Chapter 1 Introduction

Everyone liked Scoot right away when they met him because he was so warm and friendly. He seemed to radiate energy. Always smiling, he constantly spread joy with a quick laugh and eagerness to affirm others. He noticed positive qualities rather than negative and never hesitated to point them out. Every time I saw Scoot, he asked if I’d like to do something fun and spiritually wholesome with him. But Scoot had one blatant character flaw. He was notoriously late. Everyone who spent time with Scoot wasted an enormous amount of time waiting for him. It went beyond just a little bit behind schedule, beyond being impolite—it was rude, some would say insolent. He kept no schedule and seemed totally unaware of time. People waited for him so long and so frequently that they’d eventually take offense and cut off their relationship with him. His few friends who remained faithful often felt neglected.

Cindy was a devout Christian who never missed church and volunteered for many church ministries. She spoke freely about her faith and often put sinners on the spot, letting them know in no uncertain terms that their behavior was leading them down a destructive path. She also shared her extremely conservative political views openly with everyone she met, whether they wished to listen or not. Cindy saw herself as a beacon of truth, spreading the good news of Christ to the world. Others saw her as a killjoy spewing destructive criticism wherever she turned. To believers and non-believers alike, she spouted harsh judgment and condemnation. She seemed hard-hearted, totally lacking in empathy, kindness, or gentleness. She might have made an effective drill sergeant, but imagining her as a mother made me fearful for her future children.

Arnie was another devout Christian. He spoke frequently and passionately about God and the church, of how vital Christian fellowship, worship, and teaching were to keeping him on the path of righteousness. He could share a dramatic testimony related to almost any spiritual subject. He was quick to volunteer whenever anyone needed help with anything, no matter how unpleasant the task. But Arnie was an impulsive addict. He’d overcome addictions to alcohol and narcotics, but attended AA and NA meetings four nights a week to keep from falling back into his addictions. He still lived under the oppression of smoking and gambling addictions along with dozens of other bad habits, some more destructive than others. His impulsiveness constantly dragged him into trouble that could have been prevented with a little forethought and discipline. He entered friendships eagerly, but his lifestyle habits made him unreliable. Most attempts at friendship ended in disappointment.

Rob saw himself as warm and friendly, but difficult to get to know because he was shy. He loved people, but lived a socially stunted life because he felt inhibited when interacting with others. In spite of feeling internal personal warmth toward almost everyone he met, people often perceived him as cold and distant. Most sensed that he didn’t like them for some reason. Throughout his entire life, he maintained only a few close friendships.

Erica seemed happy and popular. She was always surrounded by friends and had a pleasant wit that quickly cheered people up. She was genuinely joyful herself. But she had no real intimate friends. She couldn’t maintain close relationships. Although men constantly asked her on dates, no one pursued her for long. One particularly rude acquaintance accused her of being shallow and superficial. Although Erica succeeded in almost everything she did, she occasionally expressed disappointment over missing the intimate “fellowship” Christians were supposed to experience with each other.

Scoot, Cindy, Arnie, Rob and Erica are all good people who fail in some aspect of godly living. Parts of their lives succeed in reflecting godly character, but other areas fall painfully short. Though I’ve changed their names, I knew all five of these individuals personally. Their success and failure predictably matched their personality types.

Everyone wants to be good. We strive long and hard to achieve personal standards of godly character, but often without total success. Some may even succeed with ease in many areas, but still consistently fall short in others. In almost every case, I see personality issues that explain why success comes naturally and why failures are so persistent. Each personality type has strengths and vulnerabilities. The good news is that God created all personalities and gave each the means to succeed.

There are many personality theories and tools available to help people succeed in life. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a popular personality tool backed by overwhelming validity and reliability data, wide ranging research, and countless successful real world applications.

Because the MBTI explains human characteristics that God created, it has limitless application to godly living. Formal MBTI trainers frequently state that there are neither good nor bad types. Rather, each type is unique with differences, which have distinct benefits and drawbacks. I prefer to say there are no bad personality types—God made them all good with intentional purposes and roles to fulfill. Every personality revealed by the MBTI is a godly personality.

1. What Is the MBTI?

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a questionnaire that helps identify personality preferences. Katharine Cook Briggs (1875-1968) and her daughter, Isabel Myers (1897-1980), developed the instrument more than fifty years ago while studying human personality differences. They expanded the works of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1875-1961). They dreamed of developing a tool to help therapists, counselors, and lay people who had no formal training in human behavior to better understand why people behave the way they do and thereby improve themselves and their interactions with others. (Hirsh et. al. 1998, 5)

The MBTI has proven extremely useful. Its widespread use has led to incremental improvements in the questionnaire and collection of volumes of data validating its accuracy, consistency, and reliability. The MBTI Manual published by CPP Press Inc., provides a thorough summary of data evaluating the instrument from a scientific and statistical perspective.

