Why I am not Impressed with the Pope's Decision to resign.

When I was a senior in college there was a point I was very near to giving up on a project that I had invested years of my life in.  I had reached the end of my rope… or so I thought.  Thankfully a friend of mine told me in very harsh language to get it together and finish the job.  The end was so close and I was ready to throw it all away.  I needed that and I am thankful for what he did.  With the help of my my friends we all dug deeper than we thought we could and we pulled it off.  Sometimes the harsh truth is the only truth that gets people’s attention. 

The last couple of weeks I have been feeling very bothered by the Pope's decision to resign.  When I see the videos from the Vatican of people applauding the Pope's decision to resign cannot help but cringe.  When I hear people at Church speak of the resignation as a praiseworthy thing showing humility or courage I feel put off.  Quitting does not show courage in my book.  This is not like a surgeon who is getting Alzheimer disease deciding to quit because he literally cannot safely and competently do the job anymore.   Personally I do not think there is any virtue in this resignation.  I do not feel there is any humility here.  I am very skeptical of the idea that we need a "strong", “healthy," Pope.  This kind of thinking totally flies in the face of the spirit of Catholicism as far as I am concerned.  I do not feel it lines up with the culture of life.  The bible and Catholic tradition is all about God using weak people to accomplish great things.  Whether it be Abraham and Sarah, Sampson, Jonah, King David, the Apostles, St Therese etc, etc, etc.     I remember seeing a news interview from one of the Cardinals saying that anyone who had a problem with the Pope resigning or felt bad about it had a problem themselves.  You can take what I say with a grain of salt in light of those statements.  With that in mind I am saying right now I have a problem with it.  I think it flies in the face of the spirit of Catholicism.  Sure, I have no doubt that it is with in the "rule" of Church law that the Pope can resign.  But you know what.  Catholicism is bigger than a set of rules.  Sometimes that means relaxing the rules in order to be merciful.  But other times that means stepping up and going beyond what the rules call for to go the extra mile.  My question is whether or not resigning is within the spirit of law.  I contend that it is not.  Pope's have been going to their grave as Pope for 600 years.  I think and feel that this is a powerful witness and if the Pope resigns he is missing a powerfull opportunity.  The Catholic prayer is not to ask for end to suffering, it is to ask for the strength to endure and explore the mystery of suffering. 
The Catholic religion is from my point of view is very tribal.  We do not shy away from the hard aspects of life.  We have very hard fast rules.  Rules which the current Pope has spent his life upholding.  A lot of these rules require very extreme sacrifices and hardships to maintain.  We tell a lot of people that if they want to be in good standing with the Church they need to just pick up their cross and walk.  Here are a few examples.  We tell couples they must be open to life and not use contraception.  Children are hard to raise.  They consume a lot of financial resources and drastically change a person’s life.  Alternatively they can use natural family planning, which has a wide variety of problems and hardships of its own.  Living the Catholic Faith calls for this though.  How about the family that is open to life and as a result has many children and lives near poverty because work is hard to find.  Take up your cross and walk…  What about the person who is in a marriage that has no sense of excitement or passion or emotional love?  We tell them to suck it about and live it out.  They are not permitted to divorce and remarry. They must take up their cross and walk.  What about the person facing terminal cancer who would prefer to avoid the suffering and just be euthanized.  We say no, you cannot do that.  Live your suffering and grow from it.  What about the untold number of single Catholics who want to be married but cannot find a spouse who actually practices the Faith and is actually enjoyable for them to be around.  They just have to live with it, our society is a rough one to live in for Catholics.  Go evangelize the culture if you do  not like it.  How about the women who is pregnant and finds out she has a high probability of dying if she follows through with the pregnancy.  We tell her she might have to die because she cannot have an abortion (I am aware of double effect issues.  That is not what I am referring to here).  What about her children that will be left motherless as a result.  They just have to live without a mother- sorry.  Let’s take a step back.  What about the couple where the wife knows she could experience significant medical problems if she gets pregnant.  That couple may have to nearly totally abstain from marital relations.  They are told they are just called to live their Faith this way.  How about a nurse who has to quit her job because she cannot in good conscience participate in the abortions she is being asked to take part in.  Same goes for the medical student or pharmacist or therapist who is facing persecution and or job loss for their faith.  How about a person who feels attraction to someone of the same sex?  They may never have any opportunity to experience what the Catholic church would consider legitimate intimacy.  These people often did not choose these crosses in any way.  They just have to live with them.  Take up your cross and walk…  There are a wide array of ways the Catholic Faith can make a person’s life significantly harder.  In the cases I outlined above people do not get a chance to call for a time out.  They do not get a chance to resign.  Resignation in these cases means a person typically has to die to themselves, or in some cases they actually literally have to die.  The Pope has spent his life enforcing these teachings that are not easy to follow.  Unlike many of these people he did have a choice.  He did not have to accept the job of Pope.  He was an insider.  He knew what he was getting into.  He could have declined and I would say that is totally legitimate.  He chose to take the job.  The Pope asked for kindness.  Fine – I am fine with that.  But I feel he needs the same kindness we extend to people in all these tough situations.  Sometimes tough love is called for.  

