Labels, Part 2 "INFP vs. ESTJ"

I was chatting with an old friend this morning over a cup of coffee. It was one of those wonderful “accidents” that God is so generous to arrange. My young friend, who I met when he was a college student, happened to be passing through town.

He is now a college minister and I am so very proud of him. Looking back on our relationship, I marveled at the growth that had taken place in his life. A lot of it has to do of course with the natural process of maturing. And, the fact that he married a lovely, bright, and talented woman has not at all hurt his drift toward refinement. She is definitely sanding off the rough edges of her husband as is the common task of all lovely, bright and talented wives - which describes pretty much all wives by my book! (Shameless pandering, but it increases Blog-traffic). Their job is to “de-Neanderthal-ize” us nose-picking, knuckle-draggers.

As we chatted, he told me that a part of his leadership training that had been especially meaningful to him had been to work through the Myers-Briggs profiling test. This test is commonly used in the business world to help people better understand one another and to build group dynamics...allegedly. (More on that in a moment). I use this tool in pre-marital counseling quite often, thus, I had already formed a few educated guesses in regard to my friend's profile. Allow me a moment to recount a few memories…

When I first met my friend, he was a football player at Fort Lewis College. When we would get together to chat, he almost always had some topic, or someone, with which he was taking “serious” issue. Being an ESFJ (the J standing for Judging), he excelled nicely with the “J” portion. In other words, he suffered no fools, and the world, in his mind, was chock-full of them.

I remember many times that I sat and listened, slowly drumming my fingers on the table, wishing I had brought along just a fragment of duct-tape. Two or three inches of the magic adhesive would have come in quite handy. But, I did what my profile (INFP) does rather easily – I listened and sympathized. My “P” (perceiving) as opposed to his “J” (judging) offered him another way of looking at the people or the situations. I am not at all saying that my personality type is better than his. I, in fact, often put a lot of trust in people – especially in their unrealized potential – while overlooking the present realities of a person’s journey. That has bitten me on more than one occasion. The disappointment always circled back to my projection of what a person could be that was frequently at odds with who they really were. It is both an encouraging gift to many people and yet at times was wrought with wrongful expectations on my part. It took me awhile to figure this out.

What is my point? I am speaking here again, as I did in the previous blog, about labels. I hate them. I really do. Yet we seem to be incurably driven to find a place in our minds to categorize people: He is a banker; She is an accountant; He is a Baptist; She is a Homemaker; He is a jerk; She is a flake. On and on the labels go. We unfairly summarize an entire person’s life with meager amounts of data and impressions gathered by fleeting moments in their presence.

It is terribly unfair but also unsurprising. Psychologists tell us that our brains need a way to resolve what they call cognitive dissonance in our minds; thus, we merrily and unconsciously go about cataloging people as: friend, enemy, weirdo, attractive, not so much, etc. When I was in my doctoral studies, I had a professor describe cognitive dissonance as a bunch of untethered strings floating around in our brain. Categorizing people and subjects help tie these thoughts down and bring us a measure of peace.

It is right here where we can go off the tracks and where we can find help with the Christian celebration of the word “grace”. The word in the Greek: “charis”, when tracked down to its effectual usage in the Scriptures, means: “God’s empowering presence.” I have heard other definitions, but this one seems to work in all circumstances, so it is the one I prefer. Grace is God’s active goodness, influence and participation in our lives. Grace is God becoming a man, a human being, and experiencing the dust and disappointment of earth. Grace is the effort given to understanding every temptation and shortcoming and weakness common to the human race and enduring it all. Grace is placing oneself on a cross as a substitute to take the blame for all of our naughtiness. And grace is seeing within each human being the potential of what they might someday be. Yes, I like to fancy that God is a bit of an INFP Himself! But, that would be overly flattering to my profile type and it is simply less than honest. He is all of the personality types noted by the Myer-Briggs profilers and much more. His character is one of: holiness, mercy, kindness, matchless beauty, mystery, self-revelation, justice and judgment, downy-soft tenderness, transcendence and imminence. Try labeling God into one category and you will come away with a tiny, manageable God – but you will be missing the real thing. In a sense, Deity defies labels.

And this is the big point I wish to make…grace, when freely received, never allows us to remain the same. It is transforming. It is metamorphosing. But there is more…grace freely received is meant to be freely given. It is a pass-through gift. It is a river, not a reservoir.

Here is where we come to the limitations of personality profiling. I once worked through a Myers-Brigg facilitator to help me resolve some conflicts with a few business partners. Actually, I was in the middle of the conflict – a tormented peace-maker of sorts. The Myers-Briggs actually mapped it out quite accurately. One guy was in the upper right hand corner, a driver, and a controller. The other partner was down in the lower left corner – a very easy-going, “collie” type. My personality was in between the two. As our facilitator shared with us our personality types, the controlling fellow lit up and got excited. He said, “Yes, this is me!” And…then he used his newfound knowledge to define and defend his nastiness to the other guy. “This is me! This is me! This is me! You have to adjust to it because…This is me!” As retreats went, it wasn’t one of my more successful ones. He used his personality type as a sledge-hammer.

