Saturday, Jan. 21, 2006 - 12:58 p.m.

Something Important to think on

This is one of the longest things I have ever put in this journal, but I want to keep it. I think I will post it in my xanga, also. My Titus II woman once again has taught this younger sister somthing very important. The demarcation is getting more and more noted.

Title: Those Personality Tests

Author: Elisabeth Elliot

Aristotle said that the purpose of education is to make the pupil like or dislike what he ought. To be educated is to be able to make distinctions. But we are being educated nowadays to believe that distinctions are to be deplored. What you like or dislike has nothing whatever to do with the object. It's merely a matter of taste.

Edwin Newman is one of the few public figures who clings to the quaint idea that distinctions in language are important. It still matters to him whether hopefully means "with hope" or "I hope that," and whether momentarily means "for a moment" or "in a moment."

Distinctions in dress have become fewer and fewer, for the carefully studied "unstudied" look is adopted by most Americans most of the time, whether they're headed for a hike or a party.

Distinctions of race, color, sex and creed are being obliterated as fast as possible, so that we may become a people without identity colorless, sexless and faithless.

I went to a conference a couple of weeks ago sponsored by a mission organization. The psychiatrist who screens candidates for that mission administered to the entire audience, purely for their own interest (he said), five of the simpler personality tests which he uses. I, like everybody else, dutifully filled in the blanks. It was my first experience of this sort of thing. Nobody had thought of it as a prerequisite for missionaries back in my day, and my missionary friends at the conference agreed with me that no one of the five of us would have made it to Ecuador if they had.

Each question on the "temperament" test began with words like: "Do you feel," "Are you easily tempted to," "Do you tend to," "Is it difficult for you to," "Do you prefer," "Are you regarded as," "Do you like," "Are you comfortable with," "Do you appear"--every one of them questions for which there could be no absolute answers. The doctor assured us that there were no "right" or "wrong" answers." It's just a matter of what's right for you."

Very soothing. No moral distinctions have any bearing on this test. That was what the psychiatrist was saying. The difference between right and wrong really has nothing at all to do with a person's temperament. A simple matter of "pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold." We're not concerned here with what ought to be but simply with what is. Not with what I ought to like but with what I do like, for whatever reasons. Learning "who I am" requires merely the listing of traits--true enough, I suppose, but is there any place for judgment of them as faults or virtues?

But as it turned out, I was categorized at once by my answers. Distinctions were made, all right, whether the tester chose to call them moral ones or "value judgments" or not. If I admire what, in a less analytical age, were called virtues and am "upset" by what were once called faults, I am classified as "R"--regimented, regular, reserved, rigid. To like punctuality, neatness, thrift and self--discipline is to be regimented. To dislike tardiness, slovenliness, profligacy and self-indulgence is to be hostile. (My "hostility scale" was dangerously high.) To be upset by punctuality, neatness, thrift and self-discipline is not regarded, I found, as any index of hostility but rather of geniality, and to "feel comfortable with" tardiness, slovenliness, profligacy and self-indulgence is to be classified as "Z" which, we were informed, means you've got "zip, zing, zest, and zowie"! The conclusion is that discipline and joy are mutually exclusive. (Not certain that I had understood, I inquired whether a person who is rated "pure R" therefore has no zip, zing, zest and zowie. The solemn reply: "That is correct.")

There are a number of questions to be raised about this kind of "testing."

What are the presuppositions which underlie the test questions themselves?

First, that people's behavior is governed by their feelings. For the Christian, at least, this is not necessarily true. If my answer to the question Are you irritated when someone is late for an appointment? is yes, this does not always mean that I shout at him when he finally arrives. Paul said, "Be angry and sin not." He said, "Never act from motives of rivalry or jealousy." Jesus said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto," not, "Inasmuch as ye have felt it toward one of the least of these..." If I say yes when asked if I find it difficult to discipline myself, this does not mean that I therefore do not discipline myself.

