An INTP on the Mission Field: Periods of Low Energy

On the mission field, one is continuously exerting social, mental, and often physical energy, not to mention carrying the spiritual burdens of the ministry. This extra strain, brought on by the non-native cultural context and the stressful, no-such-thing-as-finished nature of the work, can sometimes push our natural highs higher, but more often drags the natural lows lower, or makes it more difficult to rise back out of them. In this post, I want to look at the high/low energy phenomenon that INTPs (and everyone else, to varying extents) experience, and what can be done about those lows which can be so damaging for INTPs.

Highs and Lows

A well-known tendency of INTPs is to move through cycles of high-productivity and creativity, then low-energy and depression. In the "high" periods, we are likely to experience what is called Flow-- that channeled focus which results in works of great skill and/or creativity beyond one's normal performance. In the "low" periods that inevitably follow, however, we may sink into a depressed state or general lethargy, in which there can be a sense that more ground is lost than was gained during the productive streak that preceded it.

If you are not an INTP, think Sherlock Holmes: When he's Up, Sherlock is scintillatingly brilliant, full of restless energy, and everyone else is trying to keep up and being left far behind. But when he's Down, he is irritable, lethargic, and world-weary to the point that in the books (and some screen adaptations) he turns to small doses of cocaine to liven up his unbearable ennui, listlessness, and despondency. (Cocaine was not an illegal controlled substance when the original stories were written, but Watson still advises him to avoid it)

That's a hyperbolic literary example, but a lot of INTPs deal with a similar cycle on a lesser scale. When present, this high-and-lowing is very inconvenient for most adults, with jobs and lives and time that waits for no man's unfortunate tendency to cycle up and down with no real way to predict when the next phase will hit. However, the weaknesses that accompany one's personality are exactly that: weaknesses, which adversely affect our performance, ministry, and even quality of life if left unchecked. For INTPs, it's weakness which can't simply be ignored. (Some have suggested low energy spells are a coping mechanism for draining the excess energy/overstimulation we get from social interaction, but that's more connected to introversion than the up-down cycle which I'm describing)

Sometimes INTPs get stuck here. Hopefully the tips below
will help you get recharged, or stop the draining where it starts

The Downside of being Down

I have observed the up/down tendency in myself repeatedly, and frankly I'm sick of it; I don't see any reason why when normal people are moving along as they generally do, I suddenly go from energetic creativity to blank-brained exhaustion and want to find a rock to hide under and play tower defense games and eat cookies for a few days, avoiding excessive movement and definitely any social interaction.

But I can think whatever I want about it; just as being an INTP comes with unique positives, it also comes with strong downsides, and this is one of them, whether I like it or not. (What I choose to do when confronted with them is another thing; more on that below)

But as a missionary (and as a human being, for that matter), the low energy cycles are not merely inconvenient and undesirable, since they affect my quality of life and ministry as well. In a foreign culture, to be socially engaged always takes more energy. As an introvert, such engagement is already costly in terms of social energy, and doing it in my second language, with only a tenuous grasp of the underlying social mores and structures that lead to the observable behavior, the cost is much higher. This means the efforts I make to get more plugged into the culture, meet more people, expand the scope of our outreach ministries, etc., all begin to slowly lose ground when I can't gather enough social energy to successful continue doing all that. (If that sounds like I'm saying missions is best left to extroverts who will naturally not struggle quite as much with this, I'm not. Both introverts and extroverts have necessary roles to play in global missions, and neither are limited to certain kinds of roles.)

On the other hand, especially as a missionary, social activities are a large part of my ministry. I can't share the gospel with people if I don't meet them. (I've done it online before, but even that was usually preceded by knowing the person through repeated social engagements prior to the conversation) I can't disciple people if I don't spend time with them. I can't practice Chinese effectively if I don't meet with them. The list goes on.

Thus, depleting the energy I draw on for social stuff then leads to a direct diminishing of what I'm able to accomplish in my ministry, which contributes to the feeling that I'm not accomplishing anything (because that's partly true), which feeds back into the depressive thoughts that accompany the low energy state, producing an extended/worsened low which can go on for quite some time, especially if the weather stays gloomy.

Note: If this seems weak or whiny to you, think of it in terms of bench-pressing: if you're already struggling, regardless of what's on the bar, slapping a "harmless little" extra 10lb weight on each side could easily have you dropping it all straight onto your chest. (Especially since INTPs often don't have anyone who "gets it" to spot for them, and are trying to bench on their own, so to speak)
It's the same way when you're already in a low: even a couple days of gloomy weather or the early darkness of the cold months can add to the weight already on one's spirit in a way that wouldn't be a big problem normally.

People are a union of mind, body, and spirit. (I'm not espousing a particular trichotomous or dichotomous view here, just bringing up the mental, physical, and spiritual aspects of life) When one these components of our being is having issues, the other two inevitably are affected. This is true of all people (sadly often acknowledged in the theoretical sense, but practically speaking still ignored). But being so aware of our mental state, INTPs are especially equipped to notice how the one affects the others, though we may forget it works the other way around too.

Lows therefore do not merely cause one to "feel" tired and lethargic, but the symptoms are very real in one's body. Weight gain (possibly loss, for those who also lose their appetite during those times), poor sleep (despite feeling tired all the time), lack of any motivation to work out or even leave the house- all these things are not only symptoms of a low, but can prolong it. The converse may also be true; the mental/emotional low may be caused or encouraged by physical deficiencies.

The same is true of our spiritual selves as well; we can't always be "on fire," and will go through dark valleys and quietly restful periods as well, but a prolonged low can lead to listlessness, numbness, and dry periods in our spiritual lives too.

Tactics for Low Energy Periods:

So if these low energy periods are a natural tendency of our personality type, but also very problematic, how best to proceed in mitigating the damage? Can we overcome them entirely?

I suspect we can never overcome the tendency itself, as it's rooted in the strength and liveliness of the world in our minds, but we can go a long way towards shoring up this weakness, to the extent that it becomes a nuisance to be guarded against rather than a continual ongoing problem we're stuck inside.

I can begin with an example from my experience here: In learning Chinese over the longer term, I have found that the best time to understand my progress is not the occasional high points: throwing out a chengyu (4 character idiom) at exactly the right time and getting praise from my local coworkers, but rather, on those days when I didn't sleep well or have caught whatever 24-hour virus is going around the metro system and don't seem to have two brain cells to spare for speaking more than my baseline Chinese. On those days, has my worst Chinese improved over my worst Chinese a month ago? If so, then I have improved. Measuring from the lows gives you a far better sense of how much your baseline has improved than measuring the peaks, which are heavily dependent on circumstances.

So it's the same for low energy days. When I first arrived here long term, just making it through the day and feeling like I was still okay with life in Taiwan and how the ministry was going (as opposed to visions of impending failure--don't laugh, I suspect church planters all have those, and INTPs are especially plagued with them) seemed like a minor victory, as I was going through longer-term culture shock and the more stressful adjustment period. Now, into my second year here, I demand at least some level of productivity from myself even on the lowest days. If I can't run towards a goal I walk towards it, or maybe even trudge, but at least by the end of the day I've gotten closer. A paragraph of my novel is not much compared to the rare days I sit down and crank out a chapter or more, but it's a paragraph closer to being finished that wasn't there before.

