Nov 29, 2023
No one is born with diakrino, a Jesus-y street smarts. It has to be developed and trained. Last week I offered goodness as a telos for discernment. This episode tracks with truth as a guide for discernment. To contemporize the topic of discernment I ask the questions, "are you a racist?", and "are all whites racists?"...
Nov 22, 2023
Western Civilization is cracking and creaking. There are obvious signs—educated people celebrating rape, slaughter, and genocide—and there are subtle signs—someone being sent to prison for 10 years for posting a snarky meme. But we will miss both signs if we are lacking discernment. In order to catch nuance and...
Nov 15, 2023
Two thousand years ago a Roman centurion observed yet another Jewish rable-rousing "messiah" being crucified. Compared to the many taunting passersby, that soldier discerned that something unusual was transpiring. Seeing it all, he uttered an epic historic statement. Truth is, discernment takes time. Catching the...
Nov 8, 2023
Jesus said, "do not judge lest ye be judged." And that settles it: we should never judge, right? Well, actually, no. In the same chapter—Matthew 7—where Jesus starts out by forbidding judgment he positively calls us to make several judgments: bad vs. good fruit, wolves vs. sheep, wide vs. narrow gates, bad vs. good...
Nov 1, 2023
Christianity is not first the study of a book, or a new ethic, or a set of doctrines, as important as all those are. It is, instead, a lived experience. Or more carefully? Christianity is a felt telos: a orientation to life that filters and orients all our other experiences (even going to football games!)....