Horoscopes from Camelot<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An @woofboy responding to a friend's Twitter comment pointed us both to this editorial from\u00a0Theology Today in 1982: Meyers-Briggs and Other Modern\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/2014\/12\/horoscopes-from-camelot\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Horoscopes from Camelot\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"An @woofboy responding to a friend's Twitter comment pointed us both to this editorial from\u00a0Theology Today in 1982: Meyers-Briggs and Other Modern\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/2014\/12\/horoscopes-from-camelot\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" 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{"id":1501,"date":"2014-12-11T07:00:38","date_gmt":"2014-12-11T11:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/?p=1501"},"modified":"2014-12-13T14:32:59","modified_gmt":"2014-12-13T18:32:59","slug":"horoscopes-from-camelot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/davidmills\/2014\/12\/horoscopes-from-camelot\/","title":{"rendered":"Horoscopes from Camelot"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

An @woofboy responding to a friend\u2019s Twitter comment pointed us both to this editorial<\/a> from\u00a0Theology Today<\/em> in 1982: Meyers-Briggs and Other Modern Astrologies.\u201d As described by the writer, Thomas G. Long, it began (this is my summary) in a utopian hope combined with a modern American faith in technology and desire for the easily applied and painlessly effective technique. Plus the experts say it\u2019s not actually very helpful. Plus it gives people an excuse for being jerks, as Long suggests without saying (\u201cThis makes MBTI-styled talk vaguely\u00a0deterministic: \u2018This is my personality; it\u2019s just the way I am, probably\u00a0always will be\u2019,\u201d he notes.)<\/p>\n

Why, asks Long, have Christians fallen for it so hard? It helps supply a sense of identity, he argues.<\/p>\n

Add to this Isabel Myers\u2019 tendency to describe each personality type\u00a0in unfailingly optimistic terms and the possibilities for self-flattery\u00a0abound. For example, ESFPs are, she tells us, \u201coutgoing, easygoing,\u00a0accepting, friendly, enjoy everything and make things more fun for\u00a0others. . . \u201d while ISTJs are \u201cpractical, orderly, matter-of-fact, logical,\u00a0realistic, and dependable.\u201d Nowhere do we encounter the harder\u00a0truth about ourselves and others, namely the possibility that our\u00a0personalities include not-so-admirable traits like greed, envy, selfishness,\u00a0or a propensity toward violence. Myers was aware, of course, that\u00a0personality formation can go awry, that \u201cbad type development\u201d does\u00a0happen, but even here she tended to speak in the meekest of terms,\u00a0admitting that certain personality types may \u201cfail to finish anything,\u201d\u00a0\u201cneglect their feeling values,\u201d \u201cbecome too sensitive and vulnerable,\u201d\u00a0or \u201cburden themselves with a sense of inadequacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, the MBTI profiles read like horoscopes from Camelot.<\/p>\n

The result is a tool seductively attractive and easy to use but that gives us information more likely to be misleading than helpful. \u201cIt is far more fruitful to think of a \u2018personality\u2019 in\u00a0relational terms, as the way one tends to behave with certain other\u00a0people and under certain conditions,\u201d Long concludes.<\/p>\n

Some aspects of a personality\u00a0persist from setting to setting, but a relational view opens up the\u00a0possibility of true complexity, unexpected change, repentance, even\u00a0conversion. . . .\u00a0Thus, whatever use it\u00a0may wish to make of instruments like the MBTI, the Christian church\u00a0needs to make some protest as well, to refuse to accept that people can\u00a0be known in any serious way through a pencil and paper questionnaire\u00a0dashed off in a few moments, to insist upon knowing people in the only\u00a0way they can genuinely be known-in costly and messy relationships\u00a0that endure<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"