Once upon a time, a great King and Prince decided to they didn’t want to be alone anymore. There were other beings in their realm, but none like them. No one else to share their love and unity with, at least not in the way they longed for. So they came up with a plan. They created a beautiful garden and from the earth they molded living, breathing people patterned after their own image. They wanted these people to be their companions, but not as servants or slaves, and that meant the people had to be given free will. They would need the opportunity to choose the King and Prince just as the King and Prince chose to want them.
But there was an evil force at work. One of the other beings, prideful and jealous of the King, led a revolt and became the Adversary. And as Adversary, he made it his goal to thwart the King’s plan, including the great plan to grow his family. The Adversary was not powerful enough to destroy the King. But he knew if he could kill these new people who the King wanted to become his children he would have his revenge.
When tempted by the Adversary, the King’s new creation fell into his lie. They chose a path that led away from the king their Father and the Prince their brother. And that choice changed the battle field between the King and Prince and the Adversary. Now they fought over the fate of the King’s children.
The King and Prince weren’t caught off-guard by the Adversary, though. They already had a plan, but it seemed a strange sort of plan for going into battle. Rather than using force to get the King’s children back they used love. The Prince came as a suitor asking for his adopted sister’s hand in marriage. And some of the people made a covenant with him, but there was still a death penalty hanging over their heads. The Adversary had talked them all into breaking the King’s law and someone had to pay the price justice demanded. So that’s what the Prince did, leaving his kingdom and making himself vulnerable on the battlefield.
But even though the Adversary is still doing damage in the world, the King is holding off on the final battle. He wants to get as many people as possible on his side because he knows if they don’t accept the victory he and the Prince already won that they’ll take part in the Adversary’s defeat. And his goal all along was to make every single person part of His family. He’s not giving up on reaching as many of them as he can. So he keeps calling people to join in following the Prince as the Adversary keeps trying to yank them away.
That is the situation we’re called into today when we begin a walk as Christians. Our Prince, brother, and rescuing lover Jesus has achieved victory. But His people here on earth are still fighting the Adversary Satan, waiting for the final battle to end all this. (more…)
I just started rereading Watership Down by Richard Adams last night. Normally I wait to write about the books on my Classics Club list until after I’ve finished them, but I’m also rereading Elain Aron’s The Highly Sensitive Person In Love and I was struck by a connection between the two books.
In her research on high sensitivity (also known as Sensory Processing Sensitivity), Aron discovered that it’s found in 15 to 20% of the population. And it’s not just humans. The trait “can be observed in all higher animals — mice, cats, dogs, horses, [and] monkeys” at about the same percentage. I’m going to add rabbits to the list as well.
Research on HSPs had barely started by the 1970s, so I doubt Richard Adams would have been familiar with it as a scientifically validated trait when he published Watership Down in 1972. I think he was writing about it anyway, though, with his character Fiver.
When publisher Rex Collins acquired the book, he wrote to a friend saying, “I’ve just taken on a novel about rabbits, one of them with extra-sensory perception. Do you think I’m mad?” Fiver’s insights do go beyond simply being a highly sensitive rabbit, but it’s also true that Fiver would pass the HSP test. Easily overwhelmed by strong sensory input? Check. Aware of subtleties in the environment? Double check. Made uncomfortable by loud noises, startles easily, has a nervous system that feels frazzled, and so on down the list.
He was small, with side, staring eyes and a way of raising and turning his head which suggested not so much caution as a kind of ceaseless, nervous tension. His nose moved continually, and when a bumblebee flew humming to a thistle boom behind him he jumped and spun round with a start that sent two nearby rabbits scurrying for holes (Fiver’s introduction, Watership Down)
As a Highly Sensitive Person myself, I know that feeling all too well. The heightened awareness of the smallest noise. The tension so familiar you barely notice it until an unexpected sound startles you out of your chair (in fact, right after writing this sentence I jumped at a Facebook notification on my phone). And it’s kind of nice to see a character like that in a book, especially one with friends who don’t tell him he needs to change. They accept him for who he is, work with his weaknesses, and appreciate his unique strengths.
