If you're an INTP, you want to know whether a claim holds up before you build anything on it, and you'd rather be accurate than agreeable. Christianity has room for that, and one of the four Gospels was written by somebody working the same way.
A Gospel That Opens With Its Method
Luke starts his Gospel with a paragraph nobody quotes at Christmas.
"Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught" (Luke 1:1-4).
Take it apart. Other accounts exist and he's read them. The material traces to eyewitnesses. He investigated it himself, from the beginning, carefully. He arranged it in order. And he states his purpose, which is that Theophilus can know how certain the things he's been taught actually are.
That is a methods section. It's in the Bible, at the front of the longest book in the New Testament, written by the physician who also wrote Acts.
So when somebody tells you faith means switching off the part of your brain that checks things, Luke 1 is the answer. The man who wrote a quarter of the New Testament checked things.
Investigate It, Then Do Something With It
Here's what makes Luke different from a person who only investigates. He wrote it down for somebody else, and he says why: so Theophilus may know the certainty of what he's been taught.
The research served a person. That's the part worth copying.
You can spend years on one interesting question, and the questions are worth it. God is not nervous about them. What can happen instead is that the study becomes the entire relationship, and reading about prayer starts to substitute for praying, and being able to explain a doctrine starts to feel like the same thing as living inside it.
So set a rule for yourself. Whatever you study this month, do one thing with it, or tell one person about it in language they'd use. The understanding is real. It was always meant to end up somewhere.
The Thing You Can't Think Your Way Into
There's a specific frustration waiting for you, and it's worth naming before you hit it.
You will reach a point where the next step isn't a better argument. Somebody in your church will be dying, or you will be, and what's needed then is not a defensible position on suffering. It's being able to sit in a room and say to God that this is unbearable. Analysis is a way of standing outside a thing so you can see it clearly, and there are moments when God asks you to be in it instead.
Everybody meets a version of this in the place they're strongest, and yours arrives here, at the edge of what analysis can reach.
Practice being in it now, while the stakes are low. Pray without preparing, in whatever words show up. Say the thing that isn't well-formed. Worship on a Sunday when the music isn't to your taste and the sermon has a hole in it, and let it be worship anyway.
Nobody Is Grading Your Precision
One more tendency. You tend to hold back on saying anything until you're sure, which reads to everybody else as detachment, and it isn't.
One more thing that follows from that. The church doesn't need you to be certain before you contribute. Your half-formed observation is often more useful than the confident thing somebody else already said. In a small group, say the incomplete version. Ask the question you think is too basic, because it usually isn't and you won't be the only one holding it.
Who Else Wanted It Verified
There are no four-letter types in scripture, so Luke was not an INTP. Scripture is full of people who needed the thing checked, though.
Luke investigates and writes an orderly account. Nathanael's first response to the Messiah is "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" and Jesus calls him a man without deceit about ninety seconds later. The Bereans get commended for examining the scriptures daily to check whether Paul was telling them the truth. Job argues with God for thirty-five chapters and is the one God says spoke rightly.
Where to Take This
Take one of these into the next month, and give it long enough to tell whether it worked. Study something hard, and then do one thing with what you learned instead of moving to the next question. Pray one prayer a day without preparing it. Ask the basic question out loud in a room with other people in it. And read Luke, all the way through, watching for the details a researcher put in that nobody else records.
God gave you a mind that checks things, and then made sure one of the Gospels was written by somebody who used one.
