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This edition of Ask the Pastor features Pastors Gary Schick, Ben Cline, and Jonathan Hernandez.
Gary Schick
So great to be with you guys, and today we're digging into something that I don't know if any of us had heard of before, but we've done a little digging and thankful these guys actually dug a little deeper than I did today. So I'm probably gonna let you guys carry a lot of it. You know, I think that this is probably a timely topic because, as we've kind of learned a little bit about it, apparently this is not something new. And yet it's gaining traction in the culture and in the church. And so, our listeners are probably going, "So, what is it?" Okay, so here's the email I got, it's called, "What does your Enneagram mean with Jesus? Would your Ask the Pastor team like to tackle the subject of Enneagrams? What is an Enneagram? Is this some new thing? Is it biblically sound? And anything else you might want to say about it." So, Jonathan, what would you like to say about it?
Jonathan Hernandez
Well, I guess I haven't really heard much about it coming into, you know, getting our email. So I had to do some research to see what it was all about. And so, some of the origins, I guess, and it was tough....
Gary Schick
Could you tell us what it is? Just so our listeners know.
Jonathan Hernandez
So, Enneagram is, I would guess I would say: a personality type test and there's nine points inside of a circle, and you're one of those nine points. I can't think of all of them right off the top of my head. But you can become stronger in each of those points as you balance yourself, I guess, between the nine points somehow. And so it was just kind of a lot of, a personality test and the sort. And so, looking back at some of the origins or the history of it. There's a guy named Oscar Ichazo and he was trying to, or I guess he had a school of some sort and they were praying, I guess, I don't know what you wanna call it. They were doing something in their prayer circles. And so, he decided that he wanted to go on a, sort of like a seven day divine coma. And he was essentially in a hallucinogenic place, cause they had taken some sort of drug I guess. And he said that during those seven days, this angel came to him and exposed Oscar to 108 different Enneagrams. And so this angel comes and he gives him these 108 and what we call now the Enneagram. And so that was kind of odd, I guess. I would say this, hearing these origins, I would say that it's a dangerous place to step into.
Gary Schick
It's not Christian prayer really.
Jonathan Hernandez
Yeah, especially if you're using drugs to get to a place to have spiritual encounters, I guess. So he, you know, revealed that information, and you can see there's some videos on YouTube of Oscar Ichazo. Actually, I think it was him that was kind of talking about how these things came about. Do we believe that that could truly happen? He could hear from an angel and give him things? Well, probably; but what is the angel that he's hearing from? Right? Like I would say that he's probably hearing from a fallen angel here. And Ichazo, he admits to having contact with spirits, including an angel called Meditron. He claims his group was guided by an interior master. To me, this sounds a lot like new age. And he talks about having a spirit guide or a higher authority often. He had a disciple, I guess, named Claudio Naranjo, and Claudio came up with the actual types that we see now in the Enneagram. And he said that he gained these through automatic writing. I don't know if you guys have heard of automatic writing, which is also demonic. So, I guess if our listeners haven't heard of what an automatic writing is, so basically he gets a piece of paper and a pen out and then he hands his body over to a spirit, and his hand can be used to write whatever the spirit wants to write, I guess. I would say that's pretty demonic. And so, like, a lot of these things is what I was seeing as I was doing research on the origins of what came up. Most of the videos I had seen didn't talk in good light about the Enneagram. So, it's a whole thing about finding your true self and exposing your false self. You could go down the path like this, new age I guess, really that's how it sounds to me; a lot of new age. We see people connect with this so much, because I think we wanna know who we are, you know? We wanna know, "what is our purpose?" And so, having this program or this personality test, I guess, that is....because when you take it, it really does align you with who you seem to be. You know, I'm more of an introvert. I wanna be a peacemaker and I would imagine if I were to take this test, peacemaker is one of the nine. And I would imagine that's probably where I would land. And as I talked to friends, they would say, "Hey, I was a five," or "I was a four." And then I'm like, "Yeah, that's who you kind of are, you know, when I talk to you." And so, how you know that this test puts them in line with that. And I think that really speaks to us, that we wanna know who we are. We wanna know how we can become better. And this thing, saying that you expose your false self, we would all like to have our false self exposed and really step into who God has created us to be.
Jonathan Hernandez
And this test really helps you step into who this test wants you to be, I guess. And so as I, you know, as I look through some of that, I think of Proverbs 20 and it says, "the purpose in a man's heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out." Who is the man of understanding? That would be the man who fears God. And I think for us, if we wanna know who we truly are, it comes down to knowing God. And if we know God, He who knows us better than anybody else right? I think we'll know who we are through Christ and be able to step into where God has us. And so I would say, do we need an Enneagram? I would say: No! Jesus didn't need one. We don't see Him walking around saying, "Oh, I was a four," or "I was eight." You know, we don't see Him talking about those. The disciples, you know, they didn't need one. We don't see the apostle Paul talking about it at all. I think the Bible gives us everything that we need. And I would encourage you, if you're wanting to know who you are, find out who Jesus is. You know, and really connect to God, and allow God to give you who you truly are. We don't need the Enneagram to be holy. The Bible gives us everything that we need for life and godliness. So that's where I would sit.
