Embodied Discernment: Learning to Discern with Our Minds, Hearts, and Actions
Does this sound like you?
If discernment is a spiritual gift, you’ve got it. You never turn off your discerning brain—it’s always engaged and evaluating the words you read, hear, and sing. You have a stack of theology books on your desk and a tattered, marked up Bible. Whenever a theology question comes up during Bible study, all heads turn to you. Biblical literacy, systematic theology, and discernment are your oxygen. You no longer fall prey to false teaching—that may have happened in the past, but now there’s a fire burning deep within you that will never let you be deceived again.
I’ve been that woman. And sadly, I was misled by false teaching again. Where I went wrong is that my discernment only engaged my mind—and if you’re like me, maybe you’ve gone wrong in this way too.
Why is this a problem? Doesn’t discernment only require logic and study?
Discernment without the Heart
My discernment muscles operated only within my mind, so engaging my emotions wasn’t a viable option. Instead, I suppressed my emotions because I believed the truly mature believer lived their life from a place of intellect. I thought emotions were a flaw, so I suppressed them—until they overflowed into anxiety, depression, and anger. Afterward, the outburst left me ashamed and broken. Yet I brought the tattered pieces of myself together to start again, more determined than before to withhold my emotions for even longer.
What does this have to do with my ability to discern? I neglected how my theology affected my inner life. If it made sense logically at the time, I refused to acknowledge any distress it could possibly cause within my soul. While it’s true that facts are facts regardless of how we feel about them (truth doesn’t change if we don’t like the way it makes us feel), that doesn’t mean our emotions are meaningless when it comes to discerning truth. If your theology regularly causes self-condemnation, shame, self-hatred, and an overall lack of joy, there’s reason to pause and ask if your theology is biblical.
As Christians, with a right understanding of sin, we should have a healthy feeling of guilt when we sin. We should be ashamed of our sin. We should recognize our weaknesses and inabilities. We should have humility. However, there’s a difference between those spiritually healthy dispositions at appropriate times, and the unwelcomed companion of self-hatred. That’s not the life God created for us! Our guilt drives us to our Heavenly Father, who promises us forgiveness, grace, loving kindness, and joy when we seek him in repentance. We receive this because of the work of Christ living the perfect life we could not and bearing all the wrath of God against our sins on the cross.
When I ignored how my theology affected my soul, I accepted the seemingly logical tenets of bad theology around mental health. I refused to acknowledge how much it crushed me inside and created further anxiety. I told myself it didn’t matter because truth was truth in spite of how I felt. If I had taken the time to consider how my theology was making me feel every single day, I would have realized that I wasn’t living in the freedom and grace Christ redeemed for me!
Discernment without Love
I also didn’t engage my actions in discernment. If facts are facts, it doesn’t matter how I communicate them—so I believed. I plowed people over with the truth; I left no room for nuance or disagreement. The conclusions I came to around secondary issues were “obvious” and others should simply see it my way. I spoke with absolution. I mocked those who disagreed with me and wondered how they could truly love God’s Word. I even believed niceness and politeness were snares of the devil.
My attitude harmed others. It splintered personal relationships. Even my writing became cold and unfeeling. I didn’t change any minds—I only enraged people and caused them to dig their heels in deeper. I thought I was following the way of my Savior, forgetting how he spoke to people like the woman caught in adultery and Zacchaeus.
I was also angry. I was frustrated that people had either led me down a path of falsehood or hadn’t taught me how to discern better. As I discerned, part of me was trying to get even with the false teachers and those who had unknowingly led me to them. I was both arrogant and terrified. Anger is often a front for fear, and deep down my anger was rooted in the fear of falling into the trap of bad theology again. I thought that anger and fierceness would protect me this time around.
When I engaged only my mind, I focused more on the content I was sharing than communicating it in a Christlike way. I didn’t consider the language I used or the people I spoke to. I communicated truth without love. While Jesus always sought to tell the truth, we can’t forget that he nuanced that truth according to whom he was speaking. The woman at the well and the woman caught in adultery received a much different message than that of the Pharisees and the Sadducees—yet all of them needed the gospel. When Paul reasoned with pagans, he used different language than when he spoke to Jews. Love and the context of each relationship should always be a filter to our teaching—without changing the truth.
Discerning the Truth with Gospel-Assurance
What if there is an effective way to discern—a way that engaged our minds, hearts, and actions? We begin by discerning the truth with gospel-assurance. To first discern well, we need a firm grounding not just in the gospel facts but our security in the love of the Father in Christ. Without that assurance, we operate out of fear and anger and disengage our emotions. This only causes heartache to ourselves and others.
This assurance isn’t established once and for all. It’s a continuous practice—the act of preaching the gospel to ourselves each day, especially as we embark on discernment. This foundation enables us to discern from a place of safety, rest, and joy, rather than from a place of fear and anger that only stunts our ability to discern and harms others.
With the gospel as our backdrop, we need to engage discernment as whole people. God created us with minds, souls, and bodies. When we only engage one of these, our discernment is lacking. It’s weakened because we’re only engaging part of us, rather than our entire selves.
Imagine you’re going to the pet store to buy your first family pet. As you go to the shop, you only engage your feelings. “I just love this dog! She’s so cute and sweet!” Without any research about the breed or questions to the owner, you buy the dog. When you bring her home she chews up your best furniture and she snarls and bites your kids. Eventually, you find out that this kind of dog is better suited for a single adult rather than a family of three little ones.
Or what if you only engaged your mind? You research for weeks and decide that a hamster best fits all the categories you wanted checked off: low maintenance, few costs, and interactive. Yet you neglect the fact that your entire family (yourself included) are terrified of rodents. You cringe every time you hear him squeak and dig in his shavings. The little furry creature gets shoved in a dark room where no one spends time with him.
Though the hamster example is a little silly, the same principle applies to our discernment. We need to engage our entire selves as we discern and communicate the truth to others. We need our minds to evaluate the facts, interpret the Bible, and test our content against Scripture. We need our hearts to know what feelings the content produces in us. We also need to engage our bodies—all theology has practical implications, and we should be pressed forward in good and lawful works.
Let’s go forward with embodied discernment, that is gospel-assured, as we read and listen to the content we face each day.
Lara d’Entremont is a wife and mom to three from Nova Scotia, Canada. Lara is a writer and learner at heart—always trying to find time to scribble down some words or read a book. Her desire in writing is to help women develop solid theology they can put into practice—in the mundane, the rugged terrain, and joyful moments. You can find more of her writing at laradentremont.com.