The MBTI focuses on habitual choices people make along four dichotomous scales, which we call preferences. Each preference is similar to the individual choice of being right or left-handed. Psychologists generally agree that we don’t actually choose to be right or left-handed, but the brain drives a preference for either the right or left hand for most tasks. We habitually favor the preferred hand until it feels more comfortable and natural to use, and performs more competently.

Similarly, our brains habitually conform to hardwired preferences that shape our personality. Preference for introversion or extraversion is the most well known of these dichotomous scales. Everyone favors one side or the other along this scale. Some express their preference more clearly than others, but everyone possesses a preference.

Extravert or Introvert: E-I

Most people think of introverts as quiet loners and extraverts as talkative socialites. In reality, many introverts are quite socially active and extraverts aren’t necessarily talkative. In Myers-Briggs evaluations, we focus on what energizes people.

Extraverts build energy by interacting with the world around them. They also spend time thinking privately, but tend to lose energy in too much reflective isolation. To restore their vigor, they need to become active with the world around them again.

Introverts are energized by reflection in the private, inner world of their thoughts and ideas. They may interact with the world around them quite competently, but over time it will drain their energy. They need to withdraw mentally and rejuvenate in their private world.

Introverts think to talk; meaning they prefer to think about what they want to say before they open their mouths. The old cliché, “think before you speak,” expresses an introverted value. Extraverts talk to think; meaning talking to others stimulates their minds to think more actively and skillfully.

Introversion and extraversion describe the attitudes governing how people prefer to use their minds. We abbreviate these attitudes with the letters E and I respectively.

Our E/I attitude subconsciously shapes the way we interact with people. At social functions—such as a party or church potluck dinner—Is tend to quietly observe the activities of others or gather in small groups of two or three to converse. Es are more active, wanting to get involved in whatever happens within the larger group. If nothing is happening, they want something to start happening. Extraverts usually liven up social functions and give them vibrancy. If you find a large group of people at your party or church potluck engaged in loud conversation with dynamic activity, they will most likely be predominantly extraverts. Introverts in the large, noisy groups will be the ones quietly watching the excitement, maybe shifting to the fringes. Clear extraverts drift to the center of activity.

If you associate clearly with one column over the other on the table below, you may have a clear preference for that side of the scale. As you review the table, look for terms that describe your natural, habitual choice; not your conscious, reasoned choice. You may feel that you are both expressive and reflective, but when faced with a new situation you tend to either express your initial reaction immediately or withhold expression until you’ve had time to reflect on it first. If you don’t sense a clear preference toward one side or the other, ask someone who knows you well to review the list and decide which side describes you best. We often struggle to see ourselves objectively and other people can see our personality traits more clearly.

If you identify yourself clearly on either side of this dichotomy highlight it or write a big E or I next to the table.

Sensing or Intuition: S-N

The Sensing/iNtuition dichotomy is a function—something we do with our minds. It’s the process where we take in data to perceive the world around us. We call this the perceiving function. We abbreviate Sensing with an S, but since I stands for introversion we use an N to abbreviate iNtuition.

Sensors prefer to take in information strictly with their senses. They trust in specific, concrete details that they can observe here and now. They tend to be realists who take things literally. They describe things exactly as they are without embellishment, rarely missing a detail.

Intuitives, however, live in a more conceptual world. They focus on patterns as they take in data in order to see the big picture rather than being caught up in minutia. They try to place what’s happening here and now in a larger context of past experience and future possibilities, which gives them a visionary outlook. They use symbols and figurative language to efficiently generalize rather than devoting time to cumbersome details and specifics. They may gloss over or even change details that seem unimportant and fill in missing information with a best guess whenever necessary for completeness.

If you ask people how they liked worship as they leave church after a service, sensors and intuitives will consistently spotlight different things. Sensors recall songs or sermon illustrations that moved them or spoke to them with a profusion of specific details. Intuitives will try to summarize the entire worship service by expressing the overall mood or message it impressed them with, or maybe give you a comparison and contrast on different aspects of the worship service with few if any specific details. The way we describe things reflects how we perceive them. Our S/N preference determines how we perceive our world, coloring everything we experience.

Our preferences on the S/N dichotomy dramatically impact how we learn. Sensing students rely heavily on direct memory. In math classes they like to see detailed steps to problem solving and apply the steps in exactly the same manner every time they are faced with a specific type of problem. Story problems that require insightful interpretation of new situations challenge them. Most sensors thrive in elementary school where learning involves remembering a lot of basic information. They begin to struggle in high school and college as subjects advance to more theoretical concepts that require thorough understanding and original application of principles.

