Book Review: Desiring God Revised Edition by John Piper

Imagine my surprise as a book reviewer when I had opportunity to obtain a pre-release copy of a book that was actually released twenty-five years ago. It seems Desiring God by John Piper has been released again as a Revised Edition.

This book has been called a 20th century classic. It has changed lives. A thriving sub-culture has been built around the term Christian Hedonist coined by Piper and the central theme of this work, a term which to many seems a bit oxymoronic. Dr. Piper seeks to debunk such a view, and does so in 300 plus pages.

If you glance over hundreds and hundreds of reviews of Desiring God published over the years you find that almost everyone celebrates this book as revolutionary. A great many have lifted it to a pedestal only slightly below Scripture. Personally I found it reads like a textbook. The complexity of the writing style is staggering. This is not a page turner. I can generally read four books in the amount of time I required to plow through Piper’s pages (note to self: never say “Piper’s pages” again). Thinking I might be alone in this I continued to scan past reviews and found one on Amazon.com that I could related to. Duane from Salem, OR said this in 2002:

John Piper has a great ministry and has a good vision of what it is to desire God above all else in life. The problem is, he has trouble getting it on paper in a form mortal man can understand. I have a Bachelors in English, but nothing I’ve had to study came as hard as deciphering this book. Verbage and word choice is at a level far above post-grad — and to make matters worse, his sentence structure is VERY unusual and choppy (albeit l-o-n-g). He would likely say, “To the store I am going.” Read Duane’s entire review here.

This book does have some fantastic things to share with we mortals. I must confess however that I opened the book with a strong caution knowing Piper’s views as a Calvinist, myself finding great fault with that theology. To be fair, I did not find Desiring God to be a manifesto for the Calvinistic cause, but Dr. Piper’s views on the matter do gently rise to surface, if only briefly. Just look for the term predestination.

Piper’s classic will challenge the believer in many positive ways, the gut check I found most toe-damaging was on prayer. I found the thesis of the book as it relates to Piper’s Christian Hedonism compelling at first, but from a theological stand point I feel the author may go to far with it. The scene in Forrest Gump comes to mind when Forrest is running with the football and not only achieves the goal of a touchdown, but just keeps going past the uprights, through the band, and off to who knows where. I really felt uneasy about mid-book when I read the chapter sub-title “Glorifying God not by serving Him, but being served by Him.” I understand what he is trying to say, but I think he blew through a stop sign back there somewhere.