Right in the middle of that valley where there was this abundance of water and pasture land was a fully modernized city.

He didn't ask questions like, where were my family live?

Where will they go to church?

Where were my children be educated? The shortest critique on record of pragmatism was uttered by Jesus of Nazareth.

When he made the statement, what shall it profit a man

if he gains the whole world

and loses his own soul.

At that point we see Christ walking on a collision course with contemporary value systems.

Pragmatism has a tendency to move in the direction of dealing with issues in terms of immediacies.

Short-term goals. Here's where we see the conflict. The Christian

philosophy, the Christian life and worldview is saying that quite often the short-term solution is ultimately

destructive. One of my favorite illustrations, the Old Testament situation that emerged between Abraham and his nephew Lott.

Remember when Abraham came out of Ur of the Caledias and answered the call of God to go to a strange and foreign land,

comes out with his family, brings a lot,

and he are very much busily engaged in the business of cattle ranching.

And they come and they settle down together and they both are very wealthy men.

Their cows are prospering.

But pretty soon the cowboys that are working for Abraham start fighting with the

cowboys that work with Lott, and they're fighting over

water rights and over fences and over pasture lands and they're getting their brands mixed up, you know, and Abraham's

holding his foreman in charge of so many cows and Lott's holding his foreman in charge of so many cows and lots

holding his foreman in charge and the guys are stealing and back and forth and you have all

...