Discernment

When Being “Discerning” Isn’t, Part 2

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In the first part of this limited series, I talked about how we Christians often make pronouncements that eliminate all genuine discernment. Today, I want to expand that post and note how easily we fall into ghettos of thinking that harm our ability to engage a dying world for the better.

As if perfectly anticipating this post, the following showed up online:

A recent article on the CNN website entitled, “More teens becoming ‘fake’ Christians,” drew my attention to a book written by Kenda Creasy Dean, a United Methodist minister and Princeton seminary professor. The author’s credentials, I have to admit, initially set off my alarm bells, signaling “liberalism alert.”  Yet I am very, very glad I kept reading.

The author of that statement is the chancellor of the strongly evangelical Patrick Henry College, Michael Farris. His “Are We Becoming a Nation of ‘Fake’ Christians?” is worth reading.

Fact is, for the educated believer, plenty of articles are worth reading.

But you wouldn’t always know that from the way some Christians talk and act. The statement above that grieves me is this: “The author’s credentials, I have to admit, initially set off my alarm bells, signaling ‘liberalism alert.'”

Fortunately, Farris decided to keep reading.

But many Christians never get that far. Too many of us naturally assume that nothing “the other guys” have to say is worthwhile. We can’t learn anything from “them,” so let’s stick to “our” stuff and disengage the rest of the world.

If we want to know why our country is in trouble, this is one of the major reasons. We stick with a party line and never once ask if the other party has anything worthwhile to say. Simply granting that they may will get us labeled “traitor.”

Or “heretic” in Christian circles, which is about as low a label as a supposed believer can receive.

In those Christian circles, we just substitute different labels than the political ones. Let’s try a few and see how they read:

“The author’s credentials, I have to admit, initially set off my alarm bells, signaling ‘charismatic alert.'”

“The author’s credentials, I have to admit, initially set off my alarm bells, signaling ‘Calvinist alert.'”

“The author’s credentials, I have to admit, initially set off my alarm bells, signaling ‘Emergent alert.'”

Now some may consider the above overkill, yet every day I read blogs written by Christians of one sect/denomination/belief or another, and this kind of thing goes on all the time. Instead of adding “Yet I am very, very glad I kept reading,” the conversation stops right there.

The reasoning? Discernment.

But stopping right there and blaming an inability to engage the ideas of someone who thinks differently from us is not discernment. The Thinker by RodinIt’s small-mindedness. In truth, it’s a form of willful ignorance.

Worse, the tendency is to fall into a perpetual state of ridicule. Some people DO keep reading, if only to add more grist for their predisposed mill.

The problem is that people who think differently from us, even Christians who think differently from us, may still have valid points we need to consider. No one is wrong on everything. Ignoring those who think differently or lampooning their most obvious errors without considering areas in which they may be correct (because that would get us labeled “soft” or something worse) is the height of spiritual pride and sloth. It is in no way being discerning.

Somehow, Paul was able to wade into the very midst of the philosophers and speak to them about Christ, even using some of their own illustrations to do so. Somehow.

Wouldn’t it be great if…

…the charismatic open-mindedly read Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

…the Calvinist open-mindely read Watchman Nee?

…the Emergent open-mindedly read John MacArthur?

Wouldn’t it?

Instead, we increasingly see people retreating to their own little ghettos of thought and practice, and the conversation either gets more shrill or it ceases altogether. When that occurs, problems go unsolved, community dies, and everyone retreats to his or her own bunker.

People who think differently than I do have helped shaped my Christian walk for the better. If it were not for them challenging the established way I thought, I wouldn’t be the Christian I am now. And the only way I got that bettering was by engaging hard and radical ideas that put my existing belief system under a microscope.

Yes, that’s scary. Yes, that raises the potential that my carefully crafted persona of perfection will come crashing down. Fact is, for most of us, that persona does need to come crashing down. We all need to admit that we could stand to learn a few things. We all need much more humility.

The worst thing we Christians can do to our perceived foes  in the public square is to call for their silence, to stick our fingers in our ears, or to resort to shouting them down. None of that shows any discernment. It’s just childish.

