Do You Know Your Personality Traits and What the Bible Says About it All?

Do You Know Your Personality Traits and What the Bible Says About it All?

5 Personality Traits and God’s View

1 Corinthians 3: 16  “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?”

You can easily google the ‘Five Factor Personality Test’ for your own interest and take the inventory on line.   Doesn’t take long and it is fun.  By the same token, you can google what the bible has to say of the personality traits you possess.  Lots.

The ‘Five Factor Personality Test’ is one of the most widely accepted personality tests around for schools and businesses.  The MMPI [Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory] is generally agreed upon as the most valid, used in clinics and hospitals, but not necessary for general purposes.  

There are 5 personality traits measured along a continuum for all people:  openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness,  and neuroticism.   We all have characteristics on both sides of the continuum.  It is all a matter of degree.

1.  Openness:  This trait refers to one’s degree of thoughtfulness, rationality and  openness to new ideas.    These more independent, imaginative and creative individuals are in contrast to those who prefer routine, limited ideas and experiences, and more conventional.  

Proverbs 3:  5-6  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.”

2 Timothy 2:  15   “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.”
Conscientiousness: Being aware and attentive to others while at the same time ambitious, goal driven and reliable are at one end of this continuum.  On the other end are those who are unreliable, lazy and impulsive.

2.  Conscientiousness: Being aware and attentive to others while at the same time ambitious, goal driven and reliable are at one end of this continuum.  On the other end are those who are unreliable, lazy and impulsive.     

1 John 1:  9   “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Jeremiah 17:  9   “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?

3.  Extraversion:   Social and assertive individuals tend to be more talkative and prefer to be around people are referred to as exroverts.  On the hand, introverts are quiet and reserved, more comfortable on their own.  

Acts 17: 28  ”For in him we live and move and have our being’;  as even some of your own poets have said,  for we are indeed his offspring.”
Agreeableness: This  is the degree one gets along with others, easygoing and trusting.   On other end of the spectrum are people who are unfriendly, antagonistic and suspicious.  

4.  Agreeableness: This  is the degree one gets along with others, easygoing and trusting.   On other end of the spectrum are people who are unfriendly, antagonistic and suspicious.  

Isaiah 1:  18   “Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool.

1 Peter 5:  3   “Not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.”
 

Neuroticism:  There are degrees of emotional instability or stability.  Whether one is worrisome, pessimistic and tempermental or even tempered, secure and calm is the continuum of neuroticism.  Psychopathy is the extreme.  

Romans 7:  24    “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

Philippians 3: 13   “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.”

Finally, it is the gifts of the holy spirit that hopefully describes the traits of the Catholic man or woman.  That is :  wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord.  One body, many members, all of the spirit.  Takes all kinds.  

Romans 12: 4-6  “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function,  so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.  Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us prophecy, in accordance to our faith.”