How can we know the will of God? The difficult art of discernment in this age of manipulation...

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.