Chapter Eleven - Discerning
Discerning
The unexamined life is not worth living
Socrates
Michael Plant was a legend among yacht racing enthusiasts. Three times, Plant had circumnavigated the globe on sailing vessels, often facing innumerable perils brought on by gale-force storms, monstrous waves, and mechanical failure. Plant was on his way to Les Sables d'Olonne, France, in October 1992, for the start of the Vendee Globe Challenge, a 24,000-mile nonstop solo race around the world.
Alas, Michael Plant’s state-of-the-art 60-foot racing sloop Coyote lost radio contact less than two weeks before the race was to commence. The United States Coast Guard, along with the Navy, deployed planes to search for the 42-year-old US seasoned sailor.
A Liberian-registered tanker, the Protank Orinoco, spotted the capsized yacht and radioed the United States Coast Guard. Coyote's hull was discovered floating in an area about 500 miles north of the Azores, an island chain in the mid-Atlantic.
What was remarkable about the sighting of the Coyote was that its 8,400-pound ballast bulb secured to the bottom of the hull was missing. The ballast gave the boat the needed weight to right itself in even the fiercest of storms. Without it, the boat was doomed. Michael Plant was never found but probably drowned when the Coyote capsized.[i]
The most important part of a sailing vessel lies beneath the surface of the water. The same goes for a person who has a proper estimation of himself and of God, for a humble person.
Much of our lives are lived above the surface of the waterline. Above the surface is where we find our activities – working, recreating, friendshipping, scheduling, producing, and fretting. Shallowness of life is directly related to living exclusively above the waterline. If we want depth, we need to get below the surface to open ourselves up to the inner exploration of the labyrinth inside us, which is the heart.
On our journey to becoming people of humble disposition, what comes after trembling and helping? It is discerning. Discerning is taking a deep dive into the universe of our thoughts, motives, longings, frustrations, joys, fears, and personal histories.
We are amiss when we think that we know ourselves well. What we know are the things on the surface of our lives – our schedules, the people we have met, our financial situation, and the many tasks to be done. Why does David in Psalm 139 ask God to search his heart? “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” (V 23-24). The reason David asks God to reveal his innermost thoughts and motives is because David is unaware of them. We, like David, often live as if the under the water part of us does not exist.
The other day, I was praying the David prayer of discernment. Specifically, I honed into “see if there is any offensive way in me.” That night, I woke up at about 12:30 AM and went to the bathroom. In the bathroom was my iPhone. The day before, I had been keenly following an investment that I had made and wanted to know how it was fairing. Having looked at the price action of my investment perhaps twenty times that day, one might suspect a slight addiction. But what did I do in the early hours of a new day? I turned on my phone and looked at the upsurge in the value of my investment. I went back to bed, happy.
As soon as I stretched out on my bed, the Holy Spirit spoke, not audibly yet plainly unmistakable. He said something like, “Dietrich, why is it that when you turned on your phone, you did not instinctively search for a word from me but instead sought out a capricious integer?” (OK, I’m not sure He used the exact phrase “a capricious integer” but I got the message). He went on, “You have made an idol out of a means to an end. You have set your heart on vapor.”
I was smitten. I knew the Spirit of God had answered my prayer. The offensive thing was revealed to me. I repented and asked for forgiveness. Then I sensed Him saying, “Dietrich, you are my beloved. You have no need to feed your soul with such sawdust. I am enough and more than enough. I satisfy all of your longings.” That’s when I savored being near the heart of my Father, blissfully falling back into a deep sleep.
Plummeting the depths of the heart - The goal of discerning
Remember the most frequent lie many of us tell daily? “I’m fine.” We have learned the fine art of covering up who we really are and how we are truly doing. Perhaps the art of deception was congenital, given to us at birth, and passed on to us by our original ancestors, Adam and Eve. After they had eaten the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, “the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked.” (Gen 3:7). Then they went about sewing fig leaves together to literally cover up their guilt and shame. They did not want God to know what they knew.
The word discerning originated in Latin and meant “to separate,” as in to separate kernels of wheat from chaff. When we discern, we are trying to distinguish between who we really are and what is untrue about who we have become. The process of distinguishing between truth and error is also known as confessing. Confessing is agreeing with God as to how He sees us. The apostle John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (1 Joh 1:9).
Theologian Lewis Smedes tells us that knowing is directly related to discerning. “Discernment is the ability to see the difference between things. It is the power to see what is really happening and what is really important. Discernment is insight – the power to see the inside of things. It is a strange and subtle ability to see beneath the surface, to sense the personal factors of any situation, and to grasp what spiritual issues are really at stake. When we are directly involved, discernment is an insight into the mixture of motives moving our own hearts. Working its way through real life, love needs the gift of discernment to focus its drives toward others in helping service.”[ii]
[i] Barbara Lloyd, “YACHT RACING; The Yacht Of Missing Solo Sailor Is Found”, New York Times, November 23, 1992.
[ii] Smedes, 48.