The Muddy Waters of the Enneagram

(Editor Alert! This article is not short.)

One of the newest books promoting the Enneagram to Christians is How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others through the Enneagram by Jesse Eubanks.¹ We will grant that Eubanks probably has good intentions and very likely desires to help his readers understand themselves and their relationships. However, we must ask, is the Bible insufficient for faith and practice? Is something needed to fill the void God left in His word regarding human relationships? Is that special something to be found in the Enneagram?

Since its introduction into the Evangelical church by IVP in 2016, the Enneagram has been racing through the church and has become the go-to resource for Christians. Pastors are using it for a nine-week sermon series. It is used for marriage counseling, retreats, church membership classes, and discipleship. It provides opportunities for the budding new growth industry of Enneagram “coaching.” One can be trained by such New Age luminaries as Ginger Lapid-Bogda or Beth McCord, who received her training from five popular New Age teachers.² About five years ago, Marcia Montenegro and MCOI warned this would happen. At last count, Christian publishers have produced over 160 Enneagram titles.

In the Introduction of How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others through the Enneagram, Eubanks includes comments on the origins of the Enneagram:

The origins of the Enneagram are mysterious and often contested. Some say it came from the early church in the fourth century. Others say it was primarily developed in the last hundred years. It’s not really clear, but what is clear is that, with such a broad list of contributors (both Christian and not), the Enneagram is best understood not as a ‘Christian’ tool but as a human tool.³

Actually, we do clearly know the Enneagram’s origins, but its promoters have obfuscated and changed their stories as a result of our exposure.⁴ Eubanks is proposing another strategic change, calling the “Enneagram a “human tool,” and not a “spiritual tool.” Of course, the Enneagram is a “spiritual tool,” originating from occultic spiritual sources, and NOT Christianity. Besides that little detail, it has no validity as a beneficial “human tool.” After performing a psychometric test, Jay Mendenwaldt concluded in his report, “The Enneagram, Science, and Christianity – Part 1,” that it does not perform for the purpose for which it is being used:

For those who have studied psychometrics, it’s a no-brainer that the enneagram simply cannot do all its proponents claim it can. Any scientist who studies personality would simply look at the reliability scores and conclude the test is not accurate enough to be helpful, and therefore, they wouldn’t use it because the potential for harm will be too high.

Even if it were a valid “human tool” used to inform us about how to relate to God and others (the premise of this book), it would have to be subjected to Scripture as the final authority for faith and practice of Christians. Non-Christians have the choice to opt for whatever tool that strikes their fancy, but Christians are and have always been tied to a biblical foundation for life and practice. Unfortunately, as we look at the list of many of the sources⁵, Eubanks lists that he draws upon for his knowledge of the Enneagram, his worldview and his understanding of the word of God. He primarily draws from heretics, New Agers, and non-believers who are the leading lights in the Enneagram movement.

This alone would show that the material in this book is not informed by scripture — but rather, scripture is interpreted through the New Age spiritual sources who created the Enneagram.

In the Introduction, Jesse Eubanks describes his once-growing resentment toward God due to:

The gap between my dreams of how life could be and the reality I was trapped in had grown bigger than I could hold.⁹

Struggling with our life circumstances has been an issue for the people of God all down through history. We find examples of how the heroes of the faith wrestled with life’s disappointments and yet stayed focused on the faith. David would cry out to God in the Psalms, asking why those who hate God seem to be prospering while he was suffering. We then see how his focus shifts, often within a few verses, from his present circumstance to God as the center of his attention. God gave Elijah a great victory over the prophets of Baal, but when threatened by Queen Jezebel, Elijah turned his focus from God, fled into the wilderness, hid in a cave, and prayed to die. God refreshed Elijah and reminded him of the greatness of God and of His preservation of His servants. (1 Kings 19:1-18). We could write a book on these examples, but then we already have one — the Bible. We often need to turn our focus from our present circumstances to God and His word.

Out of his struggle, Eubanks poses a question:

“What is the purpose of life?”¹⁰

This is a great question, perhaps the most important question in life. He then proposes an answer:

If I could be so bold, I would like to humbly submit my answer: The purpose of life is relationships¹¹

The answer the Enneagram provides sets the “purpose of life” bar far too low. An analogy may be helpful. Something we learned about driving a semi (and all vehicles, really) is to “AIM High in Steering.” (Smith System 5 Keys to Driving) The simple explanation is to not focus our primary attention on what is immediately in front of us but on what is down the road 15 or more seconds ahead — perhaps a quarter or half a mile. In so doing, we take in everything in between our present position and the point we are looking at down the road. If something happens that far ahead, we can safely prepare for our next move. We remain aware of what is immediately in front of us, of course, but we also take into consideration what waits ahead of our immediate view.

King Solomon concluded that the purpose of life is to,

Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. (Ecclesiastes 12:13)

How do we fulfill that purpose? Jesus pointed to it in answer to a question of what the greatest commandment is, posed by a young Jewish lawyer:

And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40)

Interestingly, these two are not in the list of the Ten Commandments as number one and two. The first we find in Deuteronomy 6:5, and the second we discover in Leviticus 19:18. These two should be thought of more as category headings of the Ten Commandments. The first is the heading of the first four of the Ten Commandments, which explain how we are to love the Lord with all our hearts, soul, and mind. This is our “down the road” point of focus, and the rest of life is defined by that first purpose. The second great commandment of Jesus is the heading of the next six of the Ten Commandments, which outlines how to love our neighbor as ourselves. Notice these commandments assume we love ourselves. They direct us to love God with our whole being and love others in the same way we love ourselves. If we love our neighbor as we love ourselves, for example, we will not steal his property or his wife, lie to him, covet his possessions, etc., because we would never want these things done to ourselves.

