This was our workshop on discernment for Winter Term Retreat 2012
Exercise: Gather in groups and talk about notable first impressions (or other people telling you who someone is like) when that has been wrong
First impressions stick. A long time ago I met this brother who at first meeting I thought was a little overly emotional/sensitive. Back then I was beginning to recognize that I was rather harsh with my tongue and my only solution at the time was to not talk to people who were sensitive so I avoided talking to this brother. At a distance I would observe this brother being exactly who I thought he was and why I should stay away from him. At one point he had to confront me about it and broke down crying in front of me, which of course did not help my mental image of him! (No this was not Paul)
Back then people used to describe me as angry Ken. And people described me to other people like that. That Ken is intimidating, he is easily angered, and quite harsh. And soon people started observing me from a distance and filling in all the reasons why my reputation is true. Well of course that caused everyone to keep their distance, just as I did with that brother. The only people who got to know the real me were the people who either were courageous enough or perhaps dumb enough to spend time getting to know me, who helped me become who I am today, people who I now have the privilege to advance the kingdom with at Westside Hamilton.
First impressions count for a lot don’t they? Especially when your first impression is really just what someone else told you. Technically those are called rumours or gossip.
Weirdly a lot of the same happens with scripture in the modern day church. Our first impressions of scripture are rarely from God, or even from ourselves. Often it is a pastor, a book, or more popular nowadays, a Youtube video. Often we will say we know God, then maybe some of us will finally realize we just know a lot about God. Upon further inspection though, we are one step removed from even that! We actually only know many rumours about God.
What do I mean? Let’s say I want to play ball like Kobe. Sam comes to me saying that Kobe’s jump shot works because he kicks his shooting foot out in the follow through. Now whether I trust Sam or not that comment is just a rumour to me until I go look at a bunch of clips of Kobe playing, find out that yeah, he always kicks that foot out and it seems to help him square up to the basket. Then I would go and try that out for like dozens of hours, find out that not only does it help him square up, it also helps his balance, and draws fouls. Maybe then I could say I know a bit more about how Kobe shoots. After 1000’s of hours maybe I could even say I shoot like Kobe. That is the progression we would see if Sam and I actually cared for playing basketball, not just watching and talking about it.
A rumour is an unverified piece of information that is disseminated and received while still unverified. After that piece of information is verified or discerned, we would call that piece of information knowledge. And after that piece of knowledge has been applied, the results realized and the whole process internalized in our own lives, we could truly say we have learned it. So how much do you think a sermon, the primary source of feeding for most people nowadays, covers in this progression?
Acts 1710 The brothers immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea, and when they arrived they went into the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.
The Bereans were viewed as people of noble character, and often taught as the prototypical model of discernment. Notice that the Bereans did not go find the nearest pastoral authority, or look it up on their favorite coalition’s website, or go find a video sermon. They read the scriptures for themselves! They went to the only divine source they knew of. They would have went to the Holy Spirit too if He were in them (He was not because they were not believers at the time). They were not satisfied with just letting Paul’s ideas remain unverified as rumours. They wanted to know for themselves, together as a community, whether what Paul said was indeed true. They did not elevated any human sources.
I am not saying that teaching is a bad thing. I am saying, as we see here with the Bereans, that teaching is a small part in a much larger process. Teaching here is only the initiator, something that piques our curiosity and draws us into further interaction with God.
I define discernment as our own ability to hear and understand what God is saying. Therefore discernment cannot be based on non-divine sources, unless you believe that some person has the totality of God’s voice on earth today (technically according to the Catholics that is the pope). It is common sense, you have no discernment if you have to rely on someone else’s. You have no ability to hear and understand what God is saying if you have to rely on someone else to do that for you.
So discernment is not figuring out whether this teacher is good or bad, it is not about whether this sermon is good or bad, because all that is often just a comment on presentation style. Those sorts of concerns are of course worth addressing, but when it comes to discernment, it is simply about whether what has been said is indeed what God is saying, regardless how it has been presented.
Often we are so filled to the brim with other people’s impressions of scripture and theology that we think we are discerning when really we are just subconsciously recalling things taught to us. How much of what we know of God was revealed to you through your quiet time of reading and prayer, and how much of it was taught to you by someone? Nowadays we perceive that we had a spiritual epiphany if something “convicted” us from the sermon, that God “spoke” to me through the sermon. Frankly, that usually is not an epiphany at all, just that someone has effectively persuaded you of something, and it aligned with your innate, sometimes unrecognized theological biases.
Again, I am not saying teaching is bad. I am just saying teaching is of very limited help when it comes to discernment, when it comes to hearing and understanding God for ourselves. And because most of us has been taught so many things so often for so long, we need to be extra intentional in trying to discover things, discern things, especially scripture, for ourselves.
When Westside Hamilton fell apart and us leaders burnt out 3 years ago, I spent the years leading up to now not paying attention to sermons, not going after books or commentaries, not looking for mentors and teachers. I just read the bible, over and over, a concept that Mike first introduced when he first spoke at Hamilton years ago. Even though I had done that as a reaction out of hurt, that time of actively putting teaching aside, a teaching fast if you will, cleared my head and helped me recognize that I had significant sources/biases in my head that skewed my theological preferences; I thought I was being “conservative” by taking a certain stance when really I have just been isolated and ignorant. If we do not recognize that the windows are tinted red, we are always going to think that the sky is purple.
For example, I realized I preferred a theology and view of my relationship with God that focused on having things to do and working hard on them, being a soldier for Christ, because I come from a Chinese Christian community. Asians are taught to work hard, so the idea of rest as a good, Godly thing is very foreign, even frowned upon. After reading through Psalms, reading through Jesus’ life in the Gospels, I realized there were scriptures about rest that had never been focused on before, but carry such an intimate view of resting with God as part of our relationship with Him.
So some practical things as we begin to develop our discernment:
- Read the bible. I say specifically read not study. In churches today “studying the bible” often means internalizing some teacher’s take on scripture. Read to internalize the scriptures yourself and keep foreign impressions to a minimum until you have read the bible 2-3 times over and have a decent idea of the overall contents. For those who grew up in a church, do a teaching fast and read for obvious, face-value meaning.
- Manage your first impressions. Easiest way to do this in our teaching-centric world is to ignore things that do not immediately apply to you. Continue taking notes during teaching/sermons if you wish, but if you know you have a hard time with discernment and are convinced easily, feel free to not bother with the sermon contents until you have finished with your reading plan above.
- Recognize your sources. Spend a little time reflecting, especially for those who have been in church for a long time, on what your long time sources, influences, and bias’ are (I will do another series helping you understand the modern North American church landscape later on this year).
Homework: Read in one sitting all of 1 Corinthians, noting who/what are the sources of the interpretations you currently know
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