What Should Christians Think about Personality Tests

Tim, the question for today is, what should Christians think about personality tests?

Yeah, well, as a person who's always been interested in people and being somewhat of a people watcher, personality tests have always been pretty interesting to me in general. I like to look into different personality tests and learn about them.

And so there's part of me that, you know, because I'm a little bit inquisitive in that way, I like personality tests, but then I think there's a lot of dangers that are associated with personality tests that Christians should be uniquely aware of.

So just to give you a few examples of some of the dangers that can come from this kind of thing, you know, being an individual who has studied biblical counseling in college and seminary, one of the things to realize about these personality tests is that, you know, the more that you know about, you know, how these tests are structured and the kind of questions that they're gonna ask and, you know, where the answers are gonna lead.

And if you're a person like me, then, you know, often I can figure out what these personality tests are trying, what information they're trying to get out of me. And so for someone like me, these kinds of tests are almost entirely useless because all they do is confirm whatever view that I have of myself when I'm trying to answer these questions.

And so if I give them answers, you know, whatever I can almost predict where the answers are gonna end up and how they're going to, you know, funnel me out into the outcome. And then because I have that level, I guess, of self-awareness about what the tests are doing, it makes it very hard to answer objectively.

But then beyond that, even if you don't know, you know, what the results of your answers are gonna be in that way, if you don't understand the framework, there's a problem in that most of us don't really see ourself very clearly also.

So meaning, like, whatever your view of yourself is going to be put into some neat framework, you know, with these personality tests. And it might be that your view of yourself isn't entirely accurate too.

So

Right, yeah, you tend to think the best about yourself.

Well, some people think the best of themselves and some people think the worst of themselves, right?

Okay, fair enough, fair enough.

So depending on what kind of person you are, you might think better of yourself than you actually are, or you might think worse of yourself than you actually are. So I mean, there's a secular personality test, but then there's like the spiritual gift, Christianized version of the personality test.

But then, you know, I remember taking those kind of spiritual gift tests and those kinds of things like that. And I know what the answers are gonna be at the end of it. And so then I'm sitting there trying to figure out how to answer this test, knowing where this is gonna lead.

But then, you know, it might be that I don't see myself very clearly. It might be that, you know, my understanding of what my own gift things actually are isn't really accurate. And, you know, and that goes the two different directions that you mentioned there.

And so the more that you latch onto these labels, though, then you can also pigeonhole yourself into certain personality types that may or may not be what you actually are, but they're just the personality type that you've accepted.

You know, they're the things that people tell you about yourself. And then once you accept that as a all-purpose narrative to explain who you are, it might be that the results don't actually help you.

All they're doing is basically just confirming who you think you are. You think yourself to be right or wrong in a certain sense. And so there's problems along those lines. And I mean, just to give you an example of that, I mean, growing up, I was convinced absolutely that I was a math person and I wasn't an English person.

And so because that was my view of myself, I gave a lot of myself to studying math and I gave very little of myself to studying English because I just decided I wasn't good at it. But then going to Bible college and seminary, one of the things that I realized is I have to learn how to be good at these things in order to do anything that I'm supposed to do.

And then the more I devoted myself to that, the more I realized that I actually can do well in this area too. Those limitations were largely in my brain, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny how when you don't devote any time to learning how to be good at something, you end up not being that good at it, right?

Right, right.

So it becomes in that way a self-fulfilling prophecy. And so, I mean, there's obviously natural tendencies that everyone has. And some of these personality tests, if you don't view them as an all-purpose explanation for who you are and just view them as some kind of insight into certain features of your personality, they may have some kind of helpfulness.

But then the biggest problem that I see is that a lot of these personality tests, they kind of pigeonhole you into neat little molds that serve as all-purpose explanations for who you are and how you respond to the world.

And these molds are very limiting in certain ways. And so, if you think about the classic introvert, extrovert kind of division that is present in many of these kind of personality tests, I, growing up, I had pegged myself as being an introvert.

And, I mean, there's obviously some truth to that. I'm an introvert, meaning I can be by myself for long periods of time. I don't feel energized by being around people. The more I'm around people, the more, you know, restless and whatever else I get.

But I don't consider those things to be good aspects.

Of my personality.

Or I don't consider it to be purely neutral aspects of my personality, meaning, you know, it might be that, yes, I have some natural tendencies that make me more of a thinker than being like an outgoing kind of person.

But then there's all these one another commands in the Bible that tell me that I have to love one another, encourage one another, exhort one another, rebuke one another, like love one another, greet one another with a holy kiss, all that kind of stuff.

And there's, I can't just camp out in some sort of introvert identity that becomes my all-purpose, you know, explanation for who I am as a person. Like, it would be much better if I would look at the things the Bible calls me to do and devote myself to those kinds of things, knowing that I'm gonna do some of those things better than others.

But I'll get a free pass just to ignore certain elements of responsibility that God calls me to simply because I don't do as well at them as other people would.

Yeah, yeah.

And it seems like that's kind of the danger of these things at times is they almost become like a, you know, a built-in, like you said, an explanation, right? Which can be helpful, but then it also, I've seen it a lot of times, especially with the introvert thing, it becomes almost basically like a built-in excuse to like, I mean, sin, basically, you know?

Like not love other people the way that we're called to, right?

