In a sermon entitled “The Pleasantness of Religion,” Jonathan Edwards draws the following doctrine from Proverbs 24:13-14:

“It would be worth the while to be religious if it were only for the pleasantness of it.”

Although we might expect him to go straight to spiritual joys to prove his point, he starts out by proving that Christianity increases joy through the bodily senses – not just joys of the soul, but the joys of the body; not just spiritual joys but sensual joys (meaning “the five bodily senses” not “carnal” or “fleshly”).

He takes a further surprising turn by using three Christian experiences, normally thought of as painful, to argue for the pleasantness of Christianity: repentance, self-denial, and persecution.

Read more about these three strange pleasures at The Christward Collective.