Disposition is a personality tendency, an habitual way of processing experience and responding to life. Akin to “temperament” that originally was studied with the worldview that the stars or planets had determining influence upon human behaviors. The words all have their etymological foundations in this erroneous worldview, but we now use the terms to speak of how an individual’s tendencies help them deal with life and living in identifiable patterns or tendencies.
The Bible makes it abundantly clear that we are created because Father wants us, that we were part of His eternal plan, and that Jesus accepted responsibility to create what Father wants. In this same way, the Bible clarifies that our origins have Divine design in them, blueprints of the details and particulars of destiny written into our individual personalities that are consistent with the “what-Gd-wants” of our very existence.
We begin with the most basic truth: “I exist because God wants me.” From there we understand that God wants me and has a purpose for my personal existence. I choose to refer to personal purpose as destiny. Therefore, the whole of life would be properly given to “destiny fulfillment.”
We continue with the understanding of gender, that Jesus creates a person male or female because gender is consistent with destiny. Gender confusion or rejection would be one of the most basic destructions of created destiny and disposition. To short circuit at this fundamental level would be to experience dysfunction of nearly every aspect of personal disposition and destiny. “I am male or female because that gender decision was consistent with the greater blueprint God has for my life.”
We then add the understanding that a recognizable tendency of personal disposition or temperament is part of created design, that Jesus has made us individually unique but with measurable tendencies that innately dominate our approach and response to life experiences.
Dispositional Tendencies
More than one approach is available for understanding what we’ve learned about human disposition. The oldest form of temperament categorization is more than 2,000 years old! This is a very old discussion! While the source of the discussion isn’t the Bible, per se, the discussion is answered by Scripture in a way that puts this reality into a Biblical worldview. That is, observable data fitted into the revelation of Scripture gives us a better understanding of created disposition. We understand that planets and stars are not the indicators by which we understand our responses to life. We understand that spiritual conditions are the best indicators of our responses to life: our own spiritual condition and the spiritual conditions created by Holy Spirit and other spiritual beings are the indicators the Bible presumes to be sources of influence.
The Bible presumes “the way things work” in the universe from a perspective of spiritual authority, power, and influence, that our physical world is responding to a spiritual world while at the same time functioning according to natural laws established by the Creator. Our sense of “super natural” is that Someone involved in the beginning remains involved now, and the Bible reveals that God is intricately involved.
So, the baseline for created disposition is “what God had in mind when He created,” and all discoveries that give me insight into that blueprint also gives me insight into purpose! God’s created design and my created destiny always agree!
Dispositional tendencies are a baseline, patterns of human behavioral tendencies observable and measurable in ways that inform me of what God had in mind. Dispositional tendencies can be windows to strengths and weaknesses. I do not possess all strengths or strength in every dynamic of human behavior: God created me with tendencies toward strengths and weaknesses that mark me uniquely with His intentions. Fighting with my created disposition means fighting against God’s intentions. So, having a good grasp on created disposition is powerful in discovering the blueprint of personal destiny God has for my life!
