If results are the only things that matter, then a false religion that has the desired results would be just as good as a true one. Not only that, but if results are the only things that matter, then if you could find a way to produce these results without religion, you wouldn’t need religion after all. Most important of all, if results are the only things that matter, you aren’t really worshiping God – you’re worshiping results.
Copied from How to Stay Christian in College by J. Budziszewski copyright 2004, p.118. Used by permission of NavPress (Think Books) – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved. Get this book!
The error of pragmatism is that it regards methodologies that “work” as more important and more viable than those that are biblical. A pragmatist is concerned primarily with whether a given practice is expedient, not necessarily with whether it is in harmony with Scripture.
Religious Hedonism in Our Sufficiency in Christ, 1991, Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton Illinois 60187, www.crosswaybooks.org. p. 151.
I doubt, indeed, whether we have any warrant for saying that a man can possibly be converted without being consecrated to God. More consecrated he doubtless can be, and will be as his grace increases; but if he was not consecrated to God in the very day that he was converted and born again, I do not know what conversion means.
If we do wrong and no harm comes of it, we are not thereby justified. If we did evil and good came of it, the evil would be just as evil. It is not the result of the action, but the action itself which God weighs.
