The ABC’s of Discernment: B is for Bible

Most people, I believe, have no desire to interact with evil. Or at least mentally, they will assent that engaging with evil is a bad idea. So acquiring discernment, that ability to distinguish good from evil, sounds very attractive. After all, who wants to find out after the fact that she married a con artist or he helped commit murder?

Yet if that is true, why do so many people lack discernment?

Because we want to be the ones who define what is good and what is evil.

We want to make up the standard. We want to set the boundaries. Which doesn’t work. Being human, we are limited, fallible creatures prone to selfishness, which leads to evil. Letting evil define evil results in a backward standard, where good becomes evil and evil becomes good. Instead, we need a standard beyond ourselves, and only one such standard exists: The Bible.

Therefore, to learn discernment we must learn what the Bible says. We must read it. We must study it regularly for ourselves. Then we need to measure all else against the principles and truths found within its pages, as uncomfortable as that might make us, for the Bible must be our highest and final authority in all matters.

Then we will know what is really good and evil, and we can start to distinguish between the two.