Francis Schaeffer wrote extensively that we Christians cannot be afraid of ideas. We must also not be afraid of genuine truth that may show holes in our own beliefs, even if those truths come from “the other guys.” Our holes don’t necessarily mean that we are wrong, only that greater truths and understandings exist, and we must understand them for what they are and how they may help us bolster our own understanding of what is true, honorable, just, pure, lovely,  commendable, excellent, and worthy of praise.

When Being “Discerning” Isn’t, Part 1

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One of the things that bothers me most about living in a culture mired in spotlights is the sheer number of forums and opportunities available to say or do something foolish in public. Within that subset of bother, nothing makes me slap my forehead faster than shining the spotlight on Christians who haven’t thought through all the ramifications of their theologies or who make the most appalling statements when a mic is shoved under their nose.

I fully admit that I am one of those people whose mouth runs faster than his brain. Let me talk long enough and the chance that I’ll inadvertently say something that grossly offends someone runs to about 1:1 odds. People who know me only through the blog probably consider me some deep, intellectual introvert with a bit of Old Testament prophet mixed in. In other words, kind of scary. Fact is, I’m a big, motormouth chucklehead who spends most of his time laughing—and sticking my foot in his mouth at some point in the conversation because I don’t know enough to shut up.

That said, I am a much more reflective person than I used to be. I’m not nearly as hard on other people or myself than my former persona of “angry young man destined to change the world singlehandedly.” Which is why the whole issue of discernment in the real world is one that never leaves my thoughts.

We just can’t seem to get discernment right. And if we can’t get discernment right, then nothing else in life will function as it should.

A couple weeks ago, a conversation in the comments of Tim Challies’s blog brought this home. Tim had posted a link to a blog post on another blogger’s site. That blogger argued that Christians should not friend ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends on Facebook. Here’s the reasoning:

I believe that all relationships in my life either support or detract from my marriage, however tacitly, and they stay or go based on that criterion. I believe spouses should have access to each others’ phones and e-mails and should approve of each others’ Facebook friends. I believe privacy with exes, even and perhaps particularly virtual privacy, is dangerous. I’m on the road I chose, and no good will come from revisiting roads not taken.

C.S. Lewis said this:

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them.

Lewis’s rationale can be extrapolated to mean that we can think that there will never be a demon lurking around the next corner or we will think that one will always be awaiting us.

I believe the wisdom of Lewis’s statement applies to all aspects of the Christian life. We may find it easy to believe that money is neither intrinsically good nor evil, but we often find it impossible to think that some other aspects of life also fall into that same gray or neutral area. We want our good and our evil clearly delineated.

Yet life is not always black and white. When Christians automatically flee to those poles, we’ve abandoned discernment for a knee-jerk reaction.

In the case of the anti-ex blogger, her error is found in the automatic dichotomy imposed on human relationships. She believes that every relationship is either helping or hurting her marriage.

Perhaps I’m a serious backslider here, but who frames life that way? Isn’t that automatically assuming that evil lurks behind every corner? Isn’t that falling into a trap of unhealthy concern about everything that might possibly go wrong? Is it impossible for anything, even friending a former flame on Facebook, to be neutral?

My son’s bus driver warned him that he could not read on the bus anymore because some girl was reading, got jostled, and the corner of the book flew up and bruised her eye. So now on the school bus (emphasis on school) it’s a crime to read a book.

That’s where this kind of “anything might go wrong” discernment always leads.

Folks who advocate to live that way always call on the same verses:

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.
—1 Corinthians 6:18

But as for you, O man of God, flee these things.
—1 Timothy 6:11a

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.
—1 Corinthians 10:14

That’s a lot of fleeing. And when applied rightly in the right situations, it’s a proper response.