We are not saying it is easy to look past current painful circumstances, and it’s very important to lift other Christians up in their time of trouble, but our life’s purpose must be seen as far more important than our present circumstance, whether the present is troubled or pleasant.

The use of the Enneagram to interpret Scripture comes into play again in Eubank’s Introduction. He points to John 8:31-32 and makes the passage about self-examination and self-clarity:

Self-clarity is difficult to obtain and not for the faint of heart. Moving beyond the surface level and into the recesses of our soul is a terrifying journey. We are scared of what we will find and scared of who or what might be down there. Jesus tells us that knowing him and walking with him will lead to truth, and that truth will set us free (John 8:31—32).¹²

In context, John 8:31-47 is a debate Jesus and the religious leaders were engaged in about who are children of God and who are not..

Human understanding of our dire situation as lost sinners is not at all “difficult to obtain.” The Bible is clear about it, and most of us certainly “know” there is something wrong with us and everyone else. We are all born with a sin nature, we have all personally sinned, and we will all continue to sin in these mortal bodies. A very short self-examination is all that is needed to understand our predicament. Are we sinners, as the scriptures teach? YES. Can we perfect ourselves? NO. Will our supposed numbers on a diagram make any material difference in our lives? NO. But in the Enneagram, the self is central — God is not. In all the Enneagram works, the teaching is on the True Self and the False Self, the key word being “SELF”! We find self-focus in the title of Suzanne Stabile’s book, The Road Back to You. In reality, of course, our “True Self” — prior to our salvation in Jesus Christ— is a sinner separated from God.

When in 2 Corinthians 13:5 we are instructed to “examine ourselves,” it is an examination to see whether or not we are “in the faith” — do we have a saving relation to Christ? If not, of course, that saving relationship should be obtained forthwith. There is nothing more important to the individual.

We are informed in scripture that sinful behavior arises from the “old nature” within that we carry throughout our mortal life, which will not be present in the next life; thanks be to God! The old nature is essentially selfishness. Our innate selfishness and self-focus are what drive us to sin. We cannot overcome it, as Paul makes clear in Romans 7. The more Paul struggled to perfect himself in the flesh, the more sins he committed. Trying not to sin caused him to sin all the more because the sin nature is one of rebellion. He was delivered of this burdensome struggle by realizing that he could not perfect himself but that God certainly would at the proper time.

The word “gospel” appears 39 times in How We Relate: Understanding God, Yourself, and Others through the Enneagram, and on page 10, Eubanksgive his understanding of the gospel:

What is this good news? It is the news that your wounds can be healed and your sins forgiven.¹³

We well understand that Jesus forgives the sins of those who call upon Him, who trust only Jesus for their salvation, but just how does the Enneagram help us in any way to be healed and forgiven? The focus of the Enneagram is actually an attempt to rationalize away the truth of the gospel. The “False Self” of Enneagram fabrication is an attempt to explain away our evil behaviors as something that is really not us. In Enneagram teachings, the “false self” (sometimes called the “ego”) is a “social construct” foisted on us by others. According to this teaching, we just must “realize” that we were never separated from God in the first place. The “False Self/True Self” concept is taught by Richard Rohr and carried on by those Rohr mentored, Christopher Heuertz, Ian Cron, and Suzanne Stabile, who authored the Enneagram books most used in evangelical churches.

Our sinful nature is explained to us in the bible without face-saving rationalization. We cannot “explain away” the evil things we do: rather, we must understand we were born with our propensity to evil and that our sin nature is still with us, though we have been forgiven if we have called on Christ Jesus for salvation. Our sin nature is not a “social construct” foisted on us by others but is very real. It is essential to the gospel to understand that. In the first few chapters of Romans, the Apostle Paul makes it abundantly clear that man’s true nature â”€ man’s “true self”â”€ is utterly corrupt. When we believe in Christ and are cleansed of our sin, we have a new identity as a new creation in Christ.

Near the end of the Eubanks writes:

Many explorations of the gospel emphasize our guilt before a holy God and his atonement for our sins on the cross. The Scriptures teach in Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Jesus sacrificed himself for our sake. Through Jesus’ blood on the cross, our sinful state is replaced with his perfect holiness. We receive his goodness in place of our guilt. This is the gospel of grace. What profoundly good news!¹⁴

The gospel of grace is truly good news. But our old nature is not removed from us in this life. That old nature is what causes us to sin. It is not a result of forgetting our “true selves” and striving to get back to some fabricated “former perfection.” The true gospel isn’t difficult nor at all Enneagramish. The Apostle Paul wrote:

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:1-5)

The saving gospel is what we must believe, and it consists not only of the death but also the burial and resurrection. Jesus paid the price and defeated death! We cannot “fix” ourselves. It is then that we are forgiven of our sins but not yet perfected and have what we truly need, peace with God. We find this again in Romans 10:9-13:

because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, “Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

Biblically there is “NO TRUE SELF/FALSE SELF” teaching to muddy the waters of the gospel. There are the lost/unredeemed, and the blessed redeemed, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, Who is the One that is transforming us:

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:6)

Our walk is by faith.

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

Our identity is in Him.

If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1-3)Ω

The Muddy Waters of the Enneagram

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