Does God care how we worship Him? Some Christians today say (or act) as if He does not. Too many people today ignore parts of the Bible, try to over-rule God’s laws, and adopt extra-Biblical practices in worship. And they really don’t think He’ll mind.
The problem is, God actually does care how you worship Him. If you’re not following Him the way He says to, then you’re not really following Him at all. He is “a jealous God” and He does not accept half-hearted or divided affection. You can’t honor Him by worshiping in ways He does not approve or if you’re also trying to worship something else. It’s not good for us to have divided loyalties or identities. We need to find wholeness in seeking our Lord the way He desires us to seek Him.
Really Get To Know God
Paul tells us that all the things which happened to ancient Israel “were written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Cor. 10:11, WEB). One place where the story of Israel is recorded is the book of Hosea. God used Hosea to warn Israel what would happen to them if they continued to break covenant with Him by blending pagan religions with their worship of the One True God, or “Yahweh” to use His proper name (Ex. 3:14-15). Unfortunately, it’s a message that’s relevant for churches today.
I’m not saying all churches, and certainly not every Christian, is deliberately blending other religions with their faith. But I do think it’s something we should be aware of, and on-guard to avoid. We need to make sure we’re not ignoring parts of His inspired word, rejecting His law, or blending pagan religious practices with our worship. (more…)
Today we’re going to talk about INFJ heroes in fiction, especially male heroes. But before we get to that, let’s talk about Russian literature for a moment. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky opens with an apologetic explanation from the narrator about his hero, Alexei Fyodorovich Karamazov. Here are a few highlights:
“While I do call Alexei Fyodorovich my hero, still, I myself know that he is by no means a great man …
One thing, perhaps, is rather doubtless: he is a strange man, even an odd one. But strangeness and oddity will sooner harm than justify any claim to attention …
If I, that is, the biographer himself, think that even one novel may, perhaps, be unwarranted for such a humble and indefinite hero, then how will it look if I appear with two; and what can explain such presumption on my part?”
p.3-4, Pevear/Volokhonsky translation
As you may have guessed from the title of this post, Alyosha is an INFJ (most characters and the narrator use this nickname throughout the novel. In the Cyrillic alphabet, Alyosha is two letters shorter than Alexei, which makes this something like calling a man named Robert “Bob”). And I suspect that it’s his personality type that makes the narrator so worried about how people will respond to his hero.
It’s not that there aren’t other INFJ heroes in fiction. Just take a look at my post about 10 Stories You’ll Relate To If You’re An INFJ if you want some examples. Jane Eyre, Amélie, Yoda, and Atticus Finch are all INFJs in fiction who play a hero role. But even though there are male characters on this list, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if Alyosha was a woman with all the same personality characteristics the narrator wouldn’t have felt the need to apologize for her.
FJ-type men
A large percentage of women in real-life are FJ types. There’s a much smaller percentage of FJ-type men. ENFJ and INFJ men are particularly rare, each only making up 1% to 3% of the population. Because of this many FJ qualities are stereotyped as “feminine” (even though they really shouldn’t be exclusive to one sex) and FJ guys don’t always fit with society’s idea of how men “should” act.
I’ve talked with several ENFJ and a few INFJ men about this issue, and I know it comes up for ESFJs and ISFJs as well (though to a lesser extent, since Sensing types make up about 70% of the population and they tend to “fit in” better). Because FJ types interact with the world using a function called Extroverted Feeling, they tend to show up as more relational and emotional than Western culture typically considers “manly.”
In her TED talk “Listening to Shame” Brené Brown talks about how shame is “organized by gender.” For men, shame is tied up in one expectation: “do not be perceived as weak.” She talks about one man who told her, “when we reach out and be vulnerable we get the shit beat out of us.” But that’s exactly what FJ types are hardwired to do — to reach out and connect with people in a vulnerable, empathic way.
FJ types are deeply relational people who seek to create harmony in human relationships. I know it takes incredible strength to make peace instead of sow discord, but society at large doesn’t see it like that. If you’re a woman you might get away with preferring harmony to conflict, but it’s perceived as weakness in men if they choose peace instead of standing up for themselves.
Let’s go back to Alyosha. The narrator takes considerable time to introducing his character in chapter 4 and his backstory reads like a textbook example of an INFJ. As the rarest personality type, INFJs often seem strange or out of place compared to the people around them and Alyosha (who enters a monastery early in the book) is no exception.
