Pastor, here’s how to answer “If it feels good, do it.”

You’ve heard it in a counseling appointment, usually after the damage is done. You’ve seen it in every ad, every show, every feed: follow your desire, you deserve this, if it feels good, do it. It’s one of the most culturally accepted sermons of the serpent there is. Here’s what’s underneath it, and the two questions Paul used to break it.

What hedonism is

Hedonism makes pleasure the highest good and appetite the final authority. Whatever I want, I should have, and whatever feels good must be good. The sexual revolution is its cultural form. It’s licentiousness taken to its end.

We all have desires in our hearts. That’s not the problem. Hedonism says every appetite should be fulfilled, any way possible.

The serpent’s question

The serpent’s whisper here is simple: “Did God really say no to something that feels this good?” It sounds a lot like the garden’s third lie, “Surely you will not die.” Do it, nothing will happen, it’s not a big deal.

That’s the “no consequences” lie again. But the consequences of hedonism aren’t small. They’re life-alteringly devastating.

Step 1 — Preach the little foxes

The Bible talks about “the little foxes that ruin the vineyards” (Song of Songs 2:15). It’s the small decisions that lead to big issues. Nobody wakes up one day and blows up their life. It’s a little compromise that felt good, then another, and then all of a sudden you look at the vineyard of your life and it’s destroyed, because you gave in to your base desires one small step at a time.

Pastors, preach the slide. Most of your people aren’t planning a catastrophe. They’re just making small choices with no idea where they lead.

Step 2 — Ask Paul’s two questions

There’s nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Corinth was a deeply hedonistic city, with temple prostitution and some wild things happening even inside the church. And Paul quotes their cultural slogan right back to them: “I have the right to do anything” or, as some translations put it, “everything is permissible for me” (1 Corinthians 6:12). He’s quoting the sermon of the serpent.

Then he challenges the premise twice. “But not everything is beneficial.” And, “I will not be mastered by anything.”

That’s where hedonism breaks. First, it isn’t a benefit. It’s a detriment. Just because it feels good doesn’t mean you should do it, because it’s harming you. Second, it doesn’t just harm you. Eventually it controls you. It becomes a life-controlling habit, a life-controlling addiction, a life-controlling sin, and now you’re enslaved to it.

Use those two questions in counseling. Is this beneficial? Has it mastered you? Most people already know the honest answer.

Step 3 — Choose your appetite

Paul goes on: “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food” (1 Corinthians 6:13). You get hungry, you want to eat. Then he brings it to the sexual appetite. Just because you have that appetite doesn’t mean you fulfill it with a prostitute.

We all have appetites, and we all want them fulfilled. There’s a godly way to fulfill an appetite and an ungodly way. Having an appetite for food doesn’t mean you should eat until it ruins your health. Having a sexual appetite doesn’t mean acting on every desire. Hedonism says fulfill it any way possible. The gospel says there’s a holy way, and it’s better.

And once something like this becomes culturally accepted, the church has to be clearly separate from it. We don’t get to borrow the culture’s slogan and sprinkle a verse on it.

Step 4 — Call your church to a fast

This is why I think fasting is so powerful. Fasting says, “I’m denying myself. I’m denying my desires. This desire of the flesh is not so important. My desire for God is so much greater.” It’s practice in not being mastered.

So don’t just call a fast as an act of devotion. Call it as an act of defense. A church that knows how to say no to its stomach is a church the serpent has a hard time preaching to.

Here’s the pastoral line I’d give anyone caught in this: there is no benefit to this, it has mastered you, and there is freedom in Christ Jesus. I will not be mastered by my stomach. I will be mastered by the Lord Jesus Christ, and that’s where life is.