Tag Archives: pragmatism

Pragmatism vs. the power of the ought

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In The Next Christians, Gabe Lyons talks about hearing a talk by Max Kampelman on “The Power of the Ought.” There is a video on Lyons’ qideas.org web site which shows Kampelman delivering a talk by the same name; I haven’t watched the video, so I can’t say much about it.

The idea advanced is that we need to focus on doing what we ought, rather than what is practical. Kampelman was addressing a conference that discussed what should be the Christian position regarding nuclear proliferation. He argued passionately that the only option was the elimination of nuclear weapons from the face of the earth.

Lyons quotes Kampelman as saying, “We must recognize the power of the ‘ought.’ It’s the power to change the world! We can’t just see the world in terms of how it is today, or we will always feel defeated. But when we see the world in terms of how things ought to be, we can dream for the impossible—and work to make it become reality.” (Lyons, p. 62)

I guess I see it more along the lines of Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego. Faced with the choice of worshiping an ideal or dying in a fiery furnace, they rejected idolatry, assuring the king that their God was able to save. Then they said, “Even if he doesn’t, we won’t worship your idol.”

I think the power of the ought is in the “even if.” I’m going to do what’s right, not because that will somehow force God to intervene, but I’m going to do what’s right because it’s right. Even if my obedience “doesn’t work,” even if God doesn’t step in, I will know that I have done right.

I think that’s powerful.

Pragmatism and patience

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I touched on this point yesterday, but I think it needs further examination. Along with our pragmatism, we suffer from a lack of patience. An unwillingness to wait on the Lord. Whereas the oft-repeated biblical cry is “How long?”, I fear that the modern church tends to say, “That’s too long… we’ll take care of it ourselves.”

Throughout the Bible, God acted on His timetable, not man’s. Even godly men like Abraham got impatient and tried to take things into their own hands, but their continued faith in the face of a time of waiting is a big part of what makes them great.

Four centuries in slavery in Egypt. That’s a long time.

When God would punish his people through foreign occupation, this would often be for decades at a time.

When bad kings ruled over God’s people, they sometimes did so for very long periods of time. One of the worst kings was Manasseh, and he ruled for 55-years!

We could go on and on, looking at the length of the captivity in Babylon, the time before the coming of the Messiah, even the amount of time that Jesus waited before beginning his ministry. It starts in Genesis and goes all the way through Revelation.

Revelation promises God’s victory over Rome as a consolation to the persecuted church; that victory came centuries later. Christians suffered. Christians died. Bad people ruled, good people were oppressed. Horrors were inflicted on entire nations. And God waited hundreds of years to act.

I don’t know that we’re willing to wait that long. Especially those of us who live in young countries. When your nation has only existed for 200 years or so, waiting 40-50 years for God to act seems like a lot to ask. Frankly, waiting years or even months seems like too much.

And so we say, “It’s not practical. It just won’t work.” What we should be saying is, “I’m don’t trust enough in God to wait.”

Pragmatism

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I’m wondering if we haven’t placed “what will work” above “what is right,” in many cases. Admittedly, I’m still thinking about turning the other cheek from last week’s discussion, though I think this intrusion on our belief system occurs in other places.

What it comes down to is this: people say, “That can’t be right because it just won’t work in the real world.” Be it turning the other cheek, be it lending without expecting anything in return, be it trusting in God for our financial security, be it trusting in God for our physical safety, all of it can be shown to “not work.”

Here are some things in the Bible that could be said not to work:

  • God’s promises to Abraham. Have you ever noticed that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob spent their lives living in tents? That their descendants ended up spending over 400 years in slavery? Those promises to Abraham were a nice theological device, but from a pragmatic standpoint, they didn’t work all that well.
  • The faithfulness of God’s prophets. What did being true to God get most of the prophets? Ridicule. Scorn, Rejection. Imprisonment. Death. Undeniably, faithfulness “doesn’t work.”
  • Jesus’ ministry. Jesus couldn’t keep a group of followers together for long. The few he had fought frequently among themselves and scattered when he needed them most. And he ended up dying on a cross. That certainly didn’t work well.
  • “The Jesus Way.” For centuries, Jesus’ followers were beaten, imprisoned and killed. Centuries. Hundreds of years. Dozens of decades. Does anybody really believe that turning the other cheek, loving enemies, etc., has any practical place in a violent world? It doesn’t make sense.

Tell Gideon about the effectiveness of torches and pitchers as weapons. Talk to Joshua about trumpets as weapons and Jehoshaphat about using singers as the shock troops for your army. Talk to Peter about using prayer to get someone out of jail.

When we bow down before pragmatism instead of bowing down before God, we compromise our beliefs time and again.

The Power of the Ought

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Max Kampleman

I’m reading the book Next Christians by Gabe Lyons, one of the coauthors of the book UnChristian. It’s a fairly easy read, but has a lot to say. When I finish it, I’ll review it here.

One incident that Lyons describes in his book caught my attention. He told of being at the Hoover Institute in Washington, at a conference on the Christian stance toward nuclear disarmament. One of the speakers was Max Kampleman, a Jewish conscientious objector during World War II. Kampleman unapologetically took an impractical stance on disarmament, saying, “We must recognize the power of the ‘ought.’ It’s the power to change the world! We can’t just see the world in terms of how it is today, or we will always feel defeated. But when we see the world in terms of how things ought to be, we can dream for the impossible—and work to see it become reality.” (p. 62, Lyons’ emphasis)

That really made me stop and think. I hadn’t really thought about how wrong it can be for us to speak in terms of “can” and “can’t.” Do we really believe that we have a God for whom nothing is impossible? If so, should we focus on “can” and “can’t” or should we focus on “ought” and “oughtn’t”?

What if we dared to dream, dared to believe that our God is who He says He is? What if we focused on doing what’s right, even if all human logic says it won’t work? What if we focused on faithfulness instead of practicality?

Maybe we’d be a bunch of idealistic dreamers. Like we’re supposed to be.

What do you think?

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