Suspicion, Discernment, and Pride
This post may cause everyone to want off of my prayer list but I am persuaded to share it with you anyways. Mark Lauterbach struck a chord in me as I read his most recent post on Gospeldrivenlife. It was convicting to think about how my discernment attennae are usually more in tune to see and look down on other’s faults then to see and point out evidences of God’s grace. While this is certainly an area of balance, I find it quite easy to be driven by pride rather than love in this area. I have pasted Lauterbach’s post in its entirety below.
I have been reflecting on the matters of suspicion and discernment. C J Mahaney’s message on Grace and the Adventure of Leadership has touched a nerve in my soul. Paul thanked God for the Corinthians – he saw grace in them. He was not angry or bitter toward them. He was neither suspicious of them nor discerning only of their evil.
I am finding my heart is endlessly suspicious and my discernment likes to “read between the lines” to see sin. I believe in a doctrine of sin that is serious and deep – but I think it is a wrong application of the doctrine of sin to cause me to hold others in suspicion. I think the doctrine of sin should lead me to hold myself in suspicion and assume others are not nearly as corrupt in motives as I am. But that is not the case.
The other day I spent more time looking through my prayer list – and saw that often when I looked at someone’s name it really was their sin that first came to mind. This means my heart is predisposed to suspicion of others rather than seeing grace in others. I do not think this is a mark of Gospel transformation.
It is called censoriousness by Edwards and fault-finding by others – the remarkable facility to see your specks of evil and miss my own logs of sin.
When I ask my heart questions here is what I find – there is a profound sense of self-righteousness and pride in me. When I see someone’s sin and motives (or think I see it) my thoughts run like this, “I am pretty discerning. I wonder if anyone else sees this.” I congratulate myself on being discerning. The same is true with my doctrinal discernment – I congratulate myself on my correct perceptions and wonder why no one else is as discerning as I.
It would seem that a true gift of discernment is as able to see grace and godliness that others do not see. Who says discernment is focused on sin? Why should it not also be focused on truth? Who says discernment is primarily about weeding out error?
None of this should lead me down the path of relativism or naiveté. Where it should take me is to take my pride to task before the cross and exercise myself in seeing truth and grace as much as error and sin. My guess is that my heart is so naturally predisposed to fault-finding that I do not need to exercise myself in that at all.
Paul seems to have done this with the Corinthians – he was not “buttering them up” – he was seeing the grace of God in them, flawed though it may be and marred by sin – it was grace nonetheless.
Pastors: do you love your people and see far more of their graces than their sins? Do you find fault with them more quickly than find joy in them?
May we be eager to see and point out evidences of grace in others and may we point out sin only as we are driven by love and a desire for God’s glory.