I’ll never forget a short car ride I had with a friend — a former returned missionary from our faith who had stepped away from the church, left his wife and was living a life centered, by his own admission, on the pursuit of more sexual fulfillment. In the car, this 40-something man made an unapologetic pitch for his brave new lifestyle, saying: “Jacob, there’s so much more pleasure you could be feeling in your body!”
He’s right, of course. The internet today is flooded with videos showing men and women in a thousand different scenarios and storylines — some sappy romance movies, others far more explicit — arriving at a moment where the audience is cued for what happens next: one looks at the other with longing and for a few moments, the audience becomes transfixed in a proxy act of transcendent pleasure.
Most of these millions of videos have little to no overt narration. But the overriding message still comes through clearly enough: “this is really what life is all about.”
If you’re looking for the highest sweetness of life, in other words, this is where viewers are encouraged to find it: more and more sexual pleasure. After all, finding our highest pleasure and personal happiness is really the point of everything, isn’t it?
The erotic path: ‘Men and women are, that they might have intense pleasure?’
Some of the most influential voices in contemporary culture now frame erotic experience, in particular, as a kind of higher path that unlocks the true sweetness of life. More than simply a source of pleasure, sexual fulfillment has been increasingly highlighted culturally as a pathway to authenticity, liberation, self-discovery, and even transcendence.
For instance, psychologists and sexologists like Esther Perel and David Schnarch have argued that erotic experience can reveal a more authentic self, unlock neglected dimensions of identity, and offer a kind of aliveness that ordinary routines cannot typically provide. Writer Audre Lorde has likewise described the erotic as a source of deep feeling, knowledge, and power.
In pop culture, historical dramas full of pornographic scenes such as The Tudors, Outlander, and Bridgerton, have swept away large audiences into the same thesis1 — portraying erotic desire as a transcendent pathway of self-discovery, liberation, and personal fulfillment. Other lessons include:
Passion as liberation and proof of being alive. Sexual desire is portrayed as a way to break free from restrictive social expectations and discover one’s authentic self. Intense attraction becomes an escape from routine, emotional flatness, and a predictable life.
Erotic fulfillment as personal fulfillment and a guide to truth. Sexual fulfillment becomes a measure of whether one is truly living well, rather than one part of a meaningful life. Strong desires are treated as revealing one’s deepest identity—even when following them conflicts with promises, responsibilities, or existing relationships.
‘What tells me I’m alive’
Plenty of other dramas likewise popularize the idea that erotic intensity can reveal a truer self than the safety and predictability of an established relationship. In one infamously explicit series, the online script shares a voiceover narration from the female protagonist who says:
“I just need to feel it again. What? Some small piece of that magical interconnected, love bubble rush. It was such a high!....Appetite, desire, those are the things that tell you you’re still alive. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Similar things have been said about drug highs, of course, and other intense escapes. In this case, though, rather than one dimension of human experience, sexual passion and intense desire become a privileged route to the good life — as though feeling most intensely were evidence of living most fully.
Shrinking a soul, hollowing out a life
One of my questions is what this actually means for those who eat this stuff up — which is a lot of people.
The implications seem pretty clear when you think them through. When a story repeatedly presents erotic intensity as the moment a character feels most authentic, most free and most alive, it invites viewers to embrace exactly this in their own emotional world — chasing sexual pleasure and fulfillment as a pathway of relief, sweetness and self-discovery.
In this way, any of us — and people we love — could be ushered into a narrow world where a fulfilled, valuable life is measured primarily by the intensity of what we feel instead of by who we are and the depth of our love for others.
But are we sure that pleasure pathway doesn’t actually work? Plenty of people are chasing it to find out. You tell me: When you look in their faces, what do you find?
In my experience, not joy. And that’s the great contradiction here. What if the pursuit of intense sexual pleasure actually leads to something far less than the highest happiness people can have — which must come in a very different way?
What’s it really all about?
Instead of proclaiming intense pleasure as the reason we’re here, the prophet Lehi had a different message for his sons in the Book of Mormon: “Adam fell that men might be; and men (and women) are, that they might have joy.”
In the Book of Job, we glimpse an ancient past where men and women “shouted for joy” upon learning of the opportunity to come to earth with so much learning and becoming. Something pretty awesome was going to happen by coming here, it seems.
I’ve been fascinated in my personal study lately to better understand the fundamental difference between all this pleasure at our fingertips and the truest, sweetest joy also available. My interest comes from seeing how often the former is being touted and pursued as “what it’s all about.”
