Pleasure vs Peace
Photo by Jonathan Meyer on Unsplash
One of my favourite things to do on a Friday night, is to rug up on the couch with some cheese and crackers, watching a family movie. It’s a tradition that we started a few years ago, and it’s a great way of signalling the beginning of a weekend.
So often the things we do to relax, revolve around pleasure. Whether it be eating, shopping, sleeping in, sun-baking, swimming and so many other things. And of course many of these things are necessities. But sometimes even with the greatest lifestyle, we can still find ourselves feeling tension and strain. I know I do!
The reason being, that pleasure doesn’t usually resolve the unrest inside. It probably subsides and delays it. But pursuing pleasure can be an expensive method to delay something that is bound to come back. It’s like buying new clothes every day, so you don’t have to do a wash (which maybe somebody out there has done!)
In fact, pleasure is quite a poor substitute for peace. But the truth is, peace can also be quite illusive! Would we not all pursue it, if it were easy to find and sustain?
It’s so difficult to obtain peace let alone define. But it may very well be what we are really aspiring for when we find ourselves desperate for a holiday, or needing to get out of the house, or needing a night out.
So what are we to do?
As believers, peace is our gift as received from Jesus. It is absolutely worth it. Receiving it doesn’t mean we experience it immediately, in fact its often a process of undoing all the substitutes we have gravitated toward in the past that allows us to experience it. Like right now, I am on a journey of reorienting some unhelpful thought patterns…which is only worth it because of the promise of experiencing real peace. But it also will take some time to arrive at the peace I am pursuing. So does pursuing peace mean we rid ourselves of all pleasurable activities? And what I really want to know is: Does it mean I can’t have cheese on a Friday?
No, pleasure is not necessarily the enemy. We don’t need to feel guilty when we experience pleasure at a beautiful view. Or elation at a hug from our children. Or delight at the smell of a good meal. Pleasure is not the enemy.
I’ve come to realise that the Christian life is a combination of two things:
1) Recognising the value of the future
2) Realising there is value in today
It is important to tend to our needs now. Sometimes we do need to relax and enjoy ourselves because there is an immediate need for calmness. But it is equally important to regard those things that will contribute to our future self and our future. Our trouble is that we often have the scales terribly imbalanced - we exclusively focus on the pleasure we want to experience. And we completely neglect the inner work that will bring true peace…the inner experience we probably more deeply crave.
Pleasure has some value in life. It’s just not the MOST valuable thing in life.
To hear more about PEACE, check out my latest podcast here