Thank you for your condescending and dismissive comment. Please keep them coming – but only if you’re going to wait four years after the post was written.

These arguments were become more and more defensive in nature. Not defending the gospel, but defending what one’s own syntactic and semantic expressions. If that’s the right way of examining one another (Phi 1:10), I’m terribly disappointed.

When one reads Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, John Owens, John Calvin and the writings of early church fathers, they were passionately defending the true gospel against Arianism, Socinianism, Photinianism, Macedonianism and teachings which deviate far from what the gospel teaches. Even then, the criticisms of such flawed theologies were measured, objective and reflected a deep research into the heart of these flawed theologies beforehand. And most importantly, at the end of it all, the work of Jesus Christ would never fail to be glorified.

I read through the entire post with all its comments and as I followed through all the arguments, it makes one feel nauseous at the end. I was honestly expecting well-substantiated and well-thought out replies, but most of it came across to me simply as venomous. The replies also suggest the existence of various camps, which is saddening.

What is it going to look like when Jehovah Witnesses or other cults read this, from the book review itself to all the comments? This is not going to be edifying in any circumstances, if that’s the way we are supposed to examine each other.

As much as John Piper may have over-emphasised on certain things which aren’t the focal point of the gospel of Christ, are all of you sufficiently persuaded that this book will lead someone away from God and into idolatry, or that his intention was to mislead people? It could be possible that he had authored this book with passive Christians in mind, and the language which he used would be inevitably stronger, that it may awaken the dormant soul in them. No, I’m not defending him, but I simply believe that as a fellow brother and sister-in-Christ, it would be encouraging if we can empathise with one another, unless, of course, when one deviates far from the gospel truth.

With regards to the review, as much as I perfectly understand the points which were mentioned, it is a pity that it wasn’t a balanced review, and the negative language used was simply too strong. The tone was condescending and dismissal of Piper’s intention and effort to write the book. I sincerely hope that I am wrong in what I felt about your attitude when you were writing this post.

Even though I agree that the book isn’t as good as his other books, I don’t feel that Piper’s heart was in the wrong place. And the fact that he put it up for free showed that he did hope for it to reach out to other people freely, as the gospel was onto us free and undeserved.

That’s as much as I would like to say. I’ll keep all of you in my prayers and hope that this reply would be useless, as all of you would have matured much in these 4 years after your postings.

Those quotes from Piper are not “offensive” as you say, but merely incorrect. Getting pleasure from God, as but one attribute of our pursuit of God and one aspect of giving our love to God, is not our highest calling or our aim of life, at least not according to the Bible. Since pleasure is but one attribute of pursuing God and loving God, then “pursing God” and “loving God” must be higher callings and greater aims of life than the smaller part that pleasure occupies.

Regarding your charge that my quotes “lop off the ‘in him’ portion of what Piper said. You consistently do this when you stop at ‘pleasure’ or ‘enjoy,’ and forget ‘in Him.’ “ This confuses me since the actual quote from Piper to which you are referring does include “in him”: “I came to see that it is unbiblical and arrogant to try to worship God for any other reason than the pleasure to be had in him.” So to the charge that I “lopped of the ‘in him’” I plead not guilty.

As to your comparison of me to anti-Calvinists, that type of insulting and character aspersion is counter productive to discussing theology. Insults are merely a way of harming an opponent in the eyes of others simply to diminish the impact of his comments. It is not a valid approach to either a true rebuke or to exchanging ideas.

Gene posted: “One cannot experience such pleasure without wholly pursuing God Himself and making Him the center of one’s pursuits.” With that statement, I agree. Pleasure comes as a result of pursuing God above all, not as a result of pursuing pleasure itself (in God) above all.

Gene posted: “I find your statements about overstatements to be nothing more than classic examples of mirror-reading, where you impute your own assumptions and standards to your opponent, and then accuses him of hypocrisy for failing to measure up.” Really? Remember, it is called Christian Hedonism, not Christians Loving God. Yes, all the focus on acquiring one’s own pleasure in God as if it were the key to Christianity and the key to salvation is overstated in Piper’s theology. I find that there is a much stronger emphasis in the Bible on pursuing being loving to God and to others than on getting my pleasure from God. At least, that is the way it reads to me.

“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, ” ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”

Mike, my apology for the length of this post.