To be honest I just feel upset and disappointed at the Pope.  I do not want to see him go through with this resignation.  I can think of a whole variety of reasons why my feelings may be wrong, but it doesn’t change what my feelings are.  Catholicism is tough.  The Pope knows it, this is not his first rodeo.  He is no rookie.  It can be very nasty sometime and can call for major sacrifices.  I feel like the Pope in many ways could talk the talk but now when he has a chance to walk the walk he is not doing it.  Sure it may be permissible, but I do not see anything heroic or virtuous in it.  I am not impressed.  If I were in his situation I would hope I would have a friend there to tell me the harsh truth – “get it together, people get old, and sick and sometimes they go crazy,  deal with it…  Popes have been doing it for 600 years.  Get back to work and finish the job!!!!”  Real humility to me would be the Pope saying, “Look I screwed up, I got tired and scared, please forgive me and I will get back to work.  I may only be able to do so much but living and dying in the Catholic style is the witness and that is what I will live out.”  That would be fine with me.  I am not unreasonable.  I am not asking that he be at his desk every day.  He may be able to do only very little.  Truthfully he may not be able to get out of bed.  That is fine.  Dying is a part of life.  Please Pope Benedict, get back to work.  Do not give up!  We will support you.  Leadership in weakness can be the most powerful witness.

I want to end with one last thought.  I started with a discussion of how my friend gave me a hard time about giving up.  Well we did not give up but things looked really dim.  We pressed on though.  In the end there was no way on our own efforts we could succeed.   We literally were working until we passed out.  Well If I have ever seen a miracle in my life this was it.  There was no way we should have suceeded.  Everything was put together way too shakily at the last minute.  We the time of testing came though it pulled through.  I firmly belive we gave our all and it was not good enough.  But God picked up where we no longer could on our own power.  This is where Faith comes in.  It didn't make sense.  It was beyond reason, but God in the end did pull his weight.  If we only really on our own strengths what do we really believe?

Advice for my fellow ENTJs - find an INTP friend.

I have a suspicion - ENTJs want to dream big dreams, but often they only have boring visions.  

As I learn more and more about personality and how it affects interactions between people I often read various advice about how a person with one personality type can better get along with people of an different personality type.  Generally I find this advice to be pretty much worthless.  All people ever really suggest is making a conscious effort to be like someone of the different personality type.  That is kind of silly and not a long-term solution.  All it will do is wear a person out.  I think there are much better solutions.

What I am finding out is that people of the same or in the non-ideal case very similar personality types are the best people to give a person advice.  A person of the same personality type really seems to be a person's best confidant, mentor, etc.  Conventional wisdom says you should have someone of a different type to get a different point of view.  Conventional wisdom is often wrong however.  All that will end up happening in many cases is that you will get advice that is better suited to someone else. I am finding that much of the best advice I get these days is coming from older ENTJs, ESTJs, ENTPs, INTJs and one INFJ. 

Let me give an example of a highly successful ENTJ-ENTJ partnership.  Margret and Denis Thatcher.  Denis Thatcher was a well off guy and he went on to provide finacial support to Margret so she could become a barrister.  Later he helped finance her political career.  This video below is a very fascinating reflection on Denis Thatcher.  Both Margret and Denis Thatcher are almost certainly ENTJs.  Denis was Margret's confidant and supporter.  She attributes alot of her success to Denis.  It is very interesting at the end when it discusses how people perceived Denis Thatcher's marriage to Margret.  As an ENTJ I can totally relate to what they are saying.  I cannot imagine a better relationship, although most people would probably despise this kind of thing.  These two both had their demons but they faced them head on and helped each other out.  They were in some sense both equipped to deal with mutual challenges.  Like I said you should know yourself so you can lead a life that is right for you.  What is right for an ENTJ is not right for ~98% of the population.  Actually it would probably be a walk through hell for the other 98% of the population, but we ENTJs doing with a smile on our faces :-).  


