The current popular philosophy for growing organizations is to build based on “best practices.” Best practices are behavior patterns that produce widely admired and valued results.

Best practices are commonly gleaned through a worldview of rational empirical pragmatism. Rational means that human reasoning is employed. Empirical refers to data acquired using the five senses. And pragmatism means that which works or accomplishes the desired results. So rational empirical pragmatism is a worldview based on knowledge gleaned through reasoning using physical data acquired by the five senses weighed against a standard of desired results.

For example, assume that your desired result is to maximize profit. And suppose you observe that lying to your customers will enable you to increase your sales, which will increase your profit. Using a rational empirical pragmatic worldview, you would reason, based on your experience, that lying is efficacious toward increasing your profit. Therefore your conclusion would be that lying is an acceptable practice and maybe even a best practice.

Hopefully you find lying to be an unacceptable practice. If so, this means that your rational empirical pragmatism is subordinated, at least to some degree, to biblical values. In this case, you would conclude that lying is not a best practice because there is a standard that is superior to rational empirical pragmatism—biblical values.

One of the lessons that we can glean about God’s nature as revealed in the construction of the Tabernacle is that God builds according to patterns. Patterns are timeless universal principles that guide us in making decisions that align with the ways of God. Biblical values are examples of the patterns that God has put into the universe.

In a universe created by a sovereign God, enduring success must be rooted in alignment with God’s ways, that is, with his patterns. Therefore best practices must be gleaned from God’s ways.

As a method for deducing God’s ways, one can use rational empirical pragmatism if it is subordinated to a biblical worldview. God has given us minds to use and a physical world to rule over. And in God’s universe, his ways work, so pragmatism has value when used in alignment with God’s revelation. The key is to always subordinate rational empirical pragmatism to a biblical worldview.