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| Is this the will of God? |
“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s
will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (Romans 12/2)
The
question of discernment of God's will is very topical. There was a Quaker
influence in my family, perhaps from a Cévennes prophetic tradition, and some
were not far from believing in the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit at the
risk of being guided by a simple emotion or feeling. Some churches claim to be
directly inspired by this. And then today thousands of zealots believe they are
doing God's will when they may never have listened to His word, perhaps have
heard only a distorted, second-hand fraction of it, sometimes not even from
actual people but somehow picked up on internet. Against such fanaticism, wherever
it may come from, the Christian approach is before all humble.
In his Ethics
Dietrich Bonhoeffer matches the biblical quote above, taken from the epistle to
the Romans, with this one, from the epistle to the Ephesians: "Walk like
children of light (…) examine what is pleasing to the Lord." (Ephesians 5/8-9)
For him, these two quotes from the Bible totally invalidate the idea that God's
will would be imposed on the human mind as a self-evident direction, reflected
in the first feeling or impression coming to mind unrelated to any reflection. He
also rules out the idea that discernment can come from any knowledge of Good
and Evil. To claim to know Good and Evil is re-enacting the Fall, the
separation from God. This is the mistake made by Pharisees and many other
zealots.
Bonhoeffer insists
that listening to the Word and reflection must result in action, as is clearly stated
in the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. We must, writes Bonhoeffer,
discern every day again what God's will is. Heart, reason, observation and
experience have their part to play, as well as prayer and silence. This listening
and discernment brings us directly back to the problems around us. It is not
metaphysics or principles, but suffering, lack of justice, man's hostility
towards man, organized lies, oppression of law, truth, freedom and humanity
that make us understand the magnitude of our responsibilities and set us in
motion as Christians and as a Church.
