Don’t you just love midterms and final exams?

The Workout

The workout this week is a self-administered examination of your soul. The assessment will focus on identified core, strong-soul, outcomes and has a possible score of 120. This score is based on a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being the highest) for the following 12 different, testable attributes:

• Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, knowledge, perseverance, and humility.

The assessments must be experientially based, i.e. you must have an encounter or experience that provides opportunity to measure the component. (In other words you must live life; no sequestering away in a monastery retreating from temptation.)  For example:  an irate coworker enters your office and mocks, derides and scorns your performance at a recent project meeting. This becomes an opportunity for you to measure, by your responses, 1. how patient you are; 2. your level of humility; and 3. your degree of self control.

You may require multiple experiences to be able to test all 12 but each attribute must be measured through a real life test this week.  Don’t sit and think about what your score is; rather, live through an event and watch your score happen.  We’re trying to measure behaviors and “what is” not what we want it to be.

You may also find that an opportunity to test patience for you won’t be a test for someone else.  We’re all going to be challenged in different ways.

Potential Difficulties

There are several problems with a test like this. Humility, validity and subjectivity are some. The fact that some may be unable to score themselves highly in the category “humility” because of the seeming contradiction is a problem.  Validity and subjectivity are related. How accurate can a test like this be if self-administered?  Part 2 of the test (coming next week) will address these issues.

A problem we need to address immediately relates to the definitions of each component.  Below are some descriptions that you can use to help gauge your scores.  You can select other definitions, just make sure you use the same ones when the test comes up again.

Measures

Love – among other things, love, is defined in the Bible through some important “nots”. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it is not rude, it is not self-seeking, is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love is a sacrificial other focus rather than a selfish me focus.

Joy – joy is a deep, foundational happiness that is independent of circumstance or situation.

Peace – the absence of war. When we discuss peace as a attribute of soul-health we’re talking about the cessation of conflict, tension and insecurity within us.

Patience – the dictionary definition of patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset”. It’s not easily flustered or rushed; it takes the long-term view.

Kindness – is consideration, friendliness, politeness, caring.

Goodness – doing the right thing at the right time with the right motive; morally virtuous.

Faithfulness – loyalty, trustworthiness.

Gentleness – is a rod of iron wrapped in layers of cotton; softness; “strength under control” (Weber).

Self-control – the ability to regulate self; the capacity to choose my actions rather than have them chosen for me; Stephen Covey describes this as being proactive rather than reactive.

Knowledge – wisdom, deep learning, sensitivity; one aspect of this that is relevant to the test is self-awareness and consciousness.

Perseverance – tenacity, the steadfastness in the face of difficulty or delay; the never-give-up attitude.

Humility – a life priority structure that places others above you; the absence of arrogance and/or haughtiness.