Theological Reflection: “Personality” is the realm of the Son.
“God” is hard to define. Still more difficult is who Jesus was and is. The first few centuries of this steadily emerging new way called “Christianity” are rife with passionate, and sometimes straight virulent, debates on the nature of Jesus. Was he just a great Jewish teacher? Was he a moral example? If he is God (as all the writers of the New Testament insisted), is he a version of God, a part or extension of God, a new God? A cursory look at church history will tell you there has never been a time when these big questions were settled once-and-for all, and many of those ideas the early church fathers parsed through still live on today. Some of the earliest heresies are alive and well, although many people wouldn’t recognize them, because modern life has a nasty habit of divorcing us from our rich tradition.
The early church leaders made two claims about Jesus that brought about the Creeds, our foundational documents for what constitutes orthodox Christianity. First, Jesus was fully God. He is not 1/3 of God, nor a temporary version of God, he is God Incarnate, “in flesh”. This doesn’t make sense to our modern mathematical minds, because trinitarian theology is something we must confess by faith, swim around in and immerse ourselves to understand.
The second claim they made was that Jesus is fully human. Contrary to early heresies that determined Jesus only appeared human, but was actually a spirit in human visage, the early church saw Jesus as the Truly Human Being. It’s this beautiful theological claim that I want to meditate on as we explore “personality”.
As the Christ, Jesus came not only to show us what God is like, but also what it means to be a human being. We are all created as children of God, but we have wandered away from that blessing and act in ways that make us seem less human, more fragmented. This is what we mean by “sin”. It is important to note in no way does that mean God loves us less; rather, what is truest about us isn’t realized in how we see ourselves and other people due to our wandering. Jesus is referred to as both “the son of God” and “the son of man” to reveal the truth about both God and humanity, to bridge the gap between them, so we can find wholeness. This makes sense when we meditate on what it means to be children of God - we carry in us God’s DNA. We are made to think, feel, and act like God.
Personality is the realm of the Son. Jesus came to show us how to lay claim to our true identities, to root ourselves in the truth of being children of God, and then to redeem our personalities to be multitudinous shining reflections of who he is.
Reflection:
There are several beautiful meditations on the person of Christ in the New Testament. Read Colossians 1:15-20, Hebrews 1:1-3, and Philippians 2:5-11.
Identify some of the earliest claims about who Jesus was and is. What stands out to you? What makes you curious?
What are your favorite moments in the story of Jesus? What do those moments tell you about what it means to be “God”? about what it means to be “human”?
Personality and Identity
We are in the midst of an identity crisis in the West.
Traditionally, a common story about a people is what gives them a sense of identity. This is an easy communal agreement when we all believe the same things, and behave the same ways. It informs our expectations, our desires, and our motivations. When we come from a monoculture, the story rarely gets challenged because there is no need to peer under the surface and see what is assumed to be true. With the rise in globalization and especially the internet as a vehicle for more diverse ideas, we have been forced to look deeper at some those assumptions. This is not a bad thing necessarily, but many of us feel ill-equipped. This is apocalyptic work, coming to terms with hidden things that have now been revealed. Many of the seemingly old stories are being hung out to dry. Many of them probably need to be tossed out. But what are we replacing them with?
Is your identity based in your likes and dislikes? How you vote? Who you love? Your work? Your relationships?
Henri Nouwen once spoke of the three lies we believe about our identities:
I am what I have.
I am what I do.
I am what others say about me.
The problem with the ways in which we often try to name the truest things about ourselves is that they are so transparent and transient. They are transparent in that they don’t seem to provide a solid enough foundation upon which to see ourselves, and transient in that they seem to constantly shift, or even slip through our fingers. None of these lies seem to provide us with the length or breadth necessary to identify ourselves, and we find ourselves scrambling to compensate.
I would like to propose that we in the Christian household have an opportunity to reclaim an understanding of our true identity, and allow that reclamation to inform and shape how we see our personality. The most profound way we can approach “identity” is seeing it is a gift to be received, not a status to be earned or attained. There are a few ways we phrase it, being “made in the image of God”, or being God’s children, but my favorite way to name it is being “the Beloved”. It is a hard thing to learn how to receive love rather than earn it, perform for it. Perhaps this can be seen as one of the primary pursuits of a spiritual life. But to learn to receive our belovedness as the core of who we are is to find something eternal and unchanging, in the highest highs and the lowest lows of life itself. It is a gift that is not dependent upon what we like or don’t like, what we have or don’t have, what we do or don’t do, what others think about us.
At his baptism, before he had said or done a single thing for the ministry to which God had called him, it was spoken over Jesus, “this is my son, whom I love. In him I am well pleased”. Imagine what that must feel like, to be affirmed unconditionally before you have said or done anything. Imagine what that must have meant to Jesus as he began to usher in the Kingdom of heaven. If Jesus is the Truly Human Being, then what is truest of him is truest of all of us. Sit in that for a moment before we go on.
(selah)
Just as “calling” is a particular expression of the more universal “purpose”, so “personality” is a specific expression of “identity”. Your personality is the unique way you think, act, and feel; both in how you interpret the world around you, and how you put energy back into the world. In childhood development theory, most experts agree your personality is formed as a way to overcome the sense of basic loss and abandonment you experience as an infant. While in your mother’s womb, you had all your needs instantly met, you were in complete union. Then you were born into a dark, cold world, and all of a sudden you had to find what was so freely offered in utero. Your little self, in a compulsive need to reclaim what you once had, discovered methods of getting those basic needs met. For some it is security, for others affection, still others power and freedom, but all those motivations stem from a basic need to be loved.
Our personalities get us far in life, but they have their limits. We still find ourselves having to work for trust, for connection. Oftentimes we end up overdoing the performative aspects in our personality, and we end up with unhealthy dependence upon others, or we assert ourselves too strongly, or we pull back and gather up a protective cocoon around our wounded hearts. We feel at a loss to sustain a sense of loving connection but we continue to use the tools we developed as little children to find it. This is what leads us to believe that our identity, who we are at the core, is this pattern of thinking, feeling, and acting.
The Episcopal priest Ian Morgan Cron, an enneagram teacher, says that, “Your personality is the story you tell yourself that runs contrary to the story of Grace”. While there are many beautiful aspects to your personality, they have their limits, and left unchecked can become a prison of consumption, achievement, dependency.
Here is the good news: God is not in the business of scrapping bits of your personality and replacing them as one would with a broken machine; rather, God engages in the all-important Kingdom work of redemption - giving new value and purpose to the raw elements of who you are. When your personality traits are redeemed, they reflected the beautiful and full humanity of Jesus. This is what it means to be Christ-like. For example, God will never take away your introversion or extraversion, but God will bless them in a way that you are healthier and freer to be your true self, God’s Beloved. This encourages us to ask Jesus for vision of what we look like when we are our best in all aspects of our personality.
Reflection:
When you consider Nouwen’s three lies, which one resonates most in terms of how you view yourself?
What is one affirmation from God you find in scripture that combats that lie?