The Pleasure Of Perfection Series

Christians have always had mixed feelings about pleasure. They know God made us to enjoy many

pleasures of life, and yet there are also the forbidden pleasures. These are often just extremes of

what is acceptable. Sex is good, but immorality is bad. Food is good, but gluttony is bad.

Abundance is good, but excessive luxury is bad. Power is good, but tyranny is bad. Every pleasure

seems to have a danger zone where it goes to far and become a negative. It is like the heat gage on

your dash. It is necessary for your car to develop heat, but when it keeps rising it goes into a danger

zone, and is then a threat to your car. A good thing gone to far is a bad thing. So it is with pleasure.

Adam and Eve had all the pleasures of paradise, but when they took the forbidden fruit they went

into the danger zone, and that pleasure was very costly, for it led to great pain. Christians tend to

focus on one aspect or the other of pleasure-the fair or the forbidden. The Puritans spent much of

their energy focused on avoiding the forbidden. They even passed laws forbidding laughter on

Sunday. Their idea of entertainment was sitting on a hard wooden bench listening to a three hour

sermon. They feared pleasure lest it be taken to extremes. They felt the best way to avoid extremes

is to avoid even the legitimate pleasures of life. They found pleasure in avoiding pleasure.

Modern Christians have rejected this approach, and feel the Christians should take advantage of

the pleasures God has made available. It is obvious we are made to enjoy a great many pleasures.

God has given us taste buds to enjoy many tastes, and then provided us through nature a multitude

of foods to stimulate these taste buds. A major part of our joy in life is the pleasure of eating. God

built us with a nervous system designed to enjoy the pleasures of sight, smell, touch, and sound, and

not a day goes by in which we do not experience pleasure by our senses. These are all legitimate

and motivate us to seek ways to add to our pleasures.

This may be more healthy than the Puritan approach, but it faces the same danger of lack of

balance. Christians can get so caught up in the pursuit of pleasure that they neglect their spiritual

life. The Psalms are God's gift to His people to prevent this, and promote the pleasures of the soul,

so that we maintain a balance between the pleasures of the flesh and those of the inner man. The

pleasure we want to focus on is the pleasure of beauty, and more specifically, the pleasure of God's

beauty, or the pleasure of perfection.

Psalm 84 begins with an expression of pleasure in God's dwelling place. "How lovely is your dwelling

place, O Lord Almighty." There is a deep longing in this song to experience again the

pleasure of being in this lovely environment where the presence of God could be felt. We are made

in the image of God, and so there is a magnetic attraction to what is lovely, beautiful, and perfect.

When we see perfect beauty we are compelled to praise. Why do you think millions are spent to

make cars look beautiful, and why beautiful women are used to advertise them? It is because what

motivates people to buy things is the beauty and pleasure of perfection. We all want to own beautiful

things with perfect shape, perfect colors, perfect efficiency. The perfect price is unachievable, of

course, but we will pay the price if the beauty is near enough to perfection.

Anybody selling anything uses beauty to promote the product. Better Home and Gardens gives

you pictures of what is a perfect home and garden. This produces in people a desire to possess such

perfection. The love of perfection is built into us, for it is part of God's image, and that is why the

classics never die. They are classics because they never lose their appeal, for they are aesthetically

pleasing to our ears or our eyes. Truly beautiful music and art are permanent for they appeal to

human nature in every age, and will continue to do so for all eternity.

God expects man to have pleasure in worship, for it is to be experienced in an environment of

beauty. The Temple was designed by God to be filled with the beauty of colors, artwork, sculpture,

and gold to appeal to the eye. The vast choir was to produce music appealing to the ear. The

incense was to appeal to the nose.

The sacrifice was to appeal to the taste. Worship was to be sense oriented so that the whole body,