Introverts and extroverts: the Lord God made them all

I'm on my own at the moment; Martha is visiting our new grandchild and family in Melbourne. A couple of days ago I spoke with not a single person; I went nowhere, nobody came by, and the phone did not ring once. I loved it; I'm an introvert, a person whose energy levels are recharged by being alone.

I have a friend who had just come home from spending years overseas. He started looking for work at a time when jobs were hard to come by. After some months of no success he was finally offered employment. He turned it down! The job involved being in an office all day long by himself. Being an extrovert, a person who is pumped up by the company of others, he could not stand the idea of being alone all day. Shades of the Levite's father-in-law (Jdg. 19:1-9).

Every one of us lies somewhere on a scale between extreme introvert (I'm getting close) and extreme extrovert. You won't find many extroverts in monasteries. Incidentally, introversion and extroversion are not synonymous with shyness and boldness. I'm not at all shy; I have no problem meeting strangers or conversing with them. Rather, these traits are a measure of what pumps you up and drains you. They are a measure of the degree to which you like your own company. Further, they bear no relationship to one's level of Christian love. Loners can feel as much empathy and concern for those who are suffering as party animals do.

Introversion and extroversion, along with other opposites such as intuitive vs. sensing, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving (according to the Myers-Brigg system of classification), are just one of a number of human traits that come under the umbrella of temperament. Temperament combines with other attributes such as shyness/boldness, effervescence/sullenness, chattiness/taciturnity, likes/dislikes and so on, to make up personality. The staggering truth is that no two people in the world have exactly the same personality any more than the same fingerprint. Amazing, utterly amazing!

Have you ever stopped to contemplate where the infinite spectrum of human personalities comes from? Millions of years of mutations and natural selection? Horror of horrors, no. Human personality types are the result of the divine creative act, every bit as much as quasars, galaxies, planets, rocks, lettuce and gorillas. A simple fact of life is that every one of us can be described. Another is that not all personality types get along naturally with all other types. We all click with some and pull away from others. Even Jesus Christ, as God in the flesh, was limited to a human

personality, as a result of which He "clicked" with John more than any other disciple (John 20:2); that does not mean He felt more Christian love for John than for the rest. In the kingdom of God these limited personalities will be replaced by something far more expansive. Surely, those of us who are introverts now will not go out of our glorified minds from being forever in Jesus' presence (1 Thess. 4:17)!

Inquiring minds have always wondered just what makes us tick and how to explain the universal phenomenon of individual uniqueness. Which is the more influential; nature or nurture? If the TV shows I have seen are correct, studies of identical twins separated from birth suggest that heredity is the more dominant influence. But who really knows? God does, of course, because He is the one who made us the way we are:

For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? (1 Cor. 4:7).

The context strongly suggests that Paul was talking about human personality types rather than about varying fortunes of life.

Another passage points the "finger of blame" for our differences at God:

The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men. From the place of His dwelling He looks on all the inhabitants of the earth; He fashions their hearts individually; He considers all their works (Ps. 33:13-15).

The KJV renders "fashions their hearts individually" as "fashioneth their hearts alike". The Hebrew seems to lend itself to a degree of ambiguity in meaning. The Jewish Soncino translation renders it, "He that fashioneth the hearts of them all", and comments that He is "the Creator of all men and their hearts which dispose their actions". Whatever the precise intent of the passage may be, the general gist is clear; God made humans the way they are. Remembering that one simple truth can bring considerable peace of mind. It says to you, "Don't try to change your personality". Remember Popeye's wonderful word of wisdom: "I yam what I yam". And you yare what you yare. Yes, we must change, but the word of wisdom there is found in Daniel's advice to Nebuchadnezzar: "Break off your sins by being righteous, and your iniquities by showing mercy to the poor " (Dan. 4:27).

Don't forget to thank God occasionally for making us all so different. Vive les differences!