A good while ago now, I remember two teenagers from our parish coming to speak to me about Youth and Church. They had just returned from a weekend away. I asked them what they wanted out of ‘Church’ and the answer came back, ‘I suppose we want a kind of Christian hedonism!’ I said back to them that I didn’t know I had to bring a dictionary with me.

It’s an amazing term and it’s never left me, ‘Christian hedonism’? I think I knew what they meant – to have the freedom to enjoy the pleasure and utopia of knowing God’s love in Jesus Christ. At least I think that’s what they meant! It’s an abandonment of constraints!

You know that our daughter Lydia is at University in Dundee and sorting out her social life when she got there took number one priority. She came home a few weeks ago for a short break and she deigned to have dinner with us on the Friday evening and hear all the news, and at ten past midnight... she decided to meet up with friends she hadn’t seen since she first went away (as long ago as some five weeks previous) – ten past twelve!

We learnt, among other things, that the Student Union bar had ‘themed nights’ practically every day of the week and I think you could party round the clock, if you so desired! Now, I have to admit, we had good times as students, and we were privileged to be there, but the pursuit of the social life and a ‘good time’ seems now all consuming. Our problem was that we never had any money; Lydia just thinks we do! So, washing dishes in local restaurants was always an option!

I wouldn’t begrudge them one second of it all; life is far too short and, in the end, far too desperate!

And that’s the reality of it all. Life is hugely hedonistic; you only have to look at your TV or magazine to realise that, and it is part of a post-Christian modernism, as some would call it – that if it makes you feel OK, then do it; go for it! To dare to suggest otherwise makes you into a complete kill-joy and an utter misery. And so to suggest ‘Christian hedonism’ as a concept, especially to young people in church circles, makes complete sense to the present way of thinking because it ‘fits in’!

However, Woody Allen put it in his inimitable way once by saying, ‘More than at any time in history, mankind stands at a crossroad. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness; the other leads to total extinction. Let us pray that we have the wisdom to choose correctly!”

That puts a slightly different perspective on things, doesn’t it? Is Woody Allen a pessimist, or a realist, or maybe something else?

The church seems to be caught between a rock and hard place; in some ways we are in a ‘no win’ situation.

If we condemn the pursuit of pleasure as evil and self-centered, then we make ourselves into miserable ‘wet-blankets’ who only want to spoil the fun! We can put on faces that only someone like Billy Connolly can replicate. You know exactly what I mean! Are we really such spoil-sports?

However, if we condone the hedonistic lifestyle, then we seem to be contradicting what the New Testament teaches, and ignoring the fact that we live in a world of desperate need, as our Gospel reading reminds us so vividly; where the Christian is to look outwards rather than inwards.

Where do we go from here? Perhaps ‘Christian hedonism’ is not such a bad place to be. We can accept life in all its fullness, as Jesus promises, but we can also know that being a Christian gives us great responsibility.

It is a matter of who rules our lives; is it just ourselves, or is it Christ the King who takes ultimate control?

The young generation often gets such a bad press, and yet I know of no other generation which has been so aware of the plight of millions who exist on so little throughout the world.

Christian hedonism is not an end in itself, but leads to a greater awareness of what being a Christian call is all about, and therefore it must be a legitimate pursuit.

Perhaps Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it a lot better when he gave a celebrated address in Harvard University showing how the popular philosophy of hedonism, is, in itself, ultimately very shallow, when he said,

“If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not have to die. But since he is born to die, his task on earth must be of a more spiritual nature...so that one may leave this life a better human being than when one started it.”

Being a Christian means that we can enjoy life it all its fullness, that’s the whole point of being, as Hans Kung would say, “fully human”, but it also means that it is Christ that rules our lives and He takes precedence over everything else, even our own selves.