Of Personality and Order

While making no personal claims to psychological insight, I have found great value in the Jung-Myers approach to understanding human personalities.  Part of that approach identifies four major personality temperaments toward which each of us gravitates to one degree or another.  The work of Carl Jung and Isabel Myers—and many others building on that work—has elaborated the theory that in the world of people there is a variety of personalities all interacting and contributing to the social richness of humanity.  None of these four temperaments is “right” or “wrong.”  They are just different, and that difference is valuable and, moreover, worthy of understanding so that we can get along better in our interactions with each other.

I have seen all four of these temperaments in my small family of a mere 7 souls.  I consider the variety enriching to our family more than frustrating.  This insight has helped me understand where my children are coming from when I might otherwise think that any one of them has been replaced by a space alien.

Using that framework and watching my fellow travelers through life over decades of interaction, I have personally found it useful to describe the four temperaments in the following way, with regard to each person’s approach to his environment, or the world around us.

·         First (in no order of priority or relative value), there are those who come to grips with their world by seeking to be in harmony with their environment.  My wife is in this category.

·         Second, there are those who primarily seek to enjoy their environment.  I believe that two of my daughters are in this group.

·         Third are those who seek to organize their environment.  I think that I would consider myself as being in this group, along with perhaps a son and a daughter.

·         And a fourth group would be those who seek to protect themselves from their environment.  I believe that one of my sons would be found here.

Again, I emphasize that no temperament is better than the other.  They are just different.  And we need them all.  Moreover, some of each can be found in the attitudes of any one of us from time to time.  The point is which approach is dominant in the way we each live our lives.  Together, they all contribute to the success of our society.  That is to say, that whatever our temperament, we rely upon our brothers and sisters who have different temperaments to help make us and our society complete.

I do not consider this to be an accidental development but an essential element of God’s plan for the society of His children.  In several places in the scriptures God reminds us of the variety of gifts that He has given, emphasizing that we can and need to embrace and profit from each gift, all taken together.  “For the body is not one member, but many,” the Apostle Paul explained, and no part of the body can say to the other, “I have no need of thee” (see 1 Corinthians 12:14-21).

But does not all of this difference lead to disunity and perhaps even chaos?  It can, and has, but it does not need to.  Any personality trait, any temperament, any gift, if taken to the extreme or out of balance can result in harm to others.  There are plenty of examples in the long history of mankind of one taking advantage over another, either into anarchy or tyranny.  This is one of the structural failings of absolute monarchy or dictatorship, where too much of the society is guided by one person and his or her approach to the world.  The temptation to fit all of the people into that mold is natural and hard for the dictator to resist (if he even recognizes it).  On the other hand, there would be chaos if all had full license to live their preferences in disregard of others.

Many of the commandments of God are intended to help us to keep our differences in balance and to maintain the close society that allows us to be fully enriched by one another.  One of the chapters in The Book of Mormon explains this process as being the establishment of order by means of the ordinances of God (see Alma chapter 13).  The similarity in the words is not accidental. 

Entering into the kingdom of God is nothing more nor less than making a solemn covenant—pledged and witnessed by the physical ordinance of  baptism by immersion—to accept God’s commandments for a society of order as defined by God, an order that accommodates all human gifts and temperaments and organizes them into an harmonious whole.  The two greatest commandments of the kingdom of God are to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (see Matthew 22:37-39).  In this system there are universal standards to bind us to one another by binding ourselves to our Savior Jesus Christ, who sacrificed to give us all the freedom to choose and be what those choices make us.

This verse from Alma chapter 13 describes the matter this way:

Now these ordinances were given after this manner, that thereby the people might look forward on the Son of God, it being a type of his order, or it being his order, and this that they might look forward to him for a remission of their sins, that they might enter into the rest of the Lord. (Alma 13:16)

Within the Savior’s order of peace there is full room to be at harmony with one’s environment, to enjoy it, in a well organized whole, where all are safe and at rest from fear.  Indeed, in the Kingdom of God is the one place where we all can have it all.  There is nowhere else like it for any of us.

Of Predictions and Prophecies

Two dangers to which members of our society—and perhaps members of many another society—have been prone is the eagerness to know the future, and dismay and disillusionment when the reality of the future does not play out as expected.  That makes predictors of the future in high demand and always at risk.

Experience also teaches us that most predictors of the future do not know what they are talking about and are highly susceptible to failure.  That probably explains why the oracles of history and modernity are sphinx-like in their pronouncements, offering up vague prognostications whose insightful value can only be appreciated after the ensuing events occur and are appropriately explained—or explained away.

In modern times our most prolific prognosticators are sports-wizards who tell you before the season begins and as it evolves who will be the champions and who the losers.  Not far behind are the political experts who make a living pronouncing who will win in the next elections, hoping greatly that their predictions will take the energy out of the doomed candidates and make the prophecy self-fulfilling.  Also high on the list in recent decades are the economic gurus who predict with assurance and precision everything from jobless numbers to economic growth to interest rates.