Intuitives by contrast may find themselves easily overwhelmed in their early school years with all the concrete detail. Intuitives prefer to connect data in patterns and categorize information under related concepts. Isolated facts seem irrelevant to them so they don’t retain disconnected data long. They remember how things relate to each other conceptually rather than relying on direct memory of details. In math class, intuitives can’t remember steps to solving problems unless they have an intuitive understanding of why the steps solve the problems. Once they understand what’s going on conceptually they can remember how to solve the problem and even modify the steps to solve it different ways, or apply a problem solving technique to other, similar problems. This approach to perceiving the world gives intuitives a huge advantage in geometry class.

I’m a very clear N, and when I took high school geometry math came alive for me. I had struggled through elementary school, often receiving unsatisfactory grades in spite of my best efforts and good behavior in class. My sensing teachers presented information and tested me using S communication styles. (During my MBTI certification training at Otto Kroeger Associates in Virginia, I learned that elementary teachers are overwhelmingly sensing.) My high school algebra teacher also used the sensing approach, but I had matured to the point that I focused on understanding the math concepts behind the detailed steps he required us to memorize. I often solved problems in unique ways, but since my answers were usually correct and the teacher could see I understood the concepts, he accepted my creative techniques.

Geometry was my first class with a strong intuitive approach. When we started proofs, my sensing classmates floundered. The students who made me feel stupid a few years earlier were lost while I excelled. I could easily visualize how to connect “given” data to the conclusion in proofs while my sensing classmates lacked the intuitive skills to see it. Though I struggled to recall precise wording, I understood and remembered the postulates and theorems conceptually and used them skillfully in mathematical logic. My intuitive preference helped me understand and piece together this complex world called geometry. From that point on, I used the intuitive analytical processes of my mind to improve my learning in all subjects.

History had always been a struggle because I couldn’t remember all those names, dates, and places. When I focused on understanding historical events on a conceptual level, I still struggled to remember names and dates, but I learned to put things together on mental geographic maps and chronological time lines. This created a big picture understanding of events and how they related to each other and dramatically improved my multiple choice guessing. I could answer essay questions with insightful understanding. In this process, I even learned to use my intuitive skills to improve my sensing abilities. By categorizing and linking data, I remembered the detailed facts and recalled concrete information better.

Everyone uses both sides of their S/N perceiving function. We all sense data on a concrete level with our five basic senses and we all intuit to some degree connecting data and recognizing patterns. Sensing and intuition are two basic functions performed by our minds as we perceive the world around us. Our preference determines which function we habitually rely on and feel most comfortable with. More than 73% of the US population prefers to use their sensing function (Myers et al. 1998, 298).

Because you function on both sides of this scale you probably felt that you related to both descriptions above, but one should resonate with you more strongly than the other. Take a look at the table below, keeping in mind that you operate on both sides of the scale but prefer one side. Think about what your natural, habitual preference is when you’re consciously unaware that you’re making a choice. What is your subconscious preference on how to perceive the world and take in information?

If you see yourself clearly on either side of this dichotomy highlight it or write a big S or N next to the table.

Thinking or Feeling: T–F

The T/F dichotomy is another function—a task we perform with our minds. We call it the judging function because it describes how we prefer to make decisions.

The terminology chosen by Jung leads many MBTI newcomers into misconceptions on this scale. Thinkers do not think more than feelers. People with the feeling preference think just as much as thinkers and are quite capable of reasoning in a sensible manner. Nor do thinkers lack feelings. Feeling doesn’t mean being more emotional. People on both sides of the dichotomy generally share similar emotions with similar levels of intensity. Finally, even though we call this the “judging” function, having a clear preference on this dichotomy has nothing to do with being “judgmental” in the negative sense of the word. I prefer to call it the decision function but will use both terms interchangeably.

The T/F dichotomy deals with how we make decisions regarding the information we take in with our perceiving function. After we perceive data either through sensing, intuiting, or a mixture of both, we must do something with it. We make decisions about the information itself, such as labeling it good or bad, or we decide what we should do in response to the information. It might be as mundane as assigning colors to objects we see or identifying flavors in the food we eat, or it could be as critical as assessing a person’s trustworthiness as we develop a relationship. Any mental process that involves decisions is part of our judging function.

Thinkers strive to make those decisions objectively, while feelers tend to trust their subjective reactions more. Thinkers want to clarify the information they perceive and make choices from a detached, analytical perspective. Feelers strive more for harmony in their world as they analyze data with empathic insight, preferring to get involved personally. Thinkers trust cause and effect reasoning, looking for decisions that seem to lead rationally to desirable results. Feelers follow personal values more, basing their decisions on principles and trusting that principled decisions will eventually lead to positive results.

Because thinkers give lower priority to empathy and harmony, they may seem hard hearted, even when they care deeply about people. The thinking objectivity makes them more firm-minded, especially thinking judgers (TJs—we’ll talk more about the judging/perceiving preference in the next section). Feelers express more warmth (especially extraverted feelers—EFs), and are more willing to consider another’s point of view (especially feeling perceivers—FPs).

