Getting back on track, "The Difference of Discernment and Judgement"


I decided to get back to this, but not make it so incredibly complicated and thorough due to recently acquiring a short attention span from many recent life expriences. So fortately or unfortately, I'm going to do it the easy way, and make this as simple as possible.


My thesis is that there is a great difference between the two, even though the two may look a like on the surface, or even be one in the same in the mind of many people.


So my thesis is essentially this. Here is the difference.


Discerment - perceiving true from false, "right from wrong", spiritual from carnal etc. for the purpose of avoiding error, danger etc. It is or can be the imposition of a moral standard, but in a way that is aimed not at condemning a person, but rather at aimed making some form of "Behavioral intervention", to help the person, protect the rest of the flock that may be harmed by the behavior, bad example etc.


Judgement - like discerning involves right and wrong perceptions, decision making. However the goal simply seems to be condemn the person. There is little or no desire to actually redeem the person etc. simply a desire to exact vengeance, punish sin etc.


So the distinction is one of both purpose and affect. Is the action simply about "Stoning sinners" for some wrong doing, or is this action taken to protect the local congregation, the Church's teaching etc

Furthermore what are the long term affects? I really believe in our Laizze Faire pluralistic society, there really has been a lot of deliberate blurring of these two concepts because that old saying from the pop psych book, "I'm Ok your OK", really has become part of our culture (basically all beliefs, creeds etc. should be seen as equally valid and so on). And many times people make false analogy comparisions to events in peoples lives to things in the Bible. "The false analogy is that the person says "They are being judged" because someone frowns at them for something that are advocating, have done etc. meanwhile the verses that are quoted in the NT often refer to people not being chided for misbehavior, advocating dubious things etc. but actually in danger of being put to death for their alleged offenses! So there often can be some serious "Godwin's Law" breaking going on.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin


I will try to develope out or explain my points on this more hopefully in the future. I remember teaching on this a few years ago, before I formally converted to Orthodoxy. At the time, I did some missions/church plating work with my best friend. During that time there was a lady I knew who was part of our small congregation/ outreach. She was very Charismatic, she was also extremely pushy and judgemental in her own right. But she also considered herself a "prophetess" and said a lot of questionable things as revelation, which she defended fierceley. Any disagreement with her was based on "intellectualism" and "judgementalism" on my part.


While I had covered this topic before I decided to cover it extremely thoroughly because this lady was such a handful. And I found doing so was quite illuminating. One of things I did was do a detailed study of Biblical terminlogy which really really was quite invaluable to address all kinds of claims and charges she would bring up.

Anyway I'm having trouble finding some of the sources I used when I did that study but hope to find them again in the days ahead.