However, the problem is that fleeing is but one option, the most drastic one. It’s not the sole option for dealing with life that works for most cases. For a good example of when it’s appropriate to flee, consider this:

Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance. And after a time his master’s wife cast her eyes on Joseph and said, “Lie with me.” But he refused and said to his master’s wife, “Behold, because of me my master has no concern about anything in the house, and he has put everything that he has in my charge. He is not greater in this house than I am, nor has he kept back anything from me except yourself, because you are his wife. How then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” And as she spoke to Joseph day after day, he would not listen to her, to lie beside her or to be with her. But one day, when he went into the house to do his work and none of the men of the house was there in the house, she caught him by his garment, saying, “Lie with me.” But he left his garment in her hand and fled and got out of the house. And as soon as she saw that he had left his garment in her hand and had fled out of the house…
—Genesis 39:6b-13

Given what a lot of Christians endorse concerning relationships, it was a bad idea for Joseph to even set foot in Potiphar’s house in the first place, given that he was single man in the home of a married woman. But Joseph didn’t flee that situation right away, did he? Somehow, he resisted, as it notes, “day after day.”

Eventually, though, Potiphar’s wife trapped Joseph in a no-win situation, grabbing ahold of his clothing, and offering him the classic proposition again. So he fled.

In other words, the situation was so bad that fleeing finally became the only option.

How Joseph reacted throughout the entirety of his dealings with his master’s wife is how we must rationally apply the “flee model” of dealing with temptation.

In my conversation in the comments over at Tim Challies’s blog, a commenter who advocated the flee model for even the least issue eventually got to the point where he questioned whether youth groups of mixed sexes were a good idea because they don’t allow a good option for fleeing.

If that’s where we are in the Christian Church today, then we’ve lost the battle. We might as well barricade ourselves in our rooms alone. When our first instinct is to flee at the slightest temptation, then we are no longer practicing discernment. Instead, we have become slaves of finding a demon lurking around every corner.

Here’s the verse that mature Christians apply in most cases of temptation:

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
—James 4:7

And this:

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
—Ephesians 6:11

Real Christians in a real world must navigate through gray. It’s why the Holy Spirit was put inside us. He’s our guide to dealing with issues that are unclear or those that have yet to descend to flight. He’s also the one who gave Joseph the will to say no day after day until it got so bad that fleeing became the only option.

In the case of friending ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends on Facebook, no blanket “helping my marriage or harming it” dichotomy exists in the real world.

Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well

Single man + "married" woman = flee?

Both you and the Holy Spirit know which exes it would be okay to friend and which it wouldn’t. Listen to what the Lord shows you about your own weakness and be mature about it.

And let’s also be mature and acknowledge that in a world of two sexes attracted to each other, we’re going to have to employ some other method than resorting to fleeing at the least attraction.

As an older married man, I want to speak honestly to younger men and those who have never been married but anticipate it some day: There will be times when you are attracted to women who are not your wife. Those women may even be the wives of your friends. You may attend a party with a lot of other couples, and before you walked into that party, you and your wife had some major fight about something stupid. When that other woman at the party lends you an ear, there might be a spark of attraction in that moment.

Discernment acknowledges forthrightly that such situations will arise. Discernment also acknowledges that flight is not always an option unless you want to be a complete idiot with no friends who makes his wife constantly suspicious of his seemingly unbridled lust.

The wise person must employ some other means of dealing with these kinds of situations. That’s real discernment. And it’s real Christian maturity too.

In my next post, I’ll talk about another discernment issue that even the most learned Christians fumble.

The Three Marks of Genuine Power Evangelism

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In my previous post, “Fumbling the Gospel,” I noted that many charismatic churches are using what is known as “power evangelism” to reach the lost. Power evangelism employs the Holy Spirit-given charismatic gifts to heal and speak words of knowledge and prophecy into the lives of people who do not know Jesus.

I fully support power evangelism done by genuine believers who can fully articulate the Gospel. Whether that’s the case in what passes for power evangelism in some sectors of the Church today is the question and the gist of my previous post.

Today, I feel compelled to add one more point to that post.

When you closely examine the “gospel” that many churches in America preach today, it is not the real Gospel. In too many cases, it fails to emphasize three core principles of the real thing:

1. Conviction of sin in the presence of a holy God

When the prophet Isaiah had a vision of God, notice his response:

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!”
—Isaiah 6:1-5

In the presence of a God called “Holy, Holy, Holy,” Isaiah, though called to be a prophet of God, immediately was undone by his own sinfulness in the presence of supreme holiness. As Isaiah stared into the reflecting mirror of God’s holiness, he saw a creature of his worst nightmares staring back. And he cried out in his guilt for being a sinful man.