Staying Productive

Since church-planting is a 24/7 but not strictly 9-5 occupation (there are mostly-free days and also 18-hours-of-constant-work days, like a lot of other non-desk-job occupations), to-do lists are helpful for me on those days that aren't busy with ministry. Lists are not for everyone, but I have been compiling them more consistently lately and making a goal of getting at least a few boxes checked off each day makes the day not feel wasted if I do rest more than usual. Last year I seemed to need a lot of extra rest as my brain tried to process all the cultural newness at INTP levels of multilayered depth, comparing it to all my previously assimilated information about our world and updating lots of things as necessary. (It's been better this year.)

Regardless of your occupational schedule, Perfectionism and Procrastination are a lethal duo, and both can raise their ugly heads on low energy days, preventing you from starting anything because you don't feel able to finish it "properly." For me, dividing up the responsibilities into chunks that I can tackle is like traction on the wheels of productivity, it gets me started again. It also helps avoid the situation where a day feels busy and productive but by the end of the day you mysteriously don't seem to have accomplished much; keeping track of what you actually did reveals that sometimes restful days are actually more productive.

Sleep

Overall, recognizing the exhaustion, mental and physical, is there, but that at the same time you got some good work done, can pull you right out of a low energy spell and back at least into the normal swing of things. Normal tiredness from work you got done or even a good workout is one of your best friends in this situation, both for shaking off the weary spell and also for healthy sleep.

If you are in a low energy period and therefore took a day to rest, you may not be tired by the time night rolls around either, and will almost certainly have trouble sleeping. (Or you're like me, an inveterate night owl who perks up once the sun sets)

Though it's never a good idea to skip a night's sleep, I would almost recommend doing that if you find yourself stuck in a poor sleeping pattern, in order to reset it. I've done it before and it works for me. It probably doesn't work at all for some people, or your career may be such that missing a night's sleep would make the next day unsafe. I'm certainly not advising that, but a cycle of poor sleep can contribute to getting stuck in a low energy pattern and can certainly prolong it by days, so ending it one way or another should be a priority unless you are one of those cool people who don't need as much sleep as the rest of us. (Or you might think you are, until the long term health effects set in)

Hot > Cold

Sometimes a kind of righteous anger can be helpful in dispelling or even preventing low spells as well. Anger has been treated like an inherent sin by a lot of people lately, but I think we need to look closely at what scripture says about anger. Anger is an emotional reaction just like happiness or sadness. None of those are sinful. What we do with all of them can be sinful, however, and a look at scripture suggests that anger is a more "dangerous" emotion and we don't want to be in the habit of stirring it up in ourselves, or being an "angry person." Happiness may lead to flippancy, sadness can lead to wallowing, but anger leads to rage rather naturally. That's why it's often depicted as a fire; once it catches, it tends to spread.

So the Bible says to avoid anger and malice, Galatians 5 lists "fits of anger" as one of the works of the flesh, and wrath is one of the seven deadly sins. But Jesus is reported as feeling anger on various occasions as well. He did not sin in His anger, and neither should we. His anger was directed towards the proper objects as well, as should ours. I don't want to derail this post on a discussion of anger, but personally I think an anger problem is like a drinking problem. It can be cultivated, encouraged, and become addictive, until the person stirs up anger in themselves just to get that feeling. But if you can be filled with the love of Christ and at the same time feel anger towards sin or wrongness, in yourself or others, and not sin in the way you express that anger, then the anger may in some cases be the only appropriate reaction. We should be angry at the things that anger God. (Remembering that He reserves wrathful judgment for Himself only, that's not ours to dish out on those we personally deem deserving)

So when I feel despair and listlessness seeping in like cold fog, a flare of righteous anger can sometimes dispel it immediately. I know my own tendency to sink into depression well enough that I recognize it coming. Whereas in the past I may have said "well, here we go again," and let the icy tendrils sink in, lately I find myself saying "you know what, not today. Shove off." (This has become increasingly doable the more I focus on eating well and getting into shape, going back to what I mentioned before about the mind-body-spirit connection we can't ignore as rational, spiritual, but physical creatures)

Various

Other suggestions I found around the web were mostly diet/lifestyle related:
1. Eat less carbs, more protein  (I've already been doing this and it does help.)
2. Get in shape (Yes)
3. Focus on sleep consistency more than just how many hours (this is nearly impossible for me)
4. Eat well in general (plentiful nutrients, not junk food)
5. Get in shape (Seriously)
6. Reduce overstimulating factors in your daily environment (This one is interesting. A lot of INTPs have a comparatively low toleration for external stimulation, so if you are getting consistently overstimulated by things around you (loud noises you can't control, etc) this can lead to feeling drained and having low energy as well)
7. Get in shape (No really, do it) This was the most common thing cited by people who overcame their low energy problem. As I mentioned above, it helped me too. If you are an INTP reading this, and you're out of shape, the best thing you can do for your mind and everything else is to get your physical machine in better working order. It will help everything else, even depression, though it won't change overnight. If you don't have friends to work out with, I recommend a workout routine you can do quickly in your own place to start out, because otherwise going out to workout at a gym or somewhere else may be just another social burden which you'll keep talking yourself out of. For INTPs, getting into better shape is probably one of those "just do it" things. Don't overthink it, act on it, and keep acting on it until the results speak for themselves and it becomes only rational to continue.

I hope something in here was helpful for anyone out there struggling with low energy and the guilt that might accompany them. It helps me to remember something I heard a Taiwanese pastor share in a sermon: "To be, is more important than to do." We must do, as well, but if we work on who we are, we'll find the doing comes more naturally. With a healthy mind, body, and spirit, fatigue or exhaustion should pass naturally with adequate rest, and well-earned rest pleases the God who designated a day specifically for it.

An INTP on the Mission Field: INTP Tips for Ministry Part 1

Well I haven't done an INTP-specific update in a while, so this should be fun.

For the next few posts I want to talk about some things I've learned as an INTP on the mission field. The lessons will apply more or less to anyone else too, of course, but if I seem to be really emphasizing things you don't feel are important, or skipping past things that seem vital, that would be why.

I do this partially because I've come to realize that there isn't a lot of material out there directed towards INTPs in ministry. Perhaps it's not a huge demographic; we're very much not people-people. As Quiet author Susan Cain pointed out, in modern churches we are often passed over for church ministry in favor of those with more enthusiastic temperaments.

It must be mentioned, however, that the problem is not necessarily a wave of INTP volunteers being turned down. We are not the most assertive bunch, and are all too likely to analyze the problems we can observe in a system (that system possibly being our local church) without having the social confidence or desire to work through a messy, people-oriented solution, which is typically the only available route to take in a local church context.

