(remember, these are unedited/draft show notes, not a transcript — listening is always better…and if you listen AND follow along below, you’ll see why)
Focus Question:
What’s the problem with pragmatism?
Intro:
If someone were to say, “She is pragmatic,” there is probably a good chance that that would be a compliment. After all, the dictionary definition of adjective pragmatic is that it means you deal with something sensibly and realistically, practically rather than theoretically.
But we’re all philosophers here, too, right? After all philosophy is the love of wisdom. In philosophy, pragmatism means something altogether different…that something is right or wrong based on whether or not it works. So our focus question — what’s the problem with pragmatism — might seem to have an obvious answer, but it also draws our attention to something said in our NT segment today. See if you can hear it toward the end. An as usual, we’ll add an additional nugget of insight in our closing Bottom Line segment.
New Testament segment:
Passage: John 11
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 57
Words: ~1224
Some of you who have been with me awhile might remember that back in show #991 I delineated the difference between resurrection and resuscitation (link in the show notes). In short, resurrection is to a new, transformed, immortal body; resuscitation is the revival of the existing, temporal body, and it will die a physical death again. So when it comes to this Lazarus story, this wasn’t resurrection for Lazarus…it was resuscitation.
Old Testament segment:
Today we begin Lamentations, with is a book of five poems that lament over the fall of Jerusalem. You can imagine, then, both why most scholars think it was written by Jeremiah and why it comes right after Jeremiah. Four of the five are acrostics — a poetic form representing the letters of the alphabet, just like if we did a 26-stanza poem from A to Z (or Zed for those of you not in the United States). To give you that sense, I’ll say the Hebrew letter before the stanza, but remember I don’t speak Hebrew, so…you’ll just have to cut me some slack.
Passage: Lamentations 1
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 22
Words: ~464
Wisdom segment:
Passage: Proverbs 18:10-17
Translation: CSB (Christian Standard Bible)
Verses: 7
Words: ~111
The bottom line:
Those of you with me yesterday remember that I shared what God wants for you…
We're saved from God (not ourselves), by God (not ourselves), and for God (not ourselves).(1)
So you can begin to see the problem with pragmatism — deciding that right and wrong are what works or not. The problem is that if there is a sovereign God, it’s his to determine, not ours. And pragmatism often leads to moral relativism which is false. As we heard Caiaphas basically say, we can kill one dude to save the nation. Sounds practical, right? But does it justify committing an innocent man to death?
The problem with pragmatism is something you’ll run into a lot implicitly — that someone is looking for a philosophy that works, instead of asking what is true. Ironically, God’s plan is what works ultimately, but that’s because it is true. And in the short term, it’s easy to forget God saying in Isaiah 55:8: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and my ways are not your ways.” And as Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.”
So when we decide right and wrong based on human judgment, that’s the problem with the philosophy of pragmatism.
Love you!
ForTheHope is a daily audio Bible + apologetics podcast and blog. We’ve got a passion for just keepin’ it real, having conversations like normal people, and living out the love of Jesus better every single day.
Roger Courville, CSP is a globally-recognized expert in digitally-extended communication and connection, an award-winning speaker, award-winning author, and a passionately bad guitarist. Follow him on Twitter -- @RogerCourville and @JoinForTheHope – or his blog: www.forthehope.org.
Sources and resources:
(1) As articulated by Sam Allberry on Twitter, https://twitter.com/SamAllberry/status/1310194517660831745.