Their logical firm-mindedness can make thinkers appear more arrogant and stubborn on the surface, especially NTJs. Feelers can be arrogant and stubborn also, particularly when their values and principles are challenged, but they’re less likely to come across expressing those characteristics when interacting with others. Feelers in general are just as confident as thinkers, but their self-confidence doesn’t surface as clearly because they trust principles and values while thinkers trust their own logic and reasoning. The feeling desire for harmony and avoiding conflict leads them to soften their language when confronted with opposing viewpoints. The desire for objective clarity reduces that sensitivity to conflict in people with a thinking preference, giving them a more firm-minded appearance when faced with disagreement.

The different habitual choices that people make based on their T/F preferences can also define how they treat people individually. Feelers tend to emphasize compassion and mercy on a personal level, treating everyone according to their individual needs and circumstances. To the feeler, that’s the only humane approach to dealing with people. Thinkers limit efforts to being humane and compassionate with a sense of reasonableness and fairness. To them, to be fair and just, everyone needs to receive the same treatment.

Thinkers give some value to mercy as a positive characteristic, but their sense of fair justice makes them less generous in extending mercy. Thinkers are more likely to refuse mercy with the reasoning, “If we let this person off the hook we have to let everyone off so no one will suffer the consequences due their actions.” (Most TJs will adhere to this reasoning zealously.) Giving everyone mercy is not just and extending it to a few isn’t fair, so thinkers reason that everyone should suffer the consequences of their actions equally. Feelers (most notably FPs) will reason that no two individuals are alike and it’s only fair to extend mercy in specific cases with unique circumstances. They might even prefer to extend amnesty to everyone rather than make a few they feel deserve mercy suffer unjustly.

As I expounded on the T/F differences you might have thought that I was actually touching on some general differences between men and women. That’s no accident. MBTI results consistently show women with an overwhelming feeling preference. Roughly three out of every four women prefer feeling decisions. Men lean the opposite direction preferring thinking decisions. About two out of every three men are thinkers. (Myers et al. 1998, 157-158)

The influence of our sexual peer group pushes men toward thinking and women toward feeling. Because most men are thinkers, feeling men tend to adopt some thinking language, behaviors, and values. Thinking women, on the other hand, tend to adopt certain feeling language, behaviors, and values from the feeling women who surround them. On the surface feeling men often act more like thinkers than thinking women. It can be difficult to dig beyond the influences of sexual expectations to discover the true preferences of feeling men and thinking women.

In spite of these external pressures, our inherent preferences seem to reveal themselves with a tenacious persistence. When I give MBTI feedback, people frequently share that one or two of their preferences run against external pressures in their lives, yet the seemingly hardwired preference of their subconscious nature won’t go away.

I experienced the persistence of MBTI personality type myself in discovering my own feeling preference. For most of the twenty-five years I spent in the USAF, my clarity scores on the T/F dichotomy were low and inconsistent. Sometimes the instrument indicated I had an F preference, other times a T. As a boy and a young man, I lived with the gender role pressure to be a thinker and had adopted some thinking behaviors such as trying to sound firm-minded. In school, I liked science. The more I immersed myself in science, the more pressure I felt to be objective. I majored in Astronautical Engineering and Math at the USAF Academy and went on to get a masters degree in physics. I served as an engineer, scientist, and program manager in the USAF—all fields dominated by thinkers. Even outside those career fields, the military powerfully favors objectivity and other T traits.

After thirty years of immersion in such dominating T environments, it’s a wonder my natural feeling preference survived. It not only survived but continued to reveal itself in the MBTI which frequently indicated that feeling was actually my dominant function. I consciously resisted believing it until my weeklong MBTI certification training. While studying how MBTI preferences develop during childhood, I realized that my feeling preference went all the way back to my early years. In elementary school, before the external pressures grew so strong, I exhibited all the MBTI feeling traits and none of the thinking traits.

External circumstances frequently pressure male feelers and female thinkers to behave counter to their true personality type, but that’s not the only area where external forces press against our nature. We can experience forces pushing counter to our preferences on all four of the MBTI dichotomies. That’s why I admonish people to think about their subconscious, habitual choices when considering their preferences.

Keeping in mind that you’re looking for that natural favoritism that shapes your choices without conscious control, study the table below. Consider whether one side or the other might better describe you when you’re free from external pressures.

Since this dichotomy has a gender bias you might ask someone of the opposite sex who knows you well to look at the table and see if you fit more on one side or the other. Ask them how you compare to others of your gender. If you’re a man, are you more feeling than typical men or do you fall in line with the thinking trend? If you’re a woman, are you more thinking than most women or do you follow the dominant feeling trend? This dichotomy can be particularly tricky. Even if you’re sure where your preference lies, I urge you to validate your self-assessment with formal MBTI feedback if you’ve never had it before.

