As a sociology major in undergrad, personality inventories have always been interesting to me… Meyers-Briggs, DISC, MMPI. Though there are nearly infinite possibilities of personality traits, we humans seem to want some handles on how people typically behave or misbehave, act or act out in our world. We all have positive traits, but our negative traits can quickly reveal our fallenness. I took an inventory one time that put me into a category called the “The Enthusiast.” Apparently, as we “Enthusiasts” respond to the challenges of our world by attempting to spin everything toward the positive, make everything fun, and keep people happy. We want people to see and experience the “upside.” We also, apparently avoid negative feelings like the plague by running away to try as many fun new experiences as possible. One famous “Enthusiast” is children’s author E.B. White, who wrote Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little among others. He is quoted as saying, “I get up every morning determined both to change the world and have a (expletive) of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.” Supposedly we enthusiasts are consistently inconsistent as we try to change the world for the better and have fun doing it. Sometimes it's hard for us to focus, because we are endlessly scanning the horizon for the next new exciting thing, leaving some projects unfinished that are no longer exciting to us. Like gift wrapping jello, we can be hard to pin down… as you can imagine, education or situations that require focus and putting our nose to the grindstone and finishing a task can be a challenge (though somehow by God’s grace He ushered me through three academic degrees, though for one of them, I took a semester off to have fun and work at the World’s Fair in New Orleans). I’m so grateful that God makes us a new creation and changes us when we become “one of His.” He takes the worst traits of our personality and makes us into new whole creations, redeeming us for His great work as ambassadors for His Kingdom. As God continues to change me, He reminds me that a consistent committed relationship with Him brings stability and peace to my life. He is sufficient for me.
Regardless of what category an inventory puts you in, God loves you and sees you for who you really are, better yet, for who He created you to be in Christ. When we are redeemed, He sees us as untainted by our sin, shortcomings, or our feeble attempts to respond in this fallen world. Paul reminds us of who we now are… the best expression of the person God made us to be, without the negative manifestations from our sin nature. He says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 (CSBBible) In difficult times we can be tempted to self-protect and respond to this world from the worst of our personality traits. However, we need to let God’s Spirit and His Word remind us of who we really are in Him
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Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for us all!
