About Glen

I'm a preacher in Eastbourne, married to Emma.

Personality, temperament, gifts, huh? 16

GlenSeptember 16, 200816 Comments

Codepoke made this comment on my last post on "personality types"

Still conflicted. :-)

If the Spirit has gifted you as a pastor and you torture yourself trying to prophecy, you have not benefited anyone. Some are eyes and some are feet. When the eye tries to do its part in the body by being walked on, good things do not happen to the eye or to the body. Taking guidance from a foot, savoring our food with our hands, and balancing the checkbook with our tongues would all be egalitarian but not spiritual.

Yes it’s possible to err with the personality message, but it’s possible to err with spiritual gifts too. It makes no more sense to throw the one out than the other.

If Jesus made the evergreen and the deciduous tree, should the deciduous tree feel guilty for not being always green? And if Jesus made one man an NF and the other an SJ will He iconoclastically make both into the “perfect” neutral personality?

Good points!

Let me make a couple of clarifications:

1) The trinity tells me that difference in no way compromises one-ness / equality. One of my hobby horses is to allow the Persons to be considered in all their distinctiveness and not let them be dissolved into some common essence. Humanity made in the image of this God will wonderfully reflect these distinctions. Difference is not at all a bad thing!

2) There is definitely such a thing as natural temperament - ie a way that this Trinue God has made me. Pre-fall and post-return we will still be gloriously different from one another and should not bemoan this fact but rejoice in it. The 'perfect' personality is certainly not 'neutral.'

3) There are definitely different Spirit-given gifts that do not work against unity but are in fact an expression of our unity - even in all our distinctness. (cf 1 Cor 12)

Posts like this one have me banging the drum for all these points.

4) There are spiritual gifts that specially equip certain people to serve the body in particular ways.

5) Having said this, we all have certain responsibilities to uphold even if we don't have that gifting. Some have the gift of service (Rom 12:7) but all should serve. Some have the gift of 'contributing to the needs of others' (Rom 12:8) but all should give. Some have the gift of evangelism (Eph 4:11) but all should play their part in evangelism. Some have the gift of administation (1 Cor 12:28) but all have admin to do, etc.

6) I can bring my giftings and differentness to bear in a very rich way upon the tasks I'm called to do. I will serve differently to you, give differently, evangelise differently and administrate differently - all to the glory of God. And the church should definitely not seek to do those things in a monochrome way.

7) I recognize in myself advantages to being laid back when it comes (for instance) to admin. If my deadline is Friday and an emergency comes up Wednesday afternoon it does not phase me in the slightest. In fact I'm pretty cool when Thursday goes up in smoke too. I know that I can work close to the deadline and that does free me to serve elsewhere with less distraction / guilt / pressure earlier in the process. I also recognize that for larger projects those with the gift of administration can serve me by setting me mini-deadlines along the way and getting me to be more forward thinking. In this example we're all doing admin but we're doing it in line with our different giftings. Great!

But...

8) I'm not sure Jesus made me 'ENFP'. In fact I'm pretty sure He didn't. I've read school reports from Australia (where I lived until I was 15) and I was hard-working, diligent, organised, focussed etc etc. When I moved to the UK I found that I was ahead of the school curriculum by at least 18 months in every subject. I also found that it really, really was not cool to work hard in the UK. So I stopped. I then went to a tertiary institution whose unofficial motto was "Effortlessly superior." And that pretty much defined the personality idol that I sought. Throbbing behind ENFP for me is this counterfeit motto: 'Effortlessly superior.' I'm not purely and simply ENFP, I know in myself that I seek after such a persona, attempting to justify myself before this false god. (I am an appallingly sinful, proud young man and I'm aware that my experience will not be the same as others. But on the off chance that there are other who sin in these kinds of ways I offer these cautionary thoughts.)

9) I certainly had the experience (and I know others have as well) of filling out my Myers-Briggs test and being aware that my answers conformed as much to an ideal that I nurture as they did to genuine reality. This is what I mean about our personality types being aspirational. There's a big part of me that wants to say 'I'm not an admin person.' And this has nothing to do with my organizational abilities. It is purely a kind of snobbery that says 'Admin is not rock and roll.' Certain tasks do not conform to the image I have of myself. And so I let them drop and I justify it saying 'I am not...'