If you see yourself clearly on either side of this dichotomy highlight it or write a big T or F in the margin next to the table.

Judging or Perceiving: J–P

The forth and final dichotomy is an attitude. Recall that the first dichotomy also described an attitude reflecting whether we prefer to function in our inner world as an introvert or in the outer world as an extravert. The next two dichotomies described functions, things we do with our mind, as we perceive the world and make decisions about those perceptions. The J/P attitude describes which of those two functions is most comfortable to you in the outer world. When you interact with your world do you prefer to do it in a data receiving mode or a decision making mode? Asking the same question in MBTI terminology, “When you express your extravert attitude, do you prefer to use your perceiving function or your judging function?”

We refer to judgers as Js and perceivers as Ps. In MBTI lingo, judger means you prefer to use your judging function when you interact with the outer world. You’re comfortable making decisions and expressing those decisions as you interact with people and things around you. In contrast, if you’re a perceiver you tend to look for more input while expressing your extraversion attitude.

Recall that both introverts and extraverts interact with people and things in the outer world and both also withdraw into their inner world of private thoughts and ideas. The difference is that Is find energy in the inner, reflective attitude most of the time while Es find energy in the outer, interactive world more. The J/P scale focuses on our mental behavior when we move to the E side of the E/I scale.

So, whether you prefer E or I, when you function on the E side and interact with others do you tend to take in information and withhold judgments, or do you press for closure and get decisions made? Judgers tend to be more decisive when interacting with others while perceivers use tentative language and try to keep options open. Perceivers like to withdraw and make decisions in a reflective, thoughtful mode. Even after they make decisions in their minds, when they express their decisions they will often use soft, tentative language opening the door for additional input. Judgers make decisions as they express them and will speak with an air of confidence and finality. They will resist additional data until they have a chance to withdraw and reflect on it in their inner world where they prefer to be while perceiving.

Because this attitude is tied to how we like to interact with the world it’s quite easy to spot once you know what to look for. Judgers lead controlled, scheduled lives. They like to be organized, have a plan, and to stick to the plan. They resist letting unforeseen events interfere with their agenda. They make lists and use their lists, usually checking things off as they go.

Perceivers go with the flow. They can live with plans and may even like having plans, but they are quick to modify the plans or throw them out. (NPs like to plan but SPs don’t.) Perceivers prefer to adapt to events as they happen, remaining flexible. When they make lists they often lose them and usually don’t check off completed items as soon as they’re done. There’s a saying that, “Judgers use lists, perceivers lose lists.”

As they go through their days interacting with the world around them, judgers tend to be deliberate, methodical, and systematic. They define goals clearly and follow a detailed path to each goal. They often get annoyed when unforeseen circumstances interrupt their plans, even if the impact is minor.

Perceivers may occasionally get annoyed with unforeseen circumstances too, especially when they bring a significant undesirable impact, but they can usually react to minor changes with little notice. Perceivers like to interact with the world in a more casual, open-ended attitude. Their goals tend to be broad and somewhat vague and they will proceed with several possible paths in mind (or maybe no path at all).

Judgers will usually read instructions while perceivers like to take a stab at things to see if they can figure it out before they look at the instructions. Judgers feel that there is a right way to do everything. Perceivers believe there are many ways to get things done. Judgers thrive with routine. Perceivers wilt under too much routine and may grow to enjoy interruptions.

The judgers of the world expend enormous energy trying to teach perceivers how to make lists, organize, follow plans and instructions, set goals properly, etc. Perceivers may find some usefulness in the judging approach and adopt some of their methods, but they never do it methodically and systematically enough to fully satisfy their J friends, family members, or colleagues.

Most likely by this point you already see yourself as a J or a P, but you may have some doubts. Take a look at the list below and see if one side or the other more clearly describes you. As with the other dichotomies, you want to think about your natural, subconscious habits—the preference you have when you’re not thinking about it too much—and it might help to ask someone who knows you well which side they think describes you best when you’re free from external pressures. Finally, remember that everyone uses both attitudes from time to time, but we prefer one attitude over the other in a similar fashion to preferring one hand over the other when we write.

If you see yourself clearly on either side of this dichotomy highlight it or write a big J or P in the margin next to the table.

__________________________

Carl Jung—the man who developed the idea of dichotomous preferences shaping our personalities—used to say, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” This seems to be true for the J/P scale more than the other three but it tends to hold true on all four scales. If you’re still not sure about your preference on a dichotomy, think about someone annoying that you have to work closely with or maybe someone that you occasionally spend time with that quickly gets on your nerves. Look at the table with that person in mind. If the irritating individual fits one side of the dichotomy clearly you probably prefer the opposite side.

