“The errors of youth often proceed from the want of discernment.” – Noah Webster
Noah Webster begins his definition of discernment in his 1828 American Dictionary by describing it as the “act of discerning.” Thankfully, he doesn’t stop there.
The entry continues by adding this: “Also, the power or faculty of the mind, by which it distinguishes one thing from another, as truth from falsehood, virtue from vice; acuteness of judgment; power of perceiving differences of things or ideas, and their relations and tendencies.”
Then Webster closes with the example quoted at the top of this article.
You might think that definition has stood the test of time. But sadly, it has been watered down a bit in the ensuing two centuries. The online version of Merriam-Webster dictionary now defines discernment as “the ability to comprehend or grasp what is obscure” or as “an act of perceiving or discerning something.”
As John Stonestreet and Glenn Sunshine wrote for the Colson Center, “Gone entirely is any sense of distinguishing between things, especially the role that moral sense plays in the process. The not-so-subtle shift reflects a cultural shift toward moral relativism.”
When I thought about that shift, I couldn’t help but wonder which type of discernment we need in leaders these days. What type of discernment do I want to display in my family, in my community, and in the organizations where I hope to make contributions? What type of discernment do I want displayed in those I follow?
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For me, the choice is clear. I want something that goes far beyond the ability to “comprehend or grasp what is obscure.” I want the type of discernment that gets to the right-or-wrong of a matter, that distinguishes between virtue and vice, between truth and lies.
Webster and the other Founding Fathers had to deal with their own versions of fake news when founding our republic, but thankfully falsehood didn’t travel at the speed of social media and the internet, nor were they augmented by artificial intelligence.
Leaders these days, however, are bombarded with information, much of it true and helpful but much of it as full of crap as a barnyard during Noah Webster’s days.
So, how do we attain the type of discernment Webster described?
Here are four ideas to get us started.
- Seek the truth. In my experience, if we aren’t actively pursuing what’s true, we seldom find it.
- Learn from our mistakes. It’s one thing for the errors of our youth to “proceed from the want of discernment.” It’s another to learn nothing from those errors. Wisdom typically is fertilized by experience.
- Question everything. The cynic is predisposed to disbelief, not just disbelief in the information but in the sincerity of those providing the information. A skeptic questions without passing judgment. But there’s an art to believing in people while asking questions that clarify circumstances and get us to the truth of a matter.
- Keep an open mind. The more we know, the more we should know how much we don’t know. Unfortunately, leaders often think their position only qualifies them as the keeper of ultimate knowledge. When we start with the assumption that we know all the answers, we are unlikely to scratch the surface of true discernment.
There comes a time when all leaders must make decisions based on what they know but also on what they believe. The answers aren’t always black and white, but they aren’t always gray. To figure out the difference, we can start by embracing a 200-year-old definition of discernment
