Your Personality Matters to Christ

Personality is the hallmark of humanness and the gift of a loving God to each one of us. Through personality you share with Jesus the potential for identity, free choices, and intimacy with others. By engaging the Lord with your whole personality, you develop a reciprocal rhythm of communication and communion that lasts a lifetime.

I am convinced that your personality development is more treasured by God than the Milky Way galaxy, the rotation of planets in their orbits, and the entire plant and animal kingdoms. I know it’s hard to believe, but Almighty God has designed Creation as a backdrop against which your personality and relationships can come to the fore in dialogue with him.

There are those who say, “You don’t need to know anything about your personality to please Christ. Just read the Bible, go to church, and keep the Ten Commandments. That’s what God wants from you.” 

Actually, these are good ideas, but only when taken alongside your personality growth in Christ. Personality is the sum total of your thoughts, feelings, and behavior. It is through understanding the workings of your inner life—your personal psychology—that you sustain a bridge of intimacy with the Lord. 

Your personality is as unique as a fingerprint, yet follows laws common to humanity. Knowing and honoring the laws of personality enhances the quality of your interpersonal communication with God. Not knowing these laws, or unwittingly violating them, diminishes or even cripples your individuality and relationship with Christ. 

But I have good news. There is a simple way to place these laws of personality into perspective: a personality growth tool I call the Self Compass that is scientifically valid and biblically sound. 

The outer circle of the Self Compass symbolizes your selfhood throughout the stages of life. Resembling a physical compass, the four compass points reveal a dynamic tension between Love and Assertion, Weakness and Strength. Combining the first letter of each compass point gives you a convenient way to remember the LAWS of personality and relationships.

The compass points of Love balanced with Assertion, and Weakness balanced with Strength, are essential for a healthy personality. Yet because many people don’t know this, they can favor one compass point at the expense of the others. They become “stuck” on that compass point with rigid behavioral trends that trouble them throughout life, never recognizing that many of their miseries are optional.

In overly using the Love compass point, you develop the dependent trend of feeling unsure of yourself and always needing people’s assurance and approval. 

Exaggerating the Assertion point creates the aggressive trend, where you argue frequently and feel irritated at other people because it seems that your problems are their fault.

Being stuck on the Weakness compass point triggers the withdrawn trend of recurrent helplessness and depression. Fearful of making mistakes, you exchange the adventure of self-development for a morose existence of detached isolation.

People stuck on the Strength compass point feel superior to others and become judgmental perfectionists. This controlling trend makes them bossy and critical, a real pain to be around.

Part of finding your freedom in Christ is this: don’t short-circuit your potential and disappoint God’s calling by getting trapped in a narrow corner of your personality. Rather, live robustly and creatively with your whole Self Compass! 

Here are some quick guidelines for how to get each compass point running smoothly, so you can enjoy the many benefits of compass living. 

Love and Assertion

The first polarity within the Self Compass is Love and Assertion. Love comes from all the times you express kindness, forgiveness, nurturance, fondness for the Lord, or sacrifice for the well-being of someone in need. Love empowers Christian service and supplants selfishness with altruistic caring.

But giving too much love to others lets them take advantage of your resources without replenishing you in return. You’ll likely become a smiling doormat, a person who is secretly depressed, even resentful. 

You need a healthy dose of Assertion to stand up for your reasonable rights, negotiate for fairness in the world, and dare to resist others—and the devil—when pleasing them would counter your guidance from the Holy Spirit.

Think of it this way: Love fosters good will and good cheer, whereas Assertion cultivates self-expression and self-preservation. When you have Love and Assertion operating rhythmically within your personality, you can love yourself and others while enhancing your individuality in Christ. This fulfills the LAWS of personal and relational health.

For example, healthy people can say “yes” as well as “no” to requests that other people make. They can yield to others when compromise is appropriate; yet take firm stands when it isn’t. Like Christ, they respond flexibly to life situations without being stuck in a trend of dependency or aggression.

Maturing as an individual in Christ, then, entails learning to trust your Self Compass and follow your inner marching orders from God. Honoring the rhythm between Love and Assertion increases your fidelity to God’s unfolding will. 

The Holy Spirit faithfully guides you precisely because of your courage and flexibility. Remember Jesus’ promise: “I have said these things while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you” (Jn 14: 25-26).

Weakness and Strength

The other polarity of personality is Weakness and Strength. Weakness captures all the times you feel uncertain, vulnerable, anxious, hurt, sad, lonely, fatigued, stressed out, overwhelmed, frustrated, and confused. You might immediately think: “These are bad feelings. I don’t ever want to feel this way.” Yet Christ knows that by admitting your weaknesses and deficiencies, you are made humbly reliant on him.

For those super-person Christians who claim to be strong all the time, I say, “Why don’t you grow more human, like Christ is human? He had moments of loneliness, doubt, frustration, and anguish. Are you greater than the Lord?”

When artfully managed, the Weakness compass point fosters humility and empathy for others who are suffering. Strength, on the other hand, imparts the confidence required to develop your talents, pursue the education you need, interview for jobs, hold your own in relationships, and feel good about your accomplishments. Understood this way, Strength encompasses the occasions when you feel healthy confidence, adequacy, and esteem for yourself or others.

When you integrate Weakness and Strength into your relationship with Christ, you find yourself able to converse with him day and night, asking for blessing and guidance in everything you do. At the same time, you take responsibility for your choices. You do the footwork to make good things happen instead of magically hoping that life will get better. 

If you combine the four compass points into a single prayer, it might go like this:

“God, please strengthen my weaknesses and help me develop humility about my strengths. Show me how to care for people assertively and maintain a caring attitude when I assert myself. Thanks. Amen.”

For more about this, you can read Christian Personality Theory: A Self Compass for Humanity that is co-authored with my wife Kate.