FAITH TEACHING MOTIVATIONAL CONSTRUCTS, TIME CONSTRUCTS AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES CHAPTER 5

MOTIVATIONAL CONSTRUCTS, TIME CONSTRUCTS AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES CHAPTER 5

Rychlak’s (1981) second, third and fourth questions ask: On what basis does the personality structure act or behave? How does the personality change over time? And, how does one account for the individual differences of people? The questions boil down to understanding what motivates people to grow and change and to answer the question of why we are all different from one another.

Kenyon and Hagin discuss motivation in a way similar to the discussion of the struggle between the id, ego, and superego in Freud’s theory. There is an ongoing striving for dominance (hegemony) among the three different parts of the personality. Just as in Freud, the id, ego, and superego struggle for primacy, in the Faith teaching, the physical, the sense knowledge, and the spirit struggle for hegemony. Just as in Freud, the process of this struggle and the outcome, explain how one’s personality comes to be, in a similar manner, so it is with the Faith Teachers.

The Process of the struggle to grow as mature Christian personalities

Kenyon (1971) writes: “When the spirit receives Eternal Life, it begins a war against the senses that rule the mind that has received all of its impulses from the human body. It demands ascendancy over the mind.” (p. 6)

Hagin (1978) adds: Even though your spirit is born again, even though your spirit has the Holy Spirit abiding within: if the mind isn’t renewed (or as James says, the soul saved) with the Word, then the mind, which has been educated through the body and through the physical senses, will side in with the body and the two will frame up on your spirit to keep you a baby Christian.(p 69)

Bottom line is that the personality is being formed as its different parts struggle with each other. We can reveal a fleshly dominated personality, a mentally dominated personality, or a spiritually dominated personality, as the different parts assume control.