My child, don’t lose sight of common sense and
discernment. Hang on to them~
Proverbs 3:21 NLT
As
newlyweds, my husband and I were broke. Really broke, as in hot dog and rice
casserole twice a week broke; so when our car with the automatic transmission
breathed its last breath and went to be with Jesus (or wherever good cars go
when they die), we took the car we could afford, which happened to have a
manual transmission. I had to learn to drive it, so, after many tears, several
arguments and at least one threat of divorce, my long-suffering husband managed
to teach me to drive a stick shift. He is a saint.
As our family grew, we needed a larger
vehicle so we eventually traded our little car in on a used minivan with an
automatic transmission. To my surprise, I missed the old transmission at first—but
it didn’t take me long to readjust.
A while back, a friend called me in a
panic and asked me if I knew how to drive a stick. Her husband was out of town
and she needed someone to help her transport a vehicle with a manual transmission.
I was happy to help—until I got behind the wheel and realized that it had been
so long since I used a manual transmission that I had forgotten how.
After much prayer, a few shaky starts, and
a frantic call to my husband I got it going and made a rather embarrassing,
herky-jerky trip to the mechanic. He watched me pull in and told my friend that
she should have found someone who had experience driving a manual transmission
to help her transport the car. It was mortifying.
That experience got me thinking about how
easy it is to neglect a skill. When we stop doing almost anything for any
period of time it’s a challenge to get back into the groove and remember the
finer points of the skill-set. It is not just our driving skills that can get
rusty. Hebrews 5:13-14 tells us that
when we neglect truth our spiritual maturity is stunted and we lose the skill
of discernment.
According to Scripture, discernment is the
ability to tell right from wrong and good from evil (1st Kings 3:9).
Discernment is closely related to wisdom (Proverbs 14:33) and according to
Psalm 119:125 discernment is an important skill if we are going to understand and
teach God’s decrees.
Our world is becoming more and more
difficult to navigate morally and ethically. It was not long ago when even the
non-religious in our culture agreed that divorce was wrong, theft was a sin and
cheaters should be punished.
We live in a different world now. According
to Gallup 67% of Americans believe divorce is morally acceptable, nearly half
of students believe that there is nothing wrong with cheating and according to
the FBI Financial Crimes Report white-collar theft has skyrocketed in recent
years.
Few would argue that the moral climate in
America has changed dramatically in recent years. Behaviors that were once
considered absolutely unacceptable are now publically celebrated.
Even within the Church we see fewer
decisions and choices being made on the basis of sound biblical teaching and
more decisions being made on the basis of emotion and public opinion. We have
forgotten how to think biblically so we think emotionally. Some have become
like the country described in Deuteronomy 32:28—they are without sense, without
discernment.
Our world is becoming increasingly more
complex and amoral, making the ability to discern right from wrong more
important than its ever been.
Anyone can become more discerning but it
takes a commitment to cultivating a biblical world-view, to learning to think
like God thinks. We develop discernment by…
Carefully guarding what goes into our minds~
Philippians 4:8, Psalm 101:1-2
We are bombarded by messages coming at us continuously
through radio, television, music, books, movies and the Internet; all of this
information shapes our understanding of the world, often without our being
cognizant of the shaping that’s going on. We end up thinking like the
information we consume. If we consume People
Magazine, The Rachel Maddow Show,
Fifty Shades of Gray and Two and a Half Men we may well become
silly, banal, crude, and purposeless: a reflection of that material. Pay attention to what you read, watch and
listen to; if what you are consuming does not line up with what the Bible
teaches put it down or shut it off.
Surrounding ourselves with wise people~
Proverbs 13:20
I counseled a woman who went off the rails
spiritually speaking a few years ago. She nearly destroyed her marriage, kids,
and career with a bunch of really foolish choices that included among other
things substance abuse and an affair. She’s back on track but the fallout from
those choices is still affecting her life today. I asked her how she got off
track in the first place and she said that it all started with a friend she met
at work. This friend took her drinking; the drinking led to recreational drug
use; the drugs led to a guy and all of that culminated in near-disaster. We
become like the people we spend time with. 1st Corinthians 15:33 “Do not be misled: “Bad company corrupts good character.”
This advice does not just apply to teenagers; it works for everybody
regardless of age.
Living lives of holiness~ 2nd
Corinthians 7:1, Romans 12:2, 2nd Corinthians 5:17
There is nothing ethereal about living a
life of holiness. Holiness is the process of shedding behaviors and attitudes
that the Bible tells us are unacceptable, and embracing behaviors and attitudes
that God deems good. As we let go of worldly thinking and actions our spiritual
senses are sharpened and we become more tuned into the way that God sees the
world. As a result we become more able to discern right from wrong and good
from evil.
By
really thinking about the consequences of worldly philosophies and value
systems ~ Colossians 2:8
Many of the ideas and philosophies in our
culture sound good but if you really think them through all the way they don’t work
all that well. For example, many in our culture have bought into a hedonistic,
epicurean philosophy that teaches that pleasure is the highest value for a
human being. In reality many things that begin as pleasurable experiences
(heroin use) end in catastrophe. If we are going to embrace discernment we must
learn to look past the sound bytes and easy answers and really think about the
consequences of belief systems.
The results of forgetting how to think
biblically can be tragic. We see those consequences playing themselves out in
every corner of our culture. Government, corporations, families, churches and
communities are all being affected by the cultural loss of a biblical
worldview. Our world desperately needs a revival of wisdom, prudence and
discernment and it all begins with individual Christians making the commitment to
think like a Christian.
And 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 and may be pure and blameless until the
day of Christ, filled with
the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and
praise of God~ Philippians 1:9-11
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