What Do You Know About Yourself?

Pick up any woman's magazine these days and there is some sort of self-quiz inside. Though of questionable validity, by simply answering the questions may discover things about yourself you didn't know, like how your favorite color provides insight into your personality, or why your choice of pet characterizes you, to how you and your spouse could have a better sex life. When I see these I wonder why anyone would take them. Certainly I have better things to do...

But once in a while, I take them anyway. Why? Sometimes it's fun. So if you also enjoy an occasional moment to respond to these little questionnaires, why not answer one that tells you something meaningful about yourself?

So here is one that barely borders on meaningful, if that. I certainly won't vouch for its accuracy. Its usefulness may simply be, for the theological neophyte, to open doors of inquisitiveness concerning the history of your own denomination or the Christian church in general. Your results could be:

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
Emergent/Postmodern
Neo-Orthodox
Roman Catholic
Charismatic/Pentecostal
Classical Liberal
Reformed Evangelical
Modern Liberal
Fundamentalist

If you've never come across these terms but end up being labeled as something you're not familiar with, investigate it, especially if you didn't "score" where you thought you would.

Why? Because although parish nurses advocate medical care, we deal with human beings from a wholeness perspective. If I dropped the medical advocacy issues I deal with on one side of a scale and the emotional/mental health issues on the other side, the emotional/mental side would slam to the ground, launching the medical advocacy side into low earth orbit. Everything that is medically related has emotion and psychological issues interwoven. You cannot address the former without confronting the later.

I absolutely believe that the only way to gain insight into the psychology of any individual is by having first learned about yourself. I'm convinced that without the earnest, detailed and often painful work of self-exploration and analysis, we will forever be blind to the inner workings of another. Though we can never be totally self-aware nor achieve total understanding of another, we are not to throw our hands in the air in defeat without trying. It does mean that for us to even approach a level where we can be useful to others, we must first look at ourselves. Anything that may help us do that could be a useful tool.

Does that mean this little quiz linked to above is useful. Well...maybe not this one, unless you take it a bit further. However, in the future I will post a few tools that may help you to discover how fascinating it is to help people deal with their inner beings after first examining your own. If it takes simple, little questionnaires to start that process, so be it. I know we are all worth it - both you and the people you care for. God created - and he said that it was good!