An Obadiah Slope column
Readers will probably think Obadiah is stating the perfectly obvious, but no score on a personality test is an excuse for constantly picking a fight. Here’s an example of a Christian minister who thinks differently.
Over to Youth Pastor Ekama Eni of St Paul And St Andrew, a progressive United Methodist Church in New York City.
“Perhaps the practice of keeping on and taking on one’s enemies comes so easily to me, is because I’m an eight on the Enneagram, and my astrological sign is in Cancer.
“Eights on the Enneagram, a personality test, are categorized as self-confident and assertive. They are really, really into controlling one’s environment, though it’s not working. It’s still too hot in here, and eights have no issue taking on confrontation. At our best, eights use this attitude to improve the lives of others. That drives us, keeps us going.
I’m also a Cancer, and Cancers are an astrological sign, one of 12, right? Born between June 22nd and July 22nd, and our little symbol is the crab. We are characterized as being deeply, perhaps overly emotional. We are free-flowing and malleable, adaptable to the people around us and our environment.
Cancers are like, they’re criers, which some of you have seen that in me. However, when one sees someone or says someone is crying all the time, it’s usually because they’re sad, and sometimes, sure, but my peak driving emotion is anger.
This is an example from the left, but any pastor whose “peak driving ambition is anger” is in the wrong job.
The sad thing is that many, many readers of the Obadiah Slope column will have encountered pastors like that.
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Talking of personality tests: “The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Personality Test is Astrology for Businesses” is the headline for a Substack story by The Health Nerd. Scientific American is a bit kinder stating “A popular personality test beats out astrology but trails far behind scientific measure of personal traits.”
The Scientific American article by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz and Spencer Greenberg contrasts Myers Briggs with a more recent test used by Psychologists called the Big Five test that rates people on conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness to experience and extraversion. They used a sample of 559 people with known outcomes such as their number of close friends and exercise routines. Myers-Briggs-style tests outdid astrology – so Mr Health Nerd is wrong-ish.
“On average, the Big Five test was about twice as accurate as the MBTI-style test for predicting these life outcomes, placing the usefulness of the MBTI-style test halfway between science and astrology—literally. When we tried predicting these same life outcomes using astrological sun signs (e.g., whether someone is a Pisces or Aries), we achieved zero prediction accuracy.”
If you have a Myers-Briggs test result hanging around, Scientific America offers a free version of the Big Five test to see which is more accurate for you personally.
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A group of alligators is called a congregation!
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We’ll always have Paris (for a couple of weeks): As you watch the Olympics don’t forget to pray for Christian’s witnessing to the athletes and tourists.
France 1 Million’s vision is to gift a million prayers from the worldwide Church for France in this significant year.
A million prayers were mobilised for the Tokyo Games in 2021, and the impact of this legacy continues across Japan. Paris 24 offers the same opportunity to pray for France, the safety and success of the Games, the Church and the many outreaches taking place throughout the Summer.
Sign Up at www.france1million.world
For daily updates on what the churches in France and their visitors/supporters are up to, check out Love France.
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Question of the week: Should Christians maintain their rage over a Last Supper parody that was part of the Olympic Games opening ceremony? The name of this website is a clue that Onadiah is not keen on engaging in Twitter—or Facebook-fed outrage. And is repeating the image a good way to protest? Most anti-statements seem to have featured it.
But the Anglican Bishop of Christchurch makes a fair point
And the CEO of Wesley Mission chimes in with the big picture.
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Widen the gap: This week, Obadiah reported that two theological colleges serving our First Nations people closed due to funding problems. They were the School of Indigenous Studies within the University of Divinity based in Melbourne and Wontulp-Bi-Buya in Cairns. We wrote a straight news report. But this is a personal column, and it is appropriate to declare how sad it is that these institutions have closed.
The University of Divinity trains clergy for the Anglican, Catholic, Uniting, Coptic Orthodox and Lutheran churches. Could they not subsidise it? The pattern repeats for Wontulp-Bi-Buya, which was supported by the Catholic, Anglican, Uniting and Lutheran churches in Queensland.
Churches that make big claims about supporting First Nations peoples have let them down.