In recent years the Lord has exposed a great deal of sin by well known church leaders and movements. In recent weeks it seems to have significantly increased, particularly in charismatic circles. There are varying opinions and assertions found in many places on social media, and in reading about it and listening to opinions it seems some would like to throw the baby out with the bathwater. When this happens there has been a departure from discernment to judgment.
From my perspective the events of recent years and the very fresh present example, is a call for us as His body to walk in a deeper level of discernment, to separate the wheat from the chaff. I say deeper because I believe that discernment operates at more than one level, so here we will delve into it a bit.
Discernment has long been an important subject to me and I first wrote about it over three decades ago. At that time, I defined discernment as follows, and still adhere to this definition, “Seeing the reality which lies behind appearances.” On the surface this may suggest that we require some mystical spiritual gift to exercise discernment if we need to discern the reality behind surface impressions. Yet my goal is just the opposite. I want discernment to be both practiced and practical. While 1 Corinthians 12 lists the gift of discerning of spirits, which I think can be useful in exercising discernment, the primary New Testament text on discernment is in Hebrews.
13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Hebrews 5:13–14 (NKJV)
This passage makes it plain that discernment is not some mystical gift but is in fact the logical outgrowth of using our senses in submission to the Spirit.
To better grasp the process of discernment we will break this passage down a bit. First, the writer of Hebrews informs us the undiscerning are those who are ‘unskilled in the word of righteousness.’ An obvious reference to the scriptures. The clear implication being that a key aspect of discernment is developing the ability to rightly divide ‘the word of truth,’ the scriptures (2 Timothy 2:15). As the writer of Hebrews puts it, our discernment deepens through ‘reason of use.’ The phrase is one word in Greek and refers to habit or practice. Our discernment deepens as we practice discerning!
Here is an example that happened to me recently. I am a member of a few Christian Apologetics groups on Facebook. Someone posted an idea about the blind man Jesus healed who first saw men like trees walking then was able to see clearly after Jesus prayed for him the second time. Ostensibly the post was just an idea but then the writer quickly shifted into presenting his ideas as fact. While some of his ideas were plausible, I challenged the post on the grounds that it was eisegesis rather than exegesis. A reading into the text what seemed like a clever idea, rather than drawing out what the text actually said. The poster took offense to my comment and challenged my view. I then broke the text down and showed how some aspects were not only not supported by scripture, they were in fact in opposition to scripture. The poster responded with further offense and accused me of ‘nit picking’ rather than simply accepting things. My final response was that I broke things down and highlighted the errors because I take a high view of scripture. This experience highlighted the need to get at the reality behind the nice appearance.
My discernment process here was that I recognized the error in the post, even though I liked the idea presented, because it didn’t align with scripture. This is the fruit of exercising my spiritual senses and weighing what was being said against scripture.
An older example for me was reading a book in recent years by a popular leader from a popular movement. Something the author said didn’t sit right with me event though the book sounded good, felt good and was very popular. When I examined it in the light of scripture, I thought it plausible to draw the conclusion of the author but it still seemed at odds with the weight of scripture and the Lord’s heart. Something felt ‘off’ so I sat with it and literally set the book on a shelf. This was a few years ago. Then in the past year or so I listened to a podcast by some pastors I deeply respect. They were discussing the book and highlighted the damage it was causing in the body of Christ. They touched on what I had seen and other areas where the book was fostering the very types of sin being exposed in recent weeks. At this point I took the book off my shelf and threw it out. In both examples above my discernment was rooted in two things, a knowledge of the scriptures and an awareness or sense in my sprit of something being off, not sitting quite right. I then took the time to further examine what seemed off to discern where the error actually lay. This is the process of deepening our discernment. The Spirt will bring passages to mind to lead us into truth and will quicken things in our spirit that we need to pay attention to if we have developed the habit of listening to His voice. So, the two obvious levels of discernment are knowing and paying attention to the scriptures and knowing and paying attention to His voice. I encourage you to develop the habit, the practice of walking this way. It guards His body, can save us a lot of heartache, and is what He calls us to walk in, discernment.
Keep on nit picking.
Thanks Wouter