10) ENFP is not who I am. ENFP has a great deal to do with sinful choices I have made in order to navigate life according to false views of identity, justification, true life. I certainly do have a God-given temperament and I certainly do have particular spiritual gifts but I wouldn't equate that with my Myers-Briggs type. Not at all.

Your example, codepoke, of doing admin in a different way from your gifted daughter is pretty much the perfect example of what I'm wanting to say. You are well aware that just because Myers-Briggs calls you 'NFP' does not excuse you from being faithful in the tasks God has given you, rather your differentness gives you a distinct and valuable way of doing that. And it certainly will involve, at many points, handing off things to others in the body who are gifted for it.

If we're mature (like codepoke - I mean that!) we'll handle this with humility and joy! Humility because we confess that these things are great things to do but that I am desperately inadequate for them. Joy because I rejoice in the giftings of others and the Spirit-given unity we have in Christ's body.

If we're immature (like me!) we'll handle that with pride and/or despair. Pride because deep down I'm saying 'I'm not that kind of person (whose abilities I don't greatly value anyway).' Despair because I'd really like to be omnicompetent and not need help.

I'm sure I've overstated things in my usual soap-box style. But you'll be aware by now that these issues lie close to some pretty strong idols for me - hence the vigourous tone and lack of nuance. Correction and criticism always very welcome (he said in a very non-ENFP kind of way).

Tearing down the idol of my personality

GlenSeptember 15, 2008Leave a comment

In talking about 'personality types' and how they play out in the day-to-day, I've been particularly interested in how aspirational these really are. "Out-going, big-picture, laid-back, last-minute" is not simply how I'm hard-wired (although there is something to that). But much more, it's a fantasy construct that I've hit upon - an ideal persona in which I seek identity and life. In other words, an idol.

I was reading Psalm 135 the other day:

15 The idols of the nations are silver and gold, made by the hands of men. 16 They have mouths, but cannot speak, eyes, but they cannot see; 17 they have ears, but cannot hear, nor is there breath in their mouths. 18 Those who make them will be like them, and so will all who trust in them.

It got me thinking - if we become like our idols then for every 'personality type' there lies behind it an idol-personality - some 'ideal' persona. Our natural temperaments might not be a million miles from these personas but very often we will work hard to fit ourselves into these moulds. For some "Dependable, unflappable" is their ideal projection. For others "never-plays-by-the-rules, unpredictable" is a more attractive idol. But neither of these are simply given, natural, neutral personalities - to a large degree they are chosen. And chosen as an identity by which we avoid the thorns and sew together our fig-leaves.

In all this it becomes obvious that what we think of Jesus will be both a reflection of, and the source of, our own personality. Since Jesus is, at base, the greatest desire of our redeemed hearts, these things will be mutually informing - our apprehension of Him and His transformation of us. (cf 2 Cor 3:18)

This alerts us to two things. First - the the dangers of fitting Jesus into our own mould. I will always be tempted to confuse Jesus with my personality idol. If I'm ENFP because deep-down I desire that persona above all others, I will naturally want to see Jesus fit that type. It will be all too easy to view Jesus through that grid.

But second, this shows us the way out of these false personas. Namely, sticking close by the biblical Jesus and allowing Him to break down the idols of our hearts. This will happen in two ways - I will see that Jesus is so much greater than what's good about my 'type' and He's completely different to all that's bad.

If I think I'm a really intense person, Jesus is infinitely more so. Can I stare down the risen Christ of Revelation 1 whose eyes blaze with fire? If I think I'm cool under pressure, Jesus is infinitely more so. Could I ever act the way Jesus did the night before His godforsaken execution?

On the other hand, if I'm laid-back then I should study hard the zeal of Jesus. If I'm rigid I should admire the flexibility of Jesus. If I'm shy I must be challenged by the boldness of Jesus. If I'm loud I must heed the gentleness of Jesus. etc etc

Renounce your 'type', pick up the bible and allow Jesus to be the iconoclast of 'personality'.

I am not… 21

GlenSeptember 14, 200821 Comments

Here's an example of how we shape our own "personality types" which then shape us.

