day no. 16,335: personality is located in a Person, not a in a number

“Personality is that peculiar, incalculable thing that is meant when we speak of ourselves as distinct from everyone else. Our personality is always too big for us to grasp. An island in the sea may be but the top of a great mountain. Personality is like an island; we know nothing about the great depths underneath, consequently we cannot estimate ourselves. We begin by thinking that we can, but we come to realize that there is only one Being Who understands us, and that is our Creator.” — Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Only God sees us as we truly are and we only see ourselves truly when we see ourselves in Him.

“Personality is the characteristic of the spiritual man as individuality is the characteristic of the natural man… Personality merges, and you only reach your real identity when you are merged with another person. When love, or the Spirit of God strikes a man, he is transformed, he no longer insists upon his separate individuality. Our Lord never spoke in terms of individuality, of a man’s ‘elbows’ or his isolated position, but in terms of personality — ‘that they may be one, even as We are one.’ If you give up your right to yourself to God, the real true nature of your personality answers to God straight away. Jesus Christ emancipates the personality, and the individuality is transfigured; the transfiguring element is love, personal devotion to Jesus. Love is the outpouring of one personality in fellowship with another personality.” — Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Personality is located in a Person, not in a number.

We become who we are when we listen to God instead of ourselves.

“Live your truth” is a great way to die in lies.

“Be yourself” is a great way to lose yourself.

“You do you” is a great way to be done in.

day no. 16,333: individuality is all elbows

“Individuality is all elbows, it separates and isolates. It is the characteristic of the child.” - Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

Individuality boxes others out. It wants to carve out a convenient corner of the universe all to itself or to retain a private luxury suite of sin in its soul.

Personality, on the other hand, is the individual under his Maker’s authority. Personality is dynamic because it is connected to its source of power.

Individuality is disconnected from God and others and it suffers for it. It is boring, always engaging in the tired ol’ game of catch and catch can.

Personality receives from its Creator and is therefore creative. It is genuine.

Trying to be genuine is one of the most hackneyed, disingenuous tactics imaginable and everyone sees through someone trying not to be seen through. There are few mysteries easier to solve than the whodunnit where one suspect doth protest too much.

day no. 15,946: personality and pelagianism

"I have been anxious to bring out two points. I have wanted to try to expel that quite unchristian worship of the human individual simply as such which is so rampant in modern thought side by side with our collectivism; for one error begets the opposite error and, far from neutralizing, they aggravate each other. I mean the pestilent notion (one sees it in literary criticism) that each of us starts with a treasure called 'Personality' locked up inside him, and that to expand and express this, to guard it from interference, to be 'original', is the main end of life. This is Pelagian, or worse, and it defeats even itself. No man who values originality will ever be original. But try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come unsought. Even on that level, the submission of the individual to the function is already beginning to bring true Personality to birth. And secondly, I have wanted to show that Christianity is not, in the long run, concerned either with individuals or communities. Neither the individual nor the community as popular thought understands them can inherit eternal life: neither the natural self, nor the collective mass, but a new creature." -- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, Membership

Personality, as defined by many Christians, is Pelagian.

Pelagianism maintains that people are not radically corrupted by sin, that they retain a will that is free to choose to pursue Him, and that they have the ability to secure His favor, if they so choose. It is an unfounded faith in an inner light. Many place this kind of faith in their personality. They work hard and take countless inventories and read endless articles trying to isolate the exact ingredients of their personality. The idea is that whoever that turns out to be, is true, good, and beautiful, because it's you... the REAL you and “God don’t make no junk.”

For many, their personality is a sacred object of intense interest and devotion. It demands sacrifices and it vents its wrath on those who refuse to acknowledge it. Personality dwells in unapproachable light and is immutable. It rewards those who seek it earnestly. It justifies those who find it. It defines the individual and insists that everyone else use the same dictionary.

Personality, for many, is a place of refuge. It never judges, unless that's your personality, in which case, that's just who you are and what you do. It excuses all sin and provides alibis for any attitude.

What many of us call our individualism or our personality needs to be repented of. It needs to die if it is going to be saved. It cannot be redeemed by worshiping it. If it is served, it falls down like Dagon. For many of us, what we like most about ourselves will not survive the Refiner's fire and won't unless we turn our backs on it and lift our naked souls up to God. If we side with our personality, we side with Pelagianism, and it along with us will be cast out of God's good presence and into the hell of being left alone with our "real" selves for eternity.

Hebrews 4:13

Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

It is only in turning to God that we become who we truly are. It is in dying that we live and in the resurrection that we become. We do not find signs of life the harder we look inside. Personality when sought as an end is a dead end. Personality is received by looking somewhere else. The most creative, dynamic persons are those not trying to be creative or dynamic for it's own sake. They are free to be who they were created to be because they aren't obsessed with who or what they are, but focused on the One who created them.

day no. 15,913: the fastidious and the furious

"Fastidiousness is the most pardonable of vices; but it is the most unpardonable of virtues."

-- G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

Paying close attention to detail and desiring everything to be in its right place is the most understandable of character flaws as long as it is confessed as such. The one who wants everything to be just right, but knows enough to apologize for it when it becomes overbearing or inconvenient to others is readily forgiven. It's easy to give a pass to someone doing their best to see that details are not dropped or duties left undone.

However, this same attention to detail when worn as a badge of honor is intolerable. Few things are less pardonable than being looked down upon by someone who is upset at you for not looking up to them. Fastidiousness in this form is high pride and rubs everyone wrong. Few can find it in themselves to overlook or forgive the audacity that requires an apology from them.

Fastidiousness then, as Chesterton points out, is forgivable as a vice, but intolerable as a virtue. We forgive the one who agrees with its flaws, but resist the one who sees only ours.

day no. 14,801: a enneagram for your thoughts

Christians are nothing if not trendy. The Enneagram of Personality is no exception. I'm not sure who first shared the memo on this thing, but apparently when they did they cc'd (Christian Copied) the entire evangelical world. Since then, the trend in Christians circles, especially up the younger, mover-and-shaker types has been upward.

Now, I personally like personality tests. I find them interesting. What I don't find them is authoritative. They do not get to tell me who I am. They do not have that kind of pull.

That would be like a hammer claiming to have the authority to hold up a house when in reality it possesses only the authority to drive the nails. The hammer does not hold the house up, physics, blueprints, architecture, etc... hold the house up.

So I think there is some value in using the Enneagram as a tool. In that sense, it can be helpful and useful. But as a centering philosophy of self, it fails miserably.

The carpenter has authority to drive the nails, but not the authority to make the building stand up. He doesn't possess in himself the kind of pull that gravity does. He doesn't have physics at his fingertips. 

But God does.

He has the authority to tell you who you are. He has the ability to hold you together. He can tell you who you are and why you do things and more importantly why you should stop doing certain things, repent and be forgiven for having done them.

The Enneagram is never going to ask anyone to repent of anything. There are no wrong answers on a personality exam. You can't fail a personality test. Because ultimately, it's not trying to hold you together, it's only attempting to explain why you're falling apart.

Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.