Found an interesting Muslim Hedonist blog today:
"But in my experience, the idea that converts undergo a “new birth” often has less to do with us experiencing God’s forgiveness than with our Muslim communities’ ideas of how we should conduct our lives as Muslimconverts. We’re often expected to transform our lives so drastically that it is as if we have become totally different people. We’re supposed to re-make ourselves, often along very conservative lines.
Well, I’ve been there, and tried to do that, and now I’m asking myself a number of questions:
What is “conversion”? Is it really ever possible to entirely re-make yourself? If it’s possible, is it even a good thing to do?
Who am I really? When I strip away all the community-imposed and guilt-induced ideas of what I “should” want and how I “should” feel, what do I really want out of life? And how do I know?
One important aspect of converts’ experiences which is hardly ever honestly discussed—in my experience, anyway—is what to do with your now-multiple religious identity. We are often told that “true” conversion means entirely abandoning all religious ideas, ways of seeing the world, emotional attachments, holidays, and tastes in music and art which we had before we became Muslim.
Is this even possible? Who has control over their emotional responses to, say, a former favourite Christmas carol they happen to overhear as they pass by a store in December? Or who can entirely squelch the impulse to pray for a non-Muslim family member when they receive the news that she or he has passed away? In the end, I couldn’t. Would it be a good thing even if I could?
Muslim converts who still persist in celebrating non-Islamic holidays often feel that they have to bend over backwards to justify it: “It’s to keep my Mom happy.” “It’s so that my kids don’t feel left out at school.” God forbid that we should celebrate a holiday just because we grew up celebrating it; it’s part of who we are; it’s beautiful; and it resonates with us on a deep level. Instead, we are often told to work harder at trying to enjoy Eid instead! Uh, Brother Beardie, did you ever take Psychology 101?
It’s interesting that on one hand, our sincerity in converting to Islam is often measured by our success in adopting conversative Muslim social habits and beliefs. Yet, we are never really allowed to be anything but converts to Islam. Never."
Read on
"But in my experience, the idea that converts undergo a “new birth” often has less to do with us experiencing God’s forgiveness than with our Muslim communities’ ideas of how we should conduct our lives as Muslimconverts. We’re often expected to transform our lives so drastically that it is as if we have become totally different people. We’re supposed to re-make ourselves, often along very conservative lines.
Well, I’ve been there, and tried to do that, and now I’m asking myself a number of questions:
What is “conversion”? Is it really ever possible to entirely re-make yourself? If it’s possible, is it even a good thing to do?
Who am I really? When I strip away all the community-imposed and guilt-induced ideas of what I “should” want and how I “should” feel, what do I really want out of life? And how do I know?
One important aspect of converts’ experiences which is hardly ever honestly discussed—in my experience, anyway—is what to do with your now-multiple religious identity. We are often told that “true” conversion means entirely abandoning all religious ideas, ways of seeing the world, emotional attachments, holidays, and tastes in music and art which we had before we became Muslim.
Is this even possible? Who has control over their emotional responses to, say, a former favourite Christmas carol they happen to overhear as they pass by a store in December? Or who can entirely squelch the impulse to pray for a non-Muslim family member when they receive the news that she or he has passed away? In the end, I couldn’t. Would it be a good thing even if I could?
Muslim converts who still persist in celebrating non-Islamic holidays often feel that they have to bend over backwards to justify it: “It’s to keep my Mom happy.” “It’s so that my kids don’t feel left out at school.” God forbid that we should celebrate a holiday just because we grew up celebrating it; it’s part of who we are; it’s beautiful; and it resonates with us on a deep level. Instead, we are often told to work harder at trying to enjoy Eid instead! Uh, Brother Beardie, did you ever take Psychology 101?
It’s interesting that on one hand, our sincerity in converting to Islam is often measured by our success in adopting conversative Muslim social habits and beliefs. Yet, we are never really allowed to be anything but converts to Islam. Never."
Read on
Comments
"Geerhardus Vos was the originator of Christian Hedonism--not Piper. Some of Vos's following remarks, compiled by a friend of mine, may help to clarify Piper's passionately given message last night.