Can you think of any other HSP characters in fiction?
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with all prayer and supplication praying at all times in the Spirit, and to this end being alert with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints (Eph. 6:18, LEB)
All the armor must be put on and used with prayer. In this context, we can see prayer either as the connective tissue buckling the other armor on us or as a necessity before and when using the armor (or both). Whether you count prayer as a piece of armor or not, it’s clear that praying is essential when going into a battle we want God to fight for and with us.
As with the six pieces of armor listed earlier, we have examples of prayer being used in physical battles as well as spiritual ones. People of God have always recognized that even when facing physical enemies there’s a more important spiritual side to the battle. And it’s the Lord of Hosts who determines the outcome.
Three righteous kings left us records of their prayers before battle. Asa prayed when facing “an army of a thousand thousands” (2 Chr. 14:9-12), Jehoshaphat when facing “a great multitude” of Moabites and Ammonites (2 Chr. 20:1-29), and Hezekiah when threatened by a powerful Assyrian army (Is. 37:8-38).
In all three cases, God answered with a powerful victory. “Yahweh defeated the Cushites before Asa” and his army (2 Chr. 14:12, LEB). The Lord sent Jehoshaphat and his men armored into battle, but did all the fighting Himself (2 Chr. 20:16-29). And Hezekiah woke up one morning to find his enemy struck dead outside (Is. 37:36-37). Clearly, prayer is an effective battle strategy for those following God and fighting against His enemies. (more…)
It’s nearly impossible to study Myers-Briggs® types on the Internet without coming across several articles about the incredibly rare and nearly magical INFJ type. I’m an INFJ myself, and I’ve seen us described as the world’s prophets and shamans with deep spiritual insights. We’re called natural empaths with unfailingly accurate telepathy. We appear so deep you’ll never plumb the depths of their souls. We’re even seen as the ideal type–the one everyone else mis-types as because they wish they were this special. And the more people describe INFJs as perfect and other worldly, the more ridiculous the claims about INFJ super-powers becomes. For example, I’ve actually seen such ridiculous claims like these made in INFJ memes and blog posts:
If you’re laughing out loud at the craziness of this, you’re not alone. The tendency to portray INFJs as something akin to a demigod or goddess doesn’t sit well with most healthy INFJs, and yet these sorts of stereotypes are still around. On the one hand, you have certain INFJs and want-to-be INFJs embracing the idea that they’re better/special and using it to look down on other types (something that can be damaging to us as well as to others). And on the other hand, you have non-INFJs buying-in to the otherworldly stereotype and reacting to it in ways that aren’t good for the INFJs (such as when certain people “hunt” INFJs for a relationship, a disturbing thing that I’ve written about in another post).
How Did This Happen?
The simple fact that INFJs are the rarest personality type is going to make us feel and appear different than other people. That’s where this whole thing started–with acknowledging and explaining why INFJs aren’t like the other 98-99% of the population. So far so good. But soon, it started turning into an idea that “different” equals “better.”
INFJs process incoming information with a mental function called Introverted Intuition (Ni). INTJs also lead with this process, and they’re the second-rarest type. That means only 3-7% of the population has this as their preferred mental process (it’s the co-pilot for ENFJ and ENTJ, and they’re pretty rare too). Ni is a perceiving process that’s inward focused, tied to personal perspectives, highly interested in patterns, and is concerned with things that can’t be directly experienced.
It’s not too hard to see how this process could be seen as mystical, or even magical (as side-note, I actually like the nickname “The Mystic” for INFJs as much or more than “The Counselor,” since it focuses on our dominant function instead of our co-pilot). Introverted Intuition doesn’t “make sense” to most people, even the INFJs and INTJs who use it all the time. Pattern-recognition related to things you can’t directly experience is hard to explain. And if we stop trying to explain how this works, then some variation on “it’s magic” seems like a good enough stand-in.