That being said it is very worthwhile getting the viewpoints of people with other personality types.  I want to make a suggestion for my ENTJ brothers and sisters who may be interested.  ENTJ to ENTJ ;-).  I will start by spelling out the problem I had (which I am guessing many of you also have,) and then I will let you know what happened to help fix it.

A little background on myself.  I have spent alot of time over the years learning about fabrication.  My Dad is a carpenter and so I saw all the carpentry tools growing up.  In high school I took formal instruction at the community college in machining and welding for a couple of years.  I worked in a commercial machine shop for a summer, and then I worked for a number of years in the machine shop of the mechnical engineering department where I went to college.  I spent countless hours building things, making mistakes, and figuring out new ways to build things.  I spent almost every saturday for 4 years in a machine shop building car parts.  I got pretty good at it too.  By the time I was a sophomore in college the seniors thought I was a graduate student they should come to for advice.  Much to my suprise there were even machinist with decades of experience who would come to me for advice.  If nothing else I was pretty competent.  I tend to be a somewhat ambitious person and I often dreamed of making some great device or system or something great.  I knew I had the skills to do it, but there was just one problem.  A big problem...  I did not have any ideas that I thought were interesting or creative or exciting.  Sure I had ideas that were probably at some level good, but they were boring and unoriginal.  They were just plans to get things done.  They were not excitng and not worth the effort to implement.  I felt a little saddened by my lack of creativity.

I went on to graduate school which was alot of fun. I got to learn about various subjects in much more depth, and I got to meet alot of new people.  There was one person I met who really stood out.  This was a guy who I shared the lab with.  He was extremely creative and full of totally crazy ideas.  Ideas that in many cases were totally beyond all implementation.  Talk of "The game of life," or "fractals," or "finite autonomata," were the norm.  I had never even heard of many of these things till this time.  We would spend extended periods of time discussing these ideas.  I knew they were never going to go anywhere, but they were odd and totally out of left field.  Unfortunately they were not going to get my graduate work done any sooner, and I relegated these ideas to a form of procrastination and entertainment.    I did not take it too seriously at the time.

Fast forward a few years, I was finishing my PhD and I still really did not know what was next.  I just had no good ideas.  To make a long story short I went to work for a small company.  I had a role in helping write proposals.  This is when I started to realize I really needed to deal with the idea problem.  After a little while everyone was laid-off for various reasons so I had alot of time to think about the future and what I thought made sense for the next step and where I wanted to go.  I was reminded of my friend from graduate school.  He was so full of ideas.  I questioned why I didn't have any ideas.  I worked hard but I had no ideas.  I realized one thing that kept me from having ideas was my compulsion to have to make the ideas real.  My hard work was in some ways actually holding me back.  This was a big problem.  If I felt responsible for making my ideas real I would naturally scale back my ambitions and dream boring dreams.  If I wanted to move forward in life this was not going to work anymore.  So I started not worrying about implementation.  I think this is a major element of what helped my friend come up with his ideas.  He did not seem to worry much about implementation and so as a result his idea generating process had much lower intertia and was much higher performance.  I would start to try and think this way, and it actually worked.  It was very exciting and very productive.  I started coming up with more ideas that were actually interesting and exciting.  I also started a much wider variety of source material for inspiration. One presentation I came across that helped with the generation of creative ideas was this discusison on type A and type B personalities.  I could see alot of the points this person was making.  I took it to heart.

I think in some ways this presentation helped open my mind to new view points and prepare me for the day when I was introduced to personality types about a year later.  Jungian cognitive functions seem much more descriptive and predictive than type A or type B personalities.  Sometimes it just takes time to understand things though and we have to go in steps.  When I first looked at personalities I was most interested in the judger-perciever dicotomy.  This is where I saw the tradeoff more starkly.  Being a Judger I was very decisive and able to get things done, but I did this at the expense of creativity.  Percievers on the other hand tend to be more creative but they often do not have the follow through to make things happen. What I realized was that in my line of work it was imperative that I learn to develop the P.  Basically I needed to have and extroverted percieving function as needed.  Alternatively I could have a P friend and just ask them for ideas.  Either way could work, but I do like making my own ideas.  I have been practicing this for the last year.  I no longer have trouble thinking of ideas.  I have more ideas than I can handle.  Or as my friend says, "You are an idea factory."