So I want to provide some tools or suggestions for INTPs who are interested in ministry, with hopes that a feeling of mental preparation will be conducive to some boldness in volunteering for the exhausting but Christ-mandated task of loving and serving God and people in this world, and even all the unreasonable people in it, which of course includes ourselves as well, if we're honest.

Where I Serve:
With regards to my own experience over the past 18 months, as an INTP doing full-time cross-cultural ministry, I feel very blessed in that Taiwan is not the hardest place to be an INTP.

1.  It's a place you can actually "be" in your field. Yes you will be a lifelong guest, no you will never "fit in," unless you are ethnically Chinese and successfully embrace a local identity, but at least you can actually establish a life here. Some career missionaries choose to retire here, for example, which would be more or less impossible in a lot of missions focus areas. It's not the same as those fields that require living on a compound and taking little trips "into the culture," guided by locals without whom you would be lost, a situation which does not at all allow for an INTP's insatiable curiosity to be appropriately fed by immersion in the new culture/situation.

2. It's a more introvert-friendly culture. I've blogged on this in the past. I didn't immediately realize why Taiwan "clicked" with me as a culture, but over the past couple of years I've realized it may have partially been that I subconsciously recognized the marks of a more introverted culture: attention to detail, appreciation of silence and peace, lots of people reading in public, etc. Sure, you have super extroverts here too, and yes, a hot, noisy, brightly-lit restaurant or night market packed with two hundred people shouting over each other can be a daunting prospect even on a non-socially-exhausted evening, but go around the corner or up the little stairs and you'll find a nearly silent bookshop or cafe full of people reading. (Reading physical books! Interestingly, despite everyone from kids to grandparents carrying high-powered smartphones, ebooks are not popular here)

Maybe it's just me. A lot of spaces here seem to have the "by introverts, for introverts" vibe

3. It's a non-stop learning situation. Taiwan is not so much a "ok, newbie, here's how things work here" culture. In fact rather the opposite; people's attempts to explain to you "how Taiwan is" may leave you scratching your head, because the last person to explain that exact same thing told you very differently. Essentially, it's a steep learning curve that never ends and only begins to taper after years of being here. Overwhelming and off-putting to some, but a gloriously stimulating situation for INTPs. (As long as we can get away and process.)
Due to Taiwan's complicated history with waves of migration, mountainous geography (leading to less homogenization of culture), and being a free and somewhat progressive democracy, there is much less of the "the nail that sticks out gets hammered down" phenomenon that one thinks of when generalizing Asian culture. It's true that the culture also does not demand that every student be a special and unique nail that sticks out, and would frown upon the notion, but by the same token, there is the feeling that everyone, at least every family, could have something to contribute, and society would be less rich and less bountiful if that was lost. And that's not even counting the enthusiasm for embracing outside ideas.

This leads to a veritable cornucopia of never-ending detail and variety. It's almost a tease: the desire of INTPs to achieve a comprehensive and predictive mental model of the system is frustrated by the sheer amount of systems stacked on top of each other. I haven't even started to gather enough information to put all the pieces together, and may never be able to.

All that being said, my first tip for INTPs doing ministry is one that contradicts the introspection and contemplation we naturally isolate ourselves to conduct. (It will, however, help in data accumulation):

INTP Tips for Cross-Cultural Ministry - Part 1:
Push Yourself to Find Friends who will Push You

Luxuries that missionaries (believers?) don't have...

An INTP naturally enjoys levels of isolation greater than the average person could handle. Being "alone with one's thoughts" is a fully engaging and stimulating situation for us. (That doesn't even count the existence of the internet, into which I'm convinced many INTPs could happily sink most of their life and not notice that much was missing, another danger to avoid)
Thus, it's easy to gravitate towards a low level of social interaction and stay comfortably there. And while a look at Christ's life reveals there is certainly spiritual value in silence and solitary meditation and prayer, most evangelical ministry inherently requires an amount of social commitment (as Christ's life also did. His balancing of these is our example to follow.). For cross-cultural ministry this is even more true. Culture = people, and to do something cross-culturally requires spending time with those people from another culture. So, put succinctly, a missionary's work is People. An inherently exhausting task, for me at least, but an utterly worthwhile one, since it's for the Kingdom of God.

What this means by extension, however, is that my desire to, perhaps, disappear for a week or so and finish my novel, (which would probably mean many hours of reading and fewer actual hours of writing), is something I'm simply not able to indulge. And if I find that I am able to indulge it, it means I have chosen a path of too much introverted comfort. I'm not pushing myself, and I may need to find some people who will.

This isn't business as usual; people are dying without saving knowledge of Christ. A truth about the gospel that very much meshes with the INTP outlook on life is this: we can't save anyone, or force them to make a decision; only God can open someone's heart, and draw people to Himself. But, something we can do is to make sure people hear the gospel communicated clearly. It is my desire that no one in Taiwan who hears the gospel from me will find it incomprehensible because I communicated it in a way that was culturally opaque, or not in accordance with the reality of their own life, and my hope that along the way I may discover insights which will benefit others trying to do gospel work here as well. So I observe and study Taiwanese culture and try to grasp a local worldview as much as possible, so that when I share the gospel, the stumbling block will be Christ Crucified, not an American way of explaining that makes no sense to people looking at the world from a very different angle. (And, I argue, increasingly less sense to most Americans either.)

The other side to this is that for INTPs, getting out of the house, or apartment, or wherever we consider the bounds of our little residence zone to lie, is a fairly big step. That sounds ridiculous to some people, so here's an analogy:

For INTPs, our entire adult lives are like waking up to a frosty winter morning in a house with a tile floor. The bed -our introverted comfort zone- is warm and comfortable, while the air is cold and the floor is freezing. (Music can be like warm slippers we can put on first, but more on that in a later post)

Yes, we have to leave it every day (typically), but getting out of bed -getting out of our comfort zone to go engage the world and meet people- involves that extra amount of reluctance to overcome, that bracing of effort to put your feet down on the freezing floor and get over that discomfort. When there's no pressing need, like keeping our job, we are just as happy living in the rich inner world inside our own minds.

Now you might be thinking/scoffing "Sheesh, get over yourself and just go do it." That may be valid, and something INTPs need to hear sometimes. But 1) we all have things we are reluctant to do. Maybe you are someone who leaps energetically from bed at the crack of dawn and looks forward to a packed day of social engagements, but I am not convinced there aren't other tasks, perhaps involving silence or isolation, that you won't balk at and delay if possible. And 2) that's precisely what I'm saying in this section. We need to get out there and do more, it's good for us as people, let alone necessary for productive ministry.
Now criticism is not a good way to accomplish this (for an INTP that's an invitation to battle, one we can typically "win" and thus lose), but invitations that are open-ended yet suggest our presence would be missed are a very good way. (Just the suggestion that my presence would be missed can brighten my day more than I like to admit, probably due to the fact that my subconscious is more or less continually telling me this isn't the case)

So, just as the kind of people who are easily influenced by the people around them have a greater need to pick their friends carefully, INTPs have a greater need to find friends who can proactively get them to do things. "Get out of your house, we're going hiking" is actually an invitation I'm quite happy to accept. It's an experience I will enjoy that I'd probably never have begun on my own initiative, or would have taken weeks to finally get around to doing. That's one of the single most frustrating things about the INTP temperament, in my opinion. We often greatly enjoy the things we get invited or even dragged into doing, but we seem to lack some kind of positive energy that would result in us doing them on our own initiative.

