From the book:
On spiritual discernment:
There is always a danger lurking that our personal preferences and prejudices will turn out -- coincidentally -- to look exactly like the will of God. I see a growing temptation among some Christians today to call whatever happens "God's will", so long as it is personally favorable to them. Is every good outcome (at least what appears to be a good outcome) necessarily a "God thing"? If so, what do we call the bad things that happen to us or others? Person A puts his house on the market, and "miraculously" it sells in three days. Person B puts his house on the markets, and it lingers there untouched for twelve months. Person A, if he is pious, may very well declare his success God's will. But we have to ask: What if Person B is equally devoted and pious, but his house doesn't sell? What then? Is his bad luck also God's will? Whose will is it when things go very badly despite our most fervent prayers and wishes? How, we might ask, do we avoid the self-serving distortion in which we baptize our own preferences and declare them "the will of God"?
The answer is spiritual discernment, which is both a skill to be developed and the product of spiritual transformation.
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