“Wind & Waves” Psalm 119:66
“Teach me good discernment and knowledge, for I know Your commandments.”
Corrie Ten Boom, arrested and sent to a concentration camp by the Nazis for hiding Jews in her home, said, “Discernment is God’s call to intercession, never to faultfinding.” Discernment is a spiritual gift that God gives to some to protect and nurture the Church; to sound the alarm against “almost-truth.” There are four causes for the decline of discernment among Christians. Last week we learned that the disappearance of church discipline as taught in Matthew 18 has opened the floodgates for false teaching to enter the Church via well-intentioned, but severely wrong believers. Secondly, we learned that the disappearance of antithetical thinking has contributed to the near extinction of discernment in the Church. Antithetical thinking is the biblical pattern of thinking in contrasts and opposites about teaching, discarding anything that is not clearly, wholly of God (i.e. Psalm 1). A third cause for the decline of discernment among Christians is the distaste for systematic theology. The lazy mind of the modern age values feeling and personal experience above thinking. Systematic theology looks at what the whole Bible says about any given subject, and insists on carefully distinguishing things that differ. Regarding the issues the Church faces today, I can hear Moses shouting, “Let my people think!” Issues such as gender roles and equality, sexual identity, marriage, abortion (deceptively called “reproductive rights”), and immigration should all be addressed by Christians with a systematically theological approach to Scripture, knowing what the whole Bible says about each issue. Today’s Christians are more apt to follow authors, entertainers, and politicians than the Word of God on such issues, because it is easier than learning to think theologically. Those who do think theologically on current issues are accused of “splitting hairs” by those who are lazy-minded and not up for the fight against the world and the devil. I was disappointed to hear that a friend of mine attended the Women’s March in Washington DC – a godless gathering of rebels opposed to righteousness and God’s ways. She said she did not agree with much of what most of the women there were fighting for, but that she wanted to support them. This was a lack of discernment, for if something is not wholly of God, it is not of God at all. Her kind of Christian thinking allows the “integration” of ideas that are not really systematically self-consistent with one’s faith. Her approach is typical of many in the Church today: a cavalier attitude toward Scripture that has created a spirit willing to use Scripture to support ideas, beliefs, and practices that are entirely contrary to the Bible as a whole. Self-styled “experts” in psychology, sociology, and education who hold Ph.D.’s in their fields and Sunday school degrees in Bible, pontificate on Christian teaching and life on radio, tv, and internet, setting themselves up as spokesmen for God. Yet they have never received ordination from the church of Christ to do so. Their teaching and use of the Bible, when it is used, often bears little resemblance to what the Scriptures properly interpreted really say. When systematic theology disappears, discernment declines, and theological language in the Church becomes loose. For instance, the word “miracle” has taken a beating in Christian circles. Everything unusual or extraordinary seems to be called a miracle today. When God heals someone by medicine in a marvelous way, Christians proclaim it a miracle, but a careful, theologically defined use of the term “miracle” would distinguish between a miracle and the marvelous. If an amputee’s arm sprouted and grew back, that would be a miracle! The imprecise use of biblical terms has caused great confusion in the Church, and has allowed erroneous teaching to be tolerated because most Christians do not have discernment to fully refute false ideas. Those who can discern are often accused as “heresy hunters.” We shouldn’t forget Christ’s warm commendation of the church in Ephesus for “testing those who call themselves apostles, but are not, but are actually liars” (Revelation 2:2). There is indeed a place for “heresy hunting”…when done in a biblical, godly manner. We want to discern without a judgmental spirit, but we must cultivate a discerning spirit. People often wrongly quote Matthew 7:1, “Do not judge or you will be judge.” Matthew 7 does not prohibit discerning between truth and error. Matthew 7 prohibits wrong judging; improper judging of the kind you would not want applied to yourself (7:2). Indeed, Jesus Himself told us to “make a right judgment” (John 7:24). We live in an intolerant tolerant society and fear suffering vilification if we speak against the mainstream. We must encourage ourselves by remembering that “the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and few find it” (Matthew 7). Being discerning is not being judgmental with a critical spirit; it is seeing what is not consistent with sound biblical teaching and warning others in love. Next time Lord willing, we will look at the final cause for the decline of discernment in the Church and how we can cultivate discernment in our lives. Until then, beware the wind and waves (Ephesians 4:14)!