I went to bible college saying very strongly both outwardly and inwardly "I'm not a linguist." Why would I say such a thing? Well not on the basis of terrible school grades or any nightmare disputes with snooty French maitre d's. When it boils down to it, my problem is this: language learning requires simple hard work - learning declensions and conjugations and endless vocab. Basically I'd far rather invest my time finely tuning some doctrine essay than learn a list of irregular verbs. The pay-off simply seemed much greater. After all I'm a big-picture, artsy kind of guy. I'm not a linguist. (Note well the strong sense of a cultivated identity driving things).

So what happened? Well the indicative "I'm not a linguist" translated (as indicatives always do) to action. In this case: retreat from languages into other areas that I found naturally easier. So my efforts in languages were very ordinary. And guess what? So were my grades. So what did I conclude? "I'm not a linguist." These things really do become self-fulfilling.

Surely I should have been telling myself: "I am a linguist." The Lord has called me to be a teacher of His word and therefore He has equipped me to be the linguist I need to be. Whether I'll wow people with my brilliance in the subject is an entirely different (and irrelevant!) matter. The fact is, when it comes to languages no-one gets away without hard work and no-one gets to play their 'personality type' as an excuse to retreat from it. From the indicative of 'By the Lord's strengthening I am a linguist' ought to have flowed the imperative 'Be the linguist He's called you to be.' Instead I retreated into my type.

I'm fighting a similar battle at the moment with an extremely deep-seated self-identification "I don't do admin." Is this some morally neutral, hard-wired fact of my 'personality'? No, it's a sinful pattern that I've fed for years. Any help gratefully received.
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Faith is the opposite of self-regarding

GlenSeptember 13, 2008Leave a comment

From the ridiculous to the sublime.

I've posted quite a few long-winded reflections on faith in the past. (And how we shouldn't reflect too much on it!) Here, here, here and here.

But they're all summed up and vastly surpassed by one paragraph of Stott's Romans commentary:

"Further it is vital to affirm that there is nothing meritorious about faith, and that, when we say that salvation is ‘by faith, not by works', we are not substituting one kind of merit (‘faith') for another (‘works'). Nor is salvation a sort of cooperative enterprise between God and us, in which he contributes the cross and we contribute faith. No, grace is non-contributory, and faith is the opposite of self-regarding. The value of faith is not to be found in itself, but entirely and exclusively in its object, namely Jesus Christ and him crucified. To say ‘justification by faith alone' is another way of saying ‘justification by Christ alone'. Faith is the eye that looks to him, the hand that receives his free gift, the mouth that drinks the living water. ‘Faith... apprehending nothing else but that precious jewel Christ Jesus.' (Luther's Galatians). As Richard Hooker, the late sixteenth-century Anglican divine, wrote: ‘God justifies the believer - not because of the worthiness of his belief, but because of His worthiness Who is believed.' (John Stott, The Message of Romans, IVP, 1994, p117-118).

Isn't that brilliant?

He goes on a bit later...

"...The antithesis between grace and law, mercy and merit, faith and works, God's salvation and self-salvation, is absolute. No compromising mishmash is possible. We are obliged to choose. Emil Brunner illustrated it vividly in terms of the difference between ‘ascent' and ‘descent'. The really ‘decisive question', he wrote, 'is the direction of movement'. Non-Christian systems think of ‘the self-movement of man' towards God. Luther called speculation ‘climbing up to the majesty on high'. Similarly, mysticism imagines that the human spirit can ‘soar aloft towards God'. So does moralism. So does philosophy. Very similar is the ‘self-confident optimism of all non-Christian religions'. None of these has seen or felt the gulf which yawns between the holy God and sinful, guilty human beings. Only when we have glimpsed this do we grasp the necessity of what the gospel proclaims, namely ‘the self movement of God', his free initiative of grace, his ‘descent', his amazing ‘act of condescension'. To stand on the rim of the abyss, to despair utterly of ever crossing over, this is the indispensible ‘antechamber of faith'." (John Stott, The Message of Romans, IVP, 1994, p118. Brunner quotes from The Mediator)

In the debates on justification - don't ever lose those two paragraphs!!