Steve
2 Cor. 4:5-7
When reading Vos, one cannot but notice the similarities between Vos’ understanding of the eschatological reward in Pauline theology and Piper’s Christian hedonism… even more interesting is that Vos uses the word hedonism in reference to delight in God in a footnote that appears on page 71, Chapter 3, on “The Religious and Ethical Motivation of Paul’s Eschatology” in “The Pauline Eschatology”.
Vos argues that Paul’s eschatological reward has its endpoint in God’s glory and that the reward is for God’s sake: “the motive underlying Paul’s championship of grace is at bottom not different from that binding him to the forensic principle of eschatological reward. The two are at one in this that they both aim at securing the revelation of the supreme glory of God, the one in the ethical sphere, the other in the soteric sphere. The eschatological reward-idea is simply one of the twin forms in which the Apostle gives expression to the absolute ascendancy of the divine glory in religion. The law of recompense for righteousness is intended to express that the ethical process (no less than the soteric process) exists for the sake of God.” -- Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology, p.67 fn. 4.
Vos further argues that the eschatological reward, the bestowal of eternal life, is on the basis of fulfillment of the divine law (a la Romans 2) and necessarily involves the body: “All that is related in the Messianic prophecies concerning the enjoyments of the future age is inseparable from the existence and functioning of the body. It is not otherwise with Jesus, who likewise associated with the resurrection the reendowment of the heirs of the age to come with a true body.” -- PE, pg. 69.
The conclusion for Vos is self-evident: Paul is not a hedonist in the sense that his understanding of the next world includes the resurrection of the body in order to gratify his flesh in eternal self-satisfaction. “…to say that the Apostle loved his body, and loved it for specific eschatological reasons, is by no means equivalent to saying that this love sprang from hedonistic desire. Paul was not a man easily satisfied with half-way attainment in the redemptive sphere. He was governed by the absolutistic impulse, which is in the same manner characteristic of the teaching of our Lord. Nor should we dismiss in such a connection the ideal of a fuller measure of glorification of God through the completely restored organism of man than would be possible in a disembodied state. Not the slightest evidence, however, can be produced of an anticipation of, far less of a legitimate, eschatological satisfaction cherished by Paul apart from God and the enjoyment of communion with Him.” -- PE, pg. 70 (emphasis mine).
Paul is not interested in eschatological reward as an individual as much as he is in the collective body of Christ. Vos conclusion? “The intense Christ-ward bent of the Apostle’s piety… is irreconcilable with the type of hedonism laid to his charge… because…If hedonism be principally individualistic, then the inclusion of additional egos would be bound to break its force.” -- -- PE, pg. 71 (emphasis mine).
The eschatological reward of eternal life is not about individual self-satisfaction. The endpoint for Paul is Christ himself. “The climacteric consolation extended to the Thessalonians in connection with their ultimate deliverance is that they shall “be forever with the Lord,” Where the note of joy and glory enters it is not seldom produced by the sense of pride arising from the presentation of believers in holiness and blamelessness at the parousia rather than from any hedonistic prospect opening up for the Apostle himself, 1 Thess. 2:19, 20.” -- PE, pg. 71
Having made his point that Paul’s eschatology is not motivated by an egomaniac, Vos adds this caveat that rings Piperian. This comment was written some 50 years (1930) before Piper unleashed his "Christian hedonism". In the footnote attached to the 1 Thessalonians passage, Vos quotes Augustine in suggesting that one might speak of Paul’s eschatology in terms of “spiritual” hedonism: “Of course, it is not intended to deny to Paul that transfigured spiritualized type of ‘hedonism,’ if one prefers so to call it, as distinct from the specific attitude towards life that went in the later Greek philosophy by that technical name. Nothing, not even a most refined Christian experience and cultivation of religion are possible without that. It is concreated with ‘the seed of religion’ in man. Augustine speaks of this in his Confessions in these words: ‘For there exists a delight that is not given to the wicked, but to those honoring Thee, 0 God, without desiring recompense, the joy of whom Thou art Thyself! And this is the blessed life, to rejoice towards Thee, about Thee, for Thy sake.’ Conf. X, 32.”
For Vos, this spiritual hedonism consisted in a delight and joy of God himself… toward God, about God, and for God’s sake. And this view of God in Paul’s eschatology permeates the entire body of Vosian work."