To elaborate upon the old schoolyard retort: sticks and stones can break my bones, but insulting words which I consider to bear no legitimate correspondence to reality are, despite being unable to cause me physical harm*, yet at times frustratingly able to send me into unproductive introspection.
(*- No, despite living in Taiwan I have yet to encounter the legendary Lion's Roar kung fu ability. Actually my experience thus far is that Americans are both more excited about and more likely to be training in Asian martial arts than Asian people are. A friend explained the reason, but it will have to wait for a relevant post.)
INTPs can be a bit thin-skinned. This comes partly from our tendency towards polite and reasonable social behavior. We would not randomly insult someone out of anger, and if we do, it tends to be sarcastic, methodical, and cutting, a katana strike at some real flaw which really does hurt the person. To simply toss unspecific insults at someone because we're angry with them would be worse than wrong, it would be inelegant. Unfortunately, other people may perceive our analytical comments as insults, something to which we are often oblivious; sometimes, ironically, because those people aren't thin-skinned and simply take it in stride. (If they know us well, they may be used to it and realize we don't mean it that way)
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| Thank God for the Mrs. Hudsons of the world... |
Still, that preference for politeness and reasonableness (as we perceive them) leads us to typically avoid insults and provoking language in general, as they lead to angry emotional reactions, confrontational behavior, and escalations of stressful social situations, all of which INTPs prefer to avoid if possible. So -irrationally, I must admit- we often expect other people to play by the same rules. But many people don't. They've had hard lives, they're stressed today, they simply don't think much before they speak, they don't view you as a peer and thus don't feel it necessary to extend courtesy towards you... there are lots of reasons why someone doesn't think twice about shooting an insult. They have a headache and aren't even the slightest bit interested in how that relates to something you read about plate tectonics the other day, and can't you get out of their way already?
Perhaps you are an INTP reading this, and you can simply shrug or chuckle and let the insult slide like water off a duck's back. This could theoretically be based in pride ("Did a worm speak just now? Amusing..."), but if your reaction is of that kind, stop reading this and repent before God graciously cuts you off at the knees and lets you hobble around on the stumps for a while to learn humility. If not, then it's a valuable quality. I suspect, however, that many are like me. I catch the insult in a little bubble, a protective mechanism to limit its hurtful potential, and began peering inside and analyzing it, beginning to dissect the contents, introspectively. Is this true of me? Is this a fault which others perceive which I've been blind to? Is this an area in which I have a natural weakness, or is it due to laziness or other misconduct? Do I have responsibility for making sure this is an insult which will be inapplicable the next time someone offers it? Et cetera, ad nauseum. I've lost many hours of my life to these kind of depressing ruminations. (Some introspection is good, but for INTPs it's like our Fortress of Solitude where we can hide for ages)
Mission Field Insults
Despite inheriting the Chinese cultural indirectness, Taiwanese can be quite forthright with insults. This is especially true of physical appearance, which is not taboo like it is in America, where one has to be very careful even with positive comments on someone's appearance. In Taiwan, "wow, you got fat," is a totally normal comment, one I've heard several times upon returning from living in America (truly is the Standard American Diet called "SAD"), and heard directed at other people as well. I personally am not especially bothered by this kind of insult, since being an INTP, I have a tendency to view my body as simply a physical shell. I do prefer to be in shape, and so if I let my body get so out of shape that people begin to remark on it, then I deserve whatever comments I receive, and typically they will motivate me to do something about it. But for INTPs ultimately it is the mind that matters.
That means insulting my lack of knowledge in an area in which I considered myself fairly well-versed will get you a lot farther than a physical insult. At the same time, prizing rationality as I do, I may give you a 'touche,' and resolve to further my knowledge in that area. "Correct a wise man and he will love you" (Prov 9:8b) applies to INTPs, even those of us who would claim to be far from wise, depending on how the correction is administered. I may even upgrade my opinion of you, since someone who can be my teacher even in a small way is someone who can help me in my relentless task to forge order from the chaos of existence and a comprehensive theory which encompasses all of my experiences, as I have explained in a previous post.
Questioning my judgement or thought processes will get you a reaction, however, as you're trying to undermine my most important tool for making my way in the world. It would be like telling a fashion designer not that a particular outfit of theirs was a failure, but that they were going colorblind. And questioning my motives might get you a fairly hostile reaction, though that's probably of most people regardless of personality.
My basic premise is this:
On the mission field, the thin-skinned may not last long.
You are in a culture that doesn't understand yours, among coworkers you didn't choose and who inevitably will sometimes rub you the wrong way, and often looking like an idiot to the locals as you try to make sense of a new language and lifestyle. People will insult you, it will happen. It may happen quite frequently.
Some favorite insults I've received in Taiwan:
(in Mandarin from local people)
"Wow, you got fat." (Me: "Haha, yeah") "No, I mean, really. You really got fat."
"I had thought your Chinese was impressive, but it's actually not that good"
"You foreigner teaching these children is an educational failure"
"Young man, I can tell from your face that you're ignorant"
Those are just a few of many more. The first one didn't bother me overmuch (I always gain weight in America and lose it in Taiwan), but the others rankled quite a bit; I don't try to remember insults or cultivate resentment (I attempt to actively avoid doing so) but I still very clearly remember the situation in which each of those were given (The third one was from an angry hobo! I kid you not).
