I am a classic introvert. When I have taken personality tests, I have always scored at the extreme end of the introvert spectrum. Our culture doesn’t know what to do with introverts. People make all sorts of judgments when looking at my personality type. I’ve had people suggest that I must be wise because I am thinking all the time. Well, yes, I am thinking, but I would be brain dead if I wasn’t. I have also had people think that I was angry all the time. NOTE: quiet does not equal angry. Some have thought that I was aloof. Not likely. I just don’t have anything to say at the moment.
Being introverted just means that people drain energy from me. An extrovert gains energy being with people. Our culture values extroverts because of the energy they bring to social gatherings. That’s okay, and I am fine with that truth and with being an introvert in this culture.
We all make judgments about people based on appearances only. If someone could look into our minds, I believe that our judgments in these cases are most likely wrong more than 90 percent of the time. Nevertheless, we should be wise in how we present ourselves to others.
In the book of Acts, the apostles John and Peter healed a man, in the name of Jesus, at the temple. Then they began to presch about Jesus. The Jewish leadership had them arrested. The apostles were thoroughly questioned and then threatened to not speak this way again. Acts 4:13 says, “Now as they observed the confidence of Peter and John and understood that they were uneducated and untrained men, they were amazed, and began to recognize them as having been with Jesus.”
So the leaders judgment about these men, just by looking at them, was that they had been with Jesus. What do people think about you, just by looking at you. I already told you what they tend to think about me by looking at me. Oh how I would prefer that they would recognize that I have been with Jesus. I am working on that and praying about that. What about you?
Reluctant Retiree 