Christians are nothing if not trendy. The Enneagram of Personality is no exception. I'm not sure who first shared the memo on this thing, but apparently when they did they cc'd (Christian Copied) the entire evangelical world. Since then, the trend in Christians circles, especially up the younger, mover-and-shaker types has been upward.
Now, I personally like personality tests. I find them interesting. What I don't find them is authoritative. They do not get to tell me who I am. They do not have that kind of pull.
That would be like a hammer claiming to have the authority to hold up a house when in reality it possesses only the authority to drive the nails. The hammer does not hold the house up, physics, blueprints, architecture, etc... hold the house up.
So I think there is some value in using the Enneagram as a tool. In that sense, it can be helpful and useful. But as a centering philosophy of self, it fails miserably.
The carpenter has authority to drive the nails, but not the authority to make the building stand up. He doesn't possess in himself the kind of pull that gravity does. He doesn't have physics at his fingertips.
But God does.
He has the authority to tell you who you are. He has the ability to hold you together. He can tell you who you are and why you do things and more importantly why you should stop doing certain things, repent and be forgiven for having done them.
The Enneagram is never going to ask anyone to repent of anything. There are no wrong answers on a personality exam. You can't fail a personality test. Because ultimately, it's not trying to hold you together, it's only attempting to explain why you're falling apart.
Psalm 127:1
Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
No comments:
Post a Comment