It turns out my friend was INTP.  I think for an ENTJ this is the best person to help them come up with creative ideas and grow better as a person at least in terms of creativity.  ENTP is just too similiar and if a person does not realize what can go wrong in terms of expectation, the ENTP and ENTJ relationship can end in big fights.  I could talk about this for awhile.  With the INTP though there are enough differences that this does not seem to happen.

I think the INTP wants to work with the ENTJ as well.  I think both are better off for it.  I recently had a conversation with someone who  I am guessing is INTP.  This person is very philosophical.  I told them, I needed more theory to do the things we wanted to accomplish.  He told me not to worry about that theory stuff, just build things and make the theory real.  I think we both realized we could help each other out.  

Alot of people theorize the ENTJ-INTP relationship is in some sense an ideal match.  I think this is not necessarily right.  There are alot of differences here, but I do think the two can help each other alot.  The reason being the ENTJ has Extroverted Thinking and the INTP has Extroverted iINtution. These two things manifest themselves in similiar ways, but are really doing very different things.  They can interface quite nicely thought and can lead to some very interesting brainstorming sessions. I have to admit looking back that I find it quite amusing that some random conversations I had with my friend were actually probably one of the most valuable aspects of my graduate school experience.  At the time it seemed like we were just procrastinating and wasting time, but really it was one of the most valuable things we could have done.  Sometimes you need to take the time to smell the roses in some sense. 

I would also like to thow out there that I think the following relationships will have similiar benefits for analagous reasons:
INTJ-ENTP
ENFJ-INFP
INFJ-ENFP

Also, if you are in the medical field and an ENTJ you migh consider meeting INFP doctors and being friends with them.  Then you might get for of the compassionate side for bedside manner reasons. 
Take what I suggest with a grain of salt.  It worked for me maybe it will work for you. I hope the discussion stimulated some thought. 

Is the Christoper West Controversy a Result of Personality Conflicts: Part II

So some of my friends read my earlier post regarding how the Christopher West controversy may be a prime case of a personality conflict.  

http://www.bezalelsapprentice.blogspot.com/2013/01/is-christopher-west-controversy.html

In that post I mostly focused on iNtuitor (N) - sensor (S) differences.  One of my friends pointed out that some of the critisims of West's work were very valid from a theological point of view.  Of this I do not argue.  I am sure there probably are some fundamental problems with what West is saying.  It was pointed out to me that David Schindler was one of West's most staunch critics.  Supposedly he wrote a blog post of some kind of his criticisms.  I could not find the whole thing, but I did find some excerpts.  At first I did not think Schindler's criticisms would be personality-based, but as I looked at it more I changed my mind.  There may very well be a personality-based conflict here.  Below is my reasoning why.  I also want to point out.  Even if my personality analysis is off, which it probably is, and even if distinct personality types do not exist,  it does not matter from a practical point of view.  There are complementary ways of thinking.  In some ways that is what the different personality types are capturing.  Depending on which philosophy you tend to bias towards you will value different things.  These values are often morally neutral, but they can lead to different plans of action or different results.  Anyways here is my thoughts concerning the David Schindler-Christopher West conflict.  (The style may seem odd but that is because I took it from a post I sent to a friend.)

"
I could not find the David Schindler post either, but I did find snippets of it.  I would say many of the comments Schindler makes are not of the nature of what I am talking about.  Schindler may even be right about alot of the things he is speaking of, but most average people do not consciously think of the things he is talking about. He uses very technical language most people would not understand nor care to understand.  

Actually even in the Schindler case their may be a personality conflict between West and Schindler.  Let me explain.  I am willing to bet that West is an extrovert.  Schindler on the other hand is an academic.  I would not be surprised if he is an introvert.  Let us suppose for the sake of argument he is an intravert. Actually I would not be surprised if West is ENTJ and Schindler is INTJ.  Let's pretend this is the case for the sake of argument because I am familiar how these types of arguments play out and I can see some similarities with what I have read from Schindler.  INTJs (Shindler?) love being intellectual, focusing on details and precision.  They are good at studying individual topics in depth.  They are natural perfectionists in their thought.  They also have great skill at criticizing things.  It is almost their favorite thing to do from what I can tell.  The problem is they are often not good working outside of frameworks.  They need structure to operate.  They often seem uncomfortable dealing with poorly defined problems.  They also tend not to like to take action unless everything is planned out in detail.  They also like to think things through in detail before speaking.  ENTJs (West?) on the other hand are also intellectual, but in a different way.  ENTJs tend to know a modest amount about many different things.  ENTJs are generalists.  He finds totally new connections people have not seen before.  He has a very big-picture view of the world.  The big picture comes at the expense of precision and perfection in thought however.  West is totally unafraid to throw out half-baked ideas and see what people think of them.  ENTJs tend to think out loud alot and this drives INTJs crazy.  It is just how ENTJs think to work out problems but INTJs think they are speaking without thinking.  There are are pros and cons to both techniques.  He is also out with the people pushing his ideas in the hopes that it will make things better.  He uses new analogies to make things easier for people to understand why they should follow sexual teachings.  West is a doer and a man of the world.  He wants results.  At the same time though he does want precision, but if he focuses too much on precision and perfection he will never get any results.  He may very well welcome Schindler's input but not be totally sure how to implement it.  Sometimes too people with a big picture recognize problems that people focused on details totally miss and vice versa. 

