Discernment

Summary: A books about discernment. 

Anyone who is a regular reader of my book reviews probably knows that I have been on a long-term reading project about discernment. I listened to an interview with Emily Freeman on the Gravity Commons podcast, and then a couple of days later, Audible had a sale on How to Walk Into a Room, and I picked it up.

One of my convictions about discernment (you can read my most recent summary of what I think about discernment here), is that while discernment includes decision-making, I am more interested in formational discernment, how we are formed toward Christ so that we both intuitively follow Christ’s lead as well as how we consciously make decisions. I think both parts are important, but How to Walk Into a Room is mostly about the consciously deciding aspect of discernment.

Over the past decade there has been a near constant discussion about the rise of the ‘Nones”, those who no longer identify as part of a specific religious community. Those nones are not necessarily leaving Christian faith, but they are leaving a religious community for one reason or another. One of the findings of the research study that was detailed in The Great Dechurching, is that most people stop going to church when they move. It is less an intentional withdrawal from church than a lack of motivation to find a new church. Another large group of people stopped going to church during Covid and never found their way back. But Freeman is talking about a third group of people, those who are intentionally trying to discern whether to continue in a church or leave because of specific reasons. Those reasons can be different, spiritual harm or abuse, differences in theology or practices, personality conflicts, etc., but there is conscious intention to ask God if they should continue or leave. In many cases, these people are not leaving faith, they are leaving a specific community and intend to go to a new faith community.

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Summary: Theological account of Christianity as a way of living, not simply as an intellectual system.

In an overly simplified sense, the point of the book is to move Christianity from a series of propositional belief statements (thin) to a “thick” belief system where those beliefs matter to not just how we see the world, but what we do in the world.

I appreciate academic books because they often interact well with not just the ideas being discussed but the alternatives to those ideas. A good academic book should grapple with the best arguments which disagree. What I don’t always appreciate about academic books is that in general, academic books tend to have really long chapters because they are making a sustained argument that pays attention to not just their point, but everything around that point as well. Long chapters require a level of sustained attention that I do not always have.

I picked this up initially as an audiobook because it was cheater for me that way. But about halfway through the book I broke down and bought the (very expensive) Kindle edition. There are a number of really good quotes and I know I need to read the book again because there is nuance that I need to pay attention to. To try to keep the whole idea together, I tried to mostly listen to whole chapters while I was on a walk. This meant that I was not taking notes, but it meant that I was listening without much distraction.

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Summary: A look at whole-brained discipleship which uses insights from recent neuroscience to help develop Christian maturity. 

A good friend recommended The Other Half of the Church to me about a year ago, and I have only recently gotten around to reading it. Many insights were not new to me because of work that either my wife or I have done regarding parenting, trauma, and attachment, or child development. I want to start with the fact that overall, I am glad that this book was written, and I commend it, even if I am going to spend most of my time discussing areas where I have concerns. The insights here into character development, group identity and its role in correction, and deep relationships are all important. Because of my training as a spiritual director and a couple of professional associations of spiritual directors which I am a member of, I know that more academic books in similar areas are being written. No book can address all of the nuance and potential areas of misunderstanding, so I am looking forward to reading more books to address different aspects.

This is a book that is co-written by Jim Wilder and Michael Hendricks. Much of the book is written in Hendrick’s voice, and he relates insights about spiritual formation and brain science from Jim Wilder. Part of what I appreciate about the framing of this book is that it is intentionally oriented toward a reader unfamiliar with the science. It is very accessible, and the authors know that stories are necessary to communicate not just the information but the meaning behind it.

Many will come to The Other Half of the Church with some background from gentle parenting (Whole Brained Child, Brain-Body Parenting, etc.) or insights from trauma, attachment, or adult emotional development. In many ways, I think discipleship is a bit late to the game with these insights. I also think that from my experience (which is obviously limited), many of my Gen X cohort or the Baby Boomers are less likely to have exposure to this type of whole-brained approach than the Millennial parents who have been at the forefront of the Gentle Parenting movement. Millennials are much more aware of trauma, abuse, and the science around those realities, which, again, have some overlap with the science discussed here.