Second, that traits of character are--with two notable exceptions--morally indifferent. We are all conditioned or constituted as we are and therefore O.K. We are told to express ourselves, tell the world how we "really feel," and "hang loose." We need not encourage any course of action on any ground other than our own (even "gut-level") feelings.

But there is one unarguable virtue toward which some effort (I gather) needs to be directed. That is tolerance. And there is one thoroughly damnable fault which must be eradicated. That is intolerance. We are encouraged to be tolerant of just about everything and intolerant of almost nothing. (We are permitted to be intolerant of just one thing--intolerance.)

Do certain kinds of behavior merely receive, or do they also merit, certain kinds of response? Are certain reactions more just or appropriate than others? Are there things which are actually in themselves pleasurable, admirable, likable or tolerable, and other things which are painful, detestable, unlikable and intolerable? The Bible makes clear distinctions. Behavior is not merely a question of taste. It speaks of "the activities of the lower nature," which include sexual immorality, impurity of mind, sensuality, hatred, jealousy, bad temper, rivalry and envy. Nowhere does it admonish us to tolerate such activity. (Loving all others certainly does not imply an inability to distinguish between the lovable and the unlovable. How then could we tell an enemy when we saw one?)

Over against that list is the fruit produced in human life by the Spirit of God: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, fidelity, tolerance and self-control. "And no law," the Bible says, "exists against any of them." No law, perhaps, except the norms of the personality testers. They like most of the things in the second list, though they won't stand for too much fidelity or self-control. Qualities such as those reveal a tendency to rigidity and are, by the testers' standards, unlikely to occur in the same list with tolerance. But in the world where one quality of personality is as good as another, what need do we have for peace, patience, kindness and generosity? If I am to repay evil with good I must first discern evil.

The total effect of the tests was to diminish responsibility. I found that I was a "type." Everybody's a type. So there we are. Accept it. Like it. Like all the other types. We're all O.K. No need to condemn anything. No need to feel guilty. Don't distinguish between personality traits; that's a "value judgment" and value judgments are always bad. So what if you're a fidgeter, an underachiever, a social boor, a spendthrift? Don't let it upset you. Nothing matters, finally--a messy house or a clean one, work done or work undone, appointments kept or missed, bills paid or unpaid, health guarded or ruined, feelings soothed or ruffled--just be yourself. Here I am, everybody, good old lovable me. Take me the way I am. Love me. If my habits annoy you, there's something wrong with you, not me. You're the one who needs help. You're "uptight."

But no. As I was driving home, mulling over the whole thing, I saw that it wouldn't do. Of course we're meant to love people. Love bears anything, believes anything, endures anything. But we're not meant to ignore distinctions. I saw that if I need not condemn anything neither need I praise. There is nothing to strive for, nothing to emulate, nothing to prize. "Can you be righteous," Traherne wrote, "unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem?"

It seemed a frightening thing to me to know that the servants of God might be screened by tests which would place the highest value on being easy on oneself and others. Candidates who were easy to live with simply because nothing really made much difference to them would prove, by these methods, to be most desirable. But when Jesus called disciples he asked them to deny--to "give up their right to"--themselves.

Would the apostle Paul have passed those tests? It was he who said, "Endure hardness," "Submit yourselves one to another," "In humility think more of each other than you do of yourselves," "Be strong," "Take your stand," "Live lives worthy of your high calling." He even had the courage to say "Let my example be the standard by which you can tell who are the genuine Christians"!

"Here is a last piece of advice," he wrote to the Philippians. "If you believe in goodness and if you value the approval of God, fix your minds on whatever is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and praiseworthy. Model your conduct on what you have learned from me, on what I have told you and shown you, and you will find that the God of peace will be with you."

Our faculties must be trained by practice and taught by the Spirit of God to make the strong and sharp distinctions so essential to Christian character.

It is not our experiences which in the final analysis change us, it is always and only our responses to those experiences. In any of the holy places I could have responded with cynicism, rejection, even outrage. Their mysterious power then would have been lost on me. I found it possible instead to enter in by faith, giving myself in each place to the One who was there before me and who, despite all that worldly-minded humanity had done to those places, was still there if I sought him.

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