What Is Discernment?
In The Truman Show (1998), Jim Carrey plays Truman, a person who has—unbeknownst to him—lived his entire life as a reality TV star. Truman’s world is fabricated. Seahaven Island, his hometown, is definitely a large television set full of hidden cameras and microphones. His friends, family, and neighbors are actors sustaining the fiction and ensuring Truman doesn’t look too closely at his reality. When asked why he believes Truman hasn’t discovered the true nature of his reality, Christof, the director of the truth show, responds, “We accept the truth of the world with which we’re presented. It’s so simple as that.”
Is Discernment Different from Reality?
It seems secure to assume that we don’t exist in a reality show; nevertheless, we are sometimes presented with realities that skew our perception of reality. We come to consider the world “works” in a selected way, making some actions seem inevitable— “givens” we can be silly to disregard. Unfortunately, such presentations of reality are incomplete. In part, such incompleteness is a function of our finite natures. We will at all times have more to learn—and that isn’t necessarily a foul thing. Yet, that incompleteness also arises from our rejection of Christ’s authority. If we try to explain the world as if God just isn’t present, as if he has not disclosed himself to us through His Son and His word, as if the Holy Spirit just isn’t inside and amongst us, we’re sure to get the story flawed.
What, you would possibly ask, does all of this must do with discernment? Discernment is a way of knowing what to do in light of reality, particularly the truth of the Triune God. If we return to Truman for a moment, we will see why reality is so crucial to discernment. For example, had Truman known that everybody else on Seahaven Island was an actor, wouldn’t which have modified the way in which he interacted with them? When he finds out that his life isn’t what he thought it was, he chooses to depart the show—he makes a unique selection. Because we all know that Christ has been given “all authority on heaven and on earth” (Matt 28:18), we commit to being and making disciples, pledging our allegiance to the Triune God in baptism and learning to follow the way in which of Christ.
Discernment decoupled from reality doesn’t must be “evil” within the sense that folks turn into deviant thieves and murderers. However, discernment decoupled from the truth of God as revealed in his Son and his word will at all times be misdirected and require a reorientation of attention. From the angle of Christian theology discernment is an activity aligned—or trued—to the truth of the Triune God.
3 Steps to Develop Discernment
Discernment is the fruit of discipleship. Disciples learn to look at all Christ commanded (Matt 28:20). In learning to look at all Christ commanded, a discipled mind becomes increasingly capable of constructing on a regular basis decisions that glorify God (click here to download a guide to Christian discernment). Discipleship, which goals to cultivate an unqualified devotion to the Lord, involves: (1) rightly ordering our loves, (2) reorienting our attention, and (3) responding faithfully to the Triune God.
1. Rightly Ordering Our Loves
When asked concerning the best commandment, Jesus responds by quoting Deuteronomy 6:5—love the Lord with all you might be and have. We are to offer our unqualified allegiance to the Lord. We usually are not to divide our loyalties. As Augustine writes,
“You are to pay attention all of your thoughts, your whole life, and your whole intelligence upon Him from whom you derive all that you simply bring. For when He says, ‘With all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,’ He signifies that no a part of our life is to be unoccupied, and to afford room, because it were, for the want to enjoy another object, but that whatever else may suggest itself to us as an object worthy of affection is to be borne into the identical channel through which the entire current of our affections flows.”
All of our other legitimate loves (of neighbors, nation, families, etc.) are to be immersed inside and flow along the grain of our allegiance to God.
2. Reorienting Our Attention
Attention is a theological act—an intentional posture and position we adopt as we “shift our mindset in order that the ‘worst case scenario’ we will see is failing to glorify the Lord” (“How Do We Reorient Our Attention”). Paying attention to the Lord means, partly, recognizing that he’s at all times probably the most relevant actor and consider any situation. God just isn’t someone we must always ignore or push to the margins of our lives. Attending to him indexes us to the true standard of our existence and reminds us of reality’s governing dynamics: we decide life through obedience and death through insurrection (Deut 30:19-20).
3. Responding Faithfully to the Triune God
Our basic response to God is obedience. As we obey God within the concrete circumstances of life, we create intentional spaces through which we may witness God’s presence.
