The Lost Art of Discernment: America’s Inability to Know Right from Wrong

Copyright © 2021 Roland A. Guerrero.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible, revised edition© 2010, 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0731-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0730-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6657-0732-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021910330

Archway Publishing rev. date: 7/15/2021

This book is

dedicated to St. Thomas More, to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and to Congressman John Lewis. The cross of conscience leads to Easter light in a dark world.

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

THE PROCESS

Chapter 1 Smoke and Mirrors

Chapter 2 Words Matter

Chapter 3 The Premised Land

Chapter 4 A Smattering of Perspective

THE ISSUES

Chapter 5 The Flag

Chapter 6 Black Lives Matter

Chapter 7 Pro-Life, Pro-Choice, Pro-Fear, and Accusation

Chapter 8 A Chicken in Every Pot and a Gun in Every Hand

Chapter 9 The Death of Reason: The Either/Or Trap and Other False Dichotomies

Chapter 10 The Politics of Sexuality

Chapter 11 The Separation of Church and State and Swallowing a Camel

Chapter 12 The Emperor Is Butt Naked: The Trump Problem, the Us Problem

Chapter 13 The Millstone and the Trap: An Epistle to Christians

Postscript July 30, 2020

PREFACE

The writing of this book began on the Ash Wednesday morning of February 14, 2018, which of course also happened to be Valentine’s Day and most notoriously was the day that the students and faculty of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were terrorized by the murderer of seventeen people later that afternoon. I had put off the writing of this book countless times but felt inspired to use the start date of Ash Wednesday and the focus of a Lenten discipline to finally quit making excuses, such as Who am I? and Who really cares? as if those things mattered at all. I was busting at the seams and could no longer resist the deluge of pressure building up inside me.

As the manuscript was well on the way to completion, there was a massacre on August 3, 2019, at a Walmart in my hometown of El Paso, Texas. The shock and disbelief that accompany the expression Not in my town remain nearly eight months later.

As I write this preface, it is March 31, 2020, and to date, yesterday was the recording of the greatest single day total of deaths in the US due to COVID-19 at 500, and the national death toll was around 3,100. We have not been so divided as a nation since the Civil War itself yet have such a rare opportunity to overcome our divisions as we face a common threat.

Such were the times in which this book was written.

INTRODUCTION

One might ask, What is discernment anyway? and could be forgiven for not having the answer on the tip of the tongue. Just as we have moved away from appearing to moralize out of the fear of imposing our ethical views onto someone else, we have also abandoned the most basic discipline of critical thinking in both the interior life as well as in one’s interaction with the world. Because popular opinion has become exceedingly polarized or tribalized on a single dimension, it is no surprise that we find ourselves increasingly alienated from the other. Discernment about who I am and about my relation to humanity can help us discover that the other is just a construct, but one that is very difficult to lobotomize from our consciousness.

In Christianity, the word discernment may have several meanings. It can be used to describe the process of determining God’s desire in a situation or for one’s life or identifying the true nature of a thing, such as discerning whether a thing is good or evil. In large part, it describes the interior search for an answer to the question of one’s vocation, namely determining whether God is calling one to the married life, single life, consecrated life, ordained ministry, or any other calling.

Now with the introduction of all these concepts, there is just one more to address in this age of echo chamber realities given life by participation in online communities. The Greek word is kritikos, which means to be able to judge or discern. One might add that kritikos is simply the ability to distinguish right from wrong and good from bad. Even though our English usage of the words critical and criticize carries some very negative connotations, this is not always the case.

Some of my most treasured memories of performing as a musician in school for my peers was the opportunity to be critiqued by others. Since I had a great desire to improve my musicianship and overall performance level, the critiques were always a source of information and perspective that, because of my own subjective blinders, I could not perceive on my own. This point is critical in that a prerequisite for desiring to know any truth of any kind is humility, particularly when it comes to improving oneself and freely admitting and addressing one’s own limitations.

A Christian would also have to consider this passage from Romans:

I urge you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship.

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:1–2 NAB)

This passage comes closest to what discernment means to me, and the following concepts will occur throughout the following chapters:

1. Humility. Know the truth about yourself, your strengths, your weaknesses, your talents, your limitations, and so on. Don’t deceive yourself. Let go of the illusion of being right. Saul had to believe he was right. Paul learned to walk the path of humility.

2. Openness. Have an open mind and an open heart so that ongoing transformation becomes a way of life. Be open to the pain of encountering others on a common journey.

3. Kritikos. Develop a healthy critical consciousness. Avoid groupthink and tribalism. Judge with honest clarity your motives and perceptions, but avoid judging others. Learn to listen to your conscience as you begin to know yourself.

4. Compassion. Know that discernment is not a process made in a private lab in a test tube within a vacuum. It is always about relationship and response. It draws on one’s personal history within a culture and family and expands to connectedness to all creation—that which is holy. Allow the needs of others to inform your discernment.

SECTION 1

THE PROCESS

ONE

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

GEORGE ORWELL

It has occurred to me on and off the last few decades that if the effects and outcomes depicted in 1984 really did occur in 1984, then we would be oblivious to the fact that anything happened at all. The only evidence is that not only would people be spoon-fed today’s flavor of reality but they would be incapable of seeing contradiction or inconsistency and wouldn’t even care if the truth was a lie. Wait a minute. Maybe it did really happen.