At the end of the day TOB is the wild west of Catholic thinking (No pun intended J ).  This kind of field needs pioneers like West (ENTJ) to set down some framework for people to work with.  West will make mistakes but he will correct them as time goes on.  I would not necessarily count on academics to pull this off.  At least not at first.  The people need someone like West to put this stuff in a language the common person can understand.  At the same time, as West puts a rough structure in place there will be problems and it will need to be changed.  His original ideas will certainly have problems and will need to be refined.  That is where people like Schindler come in.  We need people like Schinder (INTJ?) to refine the ideas and techniques.  At the end of the day we really need both people.  Depending on how you look at it one or the other is right.  In a way I would argue they are both right.  It may sound relativistic but I do not think it is.  Here is why.  Consistently whenever someone has a vision of hell we hear that the number one reason people are in hell is because of "sins of the flesh." Clearly this is a big problem.  People accuse West of thinking about sex too much, but at the end of the day maybe that is appropriate.  If most people who are in hell are there because of sex then maybe we need to think about dealing with this problem alot so people do not end up there.  In a pragmatic sense the theology does not need to be perfect to get across the point that they should follow the Church's teaching on sex so they do not end up in hell.  Besides most people will not remember the details of the theology anyways.  They will only remember the gist of it.  Actually alot of people will not be swayed to the teaching using rational theologic logic at all.  Another accusation is that West makes TOB too romantic.  Guess what, Feeler personality types will almost certainly respond to romantic emotional appeals than rational logic.  Remember the Maya Angelou saying, “People will forget what you said, People will forget what you did, But people will never forget how you made them feel.”  At the end of the day all the matters is that people obtain salvation.  If romantic appeals are what does it then so be it.  Now at the same time small theological problems can cause problems in the long term and can lead to poor intellectual foundation.  As time goes on this will be more vital.  In the long term we need people like Schindler to fix these problems to keep the whole intellectual framework sound.  I would not count on West to do this.  At the same time I would not count on Schindler to get the message out to the people in a manner they understand.  We really need both of them, and it could very well be the case that the reason they do things the way they do is because of their personalities.  

"

Have you met your doppelgänger?

This is a music video I came across awhile ago.  I thought it was really pertinent to this discussion because I like to think of it as a case of an ENTJ-ENTJ meeting.  The dragon in the movie symbolizes an ENTJ because he is scary looking.  For some reason many people are scared of ENTJs.  I have been told this my whole life and apparently it is a phenomenon common to ENTJs.  I do not really understand why this is because I feel friendly, but apparently I am not perceived as such.  The dragon in this story is also friendly.  He wants to be friends with the people in the town, but everything he does to show goodwill gestures go wrong and is misunderstood.  As a result, the towns deploys the military to the dragon's island to blow him up.  They find a very sad dragon when they arrive and they proceed to kill him.  At the end the general in charge of killing the dragon shoots the dragon's eye ball and sees the statue of friendship the dragon had made as a present to the town.  The general, who is also almost certainly also ENTJ, immediately recognizes the mistake he has made and he is probably sad he accidentally killed a kindred spirit, because he also knows what it feels like to be misunderstood and perceived as scary. 

