Jesus’
Personality Type
“If
we could evolve to the point of global peace, the possibilities for human
creativity would be astounding, and that creativity would have an impact in the
universe just as human activity today affects the planet.”
Thomas
Moore (The Soul of Christmas, p. 45; Franciscan Media, 2016)
When
you look at human beings from an airplane window, they look like ants
going about their business. We have grandiose ideas about our strengths and discount
our weaknesses. And yet, the health of this planet depends upon us. We humans have
tremendous capacity for creative solutions, but our goal is not to pull
together to find those solutions, it is, instead, to climb to the top of whatever
ladder we’re on. Usually, if we are single-minded and determined to make it to
the top, it’s necessary to step on a few people on the way up. We seem blind to
the power of our collective energy toward solving problems and narcissistically
focused on our own limited abilities.
In his
beautiful little book, The Soul of Christmas, Thomas Moore writes that
the birth of Jesus was a key moment in human evolution and states the primary
tenets of Jesus’ teachings as: “inclusive community, love and respect, a
healing presence, release from our demonic tendencies, heartfelt friendship,
and overcoming the death principle as a way of living.” (p. 45) These concepts
provide a blueprint for human evolution.
Jesus of Nazareth, the man,
was without doubt the epitome of the fully evolved human. There is a chapter in
John A. Sanford’s book, The Kingdom Within (Lippincott Publishers, 1970),
that lays out the personality type of Jesus using the Gospel accounts of him.
If we were to assess Jesus using the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Inventory, he
would likely have equivalent scores in all categories—introversion-extroversion,
thinking-feeling, intuition-sensing, and judging-perceiving. He would, therefore,
be whole in a way that most of us are not.
Granted, we are not
Jesus, but if we wanted to be like him, as we say we do, then those tenets stated
above deserve more scrutiny. Notice, there is no mention of elitism, hate and
division, or nationalistic power in them. We are about to celebrate the 2021st
birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, a fully evolved human being. Perhaps we want to
give some thought to what he embodied and what he taught as well as to what is “trending”
at Amazon. Just saying…
In the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment