“Spiritual Gifts: Discernment” - March 23, 2014

Acts 16:1-5

It’s March now, but it will soon be May and then June: the two months when all across the land commencement speakers will stand up in high school auditoriums and gyms or move to center field in a football stadium, clear their throats, welcome various people, and then declaim, 

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, …”

and so forth.  Robert Frost’s “The Road Less Taken” is a favorite because it talks about choosing a path in life, which people graduating from high school or college are in the midst of doing. That involves the exercise of discernment, a spiritual gift which is the ability to choose, not between good and bad or right and wrong, but among a variety of possibilities which may all be good but will have different outcomes. 

When faced with multiple good options, people’s first reaction can often be a refusal to choose at all.  How often on Thanksgiving do you hear that question, “Pumpkin pie or apple?” There is going to be someone at the table who will say, “How about just a small piece of each?”  Or why is there such a thing as Neapolitan ice cream, with a stripe of vanilla and a stripe of chocolate and a stripe of strawberry? 

That doesn’t always work, though.  There are some decisions where saying, “Yes,” to one option means saying, “No,” to another.  You cannot be in two places at once.  You cannot pay for both a trip to Paris and a new car.  You do not have the energy both to do your daily work and to train for a marathon.  You have to go with one option and stick with it.  You could, if you wanted, just go with your gut or just flip a coin.  Then there would always be that nagging question at the back of your mind about whether you should have gone the other way after all.  Should you have flipped the coin again and gone with two out of three?  I’m talking about more serious questions than pie or ice cream, here.  I’m talking about when you make decisions that will have a lasting effect in the long run.

            Discernment is a matter of understanding your priorities, and putting what is most important first.  Work is a good thing, but the Ten Commandments say to

“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God.” [Exodus 20:8-10]

Worship is a good thing, but even there, Jesus himself said that

“when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.” [Matthew 5:23-24]

Teenagers and parents, students and teachers especially tend to face situations where they have to pick among good options.  Sports or drama or youth group: those are all good.  Going to college or learning a trade: those are both good.  Each choice, however, may lead to another choice beyond that, and one beyond that, and then another, and soon the paths have diverged. 

“And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.”

So be aware of those early steps.

We want kids to be well-rounded, and sports teach important lessons about working as a team, about developing self-discipline, and staying in good health.  Those are long term gains.  Perhaps the real lesson of sports, however, should be always to do your best but when you find someone who is stronger or faster or more agile than you, you may need to lose with grace.  To keep things in perspective, according to the NCAA[1] out of 538,676 boys who play basketball in high school, 46 will be drafted by the NBA.  Of 433,120 girls who play basketball in high school, 32 will become professionals.  Figures for other sports are about the same.  The highest rate is in baseball, with O.5% of high school players eventually going pro (although that includes the minor leagues, not just the majors).  Given those numbers, shouldn’t more emphasis be placed on simply enjoying the game?  Let’s not limit things to sports, either.  In 2007, around 100,000 people tried out for American Idol.  That means, as one writer put it at the time, “You have a better chance of being the next ‘American Idol’ than you do of getting hit by lightning.  But not that much better.”[2]

            I recently saw a copy of an open letter that was written to parents by the Youth Pastor of a large church in Alabama.  When I read it my first thought was, “Whoa!  This guy is burning out!  Be careful!”  Re-reading it, however, I thought he hit the nail on the head.  Part of what he said was,

“We have never seen a generation of teenagers who are more stressed, full of anxiety, depressed, suicidal, over-committed, over-medicated, over-worked and over extra-curriculared, and it is killing them, sometimes literally. We know you want the best for them, the best grades, the best college, the best teams, performances, standardized scores, friend groups etc. We all want the best for them. But they are not the best at everything and they will never be the best at everything. I was not, you were not and they will not stand atop the podium in every area they compete. As I watch the Olympics I have thought a lot about what it takes to get to the Olympics, let alone what it takes to get to the top of that podium. It takes incredible amounts of raw talent, dedication, work, and single-mindedness about that discipline. Unfortunately we see many parents pushing these standards and unrealistic expectations of every area of their kids’ lives. They cannot do it all, they cannot handle the stress and are being crushed under the weight of the expectation. Now, please hear me, it is not just your expectation, it is the expectation of their coaches, teachers, administrators, colleges and the expectations of each other. Expectations are good, they cause us to rise above where we, alone, would usually strive. But they must be realistic expectations based on each student.

Your kids are probably not going to Harvard, and that is ok.

Your kids are probably not going to play a professional sport, and that is ok.

But your kids can be amazing, productive, courageous and wonderful human beings, who love, have passions and dreams; should we really want more than that?”[3]

Discernment means considering not just what is good, but also what might be better.  What will lead to a better outcome in the long term, not just in the moment?  How do we make our children and youth better people so that they can make the world a better place?  Acting with discernment, choosing the better over the good, may mean postponing the immediate rewards or saying, “No,” to some things.

When Paul chose Timothy to work with him in spreading the gospel, he acted with discernment.

“…there was a disciple named Timothy, the son of a Jewish woman who was a believer; but his father was a Greek. He was well spoken of by the believers in Lystra and Iconium. Paul wanted Timothy to accompany him; and he took him and had him circumcised because of the Jews who were in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek. As they went from town to town, they delivered to them for observance the decisions that had been reached by the apostles and elders who were in Jerusalem. So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in numbers daily.”

Paul was looking toward the future.  He could have decided to work only with people whose experience had been tried and tested, people like Barnabas and Luke and Priscilla and Aquila, who had helped him share the gospel already, instead of taking a chance on a youngster like Timothy.  He might have relied on the help of Timothy’s mother and grandmother, who had already shown themselves to be faithful.  All of those people were capable.  But he saw good in Timothy and the added fact that he would be around longer than the rest of them.  He chose to work to develop the long term good rather than simply take the short term benefit. 

Paul made an investment.  As it turned out, it was a wise one.  He took the road less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

---

[1] http://www.ncaa.org/about/resources/research/probability-competing-beyond-high-school

[2] Scott D. Pierce in Utah Deseret News, July 27, 2008.  http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700246255/Scott-D-Pierce-American-Idol-auditioners-will-face-heavy-odds.html?pg=all

[3] Letter to parents by Stephen Ingram, Canterbury United Methodist Church, Mountain Brook, Alabama, February 19, 2014.