| Subject: Confusing Personality with Spirituality |
Author:
Anonymous1
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Date Posted: 01/10/04 11:30am
Your spirituality may change your personality. The mistake people make is that we think we're pretty good at being able to tell how it's happening in the people around us.
Over the years, I've heard it said that when you feel especially filled with the Holy Spirit, you will feel like singing, raising your hands in the air, socializing, and opening up in enthusiastic conversation with many other people. I've also heard that activities such as these can help people come into a group and open up, to cause them to further open their hearts to the Holy Spirit, which will in turn cause them to want to join in with these outgoing behaviors. While this is very true for the majority of the population, and most churches address this need, the need varies greatly from person to person, and with more depth than is commonly thought. Many extroverts and introverts alike can and do become "more extroverted", relatively speaking for each, as they gradually get to know people and become more comfortable with the type of worship service their church offers. And I think churches do a good service by encouraging people to outwardly express their spirituality.
The problem is that we always expect to see certain behaviors emerge as a person's relationships with God deepens. Or we feel that someone's relationship with God must be deeper based on emerging behaviors we see (or must not based on lack of these behaviors). We even assume "always" when we say "the eyes are the window to the soul," which ignores the fact that there are some academy award-winning moments out there, that never make it into the movies. We will readily admit that we are not always correct about what's in someone else's heart. But even after admitting to this, as bonafide human beings, we still believe we are right, with 100% zeal and fervor like never before, about someone else's "questionable" behavior. This is hypocrisy, and it's also one of the most unrecognized of sins. It's just my opinion that we often allow our certainty in God to leak over into other beliefs when we shouldn't. Especially when it comes to judging what's in another person's heart.
So with regard to spirituality, I believe there are a significant number of people whose needs are still unaddressed. And their ways of expressing spirituality may be mistakenly seen as weak and incomplete.
I'd like to hear what others have to say on this, either here or at www.voy.com/169471/
- Thanks.
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