Myers-Briggs Type Indicator combines the techniques of the therapist and the manger, purporting to be a neutral tool that identifies my "personality type" within manageable categories that can be used to differentiate those with whom I am compatible from those with whom I am not. Even more, bureaucratic structures in churches are increasingly mandating that such inventories become a primary means of determining whether someone is or is not fit for leadership in the Church. Thomas Long aptly reveals the dangers of the Myers-Briggs in a short piece entitled "Myers-Briggs and Other Modern Astrologies." He writes,From Embodying Forgiveness: A Theological Analysis.In short, the MBTI profiles read like horoscopes from Camelot. Taken too seriously, they can be perilously close to fortune cookies for the human potential movement. In contrast, running through the Christian theological tradition is a view of humanity that is far more complex, at once far more sober about human failings, far more truly hopeful about the human prospect, and far more infused with mystery, featuring a landscape of exhilarating peaks of communion with the holy and also valleys of tragic denial of our humanity. (Theology Today 49/3 [1993])
The Myers-Briggs is not simply a neutral technique for evaluating personality types and managing people; rather, it is an instrument predicated both on modernity's bifurcation of ends and means and on its construction of the self as an enduring, discrete entity that is impervious to cultural, moral, and theological shapes.
A "restless" theologian in service to the church of Jesus Christ