Worship to honour the Lord

GlenSeptember 11, 2008Leave a comment

Perhaps most ironic of all is the worship leader's opening prayer - a desire to honour the Lord.

Suggestions please for the absolute worst aspect of these ten minutes. There'll be some competition I tell ya.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsHH_HYSkH8]

"Jack Black's" hair-do

The sock spinning

"Everybody! You're not spinning anything!"

The song!

"Hands in the air like you just don't care"

"The Holy Ghost Hoedown"

Starting a love train

"Mess us up! Mess us up! Mess us up!"

The 2Unlimited synth solo at 8:10

"Give Him Glory"

"We love the Lordy"

If anyone's speechless, just leave the comments form blank.

What do you give the person who has everything?

GlenSeptember 11, 2008Leave a comment

Penicillin.

arf arf.

But seriously folks... Nick Cornell, fellow Eastbourne curate, asked us last night at our joint prayer meeting: What do you give to a people who already have everything?

Because Ephesians 1:3 says we are that people.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places

We have it all. So what does God our Father give to His children who already have everything? Ephesians 3:14:

14 For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith - that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

That's what God gives His children who have everything. A deeper understanding of what they already have.

Isn't that a brilliantly simple and powerful description of the Spirit's work?

Good one Nick. Somebody give that man a blog.

Personality types? 19

GlenSeptember 9, 200819 Comments

Part of my ordination training involved doing the Myers-Briggs personality test. Now I realise that this is not strictly mandated by the Pastoral Epistles, but on the other hand it was a good old giggle. (See mildly amusing prayers for the 16 personality types here.)

I came out quite strongly as ENFP which means I'm an inveterate procrastinator, big-picture, no-detail, scatter-brained, last-minute, wing it with a smile and talk my way out of it later kind of guy. At this point all the ISTJs (the opposite to me on all four spectrums) are waking up to why my blog really bugs them. (Myers-Briggs did actually help me understand my bible college experience - the majority of Anglican ministers I trained with were ISTJs).

But already you're probably sensing what everyone should know about these 'personality types.' They're not neutral. They describe real patterns alright - and extremely hard-wired patterns too. But a lot of what they describe are patterns of sin. A good part of each of the 16 'personality types' simply identify chosen, self-protective schemes that enable us to navigate a cursed world along paths of least resistance. Whether we buy into the 'loud' or the 'shy' persona, the 'organized' or 'shambolic', we're basically doing the same thing - finding a way to make life work apart from Christ. By some combination of retreating from the thorns and sewing our fig leaves we hit upon a style of relating that minimizes pain and maximizes self.

Now we cluster together in different groups of sinners because there are natural contours to our make-up and unique events shaping our development. And it's important to say that those internal and external differences are not in themselves sinful. The new creation will not be monochrome! And different gifted-ness is not at all something to be ironed out in the name of Christian maturity. Our goal is not the absence of difference but the harmony of God-given distinctives.

But still, granting that there may be good and genuine reasons for some of the following, isn't it a problem when we flinch from serving Jesus by making such claims as...

'I'm just not an extrovert.'

'I'm not a morning person.'

'I need order/control.'

'I'm not good with authority/structure.'

'I'm not a people-person.'

'I don't really do organization.'

Others to add??

Even as we think of these deep-seated statements of identity it should be clear that they're not just descriptive. They are also very strongly aspirational. I got that sense even as I took the Myers-Briggs test. So many of the answers I gave were actually the answers that I thought the artsy, laid-back Glen should give. In fact it was almost exactly like doing the Star Wars personality test where I tried my hardest to come out as Han Solo (but ended up as Princess Leia. My wife was the Emporer - but that's another post). The point is our reactions to events are partly innate but also strongly determined by the persona we'd like to hide in.

So who's identity are we hiding in and why?

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20)

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. ² Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. ³ For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. ⁴ When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Col 3:1-4)

Rest of series:

I am not...