Ben Cline
Yeah, thanks Jonathan, I totally agree. You know, doing research about something like this is very telling of where things come up. And I appreciate that you talked about the spiritual side of this, the spiritual origins of it. Because, you know, both of those guys that you talked about, Ichazo and Naranjo, they were occultists. And, you know, this is a dangerous source for us to use as believers to try to figure out who we are. You know, it is something that we have to be talking about today because it's something that is becoming more and more popular. You know, starting in 2016 and 2017, Christian, you know, publishing houses, started publishing books about the Enneagram. And it's becoming more and more prevalent and more and more books are coming out in favor of the Enneagram being used in evangelical circles. And so we have to be really careful. One of the scriptures that I was drawn to, as I was thinking about this is 1 John 4. And I just wanna read these six verses real quick. It says, "beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is already in the world. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." And so I think that those are really good, you know, guiding principle verses when we talk about things like the Enneagram. Jonathan, you talked a lot about the origins of it and, you know, there's a few questions out there about it. Number one is, "well, it's just a personality test, right?" If you do a little bit of research on this, there's other personality tests out there that are really popular. And there's, you know, this ebb and flow of popular personality tests that are out there, but all those personality tests are based in research. The thing that's different about the Enneagram, is that it's based out of these, you know, occultic origins and it's not research based. And so, then you come across the question, you know, and even within evangelical circles, there's people who have done this test and say, "well, it really works for me." And so you come across those people and it says, "Well, that Enneagram describes me perfectly, so how could it be dangerous? How could it be wrong?" And, you know, one of the things that I was listening to, it was a podcast where a woman named, Marcia Montenegro, she was speaking about this. And she's really a good resource for, you know, having a biblical view of the Enneagram, and some other things as well. But before she became a Christian, she was a professional astrologist. And, you know, the example that she uses is, she says, "I had clients as an astrologist that I drew up, you know, astrology charts for. And they looked at those and they said, 'that describes me perfectly." And she said, "So, you know, we just have to understand that the reason why we look at things like this and think that they're good, that they're working for us is because as human beings, we search for patterns in everything. And, you know, if we see those ties, we're making those ties because we're searching for those patterns." But the question that really remains for us in thinking about things like the Enneagram is, you know, where is it focused, and what does it make me focus on? The danger, I think, in the Enneagram is that it doesn't make you focus on Christ, it makes you focus on self. And that can be, you know, truly said of a lot of personality tests. Like, they're really trying to help you understand who you are better. But that's really not where our identity is. Our identity is in Christ Jesus as believers. So we need to just be careful. I mean, you know, thinking back to 1 John 4, that's really what it's telling us; is to be cognizant of what is going on around us and is it backed by scripture? Or is it not backed by scripture? Is it backed by us focusing on Jesus Christ? Or is it backed by us focusing on ourselves? And so I think those are some questions that we have to to think about.
Gary Schick
Good stuff guys. Yeah, when I first looked at this, that was my first thought was, you know, some kind of a personality thing. Which, personality tests can be helpful. They can help you understand your set of strengths and weaknesses. I mean, Solomon and Proverbs talked about different kinds of personalities a little bit; 500 years before Christ, the Greeks. That's kind of where my head went with this. I kind of came up with four different personality types: the choleric (kind of a leader), the phlegmatic, the sanguine, the melancholic. And each of those personality types, having strengths and weaknesses and, you know, the only perfect all good personality being Jesus. And so, what can be helpful about those things is, we all kind of have a hardwired personality and however you label it, knowing your strengths and weaknesses and identifying, you know, make your strength stronger and identify your sinful tendencies; and Lord help me work on those. The problem with the Enneagram, as you guys have both so well pointed out is, this isn't going back through time or legitimate psychology in terms of research and looking at how different personalities work. I mean, the soul is not like other parts of our body. It doesn't have these different parts. And so, there's probably a million ways that you can kind of do models of the human personality. The problem with this one is it's occult origins. And so it's kind of a good idea taken in a bad direction. You know, it's kind of like, sorry to offend some of our listeners, but it's kind of like when the Mormons come along to you and say, "Well, you know, the Bible is God's word, and we also have, 'well, you know, Paul said very clearly, if even an angel of light proclaims to you another gospel, let him be a curse." And we know who that other angel of light was that showed up to Joseph Smith; he was Satan. We know who the angel "Gabriel" was that showed up with a very different gospel to Muhammad; he was Satan. And how do we know this? Well, their gospels do not match the gospel in scripture at all. They are works related gospels, working your way. Always Satan wants us, it's like with every sin, he wants us to work our way there; and you fail. And yeah, we do fail. Only Jesus can get us to heaven, and only Jesus is the perfect personality. And in terms of drawing on sources that are so heavily influenced by occultism, it's worrisome to me. You know, just as we were talking, Isaiah 8:19-20 comes to mind, which in the English Standard Version says, "And when they say to you, 'inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,' should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?" And then verse 20, "to the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn." So, you know, and just to balance this a little bit, you know, one of my seminary professors pointed out: all truth is God's truth. Unbelievers can often---and often do---discover things that are part of God's truth. God created this world. Everything that the scientific world legitimately gets right in their study of the natural world, they're studying part of God's truth. So, you know, I have no problem partaking of human medicine, you know? Even though, "this medication wasn't discovered by a Bible scholar." Well, you know, maybe not, but it was discovered by somebody who was doing their diligence to study God's creation and discovered this. That's legitimate. But when it's coming to you from an occult source, from a demonic source, it's coming from the wrong direction, and it's gonna take you in the wrong direction. And, you know, there is this tendency, even without the occult involvement, where our world gets about as wide as our own belly buttons. We just become so focused on ourselves. And that would be another part of the dangerous side of this. And so, I think we come together and agree. Are there some legitimate personality tests out there that can be helpful with you and, you know, even in your relationships with others? Absolutely. But I wouldn't go to the Enneagram for any of that. And the other is, you know, keeping ourselves rooted in God's word as we try, you know, our goal is to grow---not just as a person to become the best that I can be---but to be who Jesus died for me to be. Your best self in Christ!