Jesus: The Discernment Artist
Jul 17th, 2010 by John
Jesus was asked, according to the Gospels, 183 questions and Jesus answered only 3 of them. Usually Jesus responded to questions with his own questions. Also, Jesus is notoriously known for telling down-to-earth stories that did not answer questions as much as provoke thought.
Jesus was not a direction-giver. He was a discernment artist. Jesus trusted people’s ability to hear his stories and reach some startling conclusions about the kingdom of God. Some individuals wanted Jesus’ ready-made answers to their dilemmas. Jesus most often refused. (“John, why don’t you tell us where these texts are?” Uh, no. Discern, my friend.)
Jesus believed that farmers and housewives and tax-collectors and lepers could imagine, think, and reach conclusions. He believed in the human ability to discern. Jesus knew that developing discernment in others was far superior than giving them point-blank directions. I am bothered that so many pastors and teachers don’t follow Jesus in this regard. Do leaders mistrust people? Do current leaders foster an informed, elite attitude over “the people of the land” as the religious leaders did in Jesus’ day? For all our teaching about the accessibility of the Bible to the “common person” and the compassionate illuminating ministry of the Spirit to light Scripture up for ordinary folk, leaders still seem bent on spelling it all out, making it clear, answering the burning questions, fostering a codependency in biblical/theological/spiritual issues. To be proficient at giving biblical directions is no gift to people. Directions require no thinking, just compliance.
Now I know that this codependency relationship between leaders and people is fed also by people who cry, “Feed me. Feed me, pastor. Think for me. Tell me what to do. Feed me.” This lamentable mutation of so-called ‘pastoral ministry’ stunts thinking and erodes all possibility of the emergence of discernment.
I think leaders and people prefer direction-giving because it eliminates fear and offers the illusion of control. Discernment, according to my friend, Scot McKnight, requires both courage and careful thought. Why courage? Because discernment allows us to explore unknown territories of the soul and life, i.e., all those sometimes frightening areas not ‘mapped out’ by the professional direction-givers. Direction-giving tempts to a dangerous spiritual condition: pride. We know exactly what to do and we go do it. Developing discernment is a companion of humility because we feel awkwardly suspended in mid-air and our only hope is the Spirit and other discernment-oriented friends. Discernment is a community quest while I can follow directions all day long all by myself. Discernment is genuinely creative while following directions tends toward boredom.
Jesus was a superb discernment artist. He provoked thought and he elicited unparalleled commitment in others.
We think we are so smart. The disciples are at their wits’ end in the boat on the hurricane-angered Sea of Galilee. Having awakened a sleeping Jesus, Jesus speaks, things change and Jesus asks, “Why are you so afraid?” We think, “Well, duh? Jesus. They thought they were going to die!” Aren’t we smart?
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ROS (simply): He murdered us.
GUIL: He might have had the edge.
ROS (roused): Twenty-seven – three, and you think he might have had the edge?! He murdered us.
GUIL: What about our evasions?
ROS: Oh, our evasions were lovely. “Were you sent for?” he says. “My lord, we were sent for…” I didn’t where to put myself.
GUIL: He had six rhetoricals -
ROS: It was question and answer, all right. Twenty-seven questions he got out in ten minutes, and answered three. I was waiting for you to delve. “When is he going to start delving?” I asked myself.
GUIL: – And two repetitions.
ROS: Hardly a leading question between us.
GUIL: We got his symptoms, didn’t we?
ROS: Half of what he said meant something else, and the other half didn’t mean anything at all.
From Tom Stoppard’s “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.” Sorry. I couldn’t resist.
On a serious note, I do think Jesus was provoking his disciples to think, although he was also cloaking the truth for those who didn’t really want it, as he says in explaining the parable of the four types of ground. I think he was also avoiding direct answers that would have been misleading to those who heard them. He couldn’t very well say, “I’m the Messiah” to those whose messianic expectations involved violent overthrow of Roman rule.
The Bible itself, and not just Jesus’ teaching, illustrates the same thing. The way many people look at it, God could have saved us a lot of time and trouble simply by arranging his Word into a handy systematic theology, complete with an exhaustive index, so we could go straight to the inspired answer to any question we have. This approach looks at the Bible primarily as a source of information, which in turn suggests that our primary need is simply to be informed. I suspect that the reason the Bible is written as history, poetry, prophecy, correspondence, and a weird sort of biography known as “gospel,” is that by grappling with it to find the answers, we change how we look at the questions. We don’t just need information; we need to change the way we think (and consequently, act and live). Information doesn’t do that. Invitation to discernment can.
Thanks, John. Discernment requires work and isn’t very comfortable. Who wants that?
John,
I loved this.
And Keith–YES, I absolutely agree.
John,
Thanks. This is provoking some thoughts I should work through in how to relate in ministry and family.
Would you have any recommendations of writings or steps in development of this gift of discernment? Of course you would then be giving me direction!
Discernment also involves the risk of making a mistake. Discernment ius not a perfect science and when people are earnestly wanting to get it “right”, they often (myself included) struggle to make the right choice. Whereas being told what to do eliminates the risk and therefore provides someone we can blame when things don’t work out quite right. A change needs to happen in our thinking about who God is. I believe decisions made with a right heart, whether the exact right decision or not, can be blessed or redeemed by God, whichever the case may be. God is not sitting back waiting to pounce on us for making the wrong choice. Again, it comes down to the heart and discernment is also an act of faith. Exercise of it shows that we choose to trust God to lead us.
John, after reading this, it occurred to me that many of today’s so-called “discernment ministries” are really little more than autocratic information clearinghouses.
Paolo Freire
Looked up Freire, good stuff. From Wikipedia,
“Freire is best-known for his attack on what he called the “banking” concept of education, in which the student was viewed as an empty account to be filled by the teacher. He notes that, “it transforms students into receiving objects. It attempts to control thinking and action, leads men and women to adjust to the world, and inhibits their creative power. . . The authority which the educator enjoys must not be allowed to degenerate into authoritarianism; teachers must recognize that “their fundamental objective is to fight alongside the people for the recovery of the people’s stolen humanity, not to “win the people over” to their side.”
Recalls Rookmaaker, “Jesus didn’t come to make us Christian, he came to make us fully human.”
I would agree that Jesus used analogies, metophores to describe outcomes that would make one think about how he/she should decide. I’m not sure if he did that only to provoke but to also give an example that they can certainly relate to.
[...] Two important posts by John Frye (author of Jesus the Pastor ). See Jesus the Discernment Artist and Do We Believe in the [...]
[...] Jesus: The Discernment Artist [...]
John,
Thank you for highlighting this essential, yet ignored (avoided?) skill. I remember semi-shouting “where is the discernment?” as I threw my copy of Christianity Today across the room a few years ago. I had just read of more theological and character shenanigans of a prosperity gospel “pastor”. Yet 7000 parishioners can’t be wrong. All together now: “where is the discernment?”
Blessings in Him,
Kerry Doyal
[...] regarding the what it means to be discerning and how Jesus taught his disciples to be just that here (hint: it is not by creating an atmosphere of harsh dogmatism and [...]
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