The Bible notes that Isaiah is not alone:

…for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…
—Romans 3:23

2. The death of self at the cross

The Apostle Paul writes of the one thing of which he must speak boldly:

But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
—Galatians 6:14-15

All the world’s religions, save for Christianity, are little more than rules that no one can fully abide by. Each of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, no matter how many religious rules we try to keep. Only Jesus Christ perfectly kept the rules of God, and so being perfect, He took our place of punishment on the cross and served as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. As one popular Christian song states, “The cross has said it all.”

Paul said earlier in that same letter to the Church in Galatia:

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
—Galatians 2:20

If people don’t make it to the cross, then they never die to self. And if they never die to self, then they are not new creations. Because the only kind of Christian that God can fully use is the one who has died to the self that was the old man and been born again into Christ.

3. Genuine repentance

Sadly, the portrait of Jesus often sold to people today is of the weepy-eyed sort who loves infants and little lambs. Yes, that side of Jesus is real. Yet He had another side that too many churches fail to promote as part of the whole Gospel:

There were some present at that very time who told [Jesus] about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. And he answered them, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.”
—Luke 13:1-5

Jesus called John the Baptist the greatest of the prophets. What was John’s message?

In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
—Matthew 3:1-2

Shortly after being baptized by John, Jesus began His own public ministry. His message?

From that time Jesus began to preach, saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
—Matthew 4:17

After Pentecost, when Jesus had been resurrected, had ascended into heaven, and the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the disciples who had followed Jesus, they had something to tell the world. That message?

And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”
—Acts 2:38-39

Do you think repentance is a big deal to God?

That last verse I quoted, Acts 2:38-39, is preceded by the Holy Spirit falling in power on the followers of Jesus at Pentecost. Those indwelt by the Spirit spoke in tongues and exhibited the power of the Holy Spirit’s gifts, the charismata. That power was so stunning that 3,000 people watching the events of that day surrendered their lives to Jesus. Talk about power evangelism!

But what immediately preceded verses 38-39 is a telling response by the crowd of unbelieving onlookers to the words of Peter concerning the truth of Jesus and the power they had seen wrought in that gathering place by the Holy Spirit:

Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?”
—Acts 2:37

This is not a simple question but a desperate one, the same kind of angst-filled reply that burned in the heart of Isaiah when confronted with the holiness of God and the true nature of his state before that holy God. It’s the conviction of sin.

When the Holy Spirit touches sinful people, He ALWAYS brings conviction of sin because He is HOLY, HOLY, HOLY. Prostrate before the Lord in repentanceEvery great revival of the last 300 years of recorded history has been marked by conviction of sin, people fleeing to the cross, and genuine repentance. The First and Second Great Awakenings, the Welsh Revival, the Azusa Street Revival—when Christians (especially charismatics) start talking about the Holy Spirit in revival, the results always lead to conviction, the cross, and repentance. ALWAYS.

So when I’m told about power evangelism supposedly being done in the power of the Holy Spirit, if I don’t hear about people coming to conviction, dying at the cross, and genuinely repenting of their dark sins in the light of the purity of the Holy Spirit, then I have got to wonder. Without those three essentials occurring in the lives of people touched by some sort of powerful spirit, I wonder just what spirit they received. Is it possible they are being influenced by a spirit who is not the Holy Spirit of God?

Real power evangelism done through the genuine power of the real Holy Spirit will convict people of their sins, drive them to the cross, and lead them to repentance. The Bible tells us this, and the great revivals of history add their own yes and amen.

If you are doing power evangelism and conviction of sin, dying to self at the cross, and repentance are not immediately following people’s power encounters, then stop what you are doing and ask yourself if you are truly ministering the genuine Holy Spirit to people.

We have got to stop being ignorant of the truths of God. This is simple stuff, but people are not using even basic biblical discernment to understand these truths. It’s just another example of how a lack of understanding of the words of the Bible leads to all manner of error. Better to know the Bible inside and out before one attempts anything resembling power evangelism.