Spiritual Fingerprints

Last night in response to comments on my In Love with Jesus? post, Codepoke passed on a link to a post titled Personality–transformed by God?. Here is an excerpt from it:

Your comments about MBTI vs. spirit-led life made me smile a bit, because it reminded me of a conversation I had with a very extraverted friend who couldn’t really grasp what I was explaining about being an introvert. She listened, a bit incredulously to my explanation, and at the end was like, “Well, that’s all fine and good, but doesn’t Jesus make any difference in your life? What’s it mean for Him to transform you?” I almost laughed right then, because I realized that the things I was saying that I thought were good, she was seeing as faults–perhaps she thought I was giving her insight into what was wrong with me! And so, was all that explanation just excusing my faults instead of letting Jesus transform me? I told her, “Well, I think it means I’ll look more like Him, but probably NOT more like you :)”

The post caused me to think about how different we all are ... different in gender ... different in race ... different in culture ... different in personality ... different in many other ways. So ... I am still processing ... why is it that I still want to make rules and generalizations around things like how we love Jesus and how we walk out our faith in Him? Could it be that I am still a bit insecure about what consistutes love and faith? Maybe I still am not content to love and trust in that way that is so deeply personal ... maybe I yet need a validation that I didn't think I needed.

I think that, in a very real sense, God has made us each to be very unique in the way that we love and the way that we trust. This goes against the grain for many of us because we have spent many many hours listening to people who define what it is to love and trust. Then someone comes along who loves so differently and trusts in a way that we are not used to ... these people should inspire us but instead they bring out our insecurities and cause us to retreat into what we are accustomed to. I wonder, maybe we are each created with spiritual fingerprints ... each of us having a unique expression of love and trust ... each with a very specific spiritual personality.