Pragmatism in the Brazilian Church

First, it's important to understand what pragmatism is. According to Norman L. Geisler and Paul D. Feinberg, in their book Introduction to Philosophy: A Christian Perspective, pragmatism was a dominant force in North American philosophy during the first half of the twentieth century. Three central figures of pragmatism were Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952). According to pragmatism, ideas, beliefs, or hypotheses that "work," that prove useful, or that succeed are considered true. Those that fail can be discarded and considered false. William James's famous statement is that the true is "the expedient in the way of our thinking," just as the right is "the expedient in the way of our behaving." In other words, truth is determined by its consequences.

American pragmatism has landed on Brazilian soil and negatively influenced the Brazilian church. Pragmatists say: "if something is working, it's true." Experience, rather than the Word of God, has been used to determine whether something is true. As a result, harmful teachings and ideologies multiply within the Brazilian church under the false pretense of being true, because, as they claim, "if it's succeeding, it's true," or in other words, "God is blessing it." Unfortunately, many evangelicals have abandoned the practice of discernment, accepting every kind of unbiblical teaching that causes confusion and tolerance of error.

One of these new ideologies is the prosperity gospel, whose "prophets" first use personal experience to validate the truth of their teaching. Some even go so far as to use the Bible, twisting verses or quoting them out of context. One of the favorite texts of prosperity-gospel "prophets" is the closing line of 2 Chronicles 20:20: "[...] Have faith in the Lord your God and you will be upheld; have faith in his prophets and you will be successful." These self-appointed "prophets" demand that everyone who wants to be blessed follow their teaching without question. They deceive the naive by lifting the text out of context and turning it into a pretext. A quick reading of the context of 2 Chronicles 20:20 is enough to show that what those prophets actually said was the Lord's guidance for one specific battle (2 Chron 20:14-17). This text leaves no room for any person or "prophet" to bring teaching contrary to the Word of God. Anyone who does so is a false prophet. "Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world" (1 John 4:1). It's precisely in moments of "great anointing" and "miracles" that we must take the greatest care, weighing every experience through the sieve of God's Word. Pastor William Seymour, during the Azusa Street Revival, declared: "We are measuring everything by the Word of God; every experience must be measured by the Bible" (emphasis mine). A. W. Tozer makes an important observation: "The human heart is heretical by nature. Popular religious notions must be carefully examined in the light of the Word of God, for it is almost certain that they are mistaken."

The "prophets" of the prosperity gospel are bringing back a new form of the sale of indulgences. Indulgences were declarations of the forgiveness of sins, on behalf of the living or the dead, said to release a person from purgatory, and they were sold by the Roman Catholic Church for large sums of money to fund the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. On October 31, 1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses against the sale of indulgences to the door of Wittenberg Castle Church in Germany, sparking the Protestant Reformation. A similar practice happens today, where not only the blessing of salvation, but also of healing, prosperity, deliverance, employment, victory, and more, are traded — or rather, sold — in exchange for a significant "offering," which may go by other names, but which is inevitably in clear conflict with the Holy Scriptures.

Seeing how pragmatism has affected the Brazilian Church brings to mind Hosea 4:6, which says, "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge..." Pragmatism has found fertile ground among evangelicals in Brazil, because there is a lack of knowledge of the Word of God. Sadly, many Christians have never read the entire Bible, not even once. And according to Oswaldo Paião (Editorial Director of SBIA and Abba Press), "not even pastors or priests escape this sad statistic: around 52% of Christian leaders still haven't read the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, even once."

In a documentary about Brother Andrew, founder of the Open Doors mission — released in Portuguese under the title O Livro Perigoso ("The Dangerous Book") — he tells the story of a Swedish boy, about five years old, who found a dusty Bible on a shelf at home and brought it to his mother, saying:

— Mommy, this is God's Book!
His mother replied: — Yes, son, it's God's Book.
Then the boy said to his mother: — Why don't we give the Book back to God? We're not using it.

Sadly, many Christians, even pastors, are in the same situation as that family. They aren't using God's Book. The Bible has always been, and still is, our rule of faith and conduct. Brother Andrew, in an interview in that same film, speaks about the price that was paid so that we could hold a Bible in our hands today: "Thousands were killed for it [the Bible]; prophets died for it; the apostles were killed for it; martyrs throughout church history were killed for it; today people still die for it, and we leave the Bible sitting on a shelf."

I invite you to take God's Book — the Bible — off the shelf and use it. The apostle Paul urges us: "In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage — with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths" (2 Tim 4:1-4).