The fact that Christians have been so easily persuaded by the validity of personality tests and have developed an affinity for such tests points to a lack of understanding and practice of the Bible in their lives. It is also an indictment of the local church, as it pertains to its weaknesses regarding discipling the body.
This may come as a surprise to some, but it is hardly a surprise for the biblical counselor. A lack of practical understanding of the Bible and a general weakness in local church discipleship processes was what gave rise to the biblical counseling movement in the 1970′s. Teaching people the practical truths of what Peter told us 2000 years ago is what keeps me in business as a para-Church (Read: alongside the local church, but not the local church) organization:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence… – 2 Peter 1:3 (ESV)
We were granted all things that pertain to life and godliness long before Freud told Jung that they were going to change the world in the early 1900′s. Freud’s hatred for God motivated him to create a new way to think about the human condition. Many others have followed his path, as the psychological community has evolved into the ever-changing world of DSMs.
Because of the encroachments of the psychological community, it would be an unfair assumption to think that Christians know how to accurately understand themselves through the lens of Scripture. The primary reason that personality testing has such a foothold in the Christian mind is because of a general lack of awareness of the true purpose of Bible: to reveal the true person of God and the true person of man and how God came to transform man through the death and resurrection of His Son. Simply put, this is a discipleship issue.
Understand Your Gifting; Understand Yourself
For example, nothing can assess your gifting better than the Bible, especially in the context of a caring, discipleship community. Nothing can supplant the Bible when worked out through biblical discipleship processes, as far as assessing your personality. James gives us a clue as to how we drift from the Bible as a primary means of God’s grace that he gives us to help us understand ourselves better:
But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. – James 1:22-25 (ESV)
The mirror, according to James’ inspired understanding, is the Word of God. James is saying that we tend to look into the Word (mirror), make some mental notes by assessing ourselves, and then quickly forget what we saw. When we do this, we are cutting ourselves off from being blessed.
Testing Replaces Community
As mentioned earlier in this post, another major key to biblical assessment is biblical community. The psychological tester unwittingly has replaced biblical community by their testing tools. The test has replaced the person as a means of grace to help figure out human deficiencies. I understand the problem: if you have never had consistent biblical fellowship in the context of a caring, discipleship community, where people were carefully and lovingly speaking into all areas of your life, then how can you know the sufficiency of Scripture and the practical transformative help that it brings to our lives through the community of faith? You can’t know what you don’t know.
Too many Christian husbands and wives do not experience this depth of biblical community, also called biblical fellowship (Kononia), where careful, loving, observation, and correction is given to them in order to adjust them so they may grow in ways that matter.
Too many Christian relationships are so superficial that it leaves one longing for something to help them grow. This leads the Christian community to look outside of the Bible and biblical contexts for self-discovery. One of the many means of grace that I have received from God, over the years, are people who are willing to love me enough to show me what I do not see about myself. A person who has this kind of community (Koinonia) is not only positioned for initial assessment, but there is a context in place for long-term, transformative growth.
If a test is your best option to accomplish what you are trying to do then I want to encourage you by letting you know that God has something for you that can blow your mind.
Caveat: When I speak of personality tests I am talking about tests that reveal your personality or your character. I am not talking about tests that seek to discover health, medical, or physical abnormalities.
Articles in this Series
- I’m Type A! I’m an Otter! I’m a Choleric! What Are You? – 1.0
- Otter-ology and other false continuums – 2.0
- Personality Tests & Psychology – 3.0
- When Testing Replaces Community – 4.0
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