The insults are not only cross-cultural, however. I've heard stories of some cringeworthy public encounters, with missionaries saying things to other missionaries that are just short of nose-punching territory. The mission field is a stressful place, and tempers flare. Teamwork takes constant active effort to maintain, and if not, can fall apart quickly with disastrous effects for the ministries and gospel effort in that location. Even if in our generation such dramatic personality clashes are less common, one is no less likely to encounter passive-aggressive sniping, which is in many ways worse. (Speaking generally, and not of my specific team. I feel blessed in my fellow missionaries)
So it's basically inevitable that if you let those insults simmer, and develop into resentment, cracks will develop rapidly in the "one heart and mind" that we should have as fellow missionaries. If things really get bad, people will leave the field. And if they're from local people, then you will find your motivation and willingness to embrace and learn local culture begins to drop and turn into a desire to separate yourself from it, retreat from it, to return home, or into a bubble of fellow expats who understand you, or at least insult you for reasons you both understand.
For INTPs, the solution is not to endlessly mull over these insults, trying to explain them away; that's an effort inevitably doomed to failure. If you do succeed in explaining it away, then you begin to resent the person who offered the insult, and might still harbor doubts about whether it might not be true after all; INTPs are masters of self-doubt and insecurity. And if you don't succeed in explaining it away, you are left with the conclusion that you really are deficient in that area. You've taken a further step towards judging yourself based on other people's opinions, and not God's opinion of you.
There is not even much profit in defending one's self at the time. That is my natural reaction, wanting the record to be straight one way or another. In cross-cultural situations, it often feels (rightly or wrongly) that the insult is stemming from a cultural clash, and explaining your reasoning or how things were different in your home culture will clarify the misunderstanding, leading to the retraction of the insult. This has basically never worked, even with otherwise fairly nice people. You are merely looking like someone who can't handle insults, which in many cultural and subcultural contexts matters much more than whether or not the particular insult is true.
This, of course, is common knowledge for many people. I am not pretending that everyone suffers from the same thin skin problem. But I suspect many INTPs are going through a similar internal process, even if they're good at hiding it on the outside.
The solution, I submit, is simply to grow thicker skin. If a fishing hook gets caught in your finger, trying to jerk it out will often cause a lot more bleeding than pushing it through and out the other side and cutting the barbed end off. The "tougher" solution is actually quicker, less painful, and heals more quickly. An insult can be dealt with similarly. Just accept it and move on. A tactic I've observed in Taiwan is to simply agree and thank the person, and I'm working on adopting it.
Also, INTPs are especially good at the clever sort of humor or wordplay which can defuse an insult or even turn it around. Instead of an angry retort, self-deprecating humor or some other response might carry the day. But that's all based on being able to "take" the insult. Just take it. A winsome response can then be used if appropriate, but not out of defensiveness.
Turning the Other Cheek
I mentioned martial arts at the beginning, and it provides a helpful analogy here. A lot of martial arts styles observe that while one can meet force with force, that can be problematic and cause injury. Of course, Muay Thai goes the other way; after beating down a few banana trees kick by kick, meeting force with force causes injury to the other guy. But as followers of Christ we are more or less specifically commanded not to use the Muay Thai style of insult resolution. (That "turn the other cheek" verse that people argue about is talking about taking an insult, not an actual dangerous blow.)
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| This is not what Jesus meant |
Many styles, wanting to avoid things like dying young from brain trauma, have techniques which redirect the force of a blow or intended blow, moving with it and using the fighter's own momentum against him. In the end, one has exerted much less energy, to much greater effect. Sometimes the fight can be entirely ended in this way, and at least one fighter is keeping a clear head, something that appeals strongly to an INTP; coolly parrying a blow with efficiency and technique. It's how we like to see ourselves, at least. Yet the natural INTP way of dealing with insults, by contrast, might be more akin to an untrained man, who upon being struck is either mainly concerned with trying to establish that he is in the right and the other party is in the wrong, or if sufficiently hurt, lashes out instinctively to hurt back.
But the well-trained martial artist not only knows how to defend himself well, he realizes that he may not need to strike back at all. The knowledge that he can defend himself easily allows him to take blows if he wishes, not having an inferiority complex to defend. He is not concerned with others' accusations, because he knows himself.
If we are secure in our identity in Christ, knowing who we are, and have trained ourselves in the art of graciously dealing with insults and harsh comments or criticism, we need not be taken aback by them, nor need they develop into divisive resentment. We can turn the other cheek; we can take it.
As in all things, Christ is our model. When attacked by the Pharisees, Jesus never sunk to their level, He never "hit back." Sometimes He replied with piercing insight, sometimes with winsome wordplay, and during His mock trial and humiliation He simply did not open His mouth.
So in the end, if all else fails, and the insult hits home, and we can't respond appropriately, we only have one response: to forgive as we have been forgiven. Not forgiving doesn't exact any kind of revenge on the other person, it only hurts us, and we have that command, that as Christ forgave us of a multitude of sins, so we must forgive one another.
May we be strong to do so, by the grace that is in Him.
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