One of the most interesting aspects of learning about personalities is coming to the discovery that there are people like me out there.  I always thought everyone else seemed quite a bit different than me.  For whatever reason since I have been in high school I have had quite a few INTJ friends and even with them I could tell there were similarities, but still some significant differences.  Then one day I tested a person I knew only as an acquaintance, and I was surprised to find this person was an ENTJ like myself.  As time went on I discovered a few other acquaintances of mine were also ENTJ.  Then as I studied other ENTJs more and I got better at identifying them.  It was really interesting to see what people like myself were like.  Now that I know a little better what I am looking for it is almost like looking in a mirror when I see another ENTJ.  One of the biggest things is that I can much better understand why people might perceive ENTJs as scary or cold.  Actually one of the most shocking discoveries for me was that Eric Cartman on South Park is ENTJ.  I really do not care for that character, but when I found he was ENTJ I could totally see how I might do things very similar that I did not like and those are things I might need to work on.  Another good example is St. Paul.  I really did not care for St. Paul for most of my life.  Not so much because of his personality, he just seemed like an interloper to me.  Anyways a few years ago I was reading about him talking about his adventures and I warmed up to him a little.  Then I discovered he was probably ENTJ.  He was almost definitely some kind of Choleric and the ENTJ is the Choleric-Choleric.  As I read some of the stories I could see it.  For instance even when he was a prisoner in the boat the guards looked to him for leadership.  It may seem weird, but this sort of thing happens to me sometimes.  I remember there were times in college where people who had decades more experience would start coming to me asking for advice.  Anyways, since this happened I am much more friendly with St Paul.  I am looking forward to meeting him.  Actually I think God the Father is probably ENTJ too and that is one reason I am looking forward to meeting him. In general I find my fellow ENTJs are pretty friendly.  We may look rough on the outside, but often we are soft on the inside.  Also we get alot done together and we are really interesting to talk to and we are all a bit on the adventurous side to some degree.  That is nice too :-)

Anyways, my feeling is you can learn alot by meeting people similar to yourself.  For people that are SJ or SP this is probably easy.  But for Ns it is probably more difficult, and for NTs more difficult still.  Another suggestion I have for NTs is that we are all pretty rough people and should just forgive each other if we make each other mad and let it go.  Many of us only mean well but sometimes we can really push people.  Even each other.  We may be low on feelings compared to most people but we do have them.  It is so easy for us to mess up social interactions even when we mean well.  There is only so many of us and we have alot to offer one another.  

I would be curious to know how other personality types perceive their own kind. 

Is the Christopher West Controversy Primarily a Misunderstanding Between Personalities?

A few years ago Christopher West came under some fire for going on ABC news and comparing Pope John Paul II with Hugh Hefner.  Here is the news story:

http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/Sex/story?id=7527380&page=1

Now this version of the interview may be easy to take out of context, but if you watch Christopher West's videos he makes no secret of his comparison between Pope John Paul II and Hugh Hefner.  He had been talking about that for quite awhile before the ABC interview.  Why was there no outrage beforehand?  I have always thought the criticism of the JPII-Hugh Hefner comparison was unfounded.  If you listen to it he is not glorifying Hefner in any way.  He is simply trying to make a deeper point.  I could not understand why people gave him such a hard time.  Are there things you could find to legitimately critize about Christopher West's work?  Yeah, sure he is human and he makes mistakes, but I am pretty confident his heart is in the right place.  At least I have no reason to believe it is not.

Last night I had a flash of insight that I think may shed some light on the matter.  I suspect this controversy is in many ways a personality conflict.  I think it is almost certainly an iNtuitor-Sensor misunderstanding and and for many people it may be a Thinker-Feeler misunderstanding.

For More info on iNtuitors and Sensors see this link
http://www.hillinghypnotherapy.co.uk/personality-test-online/personality-testing-explained/sensor-and-intuitor-what-is-the-difference/ 

For more information on thinkers and feelers I suggest this link
http://www.hillinghypnotherapy.co.uk/personality-test-online/personality-testing-explained/thinkers-and-feelers-what-is-the-difference/ 