Discernment emerges from discipleship, yet the connection just isn’t a technique. As we learn and practice discernment, we deepen our participatory knowing—we all know God through our experience. Discernment and discipleship reinforce each other. The one just isn’t possible without the opposite.
4 Ways to Use Discernment as a High School Graduate
High School Graduation is as near a rite of passage as we now have in today’s world. Christian graduates move from highschool to the workforce, military, or college often leaving—to some extent—the security net of their parent’s home to being making decisions for themselves. In some sense, graduates begin to navigate the world’s ambiguities and challenges while leaning on their support systems in ways different than they did while attending highschool.
So, how can graduates use and deepen their ability to discern after graduation? I’d suggest the next:
1. Practice Spiritual Disciplines
Spiritual disciplines usually are not intended as coping mechanisms. They could have useful effects on us, however the disciplines themselves are intended to assist orient us to God’s presence. As I’ve suggested elsewhere, “These spiritual disciplines are us practicing the presence of God. When we hear that phrase, what it’s really saying is [that] we’re practicing recognizing how God moves in our lives—what God is doing in any given moment inside our lives. That’s what we’re doing once we are practicing the spiritual disciplines.” Practicing spiritual disciplines will allow graduates to boost their senses in order that they appear on the world with eyes that see and take heed to the world with ears that hear.
2. Participate in a Local Congregation
While every believer is a member of the invisible body of Christ, every believer also must live under the authority of an area group of elders, be formed as a member of an area Christian community, and contribute their gifts in service to other members of the body of Christ and to a area people as a witness to Christ. Without this participation, graduates will lose a crucial anchoring point tethering them to a concrete assembly dedicated to discerning well together.
3. Think Well concerning the True, Good, and Beautiful
The true, good, and delightful are often called the transcendentals. Humans don’t determine truth, goodness, or beauty. Instead, truth, goodness, and wonder are facets of reality that we recognize, miss, ignore, or reject. As young Christians entering the world, graduates may experience a level of confusion as they encounter truth, goodness, and wonder aside from Christ. My encouragement can be to encourage graduates to affirm truth, goodness, and wonder where they find it while, at the identical time, pointing beyond these incomplete understandings of the true, good, and delightful to the Triune God.
4. Cultivate Patience and Contentment
The world is a difficult place. It is, perhaps, getting tougher by the day. As graduates got down to pursue their goals, it’s important that they accomplish that with patience, finding contentment with whatever they’ve within the moment. Their ambitions should be shaped and governed by the character of Christ. Pursue a profession, but don’t compromise your testimony to Christ in doing so. Obey God and permit him to work through you. When we obey, we trust the God who’s able to doing abundantly greater than we could ever ask or think (Eph 3:20).
As graduates move right into a recent stage of life, discernment could be buried under the load of more pragmatic concerns. These 4 practices, while not exhaustive, are intended to assist graduates keep in mind that the most effective selection they’ll make in any situation is to follow the Lord. They provide a framework to graduates—and some other Christians—to relate to God (the spiritual disciplines), the body of Christ (Participate in a Local Congregation), the world (Think Well concerning the True, Good, and Beautiful), and their very own hearts and circumstances (Cultivate Patience and Contentment).
Graduates enter a novel stage in life. The need for discernment is high, yet there continues to be room to make mistakes, repent, and start again. One of the unique dangers graduates are more likely to face is the temptation of complacency. As Jürgen Moltmann suggests,
“To make sure, it is normally said that sin in its original form is man’s wanting to be as God. But that is simply one side of sin. The other side of such pride is hopelessness, resignation, inertia, and melancholy … Temptation then consists not a lot within the titanic desire to be as God, but in weakness, timidity, weariness, not wanting to be what God requires of us.”
The temptation is heightened by the urgencies and emergencies that recent responsibilities often bring. It will likely be vital for graduates to understand early and sometimes that following God with an unwavering allegiance won’t eliminate all of our problems, but it’s going to open up recent possibilities for them to participate with God as they construct his kingdom.
Photo Credit: ©Unsplash/Annie Spratt
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