But what if that’s not true? And what if many of us end up missing out on something WAY BETTER?
That’s exactly what I believe is happening. For the sake of a deeper conversation about this all, consider seven scriptural ways that true joy diverges fundamentally from even the sweetest forms of physical pleasure.
True joy vs. incredible pleasure: 7 major differences
1. A joy neither temporary or transitory
When the intense pleasure ends — be that a binge with food, porn, sex, drugs, alcohol — the sensation passes. And it’s over — passing away almost like a dream, leaving us still hungry for something more.2
But that’s simply not how true joy works. As President Russell Nelson once taught, it’s possible to “feel joy regardless of what is happening — or not happening — in our lives.”
This was an aspiration of ancient Christians, with Paul saying, “rejoice evermore” and James encouraging: “when troubles of any kind come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.”
There are many other similar words of encouragement,3 along with repeated experiences of shouldn’t-be-feeling-this-way joy.4 Monique and I have experienced this kind of growing joy in our family, even amid Emma and Olivia’s health challenges.
Bottom line: this kind of joy is not dependent on an absence of difficulty. On the contrary, this very struggle is tied in a profound way to the emergence of more sweetness. “In this life I shall have joy,” Adam says in scripture, connecting that to their eyes becoming opened in a fall away from God — with Eve also describing this painful knowledge of good and evil as connected to “the joy of our redemption.”
Rather than being a deterrent to happiness, then, our entrance into this complicated, messy life is central to the experience of joy. And there’s something about experiencing the painful opposites of life that helps us know how to recognize both the bitter and the sweet.5
2. A joy also not always immediate
One of the selling points of intense pleasure is its availability now. Not so with incredible joy, which can never be marketed with the same slogan.
“They that sow in tears shall reap in joy,” writes the psalmist — with another psalm stating: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
“Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy,” Jesus says — comparing the eventuality of sweetness among his followers to one of humanity’s oldest rituals: “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world.”
“Ye now therefore have sorrow,” he continued. “But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.”
3. Coming not from a substance or behavior — but from a relationship
“In thy presence is fulness of joy,” David declared of the Lord. Christ’s arrival was also famously announced by the angel, “I bring you good tidings (good news) of great joy, which shall be to all people.”6
Scripture speaks of the “joy of the Lord” (Nehemiah), “joy in the Lord” (Isaiah), the “joy of thy lord” (Matthew) and the “joy of his Lord” (D&C).
“The love of God is better than anything else I’ve ever experienced — even better than romantic love,” Alicia Williams once told me.7
“Call on the Lord, that your souls may be joyful,” restoration scripture encourages. “I don’t know how other people get charged up but for me it’s really coming in the presence of God and enjoying him that’s a type of joy that lasts,” taught Pastor Francis Chan. “Like if I can get that time and really be focused in the morning it really does just go throughout the whole day.”
“In this world your joy is not full, but in me your joy is full,” Christ taught early Saints in Missouri and Ohio who were being driven from their homes — with the Book of Mormon describing Lamoni’s experiences where “light had infused such joy into his soul.”
“He is the source of all joy,” President Nelson continued, “We can feel this at Christmastime when we sing, “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” And we can feel it all year round. For Latter-day Saints, Jesus Christ is joy!”
4. Compared with ‘whatever you feel like’ pleasure, joy is closely tied to aligning ourselves with a higher way of living
More than just a correct understanding of God, Joseph Smith taught that true faith depended upon “an actual knowledge that the course of life which he is pursuing is according to his will.”
The same alignment appears to shape our experience of joy as well. King Benjamin taught his people the “commandments of God, that they might rejoice” and then reflected on the “happy state of those that keep the commandments.”
The angel who announced Christ’s birth to this same ancient American king would go on to explain the humble, outward-facing discipleship that would allow these people to “always rejoice, and be filled with the love of God.”
“Lift up thy heart and rejoice, and cleave unto the covenants which thou hast made,” the Lord told early Saints — more than once. This echoes the frequent reassurance from Christ in the New Testament, where he says 5 different times “Be of good cheer” — including when he said: “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
5. Instead of pursuing any pleasure regardless of physical consequences, deep joy is closely tied to a deeper union between body and spirit
Central to all of the most intense physical pleasures is some kind of sensation that the body allows us to feel — often (but not always), despite the fact that it’s hurting us physically and distancing us from our deeper emotional, spiritual core.