Alyosha, was not at all a fanatic, and, in my view at least, even not at all a mystic. I will give my full opinion before hand: he was simply an early lover of mankind. … However, I do not deny that he was, at that time, already very strange, having been so even from the cradle. …
In his childhood and youth he was not very effusive, not even very talkative, not from mistrust, not from shyness or sullen unsociability, but even quite the contrary, from something different, from some inner preoccupation … But he did love people; he lived all his life, it seemed, with complete faith in people, and yet not one ever considered him either naive or a simpleton.
p. 18, 19
Though I don’t particularly like the phrase, INFJs are often described as “old souls” because they tend to have a different perspective on the world than other people their age. Indeed, Alyosha is only 19 when the novel starts out and already people much older than him seek him for advice. Even his father, a self-described buffoon who doesn’t respect anyone, treats Alyosha well. In fact, it seems almost impossible to dislike Alyosha. He was never bullied by peers for being weird (something many real-life INFJs will, I’m sure, envy) and the few people who resent or dislike him as an adult are clearly an exception to the rule. They see him almost as other-worldly and above the common concerns, vices, and pitfalls of humanity as a whole (a description which reminds me of how Rochester sees Jane Eyre, another fictional INFJ).
Perhaps some of my readers will think that my young man was a sickly, ecstatic, poorly developed person, a pale dreamer, a meager, emaciated little fellow. On the contrary, Alyosha was at that time a well-built, red-cheeked nineteen-year-old youth, clear-eyed and bursting with health. He was at that time even quite handsome … it seems to me that at that time Alyosha was even more of a realist than the rest of us … to say that he was slow or stupid would be a great injustice
p. 25-26
It’s a sad fact that humans tend to think in stereotypes, but the narrator for The Brothers Karamazov is having none of that. After spending a whole chapter convincing us that Alyosha is a strange young man devoted to a faith that makes little sense to those around him, he next makes sure that readers won’t assume Alyosha is “unmanly” in appearance or in any way intellectually deficient.
This is an important point to make because Alyosha is going to continually defy the idea that a male hero has to be decisive, unemotional, or never weak. We see Alyosha dreading conflict with a loathing that I think all INFJs (and the other FJ types as well) can relate to. We see him weeping when others are hurting. We see him making social blunders in an effort to make everyone happy and at peace. We see him struggling to define his own ideas of a situation because he would like to accept what others say as true, but realizes that’s not always a good idea. He’s sensitive, emotional, undecisive on certain things (though quite decisive in others), and isn’t afraid to appear weak so long as he’s being true to his beliefs.
INFJs often seem like a (barely) functioning bundle of contradictions. We’re conflict-avoidant, but will stand up passionately to defend someone we love or a belief that’s very dear to us. We can be among the most intellectual of the types, but also demonstrate spectacular naivete in certain areas. We want to build deep relationships, but we’re scared to peel back all the layers that would let you to get to who we really are.
When cast as fictional heroes, the contradictions can all show up in ways that might make an author feel the need to justify why such an odd creature should be given the main character role. I’m glad that they are, though. The ISTP action hero or charismatic ENTP genius can be wonderful characters, but if their stories are the only ones we tell then we’re missing something.
I think it’s especially important that we tell stories of thinking-type women and feeling-type men. A lot of traits that we assume are gender-based are actually associated more with Thinking and Feeling in personality types (though not all — I do believe God created men and women with some innate differences in how we bear His image). I don’t want to go into too much detail on this here, since I have a whole post on “Thinking” type women and “Feeling type men, but in many cases cultural expectations of gender cause more stress for women with a “T” and men with an “F” in their Myers-Briggs type.
One of the things that can help with this is seeing possessive portrayals of people with your type in fictional stories. That’s why it’s sad that there are so few Thinking-type Disney princesses. For male characters, we need nurturing, supportive ESFJs and ISFJs like Leonard McCoy and Samwise Gamgee (and more which you can read about in “7 Fictional Characters You’ll Relate To If You’re An ISFJ“). We need ENFJs who are mentors and leaders like Mufasa in The Lion King, and also ones like Neil in Dead Poet Society who force us to question the practice of shaming people for having a personality that doesn’t perfectly fit what society wants. And we need INFJ men like Alyosha Karamazov and Atticus Finch who prove you can be a hero by sticking to your convictions and fighting on behalf of the people around you.
How do you use your hands to praise God? Maybe you lift your hands in worship, or use them to minister to God’s people. Or maybe you haven’t really thought about there being a connection between hands and praise, so this seems like an odd question.
Idioms involving hands abound in the Hebrew language. Being in someone’s hands is to be in their power. Putting one’s hand to something means you’re working on it. Raising your hand against someone is rebellion. Open hands express giving, and closed hands withholding, something.
Hands were lifted when making an oath to God, as Abraham did (Gen. 14:22-23). God lifts His hand when He delivers His people (Ps. 10:12). Priests stretch their hands out when they bless the people and people lift their hands when they bless God (Lev. 9:22; Neh. 8:6). Hands, and specifically lifted hands, can mean different things depending on the context.
