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by Dennis Biddison
Recently in our Sunday Night services we have seen some excellent video lessons on the need for discernment (particularly concerning the "word of faith" movement). Though I think these videos have been great, they have mainly touched only one area of discernment.
We are in an era where discernment among Christians is so necessary, but lacking, that we will probably continue to see a disintegration of Christianity as it gives way to unscriptural ideas, extra-scriptural ideas, and scriptural imbalances. I believe the Lord would call each of us to become truly discerning Christians.
Discernment is a concept that lies between the two extremes of gullibility and skepticism. The gullible Christian accepts ideas that he should not accept and the skeptical Christian rejects things he ought to accept. Discernment is the process of discrimination which can reject what needs to be rejected and accept what needs to be accepted.
We will find that even concerning those with whom we basically agree, we must be discerning in three areas: learning to recognize that which is unscriptural, that which is extra-scriptural, and that which is scripturally unbalanced.
To recognize that which is unscriptural is probably the simplest of these three problems if we regularly read the Bible and basically understand its content. There are ideas out there that clearly contradict the Bible. Abortion and homosexuality are two examples of this. Any honest reader of the Bible would surely see that these are unscriptural concepts.
To some people, recognizing what is extra-scriptural seems more difficult. The reason for this seems to be two-fold: 1) we accept the words of people we respect as being "truth"; and 2) we interpret Christianity through our cultural bias.
For instance, if someone we respect tells us which version of the Bible we should use, we may not stop and think about that being an extra-scriptural idea. Likewise, how we should conduct a "worship service" may be a cultural bias. It is not found in the Scriptures.
The greatest problem of discernment among Christians comes in the area of "balance". It is our tendency to take our own thoughts, our cultural biases, our denominational traditions, and "read them into the Scriptures". This is often done by "proof-texting" (finding a verse that seems to indicate what you want to emphasize) while ignoring many other parts of the Bible. This is probably the cause of most "doctrinal" differences among Christians. We find this in areas of predestination, baptism, spiritual gifts, grace, and a host of other scriptural concepts.
Imbalances in our understanding of the Bible are also responsible for the confusion that results when we think we can make everything about God comprehendible to our finite minds. We force the Bible to mean things that it does not mean in order not to violate our systematic theology.
Christians need to be discerning when they read or hear messages, even from reputable people. I found, for instance, even in the video series on discernment, many instances in which the speaker’s arguments were invalid (even though I basically agreed with his conclusions) need to be aware of fallacies of arguments that lead us to wrong conclusions about God, about the Bible, and about the Christian life. It is not within the scope of this article to clearly define and explain these fallacies, but included is a short list.
There are fallacies of ambiguity (terms are used that are not understood the same by everyone), fallacies of relevance (distorting the relevance of a particular fact), and fallacies of presumption (using unproved data as part of the argument).
A simple strategy that one can use when hearing or reading ideas is to ask the following questions: How does this agree (or disagree) with my understanding of all of the Scriptures? How does this agree (or disagree) with my understanding of reality. What can I glean from this teaching? What must I reject from this teaching? What should I put on the shelf until such time as I have better understanding.
The days are evil. The waters are muddy. We Christians, need to be very discerning in these days to become as Paul describes in Eph 4:14: “... no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;”
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