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Summary: An exercise in discernment by exploring the legacy of three Christians of the same era and their relationship to slavery. 

I read Ownership by Sean McGever with an eye on how he handles the topic of discernment, even though the word discernment was not the focus. Over the past year, I have read about a dozen books on discernment, trying to grapple with the purpose and limitations of Christian discernment. One of the reasons for starting this project was reading Henri Nouwen’s book Discernment and how he grappled with discernment for himself. I am not going to rehash that post again, but while Nouwen received spiritual guidance and help from a pair of priests, after the death of all three and about ten years after the book was published, it became more widely known that the two priests that Nouwen confided in were serial sexual and spiritual abusers. Nouwen described them as some of the most holy men he had known. Nouwen’s discernment about those men is a good reminder of the limitations of our discernment, but also that historical judgment and tools can be helpful as a means of helping to see our natural limitations of perspective.

McGever makes the simple but important point that our geographic and social location impacts our decision-making (and discernment) because it impacts how we see choices. None of Edwards, Whitfield, or Wesley’s grandparents owned slaves because the slave trade was not yet in wide effect. However, the difference between whether their grandchildren owned slaves was significantly impacted by whether they were in England or the US. Geography and social location always impact choices.

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Summary: Helpful thinking about the ways that enneagram impacts discernment.

In my ongoing reading about discernment, this was a book that I found on Kindle Unlimited. I have a subscription to Kindle Unlimited, but mostly it is used by my parents or kids, who share my Kindle account. But there are cases like this where I find a book in my reading area and it is always nice to borrow it instead of purchasing.

I am mixed on the enneagram. I think that  to the extent that someone thinks that it is helpful and accurate in describing them, then it can be helpful to give language around personality types. On the other hand, I also think there is not a lot underlying enneagram and any system of categories has limitations because no system like this will perfectly describe someone. It is about tendencies and rough categories.

What I like about the enneagram is that it intentionally is focuses on health, moving toward healthy interactions, not simply description. It also recognizes that those aspects of personality that are strengths are also weaknesses when pushed or taken too far. There are healthy expressions of personality and our internal tendencies and unhealthy expressions.

The format of this book is unique and helpful. You can get a general book that has everything for all types. Or you can get a type-specific book that has the main content of the book but also has an end section focusing on just that type. In my case, I got the type 5 book and it has about 160 pages of main content and then a chapter that summarizes and focuses on just type five (or your specific type.) I think type five describes me pretty well, and so I read the whole book, but for those who are just interested in your type, especially if you are borrowing it from Kindle Unlimited, the focused chapter on your type is about 30 pages of summary that I think you can get most of the understanding from in a short time. You will get more detail if you read the whole book and you will see how your type fits into the larger system of the enneagram. If you are aware of spouses, friends or coworkers’ enneagram types, then the larger book can also help  you see how your type and their types interact.

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Summary: A reappraisal of Barth and Bonhoeffer’s thinking around modernity and politics.

I regularly recommend the Audible Plus lending library, where Audible members can borrow several thousand audiobooks at no additional costs beyond the membership. Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Modern Politics is a book that has been on my to-read list for a while, but currently, the Kindle version is over $70, and the Hardcover is $66. While I borrowed the audiobook, if I had purchased it, it was less than $10 when I picked it up. I am never going to make sense of that type of pricing disparity.

I was glad I listened to it, even if it may be a book that would be better read in print. It was a helpful book to think about and even had some aspect of discernment (and an ongoing reading project of mine) that I had not anticipated. But I do want to note that I did not love the narration. The British narrator did not pronounce some of the names and theological, philosophical, or political terms correctly. It is not just variations between American and British pronunciations. More importantly, I thought the tone of the narration was just off, but not so much that I didn’t listen to the whole book in just a few days.

Mauldin is concerned about the state of democracy and is using Barth’s and Bonhoeffer’s political thought to grapple with how they addressed the changes in Germany. To start, Mauldin looks at the critiques of modernity by Brad Gregory, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Stanley Hauerwas. I read After Virtue recently and have read several books by Hauerwas over the years. However, I did not have any background on Brad Gregory. The introduction to their ideas was thorough enough that I felt like I was clear.

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