiring God ministry, is obsessed with happiness.