Last week, we talked about the Hebrew word yadah (H3034), which means to confess or acknowledge as well as to praise and thank. There’s one other meaning we didn’t touch on, though. Yadah also means to throw or cast (Zodhiates’ dictionary). It’s connected with the Hebrew word for hand, yad (H3027), and as such yadah is considered the Hebrew word which “means to worship with extended hands” (see“8 Hebrew Words for ‘Praise’ Every Christian Needs to Know”).
We can think of yadah as a type of praise we “throw” to God with lifted hands as we declare how wonderful He is and confess that we follow Him. Today, we’re going to look at the ways we petition, pray to, and praise God with our hands. (more…)
A lot of introvert-themed posts that you see around this time of year are things like “An Introverts Guide To Surviving the Holidays” or “How Not to Run In Terror From Your Extrovert Relatives.” That last one’s not an actual article, but it’s pretty close to some I’ve seen.
Often, writers of articles like this assume introverts don’t like people, that they’re always overwhelmed in social situations, and that they hate parties. But being on-edge in social situations, panicking when you have to interact with people, and going out of your way to avoid places where people gather aren’t actually signs of introversion. Those things are more a part of social anxiety.
Definition Conundrums
Part of the reason for this confusion is that people don’t understand what being an introvert actually means. For example, (despite numerous complaints and petitions) if you Google “introvert definition” the first thing that comes up is “a shy, reticent person.” Only if you expand the Google result to see translations, word origin, and other definitions do you finally get something a little closer to the correct result: “a person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things.”
Being an introvert doesn’t make you socially awkward. It doesn’t mean you hate people. Being an introvert means that you’re born with a trait that gives you a preference for the internal world. It also means you re-charge better in quiet, low-stimulation environments (usually alone, but not always). Introverts might avoid parties, but if so they do it because they’d rather be somewhere else (like at home reading or hanging our with a small group of friends), not because they’re inherently shy or scared of interacting with others. (more…)
There really isn’t a word for “thank” in the Old Testament. When worlds like “thanks” or “thanksgiving” appear in English versions of Hebrew scripture, they’re translated from words with the primary meaning of praise and/or confession. It’s a different thing than what we mean when we say “thank you” in English.
Much like we saw last week in the New Testament connection between thanksgiving and grace, the concept of thanks in the Old Testament is inextricably linked to confession, praise, and sacrifice. There’s something more/different going on in these words than we might think just reading it in translation.
Confession, Praise, Sacrifice
The Hebrew word yadah (H3034) is a root with the primary meaning of “to acknowledge or confess.” It is used in three main ways: to confess individual or national sins, to proclaim or declare God’s attributes and works, and to convey man’s praise of men. Its derivative todah (H 8426) has a similar meaning and it is also used of the sacrifices connected to praise and thanksgiving.
Enter his gates with thanksgiving (todah), his courts with praise. Give thanks (yadah) to him; bless his name. (Ps. 100:4, LEB)
Yadah and todah in relation to God are about confessing or acknowledging something that is true. We can confess that we are sinful before God, as all are (Rom. 3:23). We can also confess that God is worthy of all praise, exhalation, and thanks (2 Sam. 22:50). In fact, yadah “is one of the key words for ‘praise’” in the Hebrew scriptures. It’s rendered thanks only because “praise leads regularly to thanksgiving” (Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament, entry 847). (more…)
When someone interested in Myers-Briggs®talks about loops, they’re referring to what happens when a person bypasses their co-pilot function and starts relying on their dominant and tertiary process instead. This can be a temporary situation, or it can last for quite a long time depending on the individual and their circumstances.
Some people teach that the Dominant-Tertiary Loop leads to personality disorders, but I have not found any good research to back up this claim. We can slip into a loop pattern without developing a disorder, and specific mental illnesses aren’t tied to any one personality type. It seems more likely to me that, as a general rule, loops are part of a reaction to stress or an attempt to avoid discomfort.
We all need a balance between inner and outer world feedback, a way to learn new information, and a way to process information and make decisions. We’re got all that covered in our dominant and co-pilot functions because one is introverted and one is extroverted, and one’s a perceiving/learning function (Sending or Intuition) and one’s a judging/decision-making function (Feeling or Thinking).
When we skip our co-pilot function and go for the tertiary instead, we’re replacing the co-pilot with a function that fills a similar role because the tertiary and co-pilot are both either Perceiving or Judging functions. However, the tertiary has the same orientation (Introverted or Extroverted) as the dominant function. Going into a “loop” means we’re ignoring the world that is most uncomfortable for us and we’re opting to use a function that’s less mature than our co-pilot. This “loop” is going to look different for each type, but in all cases it means we’re not balanced. It also usually means that we’re avoiding personal growth. (more…)