The impression of INFJs as empaths and mind-readers comes from how Ni relates to their co-pilot process, Extroverted Feeling (Fe). Fe picks up on other people’s feelings and makes decisions based on meeting the needs of the whole group. When you couple a keen interest in other people and an ability to pick up their emotions with Ni pattern recognition, INFJs can be insanely good at predicting behavior. And so we became known as the telepathic mind-readers of the Myers-Briggs® community (even though other types use this process as well).
Perpetuating The Unicorn Stereotype
The fact that the quasi-mythical, somewhat deified image has become a stereotype for INFJs is party our fault. Many INFJs grew up feeling like outsiders who never fit in. We’re carrying around deep emotional scars and we’re longing for someone to look at us and say, “Your weirdness makes you wonderful and valuable.” And we find that in the personality type community. Here are a couple examples:
The INFJ has been called “The Mystic,” “The Counselor,” and “Empath”. They are described as original, gentle, caring, and highly intuitive. The quality of extrasensory perception, or ESP, is often attributed to them. People who have known INFJs for years continue to be surprised when yet another layer of their complex personality is revealed. (Ann Holm, “The Mysterious INFJ”)
If we hearken back to humanity’s tribal days, we would likely find only a few INs in a given tribe. At that time, they would have assumed roles such as sage, healer, Shaman or prophet—anything that capitalized on their powers of insight and intuition. Indeed, their rare and unusual gifts would have made INs a precious commodity. (Dr. A.J. Drent, “Why INFJ, INFP, INTJ, & INTP Types Struggle in Modern Life”)
While there are some INFJ haters out there, most of what you’ll find about INFJs on the internet is positive and supportive. In fact, the descriptions are so good at inviting you to identify with this type that non-INFJs are very likely to mis-type when reading about different types online. In at least one little niche of the world, INFJs are in vogue for the first time in their lives. On the one hand, this is a good thing–we do need to understand that there’s nothing wrong with our personalities and that we have amazing strengths. On the other hand, though, we also need to be aware that we’re not a special category of human that’s more valuable, impressive, intelligent, etc. than other people who aren’t INFJs.
The Dark Side of Special Snowflakes
As I mentioned in the opening for this post, there are a couple dangers to letting the mythical unicorn INFJ persona run around unchecked. On the one hand, it can build resentment towards INFJs or make them targets for unwanted attention. I’ve seen a few nasty, aggressive posts attacking INFJs for thinking they’re so special. But for now, let’s set aside how the mythical stereotype hurts people’s perceptions of INFJs and look at how it can lead INFJs to develop wrong ideas about ourselves and damage our relationships with other people.
After writing my “Myths About Sensing Types” post, a reader on Facebook commented that quite a bit of the Sensor-hate online comes from INFJs, who write a large percentage of the personality type content online. Since Sensors make up 70% of the population, that means most of the (very real) emotional wounds that INFJs carry around and feel so deeply came from Sensors. And so we may look down from our “I’m the most insightful personality type around” pedestal and turn Sensing types into villains, or at the very least a type that Intuitives like us cannot get along with.
It’s not just around Sensing types that this sort of thinking can become a problem. We also read that we’re too intelligent for the Feelers and too emotional for the Thinkers, which further alienates us from the other types. Depending on how an individual INFJ responds to the message that they’re special and different, they can become a terror in typology as they wield their 1% status to prove that we’re better than everyone else. Alternately, it might make an INFJ feel even more isolated and alone than they did before now that they’re sure they don’t fit in with other Feelers, or the Thinkers, or Sensors. If we’re to believe our special snowflake status makes it impossible for others to understand us, that leaves a depressingly small pool of people we can build relationships with.
Embracing Differences Without Becoming A Snob
In describing INFJs, it’s important to make sure we do so the same way we describe other types. INFJs are special and different, but we’re no more special and different than everyone else. We need to make sure we talk about and value the unique traits of each type, and show both INFJs and all the non-INFJs balanced, insightful, and helpful portraits of their types online. At the same time, we also need to remember that everyone individual is more than the mental hard-wiring that we call a Myers-Briggs® type.