The problem is that we have trouble ever leaving this state
without outside intervention. Our default mode is introspection.

In order to balance this weakness, we need those friends who will seek us out, or who are aware of our potential for being too solitary and help us manage it. For missionaries, these friends could be of various kinds: friendships with local people -valuable for cross-cultural missionaries to cultivate for a plethora of reasons- expat friends, or other missionaries, though I think it's obviously best not to confine your socializing to other missionaries if your context doesn't restrict you to that. If you aren't out doing things with people on a regular basis,you are not engaging in the life-to-life interactions that result in Godly edification and chances for the Spirit to work through you in the lives of other people. What I'm describing here is a holistic approach to missions: you are not just employed at task A, you are a believer God has placed in a certain context. There is no clocking in and clocking out on being salt and light. I am convinced this is true of all believers, not just those called to be cross-cultural missionaries. If all your socializing is inside a church context, you're hiding your light under a bushel.

Now, it may be that your ministry doesn't even allow for the possibility of being a hermit; you are constantly immersed in ministry and exhausted by a steady stream of people with no obvious chance of escape. For an INTP, this is a dangerous situation which easily leads to burnout. Yes it's a weakness to be so easily overcome with social exhaustion compared to other people, but so is overconfidence or a tendency to lose one's temper. To some extent we can't help the weaknesses that come with our personalities, and there is certainly no benefit to ignoring them, but we can take steps to mitigate the damage.

I often compare myself to a machine with insufficient cooling mechanisms, like a motherboard with too few heat sinks. My temperature goes up too quickly under a heavy social load, and it takes me longer to cool down. I don't like that it's true, but it is, so I have to do my best to counteract that weakness in order to better serve the cause of Christ. In America I succeeded in building up my "social endurance" quite a bit, now in a new culture and very different context (and speaking a second language often considered one of the hardest to learn in the world, though personally I disagree with that assessment) I must endeavor to do the same. It's not easy, but with Christian brothers and sisters being decapitated in the Middle East as I write this, I would feel ashamed to suggest I've been asked to do anything especially difficult.

A Note on Burnout: If burnout really does seem imminent, there's no point in wasting time in recovery if it could be prevented. Sometimes we need to take five. However, INTPs are not good at expressing their needs and negotiating a solution because we overcommunicate and also seek perfect solutions.  So when stuck in a burnout situation, especially if other team members have more people-oriented personalities and don't understand, it may be wiser to explain the situation to someone empathetic enough to grasp the problem and have them explain it to the relevant people on your behalf.

Part 1 Summary

We have seen that INTPs have a tendency to default to solitude, and being introverts they will have varying but ultimately limited abilities to cope with social time burdens, because regardless of how friendly and cheerful they may be, they are drained by them and need alone time to recover.

We have also seen that one method to avoid this, and therefore a responsibility of INTPs in cross-cultural missions (or really any INTP believers, I'd argue), is to seek out and befriend people who will help keep them engaged and not let them isolate themselves in their preferred thought-cocoon for excessive periods of time. This may not always be an option, but it should be a goal for every INTP ministering in an unfamiliar context (perhaps in familiar contexts too). I am making it my goal is well, having to this point only imperfectly followed my own advice.

Burnout, a danger for introverts forced to the point of social exhaustion for too long, can be mitigated as a risk by effective communication with the rest of your team and balancing your social obligations if possible. One can also seek to improve one's social endurance, training to increase it like any other form of endurance.


NEXT ENTRY (Coming Soon): INTPs and Music

An INTP on the Mission Field: The Thin-skinned Shall Not Inherit the Mission Field...

As I approach a year on the mission field (two years of experience, counting the previous year that was a short-term trip, and quite different from this year), I increasingly encounter the need for thicker skin.

To elaborate upon the old schoolyard retort: sticks and stones can break my bones, but insulting words which I consider to bear no legitimate correspondence to reality are, despite being unable to cause me physical harm*, yet at times frustratingly able to send me into unproductive introspection.

(*- No, despite living in Taiwan I have yet to encounter the legendary Lion's Roar kung fu ability. Actually my experience thus far is that Americans are both more excited about and more likely to be training in Asian martial arts than Asian people are. A friend explained the reason, but it will have to wait for a relevant post.)

INTPs can be a bit thin-skinned. This comes partly from our tendency towards polite and reasonable social behavior. We would not randomly insult someone out of anger, and if we do, it tends to be sarcastic, methodical, and cutting, a katana strike at some real flaw which really does hurt the person. To simply toss unspecific insults at someone because we're angry with them would be worse than wrong, it would be inelegant. Unfortunately, other people may perceive our analytical comments as insults, something to which we are often oblivious; sometimes, ironically, because those people aren't thin-skinned and simply take it in stride. (If they know us well, they may be used to it and realize we don't mean it that way)

Thank God for the Mrs. Hudsons of the world...

Still, that preference for politeness and reasonableness (as we perceive them) leads us to typically avoid insults and provoking language in general, as they lead to angry emotional reactions, confrontational behavior, and escalations of stressful social situations, all of which INTPs prefer to avoid if possible. So -irrationally, I must admit- we often expect other people to play by the same rules. But many people don't. They've had hard lives, they're stressed today, they simply don't think much before they speak, they don't view you as a peer and thus don't feel it necessary to extend courtesy towards you... there are lots of reasons why someone doesn't think twice about shooting an insult. They have a headache and aren't even the slightest bit interested in how that relates to something you read about plate tectonics the other day, and can't you get out of their way already?

Perhaps you are an INTP reading this, and you can simply shrug or chuckle and let the insult slide like water off a duck's back. This could theoretically be based in pride ("Did a worm speak just now? Amusing..."), but if your reaction is of that kind, stop reading this and repent before God graciously cuts you off at the knees and lets you hobble around on the stumps for a while to learn humility. If not, then it's a valuable quality. I suspect, however, that many are like me. I catch the insult in a little bubble, a protective mechanism to limit its hurtful potential, and began peering inside and analyzing it, beginning to dissect the contents, introspectively. Is this true of me? Is this a fault which others perceive which I've been blind to? Is this an area in which I have a natural weakness, or is it due to laziness or other misconduct? Do I have responsibility for making sure this is an insult which will be inapplicable the next time someone offers it? Et cetera, ad nauseum. I've lost many hours of my life to these kind of depressing ruminations. (Some introspection is good, but for INTPs it's like our Fortress of Solitude where we can hide for ages)

Mission Field Insults

Despite inheriting the Chinese cultural indirectness, Taiwanese can be quite forthright with insults. This is especially true of physical appearance, which is not taboo like it is in America, where one has to be very careful even with positive comments on someone's appearance. In Taiwan, "wow, you got fat," is a totally normal comment, one I've heard several times upon returning from living in America (truly is the Standard American Diet called "SAD"), and heard directed at other people as well. I personally am not especially bothered by this kind of insult, since being an INTP, I have a tendency to view my body as simply a physical shell. I do prefer to be in shape, and so if I let my body get so out of shape that people begin to remark on it, then I deserve whatever comments I receive, and typically they will motivate me to do something about it. But for INTPs ultimately it is the mind that matters.

