Do you live for the weekend? Is being entertained very important? If so you may have some hedonistic beliefs. Or do you think none of this really matters? That is to say what you believe and how you live does not matter. Then you have nihilistic beliefs. Or are you somewhere in between with some of each. The last is more likely because Americans pick and choose what they believe. They decide what the moral truths are and what is reality. We are going to look at the hedonistic and nihilistic belief systems through the lens of some diagnostic questions. In my last blog post we looked at moralistic and therapeutic belief systems. Again I am using Mark Sayer’s “Sin Chart” taken from a blog post by Jake Meador at Mere Orthodoxy. I am adding answers I would give as Christian to these 5 diagnostic questions.
| Questions | Hedonistic Answers | Nihilistic Answers | My Christian Answers |
| What is the purpose of life? | Life is pleasure. | Feel nothing. What about pleasure? It’s hard to get and doesn’t cover pain. Do good? What’s the point. Feel peace? Fat chance. Better to just feel nothing. | To know God and trust Him, and to live life by loving Him and loving others. This is only possible because of God’s grace. |
| What is sin? | Preventing pleasure. | Something that permeates everything. Sin is reality. | Self-centered attempts to be God by doing things our way. This makes us broken. |
| What is the world? | A playground. The world is there for you to enjoy. A flourishing life is to have the maximum experiences and maximum pleasure. The world is for self-pleasure and awakening. The world is there to be a conduit for your pleasure. | A disaster. | A broken place that is full of broken people in need of God’s grace. |
| What is its attitude toward faith? | Faith is too moral. | Faith is corrupt. But so is everything else. | Faith in Jesus Christ brings a full life and it begins the restoration process. |
| What is the solution to the moral ills of the world? | Just chill out. Less rules, more pleasure. If it doesn’t hurt anyone, just do it. Experience the world. Say “yes” to your desires. Look inside. What’s your heart telling you to do? | Escape. Retreat into games, into your bedroom. Escape somehow, perhaps with augmented reality? It’s depressing out there. | We cannot solve the ills of this world, but God can. Jesus Christ came and paid the price for our sin. He rose from the dead so that we might have life. God is at work in us. |
I see escaping reality in both hedonism and nihilism. Nothing matters in nihilism so just dull the senses and concerns and escape into whatever to avoid dealing with all this stuff that does not matter. Hedonism is similar. What matters is me and me being happy. Nothing else matters. I am going to do what I am going to do to make me feel good. That is all that is important, so escape to good feelings. You can see some elements of that hedonism in today’s Critical Expressive Individualism and also a little bit in Moralistic Therapeutic Deism. It is all about you and you fulfilling your desires, because your pleasure is what matters in hedonism. In nihilism you might as well do what you want since it does not really matter. There are no absolutes. Nihilism can lead to despair because there is no purpose to life and no hope that things will improve.
Since most Americans will pick and choose what they believe and how they see reality, you will find people with combinations of several beliefs and that means there will be very few people with pure hedonistic or pure nihilistic beliefs. However, Mark Sayer’s “Sin Chart” gives a good insight into moralistic, therapeutic, hedonistic, and nihilistic beliefs, and by looking at what people believe you can pick out elements of these beliefs. Can you see elements of the hedonistic and nihilistic belief systems in your own beliefs or in the beliefs of others?
As I have studied different worldviews and the modern mashup of different belief systems, it is obvious to me that the Christian Faith has the best view of reality among all the different worldviews. It is what is true.
heinsite 