Plagiarism: Christian Hedonism

Though I love John Piper, I haven't read The book til I dipped into a bit today. He quotes C.S Lewis talking about the modern virtue of 'Unselfishness', a negative term where once was 'Love'. Lewis goes on to say:

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."1

We should find our pleasure and joy in the Lord, and so finding, we should praise Him. Or, more correctly, we will praise Him, for that's what people do when they love a person. "I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation."2

1 C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), 1-2 from J. Piper, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist (Inter-Varsity Press, 2003), 20
2 C.S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958), 94-5 from ibid, 22