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has helped me understand where my children are coming from when I might otherwise think that any one of them has been replaced by a space alien.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.