Did Jesus (and Mary) have unique personalities? by this question I mean:
when a person is perfectly sinless, will that person still have a personality different from others?
Did Jesus and Mary have peculiar quirks or habits? Perhaps a certain unique sense of humor?
I’m not talking here about unique learned skills; I am aware that Jesus learned to be a carpenter. I’m talking about personality traits.
That’s a good question – do people that are completely without fault always act the exact same way? At first glance, we might seem justified in saying yes – a person without fault, when put in a situation where most people would do wrong, would always choose to perform the correct action – indeed, would always take the perfectly correct route of action. If prompted to lie, they will tell the truth; if tortured, they will forgive; if hated, they will love. They seem rather similar, don’t they! It seems at first that we might then be justified in saying that they have no unique personality. Unfortunately, to think so would be to completely miss the point of personality (and indeed goodness)!
You see, personality is not *merely *a collection of moral wrongs and rights, though that is a large part of it. The world isn’t only full of people who are varying shades of black, gray, and white; rather, it is composed for the most part of many people with varying hues and goals. It is neither moral nor immoral to preference playing sports or writing books, for example. These are simply matters of taste, like one might like strawberry ice-cream and not chocolate – they have no particular moral spectrum to them that might lead one to choose one over the other. Even the base virtues of personality need not be exactly the same – unlike God, no human being is all talented. One may have a passion for seeing justice served, and become a judge; another may be a skilled compromiser, and become a diplomat; still a third may be best to show compassion for the poor, and may choose to become a worker at a charity.
Further, this specialization in types of virtues is a good and not a bad thing – certainly everyone should possess all of the various virtues and as much of each virtue as they can. We cannot, however, expect even a perfect human being to perform *every *virtuous task set before them (at least, not with equal talent). Some people cannot comfort well, others cannot act as leaders, still others may not have the financial acumen necessary to run a charity well. Talents are given by God and are of themselves good, but no one needs all of them to have full goodness. We use our talents where they are best placed, allowing us to specialize in a particular field and improve our talent even more in that field. Thus, differences in personality that allow people to do different things actually end up being better and arguably necessary to achieve full good.
Finally, when we truly understand what good
is, we see that in fact, it must by definition increase personality, even if it causes people to act the same in some cases. Goodness is in many ways perfection – it is drawing things together towards their purpose rather than defiling and destroying their purpose, like badness. It is the apple, the true thing itself, badness is merely a rot, that corrupts and destroys the true thing. When people are drawn closer and closer into God’s nature of goodness, they are not being drawn into some vortex that sucks away all of them and turns them into clones. Paradoxically, by becoming more like Him, they are becoming more like their true selves, with more freedom to act the way they truly are, without the restrictions of sin, anger, and pride destroying their personality. It is ironically enough,
badness, which destroys a personality, focusing it inward on one sin until there is nothing left. Mary and Jesus are unique; Satan and his Devils are mere clones, drawn into themselves until there is nothing left save the badness.
I would highly recommend a reading (or rereading) of C. S. Lewis *The Great Divorce * if you want a fuller picture of what this means, her explains it so well!