That means insulting my lack of knowledge in an area in which I considered myself fairly well-versed will get you a lot farther than a physical insult. At the same time, prizing rationality as I do, I may give you a 'touche,' and resolve to further my knowledge in that area. "Correct a wise man and he will love you" (Prov 9:8b) applies to INTPs, even those of us who would claim to be far from wise, depending on how the correction is administered. I may even upgrade my opinion of you, since someone who can be my teacher even in a small way is someone who can help me in my relentless task to forge order from the chaos of existence and a comprehensive theory which encompasses all of my experiences, as I have explained in a previous post.

Questioning my judgement or thought processes will get you a reaction, however, as you're trying to undermine my most important tool for making my way in the world. It would be like telling a fashion designer not that a particular outfit of theirs was a failure, but that they were going colorblind. And questioning my motives might get you a fairly hostile reaction, though that's probably of most people regardless of personality.

My basic premise is this:

On the mission field, the thin-skinned may not last long.
You are in a culture that doesn't understand yours, among coworkers you didn't choose and who inevitably will sometimes rub you the wrong way, and often looking like an idiot to the locals as you try to make sense of a new language and lifestyle. People will insult you, it will happen. It may happen quite frequently.

Some favorite insults I've received in Taiwan:
(in Mandarin from local people)

"Wow, you got fat." (Me: "Haha, yeah") "No, I mean, really. You really got fat."
"I had thought your Chinese was impressive, but it's actually not that good"
"You foreigner teaching these children is an educational failure"
"Young man, I can tell from your face that you're ignorant"

Those are just a few of many more. The first one didn't bother me overmuch (I always gain weight in America and lose it in Taiwan), but the others rankled quite a bit; I don't try to remember insults or cultivate resentment (I attempt to actively avoid doing so) but I still very clearly remember the situation in which each of those were given (The third one was from an angry hobo! I kid you not).

The insults are not only cross-cultural, however. I've heard stories of some cringeworthy public encounters, with missionaries saying things to other missionaries that are just short of nose-punching territory. The mission field is a stressful place, and tempers flare. Teamwork takes constant active effort to maintain, and if not, can fall apart quickly with disastrous effects for the ministries and gospel effort in that location. Even if in our generation such dramatic personality clashes are less common, one is no less likely to encounter passive-aggressive sniping, which is in many ways worse. (Speaking generally, and not of my specific team. I feel blessed in my fellow missionaries)

So it's basically inevitable that if you let those insults simmer, and develop into resentment, cracks will develop rapidly in the "one heart and mind" that we should have as fellow missionaries. If things really get bad, people will leave the field. And if they're from local people, then you will find your motivation and willingness to embrace and learn local culture begins to drop and turn into a desire to separate yourself from it, retreat from it, to return home, or into a bubble of fellow expats who understand you, or at least insult you for reasons you both understand.


For INTPs, the solution is not to endlessly mull over these insults, trying to explain them away; that's an effort inevitably doomed to failure. If you do succeed in explaining it away, then you begin to resent the person who offered the insult, and might still harbor doubts about whether it might not be true after all; INTPs are masters of self-doubt and insecurity. And if you don't succeed in explaining it away, you are left with the conclusion that you really are deficient in that area. You've taken a further step towards judging yourself based on other people's opinions, and not God's opinion of you.

There is not even much profit in defending one's self at the time. That is my natural reaction, wanting the record to be straight one way or another. In cross-cultural situations, it often feels (rightly or wrongly) that the insult is stemming from a cultural clash, and explaining your reasoning or how things were different in your home culture will clarify the misunderstanding, leading to the retraction of the insult. This has basically never worked, even with otherwise fairly nice people. You are merely looking like someone who can't handle insults, which in many cultural and subcultural contexts matters much more than whether or not the particular insult is true.

This, of course, is common knowledge for many people. I am not pretending that everyone suffers from the same thin skin problem. But I suspect many INTPs are going through a similar internal process, even if they're good at hiding it on the outside.

The solution, I submit, is simply to grow thicker skin. If a fishing hook gets caught in your finger, trying to jerk it out will often cause a lot more bleeding than pushing it through and out the other side and cutting the barbed end off. The "tougher" solution is actually quicker, less painful, and heals more quickly. An insult can be dealt with similarly. Just accept it and move on. A tactic I've observed in Taiwan is to simply agree and thank the person, and I'm working on adopting it.

Also, INTPs are especially good at the clever sort of humor or wordplay which can defuse an insult or even turn it around. Instead of an angry retort, self-deprecating humor or some other response might carry the day. But that's all based on being able to "take" the insult. Just take it. A winsome response can then be used if appropriate, but not out of defensiveness.

Turning the Other Cheek

I mentioned martial arts at the beginning, and it provides a helpful analogy here. A lot of martial arts styles observe that while one can meet force with force, that can be problematic and cause injury. Of course, Muay Thai goes the other way; after beating down a few banana trees kick by kick, meeting force with force causes injury to the other guy. But as followers of Christ we are more or less specifically commanded not to use the Muay Thai style of insult resolution. (That "turn the other cheek" verse that people argue about is talking about taking an insult, not an actual dangerous blow.)

This is not what Jesus meant

Many styles, wanting to avoid things like dying young from brain trauma, have techniques which redirect the force of a blow or intended blow, moving with it and using the fighter's own momentum against him. In the end, one has exerted much less energy, to much greater effect. Sometimes the fight can be entirely ended in this way, and at least one fighter is keeping a clear head, something that appeals strongly to an INTP; coolly parrying a blow with efficiency and technique. It's how we like to see ourselves, at least. Yet the natural INTP way of dealing with insults, by contrast, might be more akin to an untrained man, who upon being struck is either mainly concerned with trying to establish that he is in the right and the other party is in the wrong, or if sufficiently hurt, lashes out instinctively to hurt back.

But the well-trained martial artist not only knows how to defend himself well, he realizes that he may not need to strike back at all. The knowledge that he can defend himself easily allows him to take blows if he wishes, not having an inferiority complex to defend. He is not concerned with others' accusations, because he knows himself.

If we are secure in our identity in Christ, knowing who we are, and have trained ourselves in the art of graciously dealing with insults and harsh comments or criticism, we need not be taken aback by them, nor need they develop into divisive resentment. We can turn the other cheek; we can take it.

As in all things, Christ is our model. When attacked by the Pharisees, Jesus never sunk to their level, He never "hit back." Sometimes He replied with piercing insight, sometimes with winsome wordplay, and during His mock trial and humiliation He simply did not open His mouth.