Tearing down the idol of my personality

Conclusions

Fig leaves and thorns

GlenSeptember 8, 2008Leave a comment

These are not the outskirts of Eden. **

Yet my defaut mode is to think exactly this. I wake every morning with peace in the land, money in the bank, food in the cupboard. I shower in clean drinking water, go to my rewarding job, drink coffee from the other side of the world. I've lost none of my siblings, none of my close friends. In fact all death seems to be sealed off in a sanitised compound, far from my everyday consciousness. I have no major illnesses (that I know of). I blog / text / download / watch the latest banal distraction. I preach with virtually no expectation of opposition and people even thank me for bringing them the gospel.

So this is the garden of Eden right? At least an outer suburb, surely?

I heard Rick McKinley once comment that news footage of atrocities looks very different in the west to other places. In the aftermath of a bombing in Palestine, the crowds are grieving. They know what to do in these situations, they've seen it all before. And they cry, they wail, they mourn the dead. In the aftermath of a tragedy in the west what are the expressions of the onlookers? Shock, disbelief, incomprehension. And the whole sense conveyed is 'How could this happen? These are the outskirts of Eden, right?'

Well, no. We've actually been exiled from the Lord's presence and the very ground beneath our feet trembles under the weight of a divine curse. Thorns and thistles grow up for us. Interesting to note that preposition in Genesis 3:18 - these thorns that mar all our efforts to fill and subdue the earth are not randomly placed in creation. They are intentionally pointed at us. The Lord rigs the whole creation for frustration (Dan Allender's phrase). Our relationships are bent on violence and destruction. Even, and especially, our life-giving activities (filling and subduing and child-bearing) are shot through with excruciating pain and disappointment and we live under an ominous death-sentence. Dust we are, and to dust we will return.

So that curse is crashing down on my head daily - and on the heads of the people I love. But because I think I'm in a suburb of Eden, here's how I respond. I retreat from the thorns and I piece together my fig leaves.

Put it another way - I refuse to engage in the painful toil involved in the Lord's work and instead I invest in whatever I think will make life work. Under the ridiculous delusion that I'm entitled to Eden's ease, I take pain as a sign that I'm not where I'm meant to be (since I believe I'm meant to be in Eden). So I shield myself from this pain - be it the frustration of admin, the vulnerability of opening up to people, the risks of leading through change. And I seek life in other ways - through my plans, ingenuity and hard graft (my fig leaves). All this assumes that I'm basically in the Garden (at least in the outskirts). I tell myself there's no reason for me to engage in pain, and every possibility I can make this world work. But this is not Eden and I must not be shocked by the thorns nor retreat from them. Neither should I think that I can press through them to life. Equally I must not cover myself in my own righteousness, nor think that life exists in such efforts.

Dante had the words "Abandon all hope ye who enter here" written above the gates of hell. Actually the words above this land east of Eden could say something pretty similar: "Abandon all hope ye who live here - except for Christ." There is no hope for us, no hope for making life work, no hope for avoiding the curse. There is Christ only. Nothing we put our hope in will work. Not finally. But we engage in His work, in all its pain. We renounce our own coverings and trust in Christ alone. And we wait for the new heavens and the new earth - for that is the home of righteousness.

............................

** btw I'm using 'Eden' as a shorthand for 'the Garden of Eden' - Paradise. I realise that the Garden was in Eden - a larger area (cf Gen 4:18). So I'm begging a little artistic license here.

Go and preach the gospel…

GlenSeptember 7, 2008Leave a comment

... TO OTHER CHRISTIANS!

Here's my ill-considered overstatement of the issue: Our problem is not that we aren't telling the gospel to our pagan friends. It's that we don't tell the gospel to our Christian friends!

When's the last time you looked another Christian in the eye and said 'Mate you're a sinner. I know you have struggles, I know you're tired but, deep down you're wicked! That's your real problem. But Mate - you're clothed in the righteousness of Christ, carried on His heart before the Father, rejoiced over in the presence of the angels.'

I don't mean, When's the last time you talked about the toughness of the Christian life, or the state of the nation's morals or the soundness of certain bible teaching etc etc. I'm talking about eye-balling your brother or sister and speaking God's word direct to them - His blood was for you, you are clean!

We all struggle to muster up the courage to evangelise non-Christian friends and family. But I wonder whether a significant part of our difficulty is that we're not even used to speaking the gospel to people who should welcome it!