Laura Seay: Hi, in addition to being ridiculous, this isn't an ancient Christian therapy method. Tim LaHaye invented it in a book called The Spirit-Controlled Temperament in 1966. LaHaye also coauthored the Left Behind series & wrote a bunch of terrible sex ed books & homophobic screeds.

Hi, in addition to being ridiculous, this isn't an ancient Christian therapy method. Tim LaHaye invented it in a book called The Spirit-Controlled Temperament in 1966. LaHaye also coauthored the Left Behind series & wrote a bunch of terrible sex ed books & homophobic screeds.

LaHaye also taught that depression has a spiritual root cause. And a lot of other pretty appalling stuff that had a big impact in American & global evangelicalism. Anyway, he died in 2016.

I was raised in Tim LaHay's church. They also taught classes in how to recognize cults (!) which were every group other than their group.

...and indirectly, how to recognize irony!

May his memory be erased. Didn't know he was dead but glad to hear it

Toxic af. Sad for kids who were pushed to read his garbage Left Behind books, which had adult & teen versions. www.vanityfair.com/news/2005/12...

Craig Unger on Tim LaHayewww.vanityfair.com Best-selling author and evangelical leader Tim LaHaye has contacts that extend to the White House. That could spell trouble, since his theology espouses a bloody apocalypse in Israel.

Overheard

may he rest in piss

Since when humorism was a Christian therapy or medicine? Humoral medicine or belief existed 500 to 400 years before Christ going back to ancient Egypt

No, but it was a fad the Evangelical movement picked up on. Nothing specifically Christian about it, they just found it useful for helping people figure out how they relate to the world and each other. Think of it as Myers-Briggs, but more woo-woo than business-speak.

MORE woo-woo than MBTI?

MBTI isn't that woo-woo; it may not be that great, but its goal is still getting (mostly) business people to figure out how to talk to each other and get along with different personality styles, including the kinds of people who aren't that great at introspection.

We'll agree to disagree.

I agree with Bill.

Myers-Briggs has no scientific basis. It's popular with human resources depts because it lets them classify candidates and staff by a spuriously systematic test; and with the MBT consultants they hire because it makes them money. E.g. intelligence and emotional understanding are not opposites.

hmm, I'm not aware of any of the classic MBTI axes implying intelligence & emotional understanding are opposites

It’s so accurate that I have answered the questions absolutely honestly and have gotten five different answers including being told I should work in areas that are completely antithetical to my actual personality.

Yeah, all personality tests are pretty woo-woo. Check out a.co/d/c5MPFOC

The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mi...a.co The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves [Paul, Annie Murphy] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shippi...

I agree to agree with kernator.com.

That’s a good analogy

It was widely marketed as “biblical”: both LaHayes 1966 work & Littauer’s “Personality Plus” 1983 rehash. Evangelicalism loathes scholarship, so despite the 4 humors not being at all “bible-based” and instead being a shrewd marketing lie, the authors got a free pass and sold millions

Well, it's old. Old things are just naturally more Jesusy than newfangled science and research based things, because atheists are newfangled science and research based, and they hate Jesus.

Since the dipshit who wrote that Christian apocalypse porn appropriated the terms into whatever self-serving bullshit he came up with? 🤷‍♂️

Therapies for being "choleric" & "phlegmatic" were not in any sense "invented" by LaHaye or any modern person. The practice dates at least to the ancient Roman physician Galen 2,000 yrs ago & was the foundation of medieval European medicine. LaHaye just revived ideas discredited 500 yrs ago. 1/2

Background on what early modern people thought of the humor theory of illness: * via the Folger Library, since Shakespeare wrote abt humors--https://www.folger.edu/blogs/shakespeare-and-beyond/the-four-humors-eating-in-the-renaissance/ * via a medical journal www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles....

Absolutely! There are even traces of the concept of humor in ancient Egyptian medicine. So it’s a very old practice that pre-date Christianity.

LaHaye was digging deep for his pseudoscientific best-seller and line of quack treatments. I'm honestly surprised he didn't propose leeches as a way to attain holiness.

But he could be pretty confident that nobody in his market segment would read it and think, "Hey, this sounds just like the stuff I learned about Ancient Greece in World History 101."

I’ve never heard of him, tbh. & I’m glad I didn’t.

I mean.... balance of the humours is exactly why Galen* recommended them in the first place. (* ancient Greek physician, not my less-famous uncle of the same name)

Somebody modern added a fifth humour, "supine"

Oh no, seriously? Because that word already has a meaning completely unrelated to things *inside* the body: it just means lying on your back facing upward.

Right. I guess they're calling them "temperaments" not "humours" also.

Well geez, if they're going to go for "position of the body in three-dimensional space" as a type of temperament, "supine" would have been the least likely choice. Why not "upright" or "hanging upside down like a bat?"

Supine as in obedient A way of telling someone they're made to submit, I guess Very fundie thing to add

Guess who wrote a furious letter to Wheaton College when he found out they'd held a memorial for MLK

Tell us you went to Bob Jones without telling us you went to Bob Jones, Tim.

Beside the point but the four temperaments have roots waaaaay older than Tim LaHaye and Jerry B Jenkins combined

TLH’s output in the 70s was even weirder than his Left Behind phase (this from my book _Have a Nice Doomsday_)

TBF it is ancient, based on Hippocrates, but certainly not Christian in any sense.

Thank you. Drove me crazy when I saw this an hour ago but bit my tongue. Biting my tongue is a skill I've been working on. Still working out the kinks.

I did the same, so you're not alone on that.

Oh my god we had those temperament books growing up. I didn't realize LaHaye invented that. Hadn't thought of that in ages; it was my first introduction to personality types.

He didn't. He lifted it from humorism, a belief going back to ancient Greece.

Yeah I know that phrases like "Choleric temper" and "Sanguine" have been around forever based on that; but the deliberate "these are the 4 genders" type of personality analysis I figured was also around but it seems like he did lead in popularizing it as a DISC alternative

Oh, I wouldn't doubt that he did. Never pass on recycling snake oil.

Never going to forget the Left Behind games which had such hilarious features as: - You cannot progress past a level without a bank - "Widows are of no use"

shades of that "ancient Chinese secret" commercial?

LaHaye and Falwell are unironically going to be the end of us because of their legacy.

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