What Does It Mean to Be Discerning?
By Tim Challies - Posted at @Challies:
Though I have heard it said of others, I have never had anyone tell me that I am a man of discerning tastes. I do not have a discerning palate or a discerning sense of style. I can, however, contentedly live without these if only I can have a discerning mind and a discerning spirit.What does it mean to be discerning? To be discerning is to have the ability to make sound judgments. It is to be discriminating in the sense of rightly sorting options into categories such as right and wrong, or ordering them along a scale of good, better, and best. A person can be discerning in many different ways—discerning in taste (knowing what is of good quality), discerning in palate (knowing what food is best), discerning in dress (knowing what to wear), and a host of other ways. A person can also be discerning in matters of religious doctrine and practice, and we refer to this as spiritual discernment.
Spiritual discernment is the skill of distinguishing what is true from what is false, what is right from what is wrong, and what is wise from what is foolish. In its fullest form, it is the skill of distinguishing what is true from what is almost true, what is wise from what is wiser still, and what is a matter of absolute right and wrong from what is a matter of conscience or legitimate disagreement. It advances beyond the relatively simple binaries to the spectrums that may be much more difficult to differentiate.
