Discernment

Just thinkin’ out loud here, this is totally random and disjointed.

What is discernment? How do we employ it and how do we recognize it in others?

Discernment is appealed to on a regular basis, often when someone crosses a doctrinal line. In other words, I disagree with you and my position is so patently obvious from Scripture that you must be lacking in discernment. There are even some people who claim to have “discernment ministries” which basically amounts to a “ministry” dedicated to sniffing around and finding people who are wrong about something and then telling the world how wrong they are. Those folks generally are self-important and self-appointed. I occasionally post about someone doing or saying something silly but I try not to make a career out of it.

It doesn’t take much to go from being considered a “discerning” Christian to a Christian who lacks discernment. A perfect example is the tempest in a teapot over John Piper inviting Rick Warren to speak at the Desiring God conference. Many people are pleading for discernment or accusing Piper of lacking discernment. Many of those same people own his books and listen to his sermons and attend conferences where he is speaking. Unless someone is an unbeliever, I don’t see any warrant to treat them as persona non grata in the Body. There are lots of Christians I disagree with about lots of stuff, from Arminians to dispensationalists to defenders of the traditional church to paedobaptists. That doesn’t mean I see inviting them to speak as somehow compromising the Gospel.

So I guess being discerning doesn’t mean covering your ears and yelling “La, la, la I cannot hear you” when someone is speaking without being properly vetted by the Reformed doctrinal police. I have certainly learned an awful lot from the T4G guys and other Reformed teachers. I have also been learning that a) they are not right on every issue (i.e. the church) and b) I have also learned a lot from men that I disagree with on lots of stuff. Being discerning doesn’t mean agreeing with certain teachers or affirming this creed or that confession.

There are a number of places that speak of being discerning or employing discernment in the New Testament. Here are a couple that I found especially pertinent:

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. (Heb 5: 11-14)

So here we see that we (i.e. Christians, more on that in a second) have “powers of discernment” that can be honed by practice with the goal being the ability to distinguish good from evil. So someone who is mature and discerning can tell the difference between good and evil but this requires training and doing so constantly, i.e. with lack of training our discernment can grow weak. Interesting. I would point out that this is consistent with us all attaining a maturity of faith (Ephesians 4: 13-16), so discernment is not the sole province of the theologians and the academy but is something that should be seen in all believers. Getting back to my point about discernment being solely a “Christian thing”

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2: 12-16)

Wow. We have the mind of Christ. Pretty sobering stuff. This kind of reminds me of the “my flock”/”not my flock” distinction John quotes Christ as saying in John 10. I think that what Paul is saying is that, at least as it applies to the things of God, people who are unbelievers cannot be discerning. They don’t understand the mind of Christ and cannot discern the things that are spiritual because they don’t have the Spirit. Further proof that we cannot force compliance to holiness on the part of unbelievers. Here is another one….

For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus. And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. (Phil 1: 8-11)

Here Paul is linking love, knowledge and discernment. I think this is important. Love seems to me to be preeminent, the first thing that Paul is praying for, but that love must be accompanied by knowledge and discernment. Why is this important? It is clear that love can be misdirected here. Not speaking specifically of “romantic love”, although it is true, but rather love as in affection. Where do your affections lie? If the answer is centered in anything other than Christ Jesus, there is a problem. Even good affections can go wrong if they move into the place that is reserved for Christ and love of Christ is more than a fuzzy feeling. Dare I say that some people love some good things (theology, the church, their family) more than Christ and that is not a sign of discernment but a lack thereof.

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. (Romans 12: 1-2)

Ah. So now we see that discernment is something that is distinguished from the world and hampered by a focus on the world. Could this perhaps mean that worldly scholasticism is not only not aiding discernment but in fact hampering it? This also seems to say that discernment is more than knowledge. Discernment has an aspect of knowledge but it is not merely knowledge. Being very knowledgeable doesn’t make one discerning. Some of the most knowledgeable people out there are some of the least discerning. Conversely, being willfully ignorant exhibits a lack of discernment. So in other words, knowledge does not equal discernment but ignorance negates even the possibility of discernment. So as I said, discernment is more than knowledge but not less than it either. Discernment employs knowledge that is gained through practice framed by love and empowered by the Spirit to enable the Christian to distinguish between good and evil. Is that a good definition?

What say you? What is discernment? What does it mean to be discerning and what does it mean to say someone lacks discernment? How would you define “discernment” or what does a discerning Christian look like?