This is night and day different from true joy, since there appears to be something about the spirit uniting with the body that also sets the stage for deeper joy. For instance, restoration scripture states that “spirit and element, inseparably connected, receive a fulness of joy; And when separated, man cannot receive a fulness of joy.”8
Death, of course, is the ultimate separation of spirit and body — something that comes to all, regardless of what you believe. Yet our bodies and spirits can also obviously become estranged in this life. Maybe that’s why a fuller expression of fasting (which I experience as emptying myself from anything in my life not of God), is synonymous in restoration scripture with our joy being “full.”
6. Rather than finding pleasure from others, joy is closely tied to bringing more sweetness to those around us
The intense pleasure available in society today has a transactional quality to it: see how much money you can get from people around you, see how much thrill, comfort and pleasure you can get — especially sexually.
That is just the opposite trajectory from where true joy comes in a spiritual sense — neither from a party life nor a monastic life of contemplation, but instead from bringing more goodness, truth and delight to others.
“If your joy will be great with one soul that you have brought unto me into the kingdom of my Father,” declares restoration scripture, “how great will be your joy if you should bring many souls unto me!”
Christ tells a story of the shepherd who “layeth (a sheep) on his shoulders, rejoicing” and then throws a party as a vivid illustration for what “joy shall be in heaven” over one person turning their life back to God.
One sign that something truly from God has been shared — and with the “spirit of truth” — is simply the sweetness felt where “both are edified and rejoice together”
This leads to a rippling effect, with new joy awakened in someone else, which then sparks even more joy in the one sharing. Alma talks about “declar(ing) the truth, that we may have rejoicings in the joy of our brethren.”9
That joy of sharing sweetness certainly includes the home, as John suggests there is “no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” And Ecclesiastes encourages readers to “live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life.”
The life of drawing upon redemptive truth personally — and then gathering together with others who are relishing the same — is portrayed by Isaiah as a sweet fount of unending happiness:
“With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation” (Isa. 12:3).
“Therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their head: they shall obtain gladness and joy; and sorrow and mourning shall flee away.” (Isa. 51:11).
“For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isa. 55:12).10
What you really want
Why think about this at all? Because of all those times we feel seduced by intense imagery of the party-life-ecstasy projected on every side — bodies thrown at bodies, to the point we feel strongly tempted to say: “Maybe that’s what it’s all about — and maybe that’s what I really want?”
It’s not. However intense the pleasure paraded before our eyes may look, we all want something better than a titillation that is transitory-and-temporary, experience-dependent, body-estranging and relationship-using.
We want something that lasts — beyond just an episodic experience. And something that draws both our souls and the hearts of those around us closer together.
Imagine what it would be like for the internet to be flooded with videos showing men and women finding deep, exquisite joy in abundant community and life together. What would that even look like?
This is certainly not what’s flooding the internet today. But the real deal is different and can change us all if we let it, which brings us to one final characteristic of true and lasting joy.
7. The clincher: Joy so amazing you have to be changed to receive it
Another selling point of intense pleasure is that anyone can have it now….right here.
That’s super different from what has been called a “fullness of joy”11 — something so good that it’s beyond normal human capacity to even experience.
“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him,” Paul taught. Rather than impossible to experience, however, this ancient apostle makes clear this is something that can be revealed to those who are ready.12
Peter similarly taught that we can “rejoice with joy unspeakable — with the author of Hebrews also describing people being “filled with that joy which is unspeakable.”
“Just as the Savior offers peace that “passeth all understanding,” President Russell Nelson taught that God “also offers an intensity, depth, and breadth of joy that defy human logic or mortal comprehension.”
So what is it that we actually want? On one hand, we can continue to chase pleasure without fulfillment, excitement without lasting joy, and the appearance of being satisfied without actually being nourished.
Or, we can set our feet on a sure path towards a sweetness, joy and happiness that surpasses anything we could imagine for ourselves.
Notes:
These are among the most popular shows on Netflix and Amazon Prime in recent years — with Bridgerton the most-streamed original series in the U.S. in 2024, while Outlander continued to attract a substantial audience.
This reminds me of Isaiah’s image of “when a hungry man dreameth, and, behold, he eateth; but he awaketh, and his soul is empty: or as when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he awaketh, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite.”
For instance, Christ taught, “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad … for so persecuted they the prophets. And Peter taught:
“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye….But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian … let him glorify God (1 Pet. 4:13).
For instance:
“I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation.” (2 Cor. 7:4).
For ye “took joyfully (joyfully accepted) the spoiling of your goods (seizure of your property), knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance” (Heb. 10:34).
