Seeing truly
Love is the soil in which discernment grows (Discernment, part 4)
“Discerning people are made, not born,”1 writes Lewis Smedes. This is good news, that discernment is not a secret decoder ring available to only a few insiders. While Scripture does speak of a gift of discerning the spirits, discernment is a core skill and insight available for the willing disciple.
What makes discernment uncommon, however, is its breadth. Evan Howard notes how Christian discernment is “an affectively rich act of knowing.”2 Affect and emotion sway our judgment. This is simply how humans are constituted, as heart-centred lovers. Proverbs reminds us, “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” (Proverbs 4:23). Since everything you do flows from your heart, discerning people not only guard it but learn how to read it well.
A common mistake around discernment is to confine it to the realm of objectivity, a cognitive process of rational decision making. Think of the many life-giving choices that are less than coolly objective decisions, like who you marry or the decision to start a family. Making wise and courageous decisions is the fruit of Christian discernment, but this sits downstream of a larger practice and wider participation. Discernment is not less than thinking but so much more. It’s the product of heart and head, and until we recognize the power of emotion in our discernment we will never discern, or decide, well. Our decisions will be wrong-headed or wrong-hearted, or both.
Imagine an ambitious, young professional working her first career job but having one of those terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad days. Discouragement has been on low simmer already because the job opportunity hasn’t lived up to her career hopes. The brutal morning commute has turned up the temperature and that annoying colleague - especially prickly today - is just spicing things up. After a deflating meeting she texts a friend to see who is hiring, and after a dismissive retort by her supervisor, she’s already composing her written notice. Too many resignations happen right here - in a flaming huff of anger and irritation. But we do not discern or decide well in anger. (ever speak words in anger you later blush over or still grieve today? Any parent wish they could walk back the discipline of a child they’ve meted out in anger?)
Or think of how fear and anxiety jam our capacity to see accurately and respond well. I’ve witnessed too many group situations where one voice of alarm sets in motion a deciding wave of anxiety. This doesn’t mean healthy discernment is oblivious to fear - remember, it is an affectively rich act of knowing. Wise Christians will always attend to the presence of fear. A discerning person lives the adage, “name it to tame it.” The capacity to name our fears never fully eliminates them but we’ll be able to at least keep them in some corner of our lives.
Discernment, then, is not only attunement to the presence of God but also to that which is not of God. Lewis Smedes writes that “Eighty percent of what we see in front of us lies behind our eyes. We filter what we see through our fears of things that might happen and through our memories of things that have happened.” Part of the skill in discernment is discovering what lies behind the fear and anxiety we have noticed and named. Fear is the alarm bell that something we love is under threat. Underneath so many of our anxieties lies a hidden love; we’re doing our best to guard something in our hearts.
Here we get to the foundations. Discernment is not a secret formula or some sort of Christian voodoo. Discernment begins in an immersion in a life of loving communion with God. Augustine writes in his Confessions, “My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.” This is Christian discernment’s distinguishing mark and momentum.
The apostle Paul writing to a group of Christians in Philippi prays: “this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best.” Paul insists love and knowledge are integral and inseparable to one another. Love is the eco-system in which insight and knowledge grows, and through the lens of love we can then behold what is best. Do you want to have more insight? Pray for God to enlarge your heart. Do you want to exercise keener discernment? Plant yourself deeper in God’s love.
The first discernment that properly orients all others is to know and live in the love of God. There are other necessary discernments to make. Gordon Smith3 notes four key areas in Christian discernment, including where God calls us to turn from sin, where God invites us to walk in truth, and where God invites us to go in times of choice. Each discernment builds upon the other but the whole project is founded on the knowledge of God’s love.
Discernment seeks to know and identify the presence of God. Ignatius of Loyola, the grandfather of the Christian discernment tradition, writes that discernment is “finding God in all things in order that we might love and serve God in all.” The Christian experience of God in all things is always love, always grace. This, of course, does not always mean a cozy or comfortable experience; we come undone before holiness, as the prophet Isaiah experienced. At times the grace of God will diagnose the sickness of our hearts, at other times it will judge injustice. Even so, love is God’s very self and so discernment of God is always an experience of love.
The core experience of God is the assurance that you are deeply loved. Henri Nouwen writes, “Many voices ask for our attention. There is a voice that says, ‘Prove that you are a good person.’ Another voice says, ‘You’d better be ashamed of yourself.’ There also is a voice that says, ‘Nobody really cares about you,’ and one that says, ‘Be sure to become successful popular, and powerful.’ But underneath all these often very noisy voices is a still, small voice that says, ‘You are my Beloved, my favour rests on you.’ That’s the voice we need most of all to hear.”4
This is the foundation to true beholding, attending to reality well. The love of God is like a light to our hearts. Without it, our hearts are disordered and we see dimly, shadowed caricatures of ourselves and others. Isn’t this the original sin of Genesis 2, doubting God’s loving intentions, listening to those whispers other than the voice that calls us Beloved?
Unless I know that I am loved, my life and decisions will be crooked. I will be directed by wounds of self-rejection, guided by pride, swayed by the opinions of others, bent by fear and vulnerable to shame. Wise and courageous living sits downstream of the experiential knowledge of love’s clear light.
Lewis Smedes, A Pretty Good Person.
Evan Howard, Affirming the Touch of God.
Gordon Smith, The Voice of Jesus.
Henri Nouwen, Life of the Beloved.
So much wisdom here! Thanks Phil!