Right, and so I think that's built into the very fabric of how these personality tests actually are meant to function. So the starting point that an individual has when they're working through personality tests along these lines is the starting point is that people are basically neutral.

And then, you know, what you do is you categorize up, you categorize people into different groups. And the rules of the game are that all the groups are neutral, right?

Yeah, there's none that are bad. They're all just explanations.

Right, and then the goal becomes to understand yourself and to validate yourself and affirm yourself. And then each one of the groups and whatever personality test that you're gonna, you know, look at, they're gonna have corresponding strengths and corresponding weaknesses.

But then the framework, the orientation in and of itself is gonna be viewed as fundamentally neutral, right?

In that way.

And so like in that way, then like this is a framework that's hostile to the way like a biblical worldview actually works. It's not true that every aspect of my personality is entirely neutral in that way.

And it's not like as if you can just group everyone up into these neat like groups, and then, you know, group them up into these neat groups and then, you know, declare like a ceasefire on all these traits.

I mean, there's plenty of, you know, like there's plenty of aspects of my personality that need to grow in certain ways. And the more fixated you get on trying to understand yourself in terms of these different personality types, the more the end result is gonna necessarily be that you're gonna sanctify different forms of sin that you may be prone to fall into.

Instead of looking at them as deficiencies in your character, you're going to sanctify sin. And that's what I think is the primary danger of individuals who get caught up in, you know, whatever their personality kind of test framework is, is invariably it's gonna be a mechanism that's gonna lead you into sin.

And what you do better at is to say, hey, we're different, we're different, we have different natural tendencies, we have different strengths, we have different weaknesses, but we all have to be about the same, give or take the same basic commands that the Bible gives us.

And, you know, most of the commands that the Bible gives us are gonna be shared with all of us. I mean, there's like few should become teachers who have received a stricter judgment. Like it may be that obviously that there are some people that don't have that gifting, and we don't all have the same giftings, but we all have, you know, give or take very similar responsibilities.

And there's gonna be some people who, you know, gravitate towards certain things in a different way than others. And what we don't wanna do is like turn every difference into a problem, but we, and we can't like at the same time, like, you know, outdo one another in showing honor, you know, encourage one another.

Like there's some people who are just naturally more encouraging, and there's some people that are naturally a little more critical, and you don't have to turn everything like that into a problem or turn yourself into the standard of encouragement or the standard of being discerning or whatever else.

You don't have to do that, but at the same time, we all need to like, we need to grow in a lot of different areas. And the more that you like look at yourself and use the biblical categories, the more that you grow.

So there's a lot of things like that I have been able to do by God's grace with his help, with his work in me over time that I thought I could never do because I was trapped in certain personality frameworks that were pretty restrictive to the kind of sanctification that God actually required of me.

So would, you know, as sort of like a final verdict on these things, if you want to do that, what would you say for Christians? Like, hey, yeah, maybe from time to time, this might be like a useful thing to use, but then take it with a massive grain of salt or avoid them entirely.

You know, what's kind of like your recommendation there?

Yeah, I think as a final verdict, it would probably, I mean, most people would do better just to read the Bible and try to understand themselves in biblical categories. And, you know, whatever interaction they're going to have with personality tests, make it very minimal, you know, at best.

If you don't have like the kind of mental fortitude that you need to have to look at these things and just, you know, lean on them very lightly, right? And it's just, make it more of a form of entertainment and just, oh, that's interesting kind of thing.

If you can't do that without just being consumed in whatever the framework is, like the framework is gonna be necessarily reductionistic and it's not gonna be entirely helpful. And it's just, and it's gonna, you know, pigeonhole you into certain conclusions.

And so unless you're really just dedicated to picking it apart and coming at it with a pretty skeptical viewpoint and running it by everything you see in the Bible, it'd probably be better for most people to quit even leaning on them at all.

Yeah, yeah, just look to the Bible for, you know, what we should ideally look like and probably ultimately look to Christ, right? As our ultimate example in a certain sense.

Yeah, I mean, there's almost, I mean, you know, whatever value that you're gonna receive from these things, I mean, I just, it's just not a good all-purpose explanation for, at all. And it's not even a good partial explanation.

It's just gonna be something that should be a curiosity, but you can't lean on, you know, if you lean on it, it's like leaning on a table with a broken leg and that's what's gonna happen. So if you can keep yourself from leaning on it at all and just, you know, more reading it for entertainment and maybe just, you know, just a perspective that, you know, you put into the proper perspective, right?

So 95 of my worldview is gonna be based on what the Bible says, and this is like a 5 kind of thing. If you can't do that, then stay away from it.

Okay, all right, fair enough. Well, hopefully this has given everyone listening something to think about. And, you know, I know a lot of people who really like to use these tests, and I'm sure a lot of it's probably just entertainment, but then it really, I have seen, I have seen it.

I have seen people use it to basically justify their sin and make it untouchable. And certainly that's never a healthy thing to do when we try to, you know, make our sin this thing that you can't attack because I have proof that I'm supposed to be this way in some way.

So yeah, like I said, hopefully that gives everyone a lot to think about and that this conversation really does equip you to be able to have these conversations with your friends whenever they bring up these tests and make them out to be like sort of the end all, be all, right, of what that person should look like as an individual who is also a Christian.

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