So in the end, if all else fails, and the insult hits home, and we can't respond appropriately, we only have one response: to forgive as we have been forgiven. Not forgiving doesn't exact any kind of revenge on the other person, it only hurts us, and we have that command, that as Christ forgave us of a multitude of sins, so we must forgive one another.

May we be strong to do so, by the grace that is in Him.

An INTP on the Mission Field: Another look at "Teamwork"

I remember engineering school quite distinctly (despite seeming in some ways like a previous life, I suppose it wasn't actually that many years ago). They were fond of giving us "group projects," ostensibly to teach us ornery engineers (real engineers are born, not graduated) how to play well with others. The most important lesson we learned through these was perhaps unintentional on the part of the school:

Observable Principle 1. Teamwork is the enemy of productivity
Observable Principle 2. Teamwork is the enemy of efficiency
Observable Principle 3. Teamwork is the enemy of adaptability
Observable Principle 4. Coordinating schedules with others is like herding cats
Conclusion for the maintenance of sanity: Avoid group projects whenever possible

My experience of team work until graduating college was pretty much this.

Thankfully, workplace experience demonstrated to me that this may not always be the case; it largely depends on the people on your team. It can be both worse (a team in which certain members are literally destroying the project through a combination of incompetency and obliviousness and harming your career prospects), or, in the rare case you get a bunch of qualified and competent people on your team, it can be a pretty amazing thing that results in stuff like, you know, getting a satellite to rendezvous with a comet after 10 years and dropping a lander on it. Of course in that kind of situation, teamwork gets a boost from the endeavor that unites them. More on that anon.

A Task Too Immense for Solo Work

Not being a people person, I definitely spent some time in prayer before deciding to become a missionary. "God, if I'm going to do this, if my job is going to be 100% people focused, you're going to have to change my heart towards people." I was pretty happy as a computer programmer; I had a few friends I trusted and family members that I loved, and didn't bother with people much outside of that.

(Contrary to what most people think, computers are quite simple. It's all 1's and 0's, they never get their feelings hurt, and they do what you tell them unless something is broken. And if so, it's usually easy to tell what's broken. People are tremendously complicated, get hurt from all sorts of accidental issues, let alone intentional ones, and actively hide their broken parts from you.)

God answered that prayer, and though at times I long for a nice, simple, straightforward task like several dozen pages of broken source code to debug, I have changed very greatly in how I relate to other people, not to mention in how I come across to them.

In missions, working with a team of one sort or another is basically necessary. Being a "lone wolf" missionary might sound attractive to a lot of INTP's and others too, but practically speaking it tends to not work out very well at all. If anyone could have worked alone (in the human sense), it would have been Christ, but He instead chose to surround himself with men to disciple, who would go forth and build the church after His departure. So at very least, if one is so competent that they do not to be taught or trained by anyone, they should work together with other people, to disciple them. But Jesus is obviously a unique example. What if we want a merely mortal example, the kind of person who is competent enough to rely on themselves?

We could then look at Paul, a stubborn genius who quickly got impatient with those less motivated than he. He seems like a good candidate for a lone wolf type, but it turns out he hated working alone, and always went out with a team when possible (my next blog post will mention this more). Later we see him sending his team members away to address issues in other areas only reluctantly, even when there was no one else who could go, and pleading with others to come join him.

The nature of modern cross-cultural missions work is typically such that one has a team to send you, and a team on the field. For new arrivals, one of the first things a team does (or should do! I've heard horror stories...) is help them get settled in. One is often not capable of surviving (let alone thriving) on one's own in the new language and cultural environment, and at very least requires help in getting started.

Settling in is not really the main issue, however. One could theoretically hire locals or expats to help you do all that, and some people are nice enough to do it for free. So my point is not that you couldn't survive the settling in process without a team; perhaps you could. That's a personal challenge that leads stubborn and/or confident people to think "hmm, I'll bet I could manage it."That kind of confidence or even stubbornness can be a useful character trait on the mission field, helping you "stick it out," though of course overconfidence or false expectations can torpedo the whole thing.

But the point of a team and the cruciality of teamwork is related to what I mentioned about great endeavors. That is, you need a team because the Great Commission is too massive a task for any one person to pursue alone, even in a local context. The team is not for you, the team is united for a common purpose, a gospel vision. Now, you've probably heard something like this before. In the secular sense, one could say "fine, that's not my vision," and walk away. For believers in Christ, the overarching goal, the meta-vision, has been provided for us, in the command from and example of our King. We are to make disciples of all nations, and though that responsibility extends to each of us individually, it's not a task any individual can tackle alone, at least not in any long-term sense; for something like planting a church, or taking the gospel into new territory, if Paul needed a team, you do too.

A Team Not of Your Choosing

Missionaries cannot typically choose their coworkers. A new missionary might arrive on the field and find, in the words of C.S.Lewis, "just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided." (from The Screwtape Letters) The guy with the annoying laugh who tries to joke about everything; the old guy who can't see why everything can't just be done the way they did it back in the day, when people were sincere and hard-working; the lady who feels the need to play devil's advocate in every discussion... (Note: these are "archetypal" examples and don't describe any past or present coworkers)
So the challenge then becomes working for the most important cause of all, with people who you would never choose as coworkers. Thrust into similar circumstances with a different task, perhaps it would be more manageable. But when your goal is to do something highly complicated and difficult- bring the gospel across cultural and other divides, plant reproducing churches, etc.- and there is no clear-cut way of achieving your goals, meaning you might have to "fail" a few times before seeing progress, then you have a recipe for teamwork disaster. (And if your team is multicultural, there are even more potential pitfalls to avoid.)

Add to this the INTP propensity for critical thinking and quickly seeing flaws in a strategy, and team discussions can be minefields for us. We feel very strongly that not pointing out flaws in the plan early on (obvious to us, who constantly run scenarios in our minds to see how they'd play out, and also file away any real-life experiences to improve the accuracy of this ability) out would mean failure of the plan is our fault; something many people don't realize... we are not attacking you! We are trying to help your plan succeed. This is our oft misunderstood attempt to prosper everyone and bless our efforts by making our plan foolproof. It just gets taken the wrong way when people begin to feel they're the fool we're trying to proof it against.

And please do not say, good missionaries wouldn't or shouldn't struggle with this kind of thing. There are no "good missionaries," there are only redeemed sinners learning to walk with God and how to obey His commands. (among them the Great Commission) Sinners argue, hold grudges, sometimes fight. At very least, they disagree about proper approaches to problems. Those differences of opinion are hard to let go of when you feel strongly that the wrong approach might not only cause this effort to fail, but make subsequent efforts more difficult. If it was a new marketing strategy for hybrid cars, that would be bad enough, but this is the gospel.

Example: What is the balance between a gradual and long-term approach that seems quite slow to bear any fruit but allows the cultivation of deeper relationships with local people and respect in the community, versus a bold and active approach that is willing to let a few people be offended and possibly wear out your welcome but results in more people hearing the gospel with the possibility of a breakthrough?

