All That He Had Made

Have you ever thought about Jesus' personality? I'm not talking about His Divine attributes. I'm talking about His personality.

I read a book about personalities, once. The Delicate Art of Dancing with Porcupines (Bob Phillips). It was one of the most important and memorable books I've ever read. Helped me to understand people, and even learn how to be a better writer, to portray characters more convincingly.

According to Bob Phillips, we have different orientations to work and to other people. Each person belongs to one of four groups: Analytical, Driver, Amiable, Expressive. Analyticals and Drivers are task-oriented. Amiables and Expressives are relationship-oriented. Each group has different emotions and different ways of responding to conflict.  And each group has another group that really gets on their nerves. If you have different priorities or different conflict-coping methods than I do, we'll clash with each other- unless we work really hard to understand each other.

I think I ended up being  some weird combination of Amiable and Analytical. I figured out my parents' and siblings' personalities too. I would tell you them BUT 1. They might get mad at me for telling the world their personalities 2. I don't remember them anyway so…

Now, what if I gave this personality test to Jesus? I know what you're thinking, but that's not irreverent. He was a Person. He never sinned, but He responded to people in certain ways based on His personality.

What's honestly confusing to me is how He could have just ONE personality. He's God- eternal, omnipotent, omniscient…

So shouldn't His personality include all personalities? If He only had one personality, wouldn't that mean that He could relate to some people better than others? Wouldn't that mean that He'd like some people ("the disciple Jesus loved"), and feel irritated by others?

That's a scary thought.

I know He was people-focused. Would He look at the work-focused person and say, "How about a little consideration of others, you jerk" as other people-focused people would do? But then, wasn't He also work-focused? "I must be about my Father's business"; "I must do the work of Him that sent me."

I've read about the way Jesus reacted to conflict. He asked questions of the Pharisees, probing them. He didn't just walk away as some of us tend to do. Would He look on us as conflict-avoiders? He didn't snap back when He was cornered. Would He think that those of us who tend to do so are overreactive and immature?

I don't think so.

I think we can't be sure of His personality for the same reason that we don't know the way He looked. If we knew Jesus had brown hair, we'd think brown hair was holy, or something. If we knew He was relationship-oriented without being task-oriented, we'd tell every task-oriented person, "Come on, be more like Jesus!"

I can say with assurance that Jesus understands you the way you are because He is omniscient. And don't forget: He is the Creator. He gave you your personality- and He gave it to you for a reason. Stop worrying about the ways in which you're different from people around you! You're not supposed to be them. You're supposed to be you… to serve God and minister to people in your OWN way, unique because of the character traits He gave you. There's no right or wrong way to be. 

If you think you're pretty normal anyway, don't walk around thinking other people are weird and wrong just because they're different from you. It's a wonderful thing that God gave them different personalities. We don't want to be surrounded by a thousand you's. 

God is not the Creator of the boring and the bland. Look at the ocean! "And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good."