This is my first post on “The Chronicles of Johanan Rakkav”. As long as I’m making this a dedicated personal blog, I might as well say something very personal (as taken orignally from my dysfunctional Yahoo 360 blog, and then from my quirky Blogspot blog, which will now be devoted solely to The Music of the Bible Revealed).

2008-04-28: I confess to a certain fascination with IQ and aptitude tests. When I was still pretty young (I don’t remember quite when), my mother told me me that a test I’d taken rated me as a “borderline genius”, but the school refused to tell her (or me) just how high my score was. Considering what I was able to do and allowed to do even in elementary school (let alone middle and high school), it must’ve been pretty high. But it’s possible that not until today have I been able to guess just what the school meant by “borderline”.

One thing that’s puzzled me about IQ tests over the years (decades!) is that on almost all of them, I never got an average score of higher than 138, and usually somewhat less. Not only did that not seem to jive with how well I dealt with problems when I was “in the zone”, but even less did it jive with how people perceived me and how I interacted with them. Those who know me well can probably guess how puzzling I found this, as I don’t deal well with ambiguity and lack of self-consistency (in myself or in how things relate to other things).

Over the past few years, I’ve taken some online tests that solved part of the problem. These tests broke down my aptitudes into categories. On one I got a 160 in logic, 120 in math, and in the high 130’s on most other categories. On another, I got scores of 100th percentile (no conversion to IQ scores) in both logical and verbal aptitudes, in addition to mostly very-high-90’s percentiles in other areas. Both of these breakdowns explained a lot. On IQ tests I always have had the most problems with mathematical and spatial reasoning tests (even though I still did well above average in these). In verbal and logical tests, however, I have always been very strong — and it’s those areas that I tend to project in my persona vis-à-vis the rest of the world. Writing is my first love anyway — and it makes sense (considering, again, how people react to my writing as well as how well I interact with written material) that my verbal aptitude would be at the top of the chart. So all this helped explain why people perceive me as being considerably more brilliant than my usual average IQ score would suggest. They perceive my logical and verbal aptitudes as well as my musical ones, basically.

Still, I felt that the whole picture wasn’t in place until today [the day when I took the test, that is]. Some part of my mind has always thought that, surely, I could’ve done (and sometimes have done) better even in the “weaker” areas than I have usually done. It wasn’t that I felt myself anywhere near the level of the truly great geniuses of the world (though I seem to be able to communicate with just about anybody, no matter how brilliant he or she is) — I just didn’t feel that sense of self-consistency that would reassure me of where I truly stood. I may not be as fast at solving some problems as some, yet I seem to be able to solve whatever problem is posed to me in time. And there was one test I took at the former Ambassador College (Pasadena, CA.) when I was applying for a WATS line job — the administrator unexpectedly came back and said it was the highest score she had ever seen on that test (if memory serves, I had a perfect score).

If all this tells you (the reader) that a lot of my self-esteem revolves around my intelligence … you’re right. Part of the reason is that in my childhood and youth, I seemed to be valued for little else other than my brains and my musicality; and old habits of thinking die hard. But it’s also part of my basic personality: INTJ on the Myers-Briggs Temperament Indicator. If anyone is tempted by intellectual vanity, it’s us Masterminds (and, in my opinion, especially scientists/artists like me). Jeremiah 9:23-24 is one of the hardest moral admonitions in the Bible for me to live up to:

(Jeremiah 9:23 ESV) Thus says the LORD: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches,
(Jeremiah 9:24 ESV) but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.”

Well, an old friend and recent arrival on Facebook, Sonia King, took a free online IQ test and got a slightly higher average IQ score (140) than I’d had heretofore. I told her that I probably would get a lower average score than that because the math score would mitigate the logical and verbal scores. Imagine then my delighted astonishment (or was it astonished delight?) when I got back what is probably the highest score the test will give back: 160+. I’m pretty sure I got every answer right … because this time, I didn’t give up early in frustration on some questions or rush through because of having to beat a clock, but sat there until I was absolutely satisfied that I’d worked out the correct answer in every case. (The coffee and cocoa probably helped too. ) So I have Sonia to thank for this bit of serendipity.

I find it strangely comforting to know that I did my best on this test, that I almost certainly “aced” it, and that therefore I really am capable of the level of performance that I guess for myself and that other people guess about me. While part of me still can’t help but wish I were a top-of-the-bell-curve, universal genius like Goethe or da Vinci (so that I could understand the world as fully as humanly possible), realistically I’m not sure I could bear the emotional and spiritual burdens that such insight would give me. (I have a hard enough time bearing what my gifts give me now — cf. Ecclesiastes 1:18!) Meanwhile, it’s enough to have the self-consistency that I crave even more. I don’t necessarily need to be at the cutting edge of the bell curve; just to know my approximate place on it, in a way that’s consistent with my own observations and those of others.

As for the “borderline genius” bit: different tests I’ve seen will give different definitions of where “genius” begins. Some will begin the “genius” range at 140 (which is where Sonia is on average). Others (like this one) will begin it higher. Since my top scores on the “breakdown” tests have been at 160 or so, could it be that when I was young, the “borderline genius” score really meant I was on the borderline of what this test would call “extraordinary genius”? That would explain much about why I was considered “borderline” and why no one would tell the family “borderline what?”

Update 2008-04-29: The best way of summarizing all this is probably found here:

(Romans 12:3 ESV) For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.
(Romans 12:4 ESV) For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function,
(Romans 12:5 ESV) so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.(Romans 12:6 ESV) Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, in proportion to our faith;
(Romans 12:7 ESV) if service, in our serving; the one who teaches, in his teaching;
(Romans 12:8 ESV) the one who exhorts, in his exhortation; the one who contributes, in generosity; the one who leads, with zeal; the one who does acts of mercy, with cheerfulness.

P.S.: My twin sister did almost as well — probably missing only one or two questions. On some other day she probably would’ve aced it also. I’m not sure I want to know how well Miss Positronic Brain (my niece) would do. I do want to know how well my nephew would do — he was the family chess champion until I beat him two out of three games, and he would probably wipe the floor with me now.

Blessings in Jesus Christ (ברכות בישוע המשיח),
Johanan Rakkav (יוחנן רכב)

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Free-IQTest.net – Free IQ Test