There is no right answer to this question! But everyone will have an opinion on it. We trust God, but we observe from scripture that He's given all believers work to do, and we've got to figure out how to do it, one way or another.

So under stress from living in a culture that is not our own, speaking a language that is not our own, making decisions we often don't have enough information to make (an especially stressful factor for INTPs, who might prefer to balk in those situations and wait for more data before making a decision), working with people we might not always respect or see eye-to-eye with, teamwork is a tenuous thing, easily fractured. And that's not even going into how the enemy is constantly trying to fragment our fellowship and set us against each other; discord is one of his works. So much intentional effort must be put into maintaining "one heart and one mind."

Substitute satan for management (no doubt easy for some of you), and this is pretty much
what is always happening on this mission field. This is one reason we need prayer!

One of the best ways to build and maintain a strong team is praying together! Coming together into God's presence not to talk to each other, but to Him, lets the Spirit do some direct work on people's hearts. This is something my team does intentionally, and I think it's incredibly important.

Summary: INTPs and Teamwork on the Mission Field

Basically, as INTPs we must be wise to avoid the following scenario:

Strategy Discussion for a Particular Ministry:

Person A: Maybe we could try [plan that was tried last year and failed]
INTP: I think we've seen that doesn't work well, unless you think the situation has changed in a fundamental way since we tried it last that would make it a good plan now?
Person A: Uh.. I'm just throwing out ideas!
INTP: *thinks* "Why waste time by talking about obviously useless plans?"

Person B: How about [plan that flies in the face of how local culture does things]
Team Leader: (Fully intending to discard this idea): Ok, maybe that's something we can think about.
Person B: (Feels appreciated, doesn't care if the plan is not actually used because their goal was to participate in the discussion in a meaningful way)
INTP: (Doesn't understand this^) "But what about [x] culture factor? Wouldn't they have [a] and [b] objections?"
Team Leader: (trying to salvage Person B's having contributed) "Not necessarily, maybe it's worth trying to see what happens."
INTP: (Feels slightly embarrassed that the team leader has rejected their assessment, and thus defensive:) Presents a 5-min, airtight logical case, with multiple failing scenarios, demonstrating that this approach is totally at odds with the local culture and could cause any number of problems. Provides an unlikely scenario in which it might succeed, wanting to be diplomatic. Some people nod in agreement or chime in, wanting to demonstrate they also have been culturally observant and understand this issue. 
Team Leader: *Sighs* Cannot disagree because the statement was clearly accurate.
Person B: (Feels foolish and under attack) Strikes back defensively insisting it could work.
INTP: (Unfortunately B's statement, born out of hurt feelings, is more an emotional expression than a rational counter) Warming to the debate, has no trouble picking B's defense apart. Noticing that B is flustered, they reassure him that they are not taking any of this personally. The INTP is confused when this only makes things worse.
Team Leader: (Resigning to the inevitable) Well, INTP, what would you suggest?
INTP: Provides a very long and well-thought out plan, taking into account both abstract methodology and practical and cultural considerations. Talks too long because they answer all questions about the plan as if the person is suggesting they didn't think through a particular issue, which they did, and feel compelled to make sure that person is aware, not wanting to appear incompetent for having missed such an obvious point.
Person B: (Upset, criticizes the INTP's plan because if theirs got criticized it's only fair that the INTP's plan gets criticized too)
INTP: Explains why their criticism of B's plan was valid, whereas B's criticism of their plan was invalid. It's not about getting equal time, it's about the validity of one's thought processes.
Team Leader: Uh, let's wrap this up and move on to the next subject.

As they leave the meeting:

INTP - Thinks the meeting went well, though B is too sensitive. Talks animatedly with a few people about the cultural issues that got raised during the meeting. Later, goes back and reflects on B's comments, making sure any potentially valid criticism is taken into account so the INTP's own arguments can be that much more solid next time.

A - Thinks INTP was a little mean to B, needs to lighten up

B - Feels upset, and possibly has begun to regard the INTP as an opponent. Concludes they can't actively oppose the INTP in a meeting without being made to look stupid; begins to think of ways to counter their influence. The beginnings of a crack in the team are possible. If they struggle with self-confidence, they may be less inclined to strike back, but hesitate to share in future meetings, for fear of their ideas being shot down.

Team Leader - Tired. Wishes INTP would not subvert his attempts to keep the team happy, through probably is aware that it isn't on purpose, and may just feel the INTP has an overbearing personality without realizing why he acted as he did. (Doing a meeting with personality tests to understand where each person on your team is coming from might be helpful. Sometimes it doesn't matter that you understand why someone could think that way, so long as you know it's a personality difference and not intentionally directed at you)

An INTP can bring extremely useful skills to a team, if they will learn and always keep in mind those rules which don't come with our personality, as I mentioned in a previous INTP post. You must take into account that most people won't have your motives, or dwell so entirely in the world of ideas, or think that the person with the most logical or well-tested thoughts should be the one to talk the most. It also helps to be self-aware, and explain your own motives for speaking up if you have a comment on what someone else is saying. They might still not appreciate it, but at least you can move from being "that INTP" to "our INTP."
As I mentioned earlier, prayer is a key here. It's harder to criticize your teammates in a potentially abrasive way when one has been praying for them! Prayer will shift one's thinking away from only their ideas or contributions and towards them as people, sons and daughters of God, which is always important for us.

Finally, a truly servant-hearted INTP who has learned when not to speak, may find people are quite willing to listen when he does. We yearn for people to benefit from our insight; to communicate that insight we must first clearly communicate the love of Christ.

An INTP on the Mission Field: The INTP Struggle Is Real (...And Needs to be Sanctified)

We return to the topic of being a (Myers-Briggs) INTP on the mission field (More posts here, and here), and the unique challenges and opportunities that presents. If you're not an INTP, don't leave just yet! I will attempt to explain why being right for us is not simply a matter of pride but part of a deadly struggle against nihilistic chaos, and how seeing part of the bigger picture is necessary for our growth in godliness. If it doesn't apply to you, it may help you understand that odd person in your life.

(Note: I am aware that a recent viral article attacked the validity of the Myers-Briggs system. I proceed on the basis that this way of roughly describing people's personalities corresponds to observable reality, is known to many people, and is in my experience a very useful heuristic.)

People often misunderstand INTPs. We tend to come across as know-it-alls, and as people who "just can't admit that you're wrong." The problem is that we typically aren't wrong, at least factually and logically, which is what we mean when we talk about being right or wrong. (Therein lies much of the problem, which we'll get to a little later on)

Typically, though, the person making that accusation has just presented a half-concocted premise riddled with logical errors and not even communicated using the most effective language. Then (we perceive) they are asking us to agree with them that not only is this a good and reasonable assertion, but it is superior to the one we've spent weeks both consciously and unconsciously formulating, testing, attacking to find weaknesses, etc.

