identity

I've been talking with a lot of my friends about personality types lately, from the little enneagram craze amongst ECCers to a general Meyers-Briggs interest in my Houghton circles to conversations about the "29 dimensions" of personality analysis offered by e-harmony. Like many people, I find the quizzes and definitions and insights amusing and intriguing. These typing-tools offer a uniquely objective analysis of personality, and may give us something new to consider regarding our strengths and weaknesses. Just the other day a book about enneagram types cued me in to an area of my life where I needed to seek forgiveness and healing. It was rather interesting.

I have a couple objections to the very idea of personality typing, though. The first is that I find them only partially accurate. Am I an ISFJ? Yes, generally. A Two? Well, sort of. Tests that are designed to lump people into nine or sixteen or thirty-six general categories are obviously going to be limited in their accuracy, because there are more than nine or sixteen or thirty-six kinds of people. If you want to get very picky, you could say that there are 6.6 billion kinds of people, but I understand that the point of these typing tests is to make generalizations. I know enough to take the results with a grain of salt, especially when I don't agree with what the tests say I am. I know other people, though, who buy into this kind of thing completely. Their lives become centered on their personal understanding of their type. They detect (and sometimes dismiss) their shortcomings and strengths based on their test results. I suppose like any good thing, personality typing ought to be taken in moderation.

A google search for "enneagram" brought up some articles that make me hesitate further, though. A couple websites suggest that enneagrams have their roots in occult practices, and are closely connected with New Age ideas about self-actualization. Let me say that these articles were not scholarly or necessarily from reputable sources, but they sure made me stop in my tracks. Many things with actual power for evil have been accepted into modern American life, shrugged off even by mainstream Christianity (ie: horoscopes, the tolerance/acceptance movement). Is this one of them? There are certainly overtones of new-age rhetoric in all of the enneagram materials that I have read. Even the overtly Christian book, which had some unique and insightful comments, was not free from the idea of self-actualization. I do not want to smear every kind of personality typing, nor dimiss the potential benefits of such tools, but I think we need to use extreme caution when integrating these definitions into our lives.

After all, the real question is "Who am I?"

And the real answer comes at the foot of the cross, and all throughout scripture, and in the voice of Jesus when he whispers your name. I want to be defined by God, not by the world's wisdom. I want Him and the people He's put in my life to be the ones to encourage my strengths and lovingly help me overcome my weaknesses. It might be nice to say "oh, you're an ISFJ? Me, too, let's look at the world from our shared viewpoint."--but I'd rather say "oh, you love to pray the word of God over the people around you and see Him answer those prayers mightily? Me too, let's do it together."

I want Jesus to tell me who I am, because it's who I am in relation to Him that matters. I want my friends to show me who they perceive me to be, because with them I can practice my God-life in safety. I am who God says I am, and I can do all things through Christ. May that truth be the one by which we choose to live.