When you hear the word “discernment,” what comes to mind? Let’s unpack the term for clarity.
Discernment is the ability to comprehend what is obscure (not easily distinguished or readily understood). Synonyms include insight, perception, and wisdom.
“And I pray this: that your love will keep on growing in knowledge and every kind of discernment, so that you may approve the things that are superior and may be pure and blameless in the day of Christ… (Philippians 1:9-10).”
The Greek term aisthésis here indicates using our intellect for moral discernment and understanding of ethical matters.
When church weirdness happens, we often try to figure out which demons are at work behind the scenes and what they’re up to. While it may sometimes be helpful to have this information, there’s a danger in focusing on the demonic as our starting point.
We can become conditioned to over-spiritualizing, not only missing what’s going on right in front of our noses, but misdiagnosing the problem altogether.
Currently, God is exposing the sins and crimes of one church leader after another. More than one charismatic leader has claimed to be facing demonic attack—right before their evil deeds come to the light.
What if it’s been the devil’s agenda all along to distract us away from the devouring wolves in our midst by getting us to over-spiritualize reality?
What if one of his biggest schemes is to get Christians so hyper-focused on demons (their names, job descriptions, activities, plans, etc.) that we fail to deal with plain old sinful choices made by humans?
The New Testament offers generous content on sins not to commit and types of people to avoid, but not much in terms of instructions for identifying demons.
(See Romans 1:26-31, Galatians 5:19-21, James 3:14-16, 1 Corinthians 5:11, and 2 Timothy 3:1-5 for starters.)
God’s priority for us doesn’t seem to be fixation on details of demonic activity.
In addition to Scripture, just as God has given us much helpful insight into the human body through medical advances, he has also given us wisdom through the field of psychology when it comes to the human soul.
We can understand behaviors like narcissism, pedophilia, and spiritual abuse. We can learn what terms like DARVO, gaslighting, and grooming mean. We can educate ourselves about facts like the extremely low rate of true repentance among sexual predators.
We can use our brilliant, God-given minds to comprehend the moral and ethical issues which play out in human lives and choices.
Discernment means recognizing sin and doing something about it.
We should be especially intolerant of wickedness in leaders who take advantage of their position to destroy people’s lives instead of nurturing and protecting the flock.
“He has told you, human one, what is good and what the Lord requires from you: to do justice, embrace faithful love, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).”
I suggest we increase our discernment by acknowledging bad behavior in people before we worry about what the demons are doing.
That way, when a wolf tries to cover his tracks by claiming to be under demonic attack, we won’t be fooled.
If we refuse to put up with sin, crime, and lack of repentance in our leaders, we probably won’t need to worry about which demon did what.
Let’s align our priorities with Jesus, who cares about individual people above the success of ministry organizations.
Let’s clearly discern selfish, sinful choices.
And let’s call them out for the sake of the wounded.
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