First let's look at Christopher West  (I suggest you take what follows with a grain of salt, I am often wrong about this stuff. ).  I am guessing he is an iNtuitor, (N) type.  All of his work deals with finding connections between things.  For instance the connection between Theology and the Body and the Scripture.  He is a fairly abstract thinker and is very comfortable dealing with patterns and relationships between things.  My guess is he is probably also a Thinker.  He seems pretty detached from his work to me.  He takes it seriously but he looks at it from a distance and he is full of new ideas.  He is probably a judger because he is all about finding order, and he is probably an extrovert because he is on a mission to evangelize the world.  I would go so far to hazard that he might be ENTJ like myself.  The reason I think this is the following.  Faith is a very personal thing.  It is not something I liked talking about for most of my life.  I think this is because I am ENTJ.  Introverted Feeling is the ENTJ's weakest cognitive function.  This means we ENTJs almost do not have feeling functions.  If weaker functions get stronger as you age I expect I will naturally understand emotions when I am about 40 or 50.  They say ENTJs have strong deep sentimental streaks that no one knows about and they do not talk about.  I think this is true.  ENTJs in general are reported to be not comfortable talking about emotions and I can say for myself this is true.  If you watch Christopher West he usually seems almost in pain as he talks about the Theology of the Body.  I think this may be really uncomfortable for him.  If he were an NF he would probably be very familiar with dealing with things that have no logical explanation.  In a sense he is really going out on a limb and bearing his soul to the world.  If he were an NF I think he would be smiling and not flinch talking about emotions.  He is not like this.  He seems too analytical to me.  (Now I want to personality test him to see if I know what I am talking about :-) )

Anyways most people in the world are Sensors (S).  Sensors tend to like more concrete straighforward things.  They tend not to pickup on connections and relationships between things as well.  I suspect most people who saw the ABC interview were Sensors and just heard the words Pope JPII and Hugh Hefner in the same sentence and didn't like the sound of it.  They probably did not understand the connections and relationships that West was trying to present.  This may seem odd to some people.  Especially if you are N, but part of the reason I came up with this is that I noticed it in some people I know.  N-S differences are considered the biggest difference between people.  I can now totally see how this could happen.

I would not be suprised if Alice Von Hildbrand, one of West's most outspoken critics is also S.  Here is an interview with Alice. 



In the interview she is always citing other people's authority.  Mostly her husband.  I hazard to guess she is SJ.  Probably a feeler as well just because women tend more often to be feelers.  She uses alot of very flowery language which seems very F-like.  SJ types tend to want to uphold the status quo.  The Theology of the Body in many ways pretty radical so it is not surprising that SJ's might react negatively to it the first time they hear it.  I want to personality test her too to check my hypothesis out.  The gift of the SJ philosophy is that it has a stabilizing effect on society.  As time goes on I suspect SJ types will warm to the ideas.

So why didn't we see much criticism of West before the ABC interview?  My guess is that most people who were exposed to West's thinking were in college.  They probably heard it at a Theology on Tap or something like that.  College culture is very N-like.  It would probably be very open to new ideas like west.  Also, in my experience there are alot of NFs in Catholic circles.  For instance the usually rare INFJ seems to be everywhere in Catholic young adult groups.  It seems pretty common to me for the leaders of these groups to be ENFJ.  My guess is the culture in colleges was such that all the S types figured that was the status quo and they rolled with it.

As far as the thinker-feeler misunderstanding goes I think it is pretty simple.  Feelers tend to put themselves into the situations that are dealing with.  They empathize with things.   Many of them probably associate negative feelings with Hefner and positive feelings with JPII.  They probably do not like their positive feeling being corrupted by negative ones.  Some feelers literally seem to feel pain if something is mentioned that evoked a bad feeling in them.  Thinkers do not do this.  They just look at this detachedly.  Some of the criticisms I hear of the JPII - Hefner comparison seem very feeler-based to me.  People will make very emotionally charged remarks concerning mentioning JPII and Hefner in the same sentence.  Not that being a feeler is bad or anything.  It is just a different way of dealing with the world.

I could be wrong, but this is what I think.  I would be curious to know what others think about this.

Stairway to Heaven: An ode to the Virgin Mary

A few months ago our young adult group was meeting and we were discussing Catholic music and I could not help but bring up one of my favorite songs about the Virgin Mary... Stairway to Heaven.  Now immediately this started a bit of a controversy.  I heard all the usual cliché things... The whole band was totally high while they made that album, it has the devil talking in it when you play it backwards, etc. etc.  Well I have heard it played backwards and the whole devil thing is a pretty big stretch if you ask me.  And yes the members of Led Zeppelin were probably totally high when they wrote this song.  Interestingly if you read any books written by exorcists they like to comment that drug use is one good way to get possessed.  Well along that vein I do not see why the Holy Spirit could not also have some influence on a person when they were in a mentally compromised state.  It is not something I would recommend, but I have known God long enough to know that he plays by his own rules, and does whatever he wants.  If he wants to he can inspire Led Zeppelin to make a song about the Virgin Mary... Which is exactly what it looks like "Stairway to Heaven" is to me.  Now its widely reported these guys were influenced by Lord of the Rings which was written by a practicing Catholic.  You definitely see some of the LOR imagry in there, but I am going to ignore that for now.  The multiple interpretations of this song are part of what makes it interesting

The song is chock full of imagery related to the Virgin Mary and Christianity.  It is blatantly explicit at times.  It's not clear to me how anyone who is familiar with Mary could miss it.  Regardless I have gotten mostly a skeptical response for my observations, so I am going to go through the lyrics and spell it out.  Now this is a highly poetic song.  If you don't like what I see just forget it.  There are more important things in life to worry about.  My primary motivation in writing this is to give a few more people an outlook on this song that they may not have experienced before.  Here we go...

