Myself: I, Me, Mine

Individuality is a smaller term than personality. 

• We speak of an individual animal, an individual person, an individual thing. 
• An individual person is one by himself, 
• he takes up so much space, 
• requires so many cubic feet of air, and so forth.
• Photo: L'Alchimiste - Paris Coffee Shop

Personality is infinitely more. 

• Possibly the best illustration we can use is that of a lamp. 
• A lamp unlit will illustrate individuality; 
• a lighted lamp will illustrate personality. 
• The lighted lamp takes up no more room, 
• but the light permeates far and wide; 
• so the influence of personality goes far beyond that of individuality. 
• Photo: Paper & Cup - London coffee shop

“You are the light of the world,” said our Lord.

• Individually I do not take up much room, 
• but my influence is far beyond my calculation. 
• When we use the term personality, 
• we use the biggest mental conception we have; 
• Photo: The Greens - Berlin coffee shop

...that is why we call God a Person, 

• because the word person has the biggest import we know. 
• I do not call God an individual,
• I call God a Person. 
• He may be a great deal more, but at least He must be that. 
• Photo: Fragments - Paris coffee shop 

It is necessary to remember this... 

• when the personality of God is denied 
• and He is taken to be a tendency. 
• If God is only a tendency, He is much less than I am. 
• Human personality is always too big for me. 
• When I come to examine and trace the Bible teaching 
• I shall find that I am much too complex to understand myself.
• Photo: The Milkman - Edinburgh coffee shop

Another illustration of personality, more often used, is the following: 

• an island may be easily explored, 
• yet how amazed we are when we realize that it is the top of a mountain, 
• whose greater part is hidden under the waves of the sea 
• and goes sheer down to deeper depths than we can fathom. 
• Photo: Tatte - coffee shop in Boston

The little island represents the conscious personality. 

• The part of myself of which I am conscious is a very tiny part, 
• there is a greater part underneath about which I know nothing; 
• consequently there are upheavals from beneath that I cannot account for.
• Photo: Bakeri - coffee shop in Brooklyn 

I cannot grasp myself at all. 

• I begin by thinking I can, 
• but I have to come to the biblical standpoint that no one knows himself; 
• the only One who knows him is God. 
• “There is a way that seems right to a man, 
• but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 16:25).
• Photo: Sub Rosa Bakery - coffee shop in Richmond, Virginia

Individuality, then, is a smaller term than personality. 

• Personality means that peculiar, incalculable being that is meant 
• when I speak of me as distinct from everybody else. 
• I might say, “Oh, I cannot understand myself”; of course I can’t! 
• “Nobody else understands me”; of course they don’t! 
• There is only one Being who understands me, 
• and that is my Creator.
• Photo: Boot Cafe - coffee shop in Paris

Adapted Excerpt From

Biblical Psychology

Oswald Chambers