God's Will & Discernment
Spiritual Struggle
Many people profess belief in God’s will as it concerns things that happen to themselves.
If it is God’s will to be financially successful and secure, have a nice home and car, live a long life free of diseases and ailments, be married and have a faithful and loving spouse, have children, ...
Whatever is God’s will.
But when push comes to shove and discernment is needed on a particular issue where the ideals of a “good” life are at stake, often times those opportunities that God places before us as a means to bring us closer to Him we instead subject to our own rationalizations contra the spiritual path. All of what we read in Scripture and profess belief in suddenly turn into fairy tales or simply moral lessons absent of any historicity. We avoid making decisions according to God’s will, and instead make decisions based on what brings us material comfort.
The journey into the Kingdom is not an easy one and certainly not one of comfort. It is precisely when a person’s decisions are governed by their own rationalizations thinking that they can control the future, instead of recognizing that God is the source of life and sustenance of not just the here and now but also of the future, that amounts to rejection of God’s will.
As Scripture tells us, cut off your hand if it causes you to sin. The Fathers teach us that the cutting off of the hand is about cutting off our wills — our rationalizations — in order to truly accept God’s will be done. While the immediate context in Scripture is sin and avoiding behaviours that are not in accordance with spiritual life in Christ, the general principle the Fathers bring to our attention is to submit one’s will totally to God’s will. In other words, we may experience God’s will as being painful because of our attachment to the world. Yet, all too often we make decisions based on rationalizations to avoid pain so that we may indulge in the world.
St John Chrysostom teaches Orthodox Christians to praise God in all circumstances, during the “good" and the “bad” (Δόξα τῷ Θεῷ πάντων ἕνεκεν). This applies especially to those circumstances where we have no moves to make apart from believing and trusting that we are in God’s care, as well as those circumstances where the right choice one is to make is the one that hurts — a sacrifice in pursuit of the Mystical life in Christ.
How many Orthodox Christians are willing to accept the pain that comes with truly living Orthodoxy?
“God allows temptations that are in proportion to our spiritual condition. For example, sometimes He may allow us to make a mistake, some small indiscretion, so that we may be more careful next time; or be able to completely avoid a greater evil brought on by the cunning devil. Other times, God allows the devil to tempt us, to put us to the test. In such cases, we are given an examination and, instead of harming us, the devil does us good.”
Saint Paisios the Athonite. Spiritual Counsels. III. Spiritual Struggle, Holy Hesychasterion "Evangelist John the Theologian", 2019, p. 135.
Discernment is one of the most important qualities we need to cultivate in the on-going struggle to be Christian.
Yet, most people misunderstand what is meant by discernment. In short, discernment is about doing things and making choices that are spiritually healthy and doing things and knowing how to make choices in a spiritually healthy way. In other words, discernment is the proper implementation of the Christian way of thinking and living.
There are times when it is not obvious to oneself how to proceed in resolving a particularly problematic predicament, and so discernment needs to be sought out.
People will often “pray about” something to settle on a course of action thinking that discernment just spontaneously appeared to them simply because they prayed. In reality, what tends to happen for individuals who do not understand how to approach discernment, “praying about” something quite simply amounts to nothing more than accepting their gut feelings or doubts on whatever issues are weighing on them. There may even be engagement with others, i.e., to “talk about” the issue, but done so more for the purpose of seeking validation than to foster a proper spiritual self-examination. Moreover, it is not uncommon that certain external signs occur during the process of discerning that reinforce the gut feelings or doubts, which the person takes as “signs from God”.
What is easy to forget is that Satan also hears our prayers and can respond accordingly. So we need to approach individuals and experiences cautiously.
In a nutshell, proper discernment on an issue should always lead one closer to God and actuated in a spiritually healthy way appropriate for the individual.
But even when proper discernment is made, there still needs to be an on-going application of it as Satan can still pervert the correct course of action. For example, while it is not difficult to discern that one should read Scripture, further discernment amounts to recognition that one is to read Scripture in alignment with the Orthodox Church’s teachings, and not utilize one’s own whimsical interpretations.
While the example of reading Scripture is simple and straightforward, discernment can be difficult in many areas of our lives, whether it is about mundane things such as taking on a new job or moving to a different city, to something of a spiritual nature such as engaging with a potential spouse, prayer rules, and fasting.
The person discerning should be utilizing the assistance of a spiritual father as well as prayers to either one’s patron saint or a saint appropriate for the situation. Now, one can pray for a saint’s spiritual intercession in that they pray to God for us, and that’s perfectly Orthodox, but that’s not discernment.
Praying for discernment revolves around the idea to examine oneself in the current predicament so as to be illumined by a saint’s life in comparison. What we pray for is to see how the saints struggled with certain vices or exhibited certain virtues and prevailed. We seek to get closer to God by discerning how the saints did so: we want to apply their lives to our own, for they shared the same passions as us. While Christ taught us what we should do, He gave us the saints to show us how to do. It is this sense of Communion we have with the saints as far as discernment is concerned.
But there is a potential pitfall to be weary of when engaging the saints: thinking that we must be carbon-copies of them. When we look to the saints, we do not necessarily look to emulate them, or at least not in their totality, but rather to find that kernel of truth in them that is relevant for our current predicament. And it is for this that we additionally turn to a spiritual father, who helps us to see the kernel of truth and how it is to be applied to oneself.
While it takes time and spiritual maturity to fully appreciate what proper discernment looks like, it is easy to identify what it is not: when the resulting course of action rejects the path that brings one closer to God, is actuated for non-spiritual purposes and/or in a spiritually unhealthy way, or promotes doing something contrary to what the saints struggled to overcome or laboured to cultivate.