The disinformation age we inhabit is designed for overwhelm and disorientation. The flood of news bites and alternative facts, talking points and opinions that colonize our attention is a feature not a bug of our time. Making discernment a most timely, worthy, and pressing matter.
Today, let’s look to Mary, the mother of Jesus, for help. Protestants have mostly relegated her to bit appearances at Christmas and Good Friday and largely failed to honour Mary’s quite massive place in salvation history and Christian theology. Mary is the first Christian theologian, she composes the first Christian hymn (the Magnificat), she is the first disciple of Jesus, and her discernment and responsiveness to God alters the flow of God’s redemption. It was in Mary’s “yes” to God’s revelation that the world, in principle, was saved. There really was no turning back once God and humanity came together in a human cell in Mary’s womb.
Mary and the annunciation story offer us a helpful imaginative frame for understanding discernment (the Henry Tanner painting above is a wonderful accompanying image). You likely know the story from Luke 1. After centuries of radio silence, God’s messengers show up. The angel Gabriel visits Mary letting her know that God is quite fond of her. Not only is she highly favoured but also, in case she or anyone else forgot, “The Lord is with you.”
The story begins with God revealing himself, reminding that our discernment always a response to what God has already said or done. Discernment is “an attunement to a God with us, still speaking, still surprising, still revealing.”1 Discernment is not a life-hack for better decisions (that is a hoped-for fruit) but always first an exploration of the initiative is God taking in our lives. How is God showing up in the world around us and what is God doing in my own life?
Mary’s heart and mind were reeling, of course. Luke tells us she was greatly troubled (a polite way to say she was freaking out). Whenever God reveals himself, it’s an unsettling thing, rattling the best of us. How do we make sense of any divine revelation?
Well, watch Mary because she’s engaged in discernment. We read that Mary “wondered what kind of greeting this might be.” This angel visitation likely blew out the walls of her categories of reality, and so Mary sifts and sorts this phenomena she has just experienced. Discernment is not a naive affirmation of any experience in our lives but rather seriously explores them.
Two ditches in discernment are to either breezily dismiss these divine encounters (they simply don’t fit our categories) or eagerly embrace and celebrate them (who are we to say whether this was God or not?). It’s because our capacity for self-deception is finely tuned, and because there are other voices than the voice of Jesus, that we desperately need skilled discernment. Scripture reminds us that our enemy comes masquerading as an angel of light — discernment not only pays attention to the voice of Jesus but also involves being alert to the ways that evil is present to us.
A vital part of discernment is engaging our whole person, with a unique focus on our emotions. In the annunciation, we find Gabriel guiding Mary as a whole person, calming the fears welling up within her heart, speaking words of hope, and then engaging her mind, her faith’s imagination. Discernment holds together both heart and mind. The rational actor is one of modernity’s favourite illusions, someone unswayed by feeling and emotions. I don’t want to downplay our rationality, so the better way to frame this is to say that we do act quite rationally but remain very blind to how powerfully our affections have already oriented and directed our minds. The Christian tradition of discernment wisely spends time to interrogate those shaping movements our heart.
In every part of Mary’s angel encounter she is discerning, testing what she perceives, which turns her to an important question: “How will this be since I am a virgin?” She knows how human biology works; she knows anatomy and her own body. How could she possibly give birth without the involvement of a man? That’s good discernment in action, showing a healthy respect for reality — for bodies and biology, seasons and circumstances.
All of this culminates in Mary’s response: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” Or as other translations record it: “Lord let it be to me according to your word.” This is not passivity but receptivity. Mary is open and obedient, yielded and ready to act. This is where discernment lead us, towards faithfulness in the moment. Thomas Green writes that “discernment is the essential link between prayer and the active Christian life.”2 It’s oriented always to faithful living in the present circumstance and moment.
Discernment is premised upon the capacity for meaningful human action. It begins with a praying person, one living in communion with God, but always leads to doing God’s work, a fruitful life of mercy and justice. Discernment takes human agency very seriously. It is about participating with God. You matter, your life matters, and the choices you make matter, with God weaving them into his redemptive work in the world.
Mary’s “let it be” altered history. The wonder in all of our discernment is not only the knowledge of God’s loving presence with us, but also the beauty of what God can do with a yielded heart of obedience. Jesus said that his friends know and participate in the Fathers business (John 15). Will our agency and action be wise, benevolent, and bring shalom or will it run counter to the Father’s business? Will you discern what God is calling you into, and will you have the courage to do it?
Learn from Mary, and watch what redemptive goodness God births in your life and our time.
James K.A. Smith, How to Inhabit Time, p. 18.
Weeds among the Wheat, p. 21.
Such an important topic. Just reading now. Carol Off’s book At a Loss For Words”. Your mention of emotion and reason reminds me of her book. Also read just recently The Autobiography of Martin Luther King. So important those words