It’s been two months! Where have you been?

Hello again, everyone. A lot has happened since my last post – the most significant being my graduation from college, with a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering. My focus was set upon that, as well as my endeavors of work, life, and everything else in lieu of adding to this blog, but I want to start updating it more frequently, on a regular basis, now that my schedule is not so dynamic. Perhaps Sunday evenings would be a good, regular time to create posts – it would afford me a bit of mental traction, and a brilliant way to “exercise” my thoughts, so to speak.

So you’re an introvert? [Insert token surprised reaction]

Anyone who knows me in real life knows how much of a basket case I am in social situations. Outwardly, I am a very distracted person. People see me as confusing, and confused or disoriented likewise. Whatever comes out of my mouth, however seldom it happens, is usually not understood by anyone else in the room. This is because inwardly, I am vastly different from everybody I know. This doesn’t come as a surprise – I am better attuned to my thoughts than anyone else, of course. But there is such a wide chasm between my thoughts and the thoughts I perceive of other people that, even though I may share one or more of their interests, there doesn’t seem to be a connection. In a way, it feels like I can never be understood by anyone else – perhaps, in part, because many of my thoughts are unintelligible even to myself.

There isn’t much of a tactful way to put it, so I’ll do what I do best and be tactless about it: my level of thought is on a different plane of existence from nearly everyone else. I am too smart for most people to understand me or my thoughts. Most people consider it offensive on the very, very seldom occasion I tell anyone this, but its verisimilitude frightens even myself – it’s most of the reason I have a hard time relating or appealing to anyone. Of course, it isn’t because I am strictly smarter than everyone else that they can’t decrypt my thoughts – I have a certain thought process, unique from everyone else, and for whatever reason, my thought process is incompatible with that of a lot of people. Typically, the only way I can converse with most others is by truncating my thoughts into something that is intelligible to whoever else may be hearing them – but it’s impossible to think exclusively about those truncated thoughts, thus my mind wanders and thinks of other things, thus I become distracted and unfocused. And when I’m tired, my thoughts don’t slow down – they simply fire in much more random directions, seemingly at the same speed, making it hard for me to focus. Strangely, I find I am much more creative when I’m very tired, which is most likely why I feel the urge to do things late at night (like writing this post) and oftentimes have trouble sleeping. The video below summarizes it fairly well (although I don’t believe all of these problems are entirely exclusive to intelligent people):

Sociability may seem like a negligible trait to many who don’t want to attribute themselves to any generalizations, but over the years, I have needed to come to terms with my introversion. Being able to state my mind in no uncertain terms, I will say that I despise generalizations – that is, making a definitive claim about an individual based on their demographic, affiliations, or any other “group” that bears no logical relevance to the claim itself. Although groups can effectively be generalized in order to describe its tendencies, many things can go awry – an individual may be completely different from their “group”, for example; that is to say, correlation does not always imply causation. A generalization is an empirical mechanism which attempts to describe the behavior of a group; in terms of human generalizations, they become dangerous when they perpetuate adversarial treatment, ostracism, and in its worst case, dehumanization – all of which perpetuate from fear. This applies to any individual, of any group, for any reason, regardless of politics or popular social stance. However, these groups are formed for a reason in the first place – there is some commonality between them, in which an attempt is made to describe that commonality. Although the generalization of introverts in popular culture may have as much merit as a tone-deaf person does as a professional singer, it exists nonetheless, and for a reason. But enough rambling about sociology. The thing I wanted to address is this:

If we as Christians are called to go forth and make disciples, where does that leave introverts?

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Romans 12:2, King James Version

The Bible tells us that if we love God, we will keep His commandments (John 14:15). Among these commandments are more specific directions, such as preaching the gospel (Mark 16:15), keeping your word (Matthew 5:37), acquiring wisdom and maintaining innocence (Matthew 10:16), and living a life without fear (Matthew 10:26), as well as a multitude of others. In order for us to follow the Lord to the fullest extent, we must keep all of his commandments, which is only possible through God’s intervention in our naturally sinful lives. It can be seen in this way: if God is truly the center of our lives in an ideal lifestyle, and there is sin present in our current lifestyle, the difference between our lifestyle and God’s will for us is our sin. Sin, by definition, is the transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4) – without these transgressions, we are in perfect alignment with God’s will. However, sin is so well-encapsulated in our earthly livelihoods that it infects our very nature – deemed our “sinful nature” – and any path we tread away from the Word is apart from God. One does not sin accidentally – if you sin, you are apart from God, and if you are apart from God, you are sinning. Therefore, if we are apart from God and not following Him, there exist one or more transgressions. The fascinating part about sin (and God’s grace) is the sheer complexity of it; sin is so impossibly difficult to avoid that none can actually do it (as mentioned in Romans 3:10). Sin is a blight so invasive and potent that the only thing that can save us from it is God’s grace – and such grace is so abundant that it overcomes even the vilest of transgressions (see Romans 5:20).

Introversion and extroversion are unique personality traits – extroverts tend to have a better handle on their communication with the outside world, whereas introverts are much more in touch with their own thoughts. Both have their own generalizations – but as I said before, generalizations can be a dangerous thing. When we conform to these generalizations, and accept that it is just “who we are” because convention declares it to be so, our conformity becomes an idol, above the divine will of God. This is all too common in our American culture – we align ourselves with an idealized version of a generalization of one of our traits instead of God, even as Christians, and wonder why our lives are so imperfect. We are called not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the will of God, by aligning ourselves with it (Romans 12:2). This serves as an ever-important reminder of our conviction to “break the mold” of the way of man, instead navigating the lives which God wants us to have.

Now, if there exists sin in our lives, there exist certain transgressions in our lives. Even these transgressions are unique to each person, and no two people will have the same reconciliation with God. If that is the case, then it can be said that introverts and extroverts may struggle with different, specific transgressions. For example, introverts may be worse at going out and preaching the gospel or coping with fear, and extroverts may be less apt to grow in wisdom or overcome the urge to conform. However, rather than disparaging introverts or extroverts for their faults, it would be much more beneficial to the classification of both personalities to analyze them for their strengths – after all, we are all children of a creative God, and there is more to our personalities than the latent sins that rest within us.

To put it simply, God has created us all with different strengths and gifts – and introversion is not an impedance in following God’s law, but rather a set of strengths that deviate from that of extroverts. Some of us may be more sociable than others, while some may desire to spend their time creating things in turn themselves. However, beyond the faults that can be analyzed from our personalities, we have been created to follow Him – and despite all our unique differences that God has created us with, we all have the capability (and obligation) to follow Him in a special way – a way unique to every one of us, between us and our omnipresent God. Therefore, we can live our lives in the unique way that God created us to by praying for guidance and revelation of God’s will for us, growing in wisdom and understanding of the Word, and acting as we are convicted – without compromising His will for our sinful nature at any step of the way.

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^[1] Munroe, Randall. (2017) xkcd. Retrieved from https://xkcd.com/1089/

^[2] “8 Struggles of Being a Highly Intelligent Person”. YouTube, uploaded by Psych2Go, 24 June, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN3KT7IERSw