Friday, September 2, 2016

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is having a powerful influence upon contemporary Christianity!


Pragmatism asks no embarrassing questions about the Scripturalness of what we are doing. It accepts our chosen ends as right and good and casts about for efficient means and ways to get them accomplished. When it discovers something that works, it soon finds a text to justify it, then "consecrates" it to the Lord, and plunges ahead.


As one fairly familiar with the contemporary religious scene, I say without hesitation that a very large part of the activities carried on today in evangelical circles are not only influenced by pragmatism but almost completely controlled by it! Religious methodology is geared to it; it appears large in our youth meetings; magazines and books constantly glorify it; conventions are dominated by it; and the whole religious atmosphere is alive with it!


What shall we do to break its power over us? The answer is simple. We must acknowledge the right of Jesus Christ to control the activities of His church. The New Testament contains full instructions, not only about what we are to believe but what we are to do and how we are to go about doing it. Any deviation from those instructions, is a denial of the Lordship of Christ.


The answer is simple, but it is not easy for it requires that we obey God rather than man, and that always brings down the wrath of the religious majority! It is not a question of knowing what to do we can easily learn that from the Scriptures. It is a question of whether or not we have the courage to do it!




[A. W. Tozer]


  




Acts 5:27 ... Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.


Romans 6:16 ... Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?


2 Corinthians 10:5 ... Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;❤