God and gifts
I recall a memorable conversation I once had with a friend. We were both sipping a beer, and he said to me, “Do you know how I know I’m an amillennialist? Because I look at this beer, and I think about the fact that it could damn me.”
Whether my friend was right to link his concern about his beer with a particular eschatological viewpoint, I am not prepared to say; I happened to share his viewpoint, and I was enjoying my beer just fine. But there is something here to which I think every serious Christian can relate: the question of how to enjoy the good gifts of God, the savor and beauty of created things, without falling into the sin of idolatry, of worshipping the creature rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25).
This interaction with John Piper’s “Christian hedonism” shows us how the doctrine of the Trinity can help us with that question. I found it extraordinarily useful.
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