As INFJs, we need to guard against the temptation to see ourselves as better because we’re more rare or because that’s what we read online. We also have to be careful not to resent or put down other types because they’re not like us or because someone of that type hurt us in the past (I know I have to be careful of that when I meet people with the same personality type as an ex-boyfriend). This shouldn’t really be a difficult thing to do, since as INFJs it’s usually easy for us to see things from other people’s perspectives. Most of us know what it’s like to be misunderstood, misinterpreted, and unfairly judged. Let’s commit to not doing that to other people.
It’s also important to point out that while INFJs aren’t perfect (we’ve all got a bit of a dark side to us), most of us don’t default to thinking we’re better than everyone else. It’s when we’re unhealthy, hurt, and/or stressed that we become adversarial or snobbish towards other people. A healthy INFJ is going to recognize that these tendencies are not ideal and work against them (or perhaps not even have a problem with this at all).
Personality type systems are meant to give us insight into how our minds work. That insight should empower us to understand and embrace our differences while also celebrating the uniqueness of others. It’s okay to enjoy what makes your type unique and, in the case of INFJs, rare as well. It’s even okay to embrace certain aspects of the mystic persona, if that fits your personality in a healthy way. But we should never use our INFJ-ness as an excuse to put-down other people or make ourselves look better than them.
Thus far, the armor of God we’ve been studying has all been defensive. The girdle, breastplate, footwear, shield, and helmet all protect us. They’re essential in battle, but they’re not something we can use to attack and (with the exception of the shield) they’re not actively defensive either. This next piece of armor, though, is a weapon.
receive … the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Eph. 6:17, LEB)
Paul tells us exactly what we’re given as the only weapon included in this Armor of God. It’s called the Sword of the Spirit and it is the Word of God. Now it’s up to us to learn how to use the word as a sword.
There are two words in Greek for “word,” and we have to start by defining them if we want to avoid confusion. Just looking at the English, we would connect Eph. 6:17 with Heb. 4:12, which says, “the word of God is living and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit” (WEB). But these versus aren’t talking about the same thing.
In Hebrews, it’s talking about the logos (G3056). This word refers to a spoken word of intelligence, and it’s what’s used as a name for Jesus in John 1:1, 14. Reading on in Hebrews makes it clear that He’s being talked about in this passage as well (Heb. 4:13-16).
In Ephesians, on the other hand, the word is rhema (G4487). It refers to the spoken or written sayings of God, but isn’t used as a title for the speaker. So in Hebrews, the Word as a sword refers to Jesus cutting into people’s spirits and knowing them deeply. Ephesians is talking about wielding the word, or scriptures, of God as a weapon. (more…)
The Librarians is one of my favorite TV shows. What could be better than a team of bookworms saving the world from runaway magic? Sure it’s campy and can’t be taken too seriously, but isn’t that part of the appeal?
Typing fictional characters is one of my favorite things to do in blog posts. I’d started writing this one for last week, but when I realized how many of the Librarians characters are Sensing types I thought it’d be a great follow-up to my “Myths About Sensing Types” post. One of the more pervasive myths about Sensors is that they’re neither intelligent nor imaginative. Since all the main characters in this show except Flynn are Sensors, The Librarians provides a perfect example to the contrary.
Please note: I type using cognitive functions, which are the basis of Myers-Briggs theory. If you’re not familiar with this concept or want a refresher, check out this articles: The Simplest Guide To Myers-Briggs Functions Ever
Eve Baird: ESTJ
Eve is the easiest character to type, partly because she’s such a stereotypical example of the type nicknamed “Supervisor” or “Guardian.” ESTJs are known for their blunt demeanor, no-nonsense attitudes, and ability to keep things moving forward. They also care about keeping the world running as it should be, a trait Eve devotes to keeping the Library safe and magical artifacts out of the wrong hands.
ESTJs lead with a judging function called Extroverted Thinking/Effectiveness. That means Eve’s preferred mental process involves measuring and managing impersonal criteria when making decisions. There are examples of this in literally every episode. (more…)
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