Imagine that INTPs think of all ideas as cages for truth, and our brains are full of hypothetical velociraptors who systematically attack the cages trying to devour the tasty truth inside. Now along comes someone with a less carnivorous idea filter, and attempts to disagree with us using an idea that just occurred to them. Our mind-velociraptors simply laugh hungrily, imagining the helpless truth on which they would feast were that idea offered up to them, and wonder what sort of pathetic mental dinosaurs test your idea-cages.

Your obliviously incessant non sequiturs... smell delicious

(If, on the other hand, your truth-cage looks strong enough to hold up, we joyfully release our velociraptors to have a go at it. We -want- to find people who have solid ideas and can defend them well. It's hard not to have wonderful multiple-hour conversations with those people. We don't mind that this makes us a bit strange, we're having too much fun)

Or, if Jurassic Park analogies aren't your thing, imagine hanging a picture at a bad slant, on a bent rusty nail, with a photo frame missing one of its four sides and the glass shattered inside, and then being sad or angry when we can't successfully cover our eye-twitch enough to lie that we agree it is indeed a beautiful picture, masterfully hung. We don't understand... why can't you see how obviously inadequate it is and yet how quickly it could be fixed? (Feelings? Hurt?... Huh? Weren't we just talking about how to hang a picture?)

I'm not saying that's an entirely fair assessment on our part. I am saying, that we usually play the game very expertly and very fairly by the rules by which we think the game is played. When you accuse us of breaking the rules of the game, we take that accusation very seriously. But the problem is not that we're wrong about those rules, they're important rules. The problem is that there are other rules too, which are sometimes missing from the rulebook which came with our personality.

For example, I discovered at some point in my 20's that people get into the-debate-sort-of-arguments (the kind that are about ideas, not something someone did that made someone else angry) for all kinds of reasons. Up until that point, I had not imagined there was any other reason to engage in this kind of discussion besides 1) clarify/strengthen your understanding of the topic and 2) refute someone who is making false statements.

The idea that one might do it to enjoy the sensations that accompany an intense discussion regardless of the topic had never occurred to me. Or, insanely, because one simply likes arguing and would just as soon switch sides because it's "not about who's right and who's wrong." (As far as I'm concerned, one might as well have said this about choosing sides in WWII; that statement communicates nothing to us except that you're possibly a menace to society and certainly should be permanently excommunicated from the world of ideas)

The issue of who is right/wrong (here meaning correct/incorrect to whatever degree those terms can be applied) is very, very important for INTPs, but for a different reason than you might think. It's certainly a matter of pride on one level, but not the most important level. Being right is critically important because we are involved in the very serious, Sisyphean endeavor of making sense of reality. We are born into this world and the mental wheels start turning. You can see it in our eyes before we can walk. We are systemizing and categorizing causes and effects, noticing patterns, building a model of how everything fits and works together.

To be right means to have staked out a small spot of order and comprehension in a chaotic and random series of events and circumstances. To be wrong means to let that potential victory slip back into the darkness. Being wrong is very valuable in but one way: it eliminates a false possibility, narrowing our options and bringing us closer to the truth. If our error is brought to our attention and we recognize it, we are highly unlikely to make it again. That would be giving ground to the enemy a second time. Ain't nobody got time for that.

So to be wrong is to lose a small battle, though it may be a strategic victory if it leads to new information. To not care that one is wrong, however... must be either wanton apathy or outright treachery, through carelessness or nihilistic evil opening the gates that Error may come in. And Error is followed by Malfunction, and Malfunction by Damage, and Damage by Suffering.

(I have been speaking tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly)

Now, you may be wondering how any of this applies to life on the mission field. It applies very deeply, every day. Because the mission field is fraught with being wrong. Nearly every day, at some point one is wrong about culture, one is wrong about language, sometimes one lacks even the communication tool to clarify one's error. Sometimes one lacks even the means to discover if one was right or wrong, and that can be the most frustrating thing of all. One can at least humbly admit one's error, as painful as it may be, when one is aware of it. One of the most difficult ideas to face on the missions field for me is that I've acted wrongly at various times and to various people and I don't even know. They might be struggling to forgive me for an insult or wondering how a missionary could be so negligent in some area and I have no idea that I've communicated an insult or neglected anything.

The Taiwanese varieties of Chinese culture can make this more difficult because here to be polite is to not provide error feedback. When you are making mistakes and people are pretending not to notice (but of course really noticing and sometimes discussing it freely among themselves), it takes longer to discover those mistakes and try to correct them. One may even feel somewhat betrayed: "Why didn't you just tell me?"
(Or very betrayed: "Why didn't you tell me... before the church split/ministry failed/coworkers quit/friendships were irreparably damaged ?") It's a particularly frustrating clash of cultures, given that it's caused by the very attempts of both sides to demonstrate appropriate behavior.

I have directly asked my coworker and his family to not be hesitant or polite about correcting my mistakes, either in language or culture, because being polite according to my culture is sparing me the embarrassment of making those mistakes repeatedly in the future by pointing them out to me directly now. (When I explain it in this way, I can often see the metaphorical lightbulb coming on over people's heads...)

Being wrong constantly is wearying to an INTP, and it adds stress for us in a special way that it may not for other people, although admittedly that's partly balanced by the ecstatic joy of having vast oceans of knowledge to absorb merely by living here, so long as we get adequate respite time to assimilate it all. (when denied that respite time to cool off and recalibrate, we overheat quickly and can shut down)

An INTP wanting to go on the missions field will need an extra dose of humility and teachability, the ability to keep one's mouth shut when helpful, and may need to develop thicker skin in general as we tend to see the criticism we offer as non-personal and objective, yet take it personally when on the receiving end. They will need to learn how to remain in a situation where you make mistakes repeatedly and are forgiven because of the depth of relationship that exists between you and another person, and not on your correcting your mistakes, which you may never discover. They may need to cultivate especially good people skills if they do not already possess them, since an INTP typically builds relationships by sharing ideas with others, and limited communication ability impedes this considerably, especially at the beginning. Being someone people enjoy being around apart from the content of information shared helps considerably. The temptation to withdraw into one's shell when communication isn't easy may otherwise be much more difficult to avoid.

An INTP on the mission field will need to rely heavily on God's grace, and learn to forgive themselves because God does, and not because they dealt with a mistake or sin properly after committing it. They will need accountability and loving support from brothers and sisters in Christ as appropriate in order to keep themselves from getting stuck in a rut of depression and/or discouragement.

The desire to be right is not wrong, but for us it can distract us from what right and wrong really mean. Not logical and factual correctness, but what pleases God vs. what does not please God. Taking someone to task for a foolish error may be done with 100% factual accuracy, and even without pride, but it may still not be done in a loving manner.

Certainly, the words of Paul in his letter to Ephesus are spoken to us as much as any other Christians:

"Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ..." (Eph 4:15)

Speaking the truth is a deep instinctive desire for INTPs... but only by doing so in/through/via/according to love will we truly grow in maturity in Christ. I'm still learning, but I rejoice to see how much God has already changed me in this way, and am confident that He will do the same for you.