Some of these last are actually becoming reliable after a sort in terms of how consistently wrong they are.  An oft-cited economist from Standard and Poors comes to mind, who you can now generally count on getting his jobless predictions backwards.  I am reminded of Raymond F. DeVoe, Jr., who generously remarked that, “Economists use decimals in their forecasts to show that they have a sense of humor.” (Raymond F. DeVoe, Jr., The DeVoe Report, February 7, 1996)  Economists love to produce charts with erratic lines displaying the recorded past and smooth lines presenting their forecasts.  These are helpful in that you can be sure that the future will look nothing like the lines of predicted future performance.  It would be wise to keep in mind the observation of Alex Pollock concerning the recent recession, “Among the many losses imposed by the bubble is a well-deserved loss of credibility on the part of central bankers and economists.” (Alex Pollock, “2007 Bust:  How Could They Not Have Known?”, Real Clear Markets, September 21, 2011)

All of this is not to say that it is impossible to predict the future.  There are certain trends that can be predicted within tolerable levels of probability, such as that flooding the money supply will usually produce inflation, that you get less of what you tax (be that income, jobs, investment, or healthcare, for example), or that the Yankees will before long win another World Series.

Aside from acting upon reasonable probabilities based upon experience, good data, and rational analysis, it is safe to say that man cannot reliably predict the future.  We can learn from history, because although history never repeats itself it can teach us lessons.  In the world of human action there is nothing new that is wholly new.  All of this, however, is in the realm of managing risks and probabilities, something that we all have to do every day just in order to act.  Nevertheless, while we expect certain things to happen, none of us on our own can know what will happen.

God can and does know.  He sees it all, and He is never surprised.  God’s omniscience is not limited by time or place.  Moreover, our loving and generous Father shares or withholds from us knowledge of the future, depending upon our need.  God has shared with me enough glimpses of the future to help me prepare and be prepared for when the events arrived.  Yet many is the difficult experience of life that I am glad to have had and learned and grown from, looking at the experience in the past, that I am not sure that I could have mustered the courage to face had I known with any clarity that it was coming.  God withholds from most of us knowledge of our manner of death, all the while equipping us with the knowledge that we need in order to live well.

There is much that God does want us to know about the future, our individual future as well as mankind’s future, to aid us in our daily living, to give purpose and direction to daily activities that might otherwise seem pointless or even hopeless, or to elicit from us extra efforts and undiscovered talents.  From the beginning of time our Father has sent to us prophets, fellow humans like ourselves, to whom He has revealed prophecies important to His children.  The prophet Isaiah brought comfort to Ahaz, the king of Judah, when his land was invaded.  He prophesied that the invasion would fail and to encourage him offered the sign of the coming of the Messiah and His miraculous virgin birth (see Isaiah 7:14-16).

Amos was another such prophet, who declared, “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.” (Amos 3:7)  That is why Jesus Christ has sent us new apostles and prophets in our day, to inspire, counsel, comfort, uplift, and in many ways aid us by divine guidance in the difficult times in which people always live, we no less than God’s children in the past.

We need, however, to keep in mind the point that while God’s prophecies are reliable and never fail our loving Father is careful to tell us what we need while withholding what were better that we not yet know.  That can leave room for misinterpreting God’s prophecies and assigning to them meanings and dressing them up with interpretations not included by God in the vision.  When the prophecy is fulfilled in ways that vary from our own predictions and expectations it is not the prophecy of God that has failed but rather our own unwarranted assumptions.

Throughout ancient scriptures there were many prophecies of Christ’s mortal ministry as well as of His triumphal second coming.  Many have confused the two, and such confusion led more than some to reject the Messiah when He walked among them in the land of Judea and Galilee.  Jesus Christ fulfilled all that was prophesied for thousands of years about His mortal ministry, including His sacrifice and death.  Yet many—but not all—eyes and ears were closed to Jesus because He did not fulfill mistaken expectations and traditions.  A similar pattern is playing out today as the hour approaches for the Savior’s return.

Inasmuch as God sees all, there is much that He sees and knows that He could not possibly explain to men bounded by the extent of their own experiences.  How would God explain to an ancient people some of the most common of daily happenings in our technological world?  And certainly we are as far removed from the realities of heavenly experience as the ancients were from our daily 21^st century experience.  That is to say that God’s prophecies can be fulfilled in ways far beyond human expectation or even imaginings prior to their fulfillment. 

When I was a missionary in 1979, I knew of the prophecy that the gospel of Jesus Christ would be preached to all nations, and I firmly believed it.  Yet I did not have the slightest clue as to how missionaries would ever be allowed beyond the Iron Curtain.  Little did I know that in less than a decade those barriers would come down peacefully and that the Soviet Union itself would cease to exist.  Knowing of the prophecy allowed many to prepare.  That preparation did not require knowledge of how God would work upon the nations to bring about His purposes.

I thank God for His ancient and modern prophets, and for the prophecies He has shared and continues to reveal, great and small, glorious and helpful.  As the prophecies unfold, my plan is to adjust my expectations to the unfolding reality of God’s work and take comfort in knowing that all will be fulfilled as God continues to reveal to those who will listen everything that they will need to know.