Pleasure is not a human idea or invention. Paul tells us that it is God “who richly provides us with everything to enjoy” (1 Tim 6:17). That is all-encompassing—God designed the world and all that is within it for human enjoyment. Relationships, food, trees, oceans, sex, sunsets, beaches, coffee, beer…all for our enjoyment.
C.S. Lewis in his book ScrewTape Letters imagines the mentoring relationship of a senior demon with his junior on how to best tempt his Christian patient. He speaks to the issue of pleasure.
Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. all the same, it is his invention, not ours. he made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. all we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which he has forbidden. hence we always try to work away from the natural condition of any pleasure to that in which it is least natural, least redolent of its Maker, and least pleasurable.