Image of the Divine
Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a big Enneagram fan girl.
Ennea-what?
Enneagram – basically means a 9-pointed shape, but it refers to a personality typing system that is, well- ancient. It’s been brushed up and expanded on in more recent decades, but its origins trace back hundreds of years. It was a little-known counseling tool utilized by the Franciscans until it was made more widely known in modern times by a Franciscan dude named Richard Rohr.
I’ve always appreciated tools for insight into personalities, but this is the first one that burst things wide open for me. For one, if you stay with it, it is remarkably accurate, yet flexible- acknowledging the complexity of human beings. It is the only tool I know of that accounts for the spiritual aspect of humans – both our wonder and our horror.
In Christian belief, humans were ‘made in the image of God’. Not in the sense of our physical appearance, although some maybe interpret it that way – but in the sense of our essence. I love the enneagram, because it demonstrates this so beautifully. Each of the 9 personality types (divided into a trinity with 1/3 dominated by the heart, 1/3 dominated by the gut, and 1/3 dominated by the head) has a dominate feature that at its most healthy reflects an aspect of the character of God – justice/righteousness, peace/unity, mercy/charity, creativity/uniqueness, wisdom/knowledge, overcoming/protector, enthusiasm/joy, loyalty/dependability, etc. But just as each person uniquely reflects an aspect of the Divine, so they each uniquely have that image thwarted and perverted. The peacemaker can be swallowed up by apathy and sloth, the lover of justice can be controlling and self-righteous, the protector can oppress, the enthusiast can be insatiable, and so forth. The enneagram provides both a beautiful picture of who we are meant to be, and a sobering look in the mirror of who we are. It inspires and convicts. It invites and it warns. It teaches us that we both have something to be saved from, and something to be saved for.
And lastly, I love it because it reminds me that we only fully manifest the Divine image together. We each only have one piece – one color of the rainbow. The fullness of beauty and purpose is only present when we’re in unity. Each personality contains a vantage point that the others desperately need, even if they don’t want it. In isolation we can make ourselves think that the way we interpret and understand reality is the way it must be understood. We can stand rooted proclaiming ‘the world is green!’ while another insists “the world is red!” But in reality, the world is all the colors, but we need each other to see them.
So if my fangirling is enough to convince you that this is worth checking out, may I recommend the following:
And lastly – PLEASE DON’T TAKE THE PERSONALITY TEST. It will give you a very surface level interaction that may be inaccurate – because part of this journey is learning that what you believe about yourself and your motives is often inaccurate at best, and untrue at worst. So read it once quickly, then again slowly, contemplatively, and deeply, and I promise you’ll come out changed. It may hurt, but it’ll be worth it.