Preference Overlap

You may have noticed that as I described the behaviors of each dichotomy above I occasionally added that certain letter combinations expressed some behaviors particularly strongly. For example, judgers like to keep their lives planned, scheduled, and organized. Sensing judgers (SJ) display this characteristic with distinctive clarity in the details of their lives. Since intuitives focus more on big picture perspectives, NJs generally don’t structure their lives down to the same level of detail as SJs. In a similar dynamic, SPs tend to take the P traits to greater extreme. SPs favor spontaneity and flexibility to such an extreme that they seem recklessly free spirited to other personality types. NPs also like flexibility and spontaneity, but their intuitive, forward looking tendency causes them to plan ahead a little bit, and their natural attentiveness to connections helps them organize more than SPs do.

Preferences on each dichotomy diminish or magnify type-typical characteristics primarily associated with another scale. The E/I dichotomy holds greater influence over how socially outgoing we are than the other three scales, but all four scales play a role. The feeling preference with its emphasis on humanity will make extraverts more interactive with people, while the objective focus of the thinking preferences can make introverts seem even more introverted. Conversely, feeling can make introverts a little more sociable, and thinking extraverts tend to be slightly less outgoing. The combined spontaneity and present reality focus of the SP temperament also enhances the expressiveness of extraverts. The focus on organization and schedule can make SJs seem more introverted.

Putting it all together, ESFPs trend toward the most sociable of the sixteen types, and INTJs lean toward the most private. If you want to liven up a party, invite some ESFPs along with a few of the other extraverted types. Don’t be afraid to add a few introverts to the mix also—a few good listeners and observers will add stimulation to get the extraverts going.

As I explore the effects of personality preferences on godly living, I will point out how some of these combinations magnify strengths and vulnerabilities. Our unique personalities give each of us areas in our spiritual lives where God made us naturally strong. We also have areas where we’re vulnerable to temptation and may need help from others to live godly lives.

Balance Through Dominant and Auxiliary Functions

God designed our preferences with a fascinating dynamic to stabilize our mental and emotional behavior. The interaction of our four preferences creates equilibrium among the functions and attitudes, which prevents us from shifting completely to the extreme of any one scale through trades between our dominant and auxiliary functions.

We each have a dominant function that we are most comfortable with where we spend most of our mental time, either S, N, T, or F. If you’re an extravert, your dominant function is the one you express and share with the world—T for ESTJ, N for ENFP, etc. If you’re an introvert, your dominant function is the one you prefer to keep private—F for INFP, S for ISTJ, etc. (Appendix A shows dominance for all sixteen types.)

We each have a second favored function called the auxiliary on the opposite function dichotomy. If our judging function is dominant, the auxiliary is perceiving and vice-versa. Switching back and forth between our dominant and auxiliary functions keeps us balanced between taking in information and making decisions. It also balances our E/I attitude.

Since extraverts spend most of their time publicly expressing their dominant function, God gave them balance by causing them to internalize their auxiliary function. In a similar balancing act, introverts prefer to express their auxiliary function.

This mental dance across our dichotomies can be quite confusing. If it’s a new concept to you just keep in mind that although you have preferred functions and attitudes where you feel most competent, we all need to spend time in the other functions and attitudes to keep our minds in balance. The dominant/auxiliary compulsion fortifies our mental, emotional, and social health.

MBTI Preferences Influence Relationships

Complete MBTI opposites without a single letter in common often have difficulty communicating and understanding each other. As an INFP, I have struggled to relate peacefully with ESTJs throughout my life. When I interact with people I prefer to use my intuitive perceiving function. ESTJs almost never express their intuitive perceiving function. When I use intuitive language with them they feel confused and awkward and tend to assume there’s something wrong with me, quickly finding fault with my personality. When I make decisions, I use my feeling function, another type of behavior that the ESTJ rarely uses and has difficulty understanding.

ESTJs naturally express their thinking decisions while interacting with me and I’m just as uncomfortable with that as they are with my intuition. It frustrates me that they insist on being decisive, pushing for closure while I’m trying to gather information and explore possibilities. When their perceiving function surfaces, they’re almost always focused on concrete details while I’m trying to take in the big picture and see patterns. The social conflicts in my life are filled with ESTJs. If you could know the personality types of people you’ve struggled to get along with in your past you’d probably discover that many are your MBTI opposites.

In contrast, my best friends have been mostly ENFPs. Like me, ENFPs like to express their intuitive function. They tend to base their decisions on feeling values that I understand. They also prefer spontaneity and flexibility, keeping options open just like I do. I get along well with INFPs also, but the extraverted nature of ENFPs more readily brings me into relationship with them. In general, people make friends and develop comfortable relationships with others who have at least two or three of the four MBTI preferences in common. It takes more effort to build and maintain relationships between people with only one or no shared preferences.

Human interaction is much too complex to explain completely with four dichotomous preferences, so of course there will be exceptions, but the tendencies to get along easily with similar types and struggle with opposite types is very strong.

