Monday, September 29, 2014

Personality Tests and Why They're Important

So lately I've been seeing a lot of these lately....
Which one are you? Comment below!

This is a great version of the Myers Brigg Test by the way. But it bothers me that I can't be Qui-Gon Jinn, and instead I have to be Padme Amidala. And besides you preferences on which character of the Star Wars universe you would like to be irrespective of the actual results of the test, this personality test has many critiques against it. However, this test in different derivations have been popping up everywhere lately. I thought I'd give it a shot and try to analyze why that is. Here's a couple of reasons:
  1. It's becoming increasingly harder for people to know themselves. In an age where information (wanted and unwanted) is so in your face, and advertisements are telling us constantly that we are lacking something, or we're not doing something right, and that we need to remedy ourselves, and unless we do it in the way that has been prescribed, we are sub-humans, or failures, we have become unable to discern who we really are, without considerable interference. Furthermore, the prescription for change in our lives and how to fix ourselves can really make us self centered. Which leads me to my next point.
  2. It's becoming increasingly harder for people to know one another. We spend more time checking the Facebook of others to get to know them rather than just getting to know them. Therefore, we tend to get skewed and shallow views of the people and we wonder why when we get deeper and eventually run into conflict with people we don't know how to resolve issues with them. As a matter of fact, we've run into some dangerous assumptions about relationships when we think that good friendships or relationships don't have conflict. Rather great relationships confront conflict and resolve conflicts. But this means we need to be able to understand one another which takes something more.
Hence, the emerging importance of the personality test. These tests were formerly necessary for businesses who profiled their prospective employees and academic psychologists, are now becoming important for just normal people who want to know themselves and know how to get along with others by understanding what makes them tick. And if we aren't going to be engaging in good ol'fashioned conversation where we learn and engage in each other's strengths and weaknesses, then we might as well learn it through the results of a test. Because living/working with each other, understanding that there are 7.125 billion people in the world and that surely there are different personality types and that we all deserve some slack is something that we are more and more starting to neglect. We hide behind tolerance and talk behind the backs of people who we don't even know.

It's clear that we need a remedy for the fact that we clearly don't know one another and as a result have very little loyalty or grace for one another. I do believe that it starts from us knowing how God sees us, that we acknowledge that we are fearfully made by our Creator, and thusly we should consider one another to at least a civil fraction of the way He considers us. But these tests provide at least a practical solution to our busy bee, too busy for you lifestyles, where we hardly have time for people who are already important in our  lives much less people who we aren't aware are important or could be important to us and much much less to the fact that every man(woman) deserves a modest assignment of importance just because they are human. 

All this to say... if you're not going to get to know others through conventional methods like relationships where you converse and learn and sometimes conflict and resolve through time, then at least take a personality test and know yourself and invite others you want to understand more to do also and maybe we can give each other a bit more slack just by understanding each other. 

So which Myers Brigg result are you? Is it accurate or completely false? Comment below!

Blessings~!

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