typing, etc

[a mere housewife]

Rev. Winzer, if you have time to engage (I understand if you don't, and don't wish to be demanding) -- elsewhere you said this:

I understand that we all engage in typology to some extent, and we would like to find a good use for it, but the reality is it serves no other purpose but "management" at best, and can easily become manipulative. The Christian is under new management (sorry for the cliche) and the attempt to exercise management in this area is always going to be a hindrance rather than a help to Christian growth. A person does not know what grace and providence will do with him or with another. John 21:22.

I have two further questions:

Do you think Matthew Henry's point, quoted in the thread, referencing different dispositions in the church, invalid? ('Among God's Israel there is to be found a great variety of dispositions, contrary to each other, yet all contributing to the beauty and strength of the body . . . Let not those of different tempers and gifts, envy and censure one another, any more than those of different stature and complexion.' Matthew Henry-Thomas Scott on Genesis 49:13-21.)

Could it not also be manipulative not to recognise genuine created differences in relating to one another?

(Comments from others are welcome, of course.)

 

[MW]

There are differences and will be differences, and these are reflective of natural, cultural, social, and rational, as well as spiritual and moral, factors. Forbearance, forgiveness, humility, gentleness, compassion, etc., are requisites in order to be able to function with these differences in the body of Christ. So Matthew Henry's comment applies regardless of how we understand "tempers." The question is to what degree these "tempers" are normative and whether they might be altered.

One would need to clarify what a "genuine created difference" is. Is there any biblical reason to suggest that one person is created an extrovert while another person is created an introvert? I don't think so. I don't think those terms are helpful. They pressure people to act in certain ways which might not be wise or good.

I know as humans we naturally tend to "understand" people in order to be able to function alongside of them. But this is socially instinctive rather than philosophically developed. When it develops into a theory and is implemented for the purpose of helping others to accept their "weakness" and find their "strengths," it is difficult not to see it as dominating and manipulative to some degree.

 

[a mere housewife]

Thank you, Rev. Winzer. That helps to clarify.

I think one might have an example of 'created differences' in identical twins, who have grown up in the same environment, and have different dispositions? But there are also many providential factors in the way those are built on and I don't pretend to know where one ends and another begins: only that the providence is also from God.

I find the categories helpful -- but not if they trump the individual. It is not instinctive for me to understand some differences (my own get in the way), and it has helped to have them explained -- helped me in learning not only patience with struggles different than my own, but respect and delight for things I previously found inexplicable and frustrating. It has also humbled me with regard to my own ways of functioning -- it's so easy for me to feel self righteous or absolutely right about what is not moral, and is as situated about me as about another peson. If we are only trying to 'see through' people, to allow them no mystery before God or with us, to manage or pigeon hole them out of possibility for significant change (I am told that some people do change from functioning as an introvert to functioning as an extrovert: I don't believe that kind of change should be 'forced') -- it's certainly just another form of disrespect, and that is a valuable thing to be reminded of.