I had been in my current role as pastor of City Beautiful Church for about three years. It was the summer of 2016, and I was sensing internally that I was on the edge of burnout. Have you ever felt that way? Not quite at the end of your rope, but you can see the frayed knots just on the horizon? That is how I felt.
With the blessing of my leadership, I decided to take a month and do something of a “staybbatical”. I continued to preach and attend to the regular meetings and duties of keeping the church moving, but I limited my pastoral work in order to search inside myself so I could see what was off. I knew I needed some sort of path or guide to lead that self-discovery, so I turned to the enneagram. In the years since it has become quite a popular system for personality typing, with some rather dramatic pushback from misunderstanding of what it is in one corner of Christendom and a parodied social media-ready fun game in another, but at the time I knew few people who were engaging with it, so I came in wide-eyed and curious. It took a bit of time, and lots of journalling, but before long the enneagram gave me a map of my inner-workings, just enough language to connect the dots between my struggles and familiar patterns that did not seem to be serving me at that point in my story. Combined with some wise mentoring and therapy, it became an invaluable tool for me to understand the boxes I was already existing in, the things I was telling myself about myself, so I could open up my personality and begin to allow God to set me free. The work is ongoing, because we are all beautifully complex creatures, but it remains to this day one of my favorite ways to understand myself and help my people do the same for themselves.
There is a brief admonition from Paul at the end of his letter to the Galatians which speaks to the work ahead of us. I quite like how Eugene Peterson phrases it in his Message interpretation:
“Make a careful exploration of who you are and the work you have been given, and then sink yourself into that. Don’t be impressed with yourself. Don’t compare yourself with others. Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life”.
One of the tragedies of modern evangelical Christian thinking is that focus on ourselves is selfish; we should instead focus on Christ and Christ alone. I would argue that our selfish tendencies are in fact a result of our inability or unwillingness to do the kind of soul-searching honest work of self-discovery that can open us up to the work of the spirit of Christ in us. Consider these three quotes from different periods of Christian history that show us another way, a better way:
“Grant, Lord that I might know myself that I may know thee.” - St. Augustine (5th c.)
“A humble knowledge of thyself is a surer way to God than a deep search after learning.” - Thomas a Kempis (15th c.)
“Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God” - John Calvin (16th c.)
Gaining language for our personalities, when done with care and a desire to grow closer to God, is a sacred process. It requires honesty, vulnerability, and courage. As the psalmist prays, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts”. It is important to understand, however, that information does not equate to transformation. Diagnosis is not the same as cure. This is why the work of understanding your personality is so powerful - it can be a path to growth, or it can be a way of stereotyping yourself and excusing your behavior. Systems like the enneagram or Myers-Briggs can even be weaponized against other people. Do not take this work lightly.
Reflection:
There are many useful tools available for gaining language for our personalities, and they are precisely that - tools. Unfortunately, we are so conditioned for quick and digestible answers that we will turn to rudimentary online tests to reveal to us deep truths, in the same attitude we might figure out which Hogwarts house we belong to, or which Sex in the City character we are most like. I believe the work is important enough to slow down and do it well. I would encourage you to take time to read a book or take a course that helps you get everything you can out of the process of self-discovery.
In terms of gaining language for your personality through these systems, what has resonated with you most, and why?
What are two or three big discoveries you made that have confirmed you personality type? How did it feel to see something in writing or hear something in a teaching that describe how you think, act, or feel?
For an overview of the enneagram in audio and PDF form, go to https://www.citybeautiful.ch/enneagram .
Redeeming our Personalities
One of the questions I most often entertain when I teach the enneagram is whether or not we can change our personalities. The revelations that can come to us about patterns and unhealthy assumptions we make about the world around us can lead to shame. Often when we encounter language that describes how we function, it hits a nerve we’d rather protect than expose. Ironically, paying attention to your reaction to certain personality types is the biggest indicator something deeply personal is being revealed. In truth, you cannot change your personality. But the good news is that you can steward it well.
One of the greatest things that staybattical helped me to come to terms with was my overwhelming desire for peace, both the “inner” peace that I crave between my mind, heart, and gut; and the “outer” peace I pursue in my relationships, both with God and other people. Coming to terms with that motivation as my core value has helped me notice the times when I settle for a counterfeit peace instead of developing the tools to engage with the real thing. This might mean that I indulge in numbing practices to avoid what’s happening within me, or that I simply go along to get along with those around me, even tucking away my needs and desires in order to not rock the boat. The more I begin to notice myself falling into unhealthy patterns, the better I am able to pivot to healthy practices that move me from simply being a peacekeeper to a peacemaker. Most importantly, were I to try and do away with that core motivation I would be robbing the world of the greatest gifts God has given me.
It is a profound truth that our greatest gifts and our greatest liabilities usually sit right next to one another. Often we think of our “sin nature” in the Christian household as this other thing, this foreign object, that has no relation to who we really are. The more devious work of the Unholy Trinity in our lives is actually to corrupt the raw materials that make us, us. Father Richard Rohr, a practitioner of the enneagram, says that sin is when we “overdo our strengths”. I recognize that in my own life - when I drift into compulsive behavior in order to protect what I think is peace, I become slothful and indecisive. In that space I’m no good to anyone, least of all myself. But when I claim that deepest desire and open myself to the grace of God, I am able to accomplish much. It begins with reminding myself that my truest self, my identity, is not in the shifting scenarios and decisions that swirl around me, but that I am unequivocally loved by God. This is the radical beauty and responsibility of stewarding personality.
What are the main aspects of our personalities?
We all perceive the world through one of our primary centers of intelligence - some of us think our way into the chaos of the world, while others take it all in relationally through our heart, still others of us are instinctually tuned to our environment through our gut.
We all have differing-yet-related perspectives on what it means to love and be loved. For some of us, love is security. For others, we interpret it as a particular kind of acceptance or permission to be ourselves. Still others may see love as empowerment to do great things.
We all have things that drain us and things that sustain us. Some of us are naturally more low-energy than others. Where some might find conflict makes us cross-eyed, for others it brings us to life. For certain people, everything is relational, while for others it’s all about the task at hand.
Recognizing that we all have different personalities opens us up to two things. First, we realize that not everyone thinks, feels, and acts the way we do, and that’s okay. It’s actually a relief, because we need other ways of seeing the world to broaden our own. This means we can be more graceful to others in how they function. Secondly, our vision of the God-revealed-in-Jesus broadens as we realize Christ is transcendent enough to encompass and redeem all our personalities. In him we see a fully human embodiment of introversion and extroversion, a free thinker, deep feeler, careful doer. If we sit with him enough, Jesus can become for each of us the model of who we are becoming. The community of John puts it this way: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is”. Here we see the pattern of affirming our unshakeable identity as children of God, and the transformation of our personalities to be more like Jesus.
Reflection:
It is easy for us to confuse our patterns of behavior with our core motivations; however, many personality types may act the same but for completely different reasons. Using the perspective you have gained from certain systems, consider the following:
What is my core motivation in life? How does this speak to my best contribution to the world around me? How about my most consistent vices and struggles? What is the relationship between my gifts and liabilities?
What is my primary center of intelligence (head, heart, gut)? If that is true, which other center might I not be paying enough attention to? Often therapeutic practices are most effective when we focus on a repressed center of intelligence.
How do I feel most loved? How do I most naturally offer love to others?