freeborn | ἐλεύθερος | 8r0gwg on Nostr: ...so...when someone says to me "well, that's just not 'me' -- that's not my ...

...so...when someone says to me "well, that's just not 'me' -- that's not my personality type" -- the worldview-translator in my head hears, "yeah, well, I'm a Scorpio" and in my heart I laugh a little.

Listen, cupcake: our 'unrealized self' is not the standard; Christ is the standard. We are not aiming to be 'more like ourselves, living our best life, becoming best version of ourselves' etc. - we aim to be conformed to the image of the ultimate [eschatos] man, Jesus Christ. He is the goal toward which we strive.

quoting
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Example #1,287 of "correlation is not causation":

https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-hidden-force-shaping-where-christians-worship?row=0&elementPosition=0&rowType=Web+Search+Overlay

Case in counter-point: I chose my denomination (and thus congregation) *after* having embraced the doctrines of grace. The article assumes people's first question is "how do they worship?" and not "but what do they teach?" (Maybe the author's own eNnEaGrAm sCoRe is showing?)

Sure, the correlation is interesting--but to be expected.

But here I must protest. This entire way of thinking is misguided, IMHO. Call me crazy but I don't think our "personality type" is some thing at our core that is inaccessible to us and to which we are passive receivers--like an operating system. Some people are more mature, some people are less. Some people have tamed their sensitive/sensual appetites to a greater degree than others when it comes to 'worship styles.' (Cue Jonathan Edwards and _Religious Affections_.)

Hear Lewis (applied to this stuff):

"Temperaments from planets [read: one's personality type] are not determined and humans have [agency]. If you’re born under Saturn [read: ESFP] you can choose to be a gloomy malcontent or a great contemplative. Under Mars [read: INTJ], you can decide to be an Attila or a martyr."

Elsewhere:

"The orthodox position, as you know, is summed up in sapiens dominabitur astris: [the wise man will be master of the stars] i.e. just as we shd. say about physical, economic, or psychological causes for behaviour ‘Yes, these are operative but they always leave room for [agency]. They dispose but do not determine.' Hence [for] Aquinas . . . [a]strological predictions often in fact come true because most men don’t use their [agency] but obey the natural pre-dispositions."

Or, to reappropriate a phrase from the "Cosmic Muffin"--an 'astrology forecast' guy on my favorite radio station in high school (WBLM):

"It is a wise man who rules the stars [read: his personality type]; it is a fool who is ruled by them [read: it]."

/soapbox:off