Lyrics to Stairway to Heaven There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold And she's buying a stairway to heaven When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed With a word she can get what she came for Ooh, ooh, and she's buying a stairway to heaven There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure 'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven Ooh, it makes me wonder Ooh, it makes me wonder There's a feeling I get when I look to the west   And my spirit is crying for leaving   In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees And the voices of those who stand looking Ooh, it makes me wonder Ooh, it really makes me wonder And it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune Then the piper will lead us to reason And a new day will dawn for those who stand long And the forests will echo with laughter If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now It's just a spring clean for the May queen Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run There's still time to change the road you're on And it makes me wonder Your head is humming and it won't go, in case you don't know The piper's calling you to join him Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow and did you know Your stairway lies on the whispering wind? And as we wind on down the road Our shadows taller than our soul There walks a lady we all know Who shines white light and wants to show How everything still turns to gold And if you listen very hard The tune will come to you at last When all are one and one is all, yeah To be a rock and not to roll And she's buying a stairway to heaven

My Interpretation: This is talking about the hope Christians are expected to have.  The lady buying the stairway to heaven refers to Mary obtaining graces for us as a rest of her intersession.  Some say Jesus cannot refuse anything Mary asks of him.  This is why if "the stores are all closed, with a word"  she can get what she wants.  Think wedding at Cana.   The “sign on the wall,” refers to things like the law, the Bible, the Church, the Prophets, natural law, etc, etc, The two meanings here can refer to a number of things.  The concept of mystery is at the core of Christianity.  It could also refer to different people responding to different methods of communication.   This is just a generally philosophical statement.  No need to constrain it with my interpretation.  Come up with your own.  Mine has to do with self-doubts and questioning.  The constant reference to wonder I interpret at the highest level as wonder about God and a yearning to know him better I am going to postulate this refers to western civilization which Christianity had a major role in, but there could very well be other interpretations that are more interesting.   I am open to comments. because I think my interpretation here could use more thought.  This refers to us and the innate longing we have for things bigger than ourselves.  To become better.   I think this refers to generally mystical things like looking for signs.  There are probably better ways to interpret this out there.  I will keep thinking about it.  If we all get on board with Jesus’ message we will be led to reason.  Jesus is the piper.  Basically this is a poetic way of saying that if we persevere we will experience eternal joy.  My interpretation of this is that the “bustle in the hedgerow” is a person experiencing the discomfort and confusion and excitement brought on by conversion from a sinful life to a life of striving to follow God’s law.  The “spring clean” can be thought of confession and conversion.   The “May queen” is an explicit reference to Mary.  It is interesting to note too that the temo of the music changes here too.  I think this is to echo the discomfort and excitement. This is a clear reference to the call for conversion.  In Catholicism there is always time to repent until you are dead.  This makes me wonder too.  The head is humming could be any number of things, a person’s conscious, the promptings of grace, personal feelings and thoughts about things bigger than yourself.  The piper is once again Jesus calling you.   The lady is once again the Virgin Mary.  The stairway alludes to grace which is the path to holiness.  The “whispering wind” is an explicit reference to the Holy Sprit.     As we go through our lives the sins (shadows) can just add up and add up.  It can lead a person to despair.  But Mary is there to help us.  She helps inspire Hope.  No matter how damaged things become.  In the end everything will come to resolution. (I also think the music changes dramatically here to emphasize the importance that Hope is called for in spite of our shortcomings and the suffering of the world.) If you quiet your thoughts and feelings so your heart .  The “tune” is a relationship with the Trinity.  When all members of the communion Saints are united in the Body of Christ.  This brings up a lot of imagery.  To persevere in Faith, Hope, and Love, Peter is the “Rock” of the Church.  It could be thought of as a “baptism” of rock music.  Of course she is ;-)

I found the lyrics for Stairway Here:

http://www.elyrics.net/read/l/led-zeppelin-lyrics/stairway-to-heaven-lyrics.html