“And now it came to pass that the burdens which were laid upon Alma and his brethren were made light; yea, the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease, and they did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord.” (Mosiah 24:15)
“And the Lord provided for them that they should hunger not, neither should they thirst; yea, and he also gave them strength, that they should suffer no manner of afflictions, save it were swallowed up in the joy of Christ.” (Alma 31:38)
If we lived free of any misery in a “state of innocence,” Lehi taught, we would also have “no joy.”
A century earlier, an angel thrilled a humble king in ancient America by announcing “the time cometh, and is not far distant” that the Son of God would come into the world — explaining that he had been sent “to declare unto thee that thou mayest rejoice; and that thou mayest declare unto thy people, that they may also be filled with joy.”
But how could they rejoice if he hadn’t been born yet? The good news was already being shared around the world, the angel explained, “that thereby whosoever should believe that Christ should come, the same might receive remission of their sins, and rejoice with exceedingly great joy, even as though he had already come among them.”
No need to wait.
As Lehi tasted this life filled with the love of God — symbolized by fruit on a tree — he said “it was most sweet, above all that I ever before tasted” — adding that “it filled my soul with exceedingly great joy.”
His son Nephi, who wanted to experience what his father did, was shown a vision of the same tree, alongside a virgin “bearing a child in her arms.”
After explaining this was the “Lamb of God,” the angel asked: “Knowest thou the meaning of the tree which thy father saw?
“Yea, it is the love of God, which sheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the most desirable above all things,” Nephi responded — with the angel adding, “Yea, and the most joyous to the soul.”
Most sweet, most desirable, and most joyous!
In an inspired 1918 vision during the height of the Spanish flu that would kill 50 million people around the world, President Joseph F. Smith beheld an “innumerable company of the spirits of the just, who had been faithful in the testimony of Jesus” gathered together soon after Jesus Christ died — noting that they were “filled with joy and gladness, and were rejoicing together because the day of their deliverance was at hand.”
“They were assembled awaiting the advent of the Son of God into the spirit world, to declare their redemption from the bands of death. Their sleeping dust was to be restored unto its perfect frame, bone to his bone, and the sinews and the flesh upon them, the spirit and the body to be united never again to be divided, that they might receive a fulness of joy” (later explaining that these “had looked upon the long absence of their spirits from their bodies as a bondage”).
Of course, just knowing this life is not the end, and that today’s actions have meaning that extends beyond the grave has also been a source of joy for believers for thousands of years. In ancient America, people were described as “being filled with great joy because of the resurrection of the dead.”
This is all about sharing God with others. “This is my joy,” Alma says “that perhaps I may be an instrument in the hands of God to bring some soul to repentance.”
President Russell Nelson taught that this is “why our missionaries leave their homes to preach His gospel. Their goal is not to increase the number of Church members. Rather, our missionaries teach and baptize to bring joy to the people of the world!”
Missionaries in the Book of Mormon are “overpowered with joy” (Alma 19:14) and with hearts “brim with joy” (Alma 26:11) — to the point that some even passed out “so great was their joy.”
While many today are hesitant to share, out of fear of others’ reaction, disciples recognize a message sweet to those ready for it — one hardly able to read “without rejoicing.”
It’s also possible, of course, to receive this message and “with joy receive it” — but then later reject it because you had “no root” (Matt. 13:20, Luke 8:13).
The psalmist says “The joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion” (Ps. 48:2). And later restoration scripture says: “Keep all the commandments and covenants by which ye are bound; and I will cause the heavens to shake for your good, and Satan shall tremble and Zion shall rejoice upon the hills and flourish” (D&C 35:24).
“And it shall come to pass that the righteous shall be gathered out from among all nations, and shall come to Zion, singing with songs of everlasting joy.” (D&C 45:71; see also Moses 7:53).
Some references:
“In this world your joy is not full, but in me your joy is full” (D&C 101:36).
“Enoch … received a fulness of joy” (Moses 7:67).
“If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11).
Referring to this passage, Pastor John Piper says “Jesus refers to his own joy as being in us — not just giving us a joy but his joy … is in us. We’re not just rejoicing over what we know about Jesus, we’re rejoicing with the very joy of Jesus.”
Paul was quoting Isaiah’s earlier prophesy: “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” (Isaiah 64:4)
Paul does add next, however, “But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:10). So however beyond normal human comprehension these wonderful realities, they are something God can reveal to any of us through His Spirit.