So what is reality in this day of reality shows and conspiracy theories? As a statement attributed to Mark Twain indicates, why is it that a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes? And more importantly, why are we so predisposed to believe lies? When did caring for the truth stop mattering to so many people? Secondly, who do you really trust anymore? What people and/or institutions did you used to place trust in but no longer do? Is trust for you relational or ideological, earned or freely given, or societal or tribal? What do you do when trust and deception become partners and you can’t separate where one starts and the other ends?

Back in the days when Walter Cronkite was considered the most trusted man in America, journalism and journalists were respected not only as a source of the truth but as essential components to a free and democratic society. How did our compass for gauging the truth, hand in hand with a trusting spirit, devolve into the www.misinformation nightmare we have allowed ourselves to slavishly consult as to what our opinions should be today? When did we surrender our brain cells for ideological frontal lobotomies?

Perhaps trust was the first casualty in the abandonment of truth. For those old enough to remember, how was your sense of trust and stability affected by the assassinations of the sixties or the civil rights movement, the Kent State massacre, the Pentagon Papers, or the Watergate scandal? How well did your psyche survive the Vietnam War, regardless of if you supported it or not? Even our religious affiliation can be an invitation to lose trust as parents and church leaders inevitably fail to live up to what is professed or, more realistically, to our perceptions of how they should act. Human failings often provide us with the reasons to lose trust at the expense of learning compassion and forgiveness. Traumatic experiences as a result of abuse by those we thought we could trust have long-lasting effects where all bets are off regarding handing one’s trust to any person, any institution, or any symbol of authority.

Lastly, what role do both fearfulness and fearmongering have in switching off the intellect and at the same time reinforcing tribal instincts and self-preservation engrams to create truths so as to believe the worst about other people? How has the inability to trust anyone outside one’s tribe allowed for the manipulation of tribal fears, which don’t necessarily have any basis in reality?

If all these issues weren’t enough, how does one discern what is true when all manner of outrageous claims are made for products aimed at our insecurities regarding weight loss, sexual potency, body odor, beauty aids, and a host of other conditions, all without a sliver of scientific data to back them up? Pseudoscience, built on ad campaigns dramatizing experts in white lab coats and testimonials by real people, also contribute to the confusion regarding topics ranging from the search for whiter teeth to the ultimate cures for arthritis and back pain. To make matters worse, there seems to be a five-year cycle of credible studies promoting and then alternately dismissing the inherent value of a glass of wine a day, butter, aspirin, vitamin C, vitamins, or any dairy products at all, not to mention eggs.

How many times have you parroted these findings to other people without doing one iota of research yourself to verify the authenticity of the study, a process akin to gossip? Who financed the study? What method of testing was used? Was there a peer review of the study? Why don’t news outlets do this research before they disseminate what could be completely false information?

Information gathering is a critical part of discernment. I remember from my minor seminary days the term affected ignorance. This entails suspecting that my actions may be morally sinful, but I’m not absolutely certain and I deliberately choose not to research and inform myself because I may not like what I find. The individual is choosing to reinforce his or her purpose, or truth, by remaining ignorant. People would often rather not shed any light at all on the subject. The function of affected ignorance is to buttress up one’s rationalizations or, in simpler terms, to cut oneself some slack and get away with it. This slack allows the individual to maintain a spurious foundation of justification and to hold on to a false belief system that insulates a malformed conscience. Wrong becomes right.

When we apply this understanding to how gullible we can allow ourselves to be, we might notice a lack of due diligence in even attempting to get all the facts on a study, a rumor, or a political position. Swallowing misinformation hook, line, and sinker reflects the opposite of a discerning heart, but there are motives for remaining ignorant. Antivaxxers really believe they are protecting their children even though there are mountains of evidence to the contrary. The critical point is that other children are put at risk and can become ill or even die as a result of epidemics that can be prevented. Antivaxxer misinformation/propaganda is very slick and very untrue, but people fall for it every day.

The motives behind antigovernment groups are also worth examining. Timothy McVeigh’s blind righteousness led to the deaths of 168 people with almost seven hundred others injured in Oklahoma City. Individual ignorance combined with self-righteousness disregards the collective needs and rights of the community so much so that the ideological cause is held in greater esteem than real people. Antigovernment sentiments can be found throughout the internet, but they are fundamentally different from governmental watchdog groups, whistleblower concerns, and websites dedicated to governmental overreach.

Most would agree that it would be naive to blindly trust the government in all things at all times, but discerning between groups that want accountability and oversight and groups that are simply antigovernment is not that difficult. The former usually believe in America and want to be part of the solution for when the country does not live up to its ideals. Think of a more perfect union. The latter usually has an axe to grind and both projects and appeals to a great deal of raw, negative emotions. Not unlike the white nationalist movement, most of those attracted to antigovernment websites are very angry White males who share a sense of being disenfranchised somehow. This is a form of tribal identification.

Critical thinking casts light while skepticism casts doubt. Without having to completely dissect the motives of McVeigh and his ilk or of antivaxxers or of conspiracy theorists in general, a sincere discernment by an individual would have to first observe that the three common denominators of casting doubt, creating mistrust, and instilling fear are central to the message