Parents, An enneawhat? As a sociology major and pastor, personality inventories have been interesting to me… Meyers-Briggs, DISC, MMPI. So, when the enneagram became popular, I was interested. Though there are nearly infinite genetic possibilities, we humans seem to want some handles on how people behave or misbehave, act or act out, so we can make sense of our interpersonal world. We all have positive traits, but our negative traits can quickly reveal our fallenness. I took the inventory and I'm Enneagram 7, as best I can determine. The nickname for a 7 is “The Enthusiast.” Apparently, as we respond to the challenges of our world, we are typified by spinning everything (even things that are not positive at all) to the positive and frequently having FOMO (fear of missing out - a phrase coined by Patrick McGinnis, to whom I have no known relation, which would be frustrating to enneagram 4, who apparently likes to name drop). We avoid negative feelings like the plague by running away to try as many new experiences as possible. One famous 7 is children’s author E.B. White, who wrote Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, among others. He is quoted as saying, “I get up every morning determined both to change the world and have a (expletive) of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult.” It can be like living out the Muppets Song, “I Hope That Somethin’ Better Comes Along.” We are consistently inconsistent searching for happiness and trying to change the world for the better. It’s sometimes hard for us to focus, because we are endlessly scanning the horizon for the next new exciting thing, leaving unfinished projects and frustrated relationships in our wake. We may have great ideas, but following them through to completion is difficult. Like gift wrapping jello, we are hard to pin down… as you can imagine, schools, jobs or situations that call for a commitment to buckle down, put our nose to the grindstone and finish a task is a challenge. I am thankful for a wife who has loved me consistently for 30 years, through all my incomplete projects, unrealized plans, and lack of constancy. While I’m continually maneuvering to reveal the best side of things, she lives in the real world and keeps me grounded, yet she doesn’t kill my spirit by squashing my imagination… thankful for her grace. I’m so grateful that God makes us a new creation and changes us. He takes the worst traits of our personality inventories and makes us into new whole creations, redeeming us for His great work as ambassadors for His Kingdom. As God changes me, He reminds me that a consistent committed relationship with Him brings stability and peace to my life.
Regardless of our enneagram, Meyers-Briggs, MMPI, God loves us and sees us for who we really are, for who He created us to be, untainted by our sin and our feeble attempts to respond to this fallen world. Paul reminds us who we now are… the best expression of the personality God gave us, without the negative manifestations from our sin nature. He says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come! Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.” 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 (CSBBible) These difficult times we live in can tempt us to self-protect and respond to people from the worst of our personality traits. We can let God’s Spirit remind us who we really are as we read His Word and connect with His perfection.
Hang in People! God is with us! I’m praying for you!