Complementary Personalities

Often having just two or three letters in common is enough for people to understand each other well and the differences lead to complementary effects that can enhance relationships. People are often romantically attracted to each other specifically because they are different on one or two scales. Having one or two opposite preferences will strengthen partnerships such as marriage because they can cover for each other in their weak areas and complement each other with wider-ranging strengths.

We sometimes use a tool called the “Type Table” to help identify personalities that relate with each other more naturally. (Myers et al. 1998, 31, 36, 38) If you find your type on the table you can identify types that you relate to easily by finding those that touch your box. Any box on the table that shares a side with yours represents a personality that you can usually feel comfortable with and communicate with effectively. Those boxes that don’t touch your box represent personalities that tend to make you feel uncomfortable and require more effort to interact with.

Most statistical data gleaned from surveys or questionnaires must be taken with a grain of salt due to self-selection and other possible biases. MBTI preference distributions are no exception. However, with reasonable prudence, the data above can give us some fascinating insights into how personality distributions might influence group behavior. Let’s look at a few preference combinations, analyzing their roles in human culture to see why God might have balanced our personalities the way he did.

46.4% of all people have the two-letter combination SJ, the highest occurrence of any two letter MBTI preference combination. If the preferences were distributed evenly, you’d expect to find 25% of the population with the SJ preference. Why would God give this preference to nearly half of us, almost twice as many as you’d expect?

SJs are the conformity police of human cultures. They pressure everyone to conform to social norms and behave respectably. In primitive cultures, SJs are the ones who make everyone plant the right crops, hunt using proven techniques, prepare food using safe methods, etc. This pressure to conform insures survival. When something appears successful, people with the SJ temperament will adopt it as part of their routine lifestyle and apply social pressures to encourage everyone to adopt the successful behavior. Pressure to conform to social norms can seem oppressive and most people think of it as a negative part of human nature, but without it humanity probably wouldn’t survive.

In modern times the SJ temperament serves a vital role that makes us more successful through its dominance. SJs are the teachers who indoctrinate our children in proper hygiene, manners, speech, reading, writing, math, etc. They’re the force that establishes order and structure throughout every culture and subculture. Without the stabilizing power of SJ conformity, all humanity might disintegrate into chaos.

The SJ temperament not only creates stability and enhances successful behaviors, it also serves as glue to unify cultures. The SJ pressure to conform to cultural norms causes people to unite under common causes and similarities. God gave SJ personalities such a strong desire to unite under similarities that they can’t help but organize people into formal institutions. They serve as leaders and faithful members in virtually every institution that exists: social clubs, civic charities, professional societies, educational associations, political parties, and churches.

The SJ pressure to conform doesn’t always unify. For individuals who don’t fit in, the SJ norming role becomes oppressive and when large groups disagree, SJs often become lead forces for division and intolerance. In the church, SJ intolerance can motivate us in our struggles against temptation, but when they become intolerant of differences, that God-created unity is destroyed.

So even though the SJ temperament may play a lead role in unifying the church, SJs can’t do it alone. They need the balancing influence of other personality types to create the truly harmonious unity God desires.

The way I characterized SJs as the “conformity police” of humanity makes them appear cold and heartless. In reality, they aren’t like that at all. In fact, most SJs (56% of them) are feelers. These SFJs live by social norms as they structure their lives and encourage others to do the same, but they usually use a soft, humane approach. Even though they resist compromise, they are willing to soften their expectations for the sake of harmony. The minority half of SJs (44%) are thinkers. Thinkers are more objective and uncompromising in their insistence that everyone get in line and live right. I believe God softened the SJ pressure to conform with a majority of feeling SJs to make their norming influence more palatable to the rest of us.

After SFJ and STJ, the next most common three-letter combination is SFP (17.3% of all people). These are the people naturally suited for caring ministries that require compassion, kindness, and gentleness. I believe God blessed humanity with an abundance of these personality types to nurture our children and hurting, needy people of all ages. Nurturing is a vital part of human interaction.

12.5% of us share NFP preferences. With their intuitive insight, these people can be very influential. The feeling preference makes them forces for harmony and unity. The perceiving preference allows them to cooperate with others. With a generous scattering of such peacemakers, God equipped humanity to adapt and settle conflicts without destroying ourselves.

The more rare preference combinations are just as vital to our success as the common personalities, but they tend to function in more specialized roles. STPs make up only 9.7% of the population, but their spontaneous, free-spirited nature gives them a lot of punch. STP influence can be dramatic at times. This combination of preferences gives us people with a natural responsiveness in the face of crisis. They see the reality in immediate circumstances more clearly and respond to it with less reluctance, than any other type.

STPs make up a large portion of our emergency responders who save the day when things go wrong. In a more mundane business setting, they are the misfit employees who often cause trouble during routine operations but save the deal with a creative response when something upsets a critical customer. They are the troubleshooters who figure out how to fix things when they break. With a generally insensitive nonconformity, STPs can be a disruptive force (a force God balanced with an abundance of SFPs to sooth and heal), but they play a vital role in saving us from disasters.

