Thursday, August 25, 2005

Personality

I took a personality test today here and not really sure how the site worked, I took my outcome and just looked at the strengths. Pumped up and full of myself, I basked in the unintended glory. Suddenly, the thought to go to the weaknesses had me clicking and I walked away deflated. It would be easy for me to become melancholy (the test said I tend to do that) but then I begin thinking about the person I am.

How do you make yourself (or help yourself become, if you will) a better person. Last night, my husband and I were talking about how churched people say, "Jesus is the answer" but even when we have the answer, we seem to keep looking. John the Baptist, with direct vocal confirmation from God, still sent people to make sure Jesus was really the one. I mean, otherwise, he would have to continue being "the voice of one crying out in the wilderness" until the one he was to precede was really here, which meant his imminent death might not be so imminent. My least favourite saying is, "You always find (something) the last place you look". I don't know why this bothers me, but it does. So, out of sheer stubborness, I keep looking after I've found something. Dumb and laughable, but worth it to me. We can come up with intelligent answers as to why we do look after we come to know God, or better yet are known of God, but seeing how we are constantly plagued by lack of trust in anything, even in ourselves, I'm not surprised we mistrust "the answer". Do you remember when you used to do math homework and the odd numbered problems were answered in the back of the book? When you did a problem all the way through and got an answer, you would look in the back and if the answer was different, there was always the thought that, in this case, the book was wrong. I think that's how we look at Christ sometimes. We work so hard to come up with the answer and then when we check "the answer" it's completely different from what we came up with.

So, how do you change? I'm not ignorant of the things I should do. I have a list of them in just about every book of the bible. It's not hard to sort out what I personally should do in the list. Fortunately someone has boiled the answer down to two steps. Love God over everything and love your neighbor as yourself. Or, if you want to be technical, just the simple word Love. That's it. That's hard. I'm hardly a "love your enemy" person. I'm not even a "love your acquaintance" person. But I have come up with a few things that might help me move away from the person I have been to the person I am becoming.

1. Hug more
2. Laugh like I mean it
3. Act like I like people until I actually do.
4. Eventually love them.

I have no problem doing any of these things if I know someone well and like them. I just have a problem being nice to the rest of you. Here's hoping something works.
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have a few thoughts if you'll permit me.

One would be to suggest that Jesus is not the answer to anything. Jesus is a person. Jesus is also God incarnate. But he's not in the business of answering our questions or solving our problems. In fact, he's not in the business of anything that can be summed up in a sentence which begins, "He's in the business of...", but I'd like to suggest that one of the businesses he's in is helping us realize how much better life is when we forget about our own little problems for a while and stop expecting him to be an answer for them and instead come join in the cool stuff he's doing in the world, messed up as we still are. I think that's one of the things he was saying when he talked about being part of the kingdom of God, which was pretty much all the time.

Secondly, something that I wish more Christians understood was that loving people doesn't have to mean liking them. We are called to love our neighbors and our enemies, which means, among other things, treating them as equal or better than us, offering them whatever we have to offer that can make their lives better, making sure their rights are not violated or trivialized, and not hitting them back even when they hit us. But what it doesn't mean, is having to act like we think they're swell, laughing at their jokes, being touchy feely, or hanging around them when we'd rather be doing something else. That's just dishonest. Liking someone is, I think, separate and unrelated to loving them. There's no component of feeling that you like someone in loving them. There's only (I say only, but it's more) the effort to see them as God sees them and live accordingly.

That's all. Pardon my intrusion.

1:21 PM
This Girl said...

Josh, thank you. You are not intruding by responding to my site, so never think you are. If we disagree, I can deal with it. There are people I enjoy who I don't treat as if I like. There are people who, if they received a hug from me out of the blue, people I don't mind hugging, who would have a much better day... not because I'm hugging them because I'm important, but because I'm hugging them although I'm normally mean. I would like to love people who drive insanely so that I don't give them "the look" and shake my fist at them, even though I think they need to have their license banned. I would like to not let my problems affect how I treat others. I don't want to like everyone. I'm glad I don't have to. But there is something I'm holding on to (something bad) that is helping me hold on to not loving. I don't want to do that. And maybe that is the answer that makes Jesus "the answer". I do forget, however, that God is not in the business of making life easy for His people. If I remembered that, then I might sometimes have my answer.

4:50 PM

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