Hedonism

I'm reading in James 4.3 this morning where James says you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. The word passions is ἡδοναῖς in the Greek which is the word from which we get the word hedonism, or the pursuit of pleasure. The word originally did not imply bad pleasures, but the meaning gradually became the pursuit of pleasure for its own end so that by the NT time all 5 uses refer to a bad pursuit of pleasure. The EDNT puts it this way: This led in Hellenism to the meaning “sensual joy, sexual pleasure,” and to the ethically negative evaluation by the Cynics, Stoics, and popular philosophy.

The point James is making is that we must be very careful that when we pray we are doing nothing more than asking God to feed our own passions which tend to draw us away from him. Why would God do that? It isn't in our best (eternal) interests. As one commentator pointed out, what we should be doing is praying that God would give us a greater desire for him than for our passions.