Grace never leaves us that way. Grace would never attempt to bend the entire universe to one’s own will and personality. Rather, grace fuels a love of others that cures such things – even if very slowly. Grace is always about the business of changing us from the inside out into something more beautiful. And, as it changes us, it makes us extremely sympathetic to other people’s struggles. We become the change we would hope for in other people.

Thanks for hanging out and completing this marathon of a blog. May God’s grace be yours in abundance…

-CJ

Labels

    The other day, I asked my wife to pick up some Fish Oil for me while she was out shopping. Fish oil is supposed to be good for the heart. So is garlic. It seems that everything that is good for the heart stinks. Everything that is bad for the heart smells savory.
    Now, for some time, the chemists that produce these supplements have heard the cry of fussy people with highly developed olfactory senses and have managed to remove the offensive smells that come with healthful choices. Yay!  So, imagine my surprise when I went to open my little bottle of heart health and wrapped proudly around the lid were these words: “Formerly Odorless.” 
    Hmm…I wasn’t sure what they were trying to say. Could it have been a labeling mistake? Did they mean: “Formerly Odorous?” Or perhaps someone complained about the lack of odor and wondered if popping these pills did any good, sans dead fish stench. So, maybe they meant this: “The stink is back!”  Curious, I opened the little jar and found the pills to be odor-free. So, yep, someone definitely screwed up the label. Their bad…
    I am always pimping life for some real-life scenario to help throw some light on a great spiritual truth and this one seemed as good as any. The great spiritual truth has to do with labels. The word Christian was not a self-proclaiming label marketed by the first generation of the church. No, the outside world, observing the behavior of believers, gave them the label, “Christ-like”, or “Christian.” It was a stunning recognition of the simple fact that these humble, first century followers of Christ were behaving in a fashion similar to the man who had recently been crucified. They prayed for people and they got better. They were ridiculously generous. They were fair. They were impartial in regard to the sex or ethnicity of a person. And, they were turning a brutal world right-side up with their gentle, Christ-like ways. In this instance, the label matched the product perfectly.
    Fast forward a few centuries to today. How is that label thing working out? I was chatting with a friend the other day who doesn’t claim to be a Christian but who, nevertheless, chooses to try to live her life according to the teachings of Christ. She called me from work and shared with me a story that I hear all too often, at least in spirit. It seemed that some Christian at work got extremely upset with her for borrowing a bowl to warm up some soup. It rocked her world because this angry Christian had often made a show of reading the Scriptures in the work room and was fairly vocal about her faith. However, her faith didn’t quite reach as far her personal soup bowl. I was saddened as my friend asked me this sweet, simple question: “Would Jesus care if I borrowed a soup bowl?” My response was this: “No, in fact, I think Jesus would have given you his soup bowl.”
    After that exchange, the obvious thing to do was to go and buy the best soup bowl I could find in order to show my friend how Jesus felt about soup bowls. Within minutes, my trustee assistant and I crossed Main Street of Durango and found the perfect soup bowl, the perfect card, and the perfect spoon. We signed the card: “From Jesus! – Bon Appétit!”, or something like that.
    Here’s the deal…the message of Jesus is still as relevant and as powerful today as it was when it was first launched into the world. He is still the most attractive person I know – and I have studied them all. I cannot get over His kindness and His mercy and His generous ways. He has wrecked me in a good way. I will never be just like Him and thus, I am not sure if I have even earned the moniker of “Christian.” Yet, He joyfully calls me His own even with my deeply flawed ways. But, having made these humble, self-deprecating admissions, I do know this – He cares more about precious souls than He does about an ordinary soup bowl! I have at least THAT much revelation!
    We live in a time where the labels are mightily screwed up. Some who proudly call themselves Christians are often the least Christ-like people to be around. Many are full of greed, avarice, pettiness, anger, and judgment. They are, to borrow my earlier example, still full of stink! While I am a little angry about that – God forgive me – I am mostly just sad. I am sad because these poorly labeled folks obscure the gospel of Jesus Christ. Rightfully so, a person outside of the Christian faith can look at us and say, “Well, if that is what it means to be a Christian, then no thanks!”  The message has gotten lost in the hands and lives of the messenger.  And you know what – “Christians” – we have absolutely no right to complain about their passivity to the Christian message. If the medicine has done us so little good, why would they be interested in taking it? They have too much regard for their own reputation to become like us!
    Here is my solution to the times in which we live…it is time for Christians to pipe-down. I know that doesn’t sound very Jesus-like and I am okay with that. I am okay with it because it is outstanding advice. Until our lives catch up to our theology, we have nothing to offer. The old English word for “belief” actually meant, “by-life.”  It is time for the church to reacquaint itself with the marriage of belief and life. A quote often attributed to St. Francis, but not known for certain if it was his, goes like this: "Preach the Gospel always: When necessary, use words. The Apostle Peter said it this way: "Keep your behavior excellent among the unbelievers, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may, on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation."  I Peter 2: 12  And, also, Jesus words in Matthew 5:16 "Let your light shine before men that they might see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." One without the other is a sham. And, the world is much too clever in these days to sacrifice or change their lives to run with a bunch of grumpy, soup-bowl Nazis.