At 6.5% of the population, NTPs are even less common. Like the STPs, they tend to resist the conforming power of the SJ temperament. NTPs are independent thinkers with a flexible approach to life and a keen, visionary insight into future possibilities. They provide a large portion of our innovative ideas. They play a vital role in countering the inflexibility of the dominant SJ influence. Without the NTP’s willingness to innovate and change, human culture would fail when critical circumstances change. In primitive cultures, the NTPs keep trying new crops, some of which will thrive when a normal crop fails due to changing climate or pest infestation. NTPs save modern businesses with innovative ideas when the demands of their customers shift. NTPs help the church reach young people with the gospel in our changing culture. When the ideas of NTPs don’t work, they try new things. When their ideas work well, SJs adopt them and make them the new norm for everyone to conform to. Though they make up a small portion of the population, NTPs often lead the way to cultural growth.

One of the least common three-letter combinations, at only 3.9% of the population, is NTJ. These are our decisive visionary leaders. We desperately need visionary leadership, often complaining that we need more of them, but God made them rare for a reason. I once taught a class with a group of six students on a learning team where four of them were NTJs. This student team struggled to work together more than any small group I’ve ever seen. At first, I thought they’d be a high functioning group because they seemed insightful and driven. Unfortunately, each saw their own solution to problems clearly and lobbied forcefully for their approach without willingness to listen or compromise.

The insightful, hard driving, uncompromising nature of people with NTJ preferences gives them powerful leadership abilities. They see solutions to problems and paths to better futures and will stick to their goals with tenacity. When groups of people follow the lead of an NTJ, success is almost assured. Their uncompromising confidence is their strength and it’s also their downfall. They don’t respond well to questioning or competition for their leadership position. Their independent confidence makes them arrogant to the point that they won’t share their leadership role and can become oppressive when given unfettered control. Humanity needs visionary NTJ leadership to persevere through major challenges, but God wisely limited their numbers to minimize the division and conflict that often erupts between them.

The T/F dichotomy plays a particularly important and complex role in cross gender social interactions. This is the only MBTI preference with a clear gender difference. Men favor thinking decisions with 57% reporting the T preference when they take the MBTI. Women overwhelmingly favor feeling decisions with 75% reporting an F preference. Combined, they give us a general favoritism toward feeling of 60%. (Myers et al. 1998, 157-157, 298)

Thinkers tend to be more assertive and forceful in their decisions. I suspect that God created men with this forceful, assertive bias for certain roles, which they more frequently perform such as hard physical labor, confrontational leadership, combat, law enforcement, etc. He gave some women the same forceful nature so they can step into assertive roles also, but the human species seems designed for men to take on most of these assertive, forceful roles.

God made the majority of people, including a large proportion of men, with feeling preferences to prevent us from becoming hard-hearted and cruel. God intends for us to remain compassionate, kind, and gentle even when facing difficulties that bring forceful leadership to the forefront, such as in times of war. I suspect that God gave women such an overwhelming favoritism toward the feeling preference because they more frequently serve in roles that call for softer, more subjective judgments such as care-giving, compassionate leadership, etc.

The gender based T/F differences make men and women dependent on each other. Cultures that become too dominated by one gender or the other tend to fail due to T/F imbalance. Maintaining unity and respect between the sexes is necessary for long-term social success.

Considering history and my own personal experiences I’ve come to believe that the T/F balance might be the most critical one in human societies. Intensely patriarchal societies (nations, churches, clubs, etc) suffer from neglecting their F. When the forceful, objective male style grows too strong, people in the group suffer from disharmony, internal conflict, and a lack of mercy. If the thinking style grows too weak, cultures suffer from lack of discipline and face collapse due to weakness. On one extreme, cultures tend to self-destruct, on the other extreme they collapse or get overrun by more aggressive groups. Peak strength comes from the T/F balance as God designed it.

Perhaps the design of human personalities can also open our eyes to the nature of the Creator. In fact, when God said, “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26–27) I don’t think he was referring to the physical shape of the human body. Nor do I think he meant exclusively the body/soul/spirit nature of the individual human. I believe the diverse personalities God created in human beings and the way those personalities work together to create efficient, harmonious unity (if we live within his plan), reveal some of God’s complex nature. The Creator of the universe is one, existing in perfect, holy unity, but his nature is vastly diverse and far beyond characterization in terms applicable to a single human personality type. The personality of God spans the entire spectrum of human personality, but he exists in perfect balance, lacking the conflict that humanity suffers.

Balance is key to many paradoxical characteristics in human interaction. God has equipped us with diverse personalities to deal with the widely varying environments and problems we face as humans living in a fallen world. Unity on a deep spiritual level helps us overcome our differences and work synergistically to advance God’s kingdom on earth.