There are many complex ways to define pragmaticism. For my purposes, I want to simplify things a bit. Basically, at the root of pragmaticism, as the term is more commonly used today, is the idea of cause and effect. Basically, it goes something like this: “If you do (fill in the blank), then (fill in the blank) is the likely outcome.”
Granted, there is some value to this concept, or way of thinking. Sometimes, this is indeed the case. For example, if I lay on my couch and eat Twinkies and drink cola for 8 hours a day while I watch television, I am more likely to become an unhealthy, overweight diabetic than I would be if I ran 10 miles a day and ate a healthy, balanced diet. If I drive the speed limit, wear my safety belt, and drive a car with good airbags, I am less likely to die in an automobile crash than I would be if I drove like a maniac, wore no safety belt, and drove an old car without airbags with a faulty braking system.
The problem is that sometimes real life does not always pan out this way. For example, I once knew a man who smoked two to three packs of non- filtered cigarettes a day, and lived to be almost 90 years old. I have known other people who practiced a relatively healthy lifestyle and then developed some form of cancer which ultimately took their lives prematurely.
I am not discounting the value of some pragmatic approach to life. There is much wisdom in considering one’s actions and the possibility of their positive or negative outcomes. However, I have seen a trend in the preaching that occurs in some of today’s churches that tends toward a more pragmatic than theological presentation of the Gospel that I find a bit concerning. Let me explain what I mean.
We live in a very narcissistic society. There are many things that cater to this approach to life. Social Media is one. I am not saying that there is no value to Social Media. It can serve as a good tool for people to stay in touch. But, it should be seen as just that, a tool. However, I have also seen that it tends to keep one focused too much on self. Personally, I do not care to be notified every time one of my acquaintances goes to the grocery store. I also do not care to view anyone’s constant deluge of “selfies” taken on the smartphone. I do not care to go into Starbucks (better, “Fivebucks” as I have heard it referred to), and see ten to twenty teen to twenties with their faces embedded into the screens of their phones, tablets, or laptops to the extent that they are totally oblivious to anything going on around them. It is comically ironic that in situations like this, many of the people who behave this way are probably spending some of that time on “Social Media” and may not even know the people who are physically less than a foot away from them.
So, back to the issue of the presentation of the Gospel. Basically, at the core of the Gospel message is the call to die to self. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. The Gospel message, and the entire Bible for that matter, is about the Glory of God. God desires to make Himself known to mankind. God desires to be glorified among the nations through Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Savior of mankind. Knowing this truth, and putting it into practice, involves the dying to self. In other words, coming to the realization that the real meaning of life is not self- satisfaction, but understanding that God is ultimately in control of everything, and He has a very specific reason for it all, and that, after all is said and done, His purposes will be the only thing that stands.
That is not to say that there are not positive and beneficial rewards for serving God’s purposes for one’s life, and doing things His way. There certainly are. But these temporary “benefits” are not His ultimate purpose. The glory of His name is. The problem I have seen is that sometimes temporary benefits get too much emphasis. That is the problem with the pragmatic approach. “If you do ________, then the result will be _________.”
Sometimes, from a purely practical, or logical approach to life, life just doesn’t “seem” to make sense. That is basically the point to the whole Book of Job. Job was caught in a dilemma. He knew that from a practical (pragmatic) position, he had done everything he knew of to do to be a righteous man. God even recognized and affirmed this. However, in our vernacular, one day “all hell broke loose” in Job’s life, and things didn’t make sense anymore.
How many of us can relate to this? A lot of us I suspect. How many times have you ever caught yourself thinking, and probably vocalizing “Why is this happening to me?”
Because this is so, the value we place on the Gospel message should not be based on the question, “How is this going to benefit me?”
Christianity should not be presented as one more ingredient in the formula for a successful life. That caters to our narcissistic tendencies.
We must take a theological approach to life, and a pragmatic approach. We have to get these two things in their proper order. The theological side has to come first. We have to be grounded in some unshakable truths upon which we will not compromise. Our paradigm, or our worldview, the framework through which we interpret life, has to be so established that it will not change, regardless of circumstances or feelings. If it is not, life will knock our feet out from under us.
The pragmatic side to life has to be subservient to the theological, or faith side to life. As I said previously, sometimes things will happen to us in life that affect our circumstances, our health, our finances, our relationships, things that affect us in a negative way, over which we have no control. If we take a purely pragmatic approach to life: If I do ____________, then_____________ will be the result, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment and disillusion. All one has to do is read the Bible to find out that a LOT of bad things happen to God’s people that have absolutely nothing to do with whether they are doing things right or not.
On a personal level, I struggled with this pragmatic mentality for a long time. I have done lots of things during my life expecting a certain outcome. I studied in the Church of the Nazarene to become an ordained minister. I thought I would be pastoring a nice church someday. I became a licensed minister, and was the associate pastor of a Nazarene church for a while, but then I went through a divorce, the cause of which was not my doing, and the denomination would not ordain me.
From the Home Study Course in the Church of the Nazarene, I went on to get my Bachelor of Ministry degree after I left the Church of the Nazarene to start attending a non-denominational church after Peggy and I got married. I served on the church board as the Director of Outreach ministry, and thought this would eventually open some doors for me entering full time ministry. Well, that church went through a real internal struggle, and eventually was dismantled, and the facility was sold.
I then felt as if God was calling me to the chaplaincy ministry, and my thought at the time was that I would become a prison chaplain, so I went through school again, and got a Master’s degree, specific to chaplaincy. I did an internship at a local hospital, and then applied for the next level at another hospital, and was turned down.
I applied for a lot of chaplaincy jobs, and was turned down. I also found out that prison chaplaincy jobs were scarce, and that these jobs have a very low turnover. (The guys that get the jobs keep them for a long time.)
We started attending another non-denominational church that, at that time had five full time pastors. I made myself available for everything. My wrong thinking lead me to believe that if I stayed there long enough, with my education and background, that eventually an opportunity would open up that would allow me to come on board as a pastor at that church. That never happened. I made my desires known to the pastors. They hired other ministers, and never approached me about anything involving leadership in the church. I have never even been given the opportunity to preach in this church, even though I have preached at lots of other churches in the past. I feel like I am not really needed.
I did start working with Emergency Chaplains, working with the police department. This has been a very fulfilling opportunity, but I have still had to work one full time job, and other part time jobs to make ends meet, because this work is voluntary.
So, basically, I became very disillusioned, and just gave up on the idea of ever becoming a pastor, in the occupational sense. I had been operating under the “If I do ___________, then _______________ will be the outcome” mentality. This approach did not work for me, so for a while I resolved to just stop expecting anything. My expectations became my enemy. But, eventually, God showed me that I had to stop behaving that way, and I have come to have a lot more peace over my life. I had to get over myself, and my expectations of what the outcome would be. I have so much to be thankful for. I have learned to just enjoy life, no matter what the outcome, and this is because of God’s peace, not because of anything I have or have not done.
I hope in sharing that, maybe it will help someone else who may also be struggling with similar issues.
Danny's Stump 