Enneagrams

Apparently people in the field of Christian spirituality prefer the Enneagram to regular personality tests.  An Enneagram suggests your core needs, which also determine your core sins.  Knowing our core sins is not something that most of us get excited about.  Dwelling on our strengths seems a bit more inviting.  However, according to the people who support enneagrams, in order to truly know ourselves, to pay attention to our true nature that tends to hide behind the cloak of life experiences, we have to start with the ugliness.  Of course we believe the ugliness is redeemed, and discovering our core sins may even be a freeing experience.  We name our fears to rid ourselves of them.

Anyway, check out the link and try out the test.  Of course it's just a test.  David Benner even suggests that we go without the test and allow the Holy Spirit to walk us through the different traits rather than a a mathemetical equation.  I'm sure God can work in both ways, but a contemplative approach seems favorable to me.

Some Christians might be a bit nervous about the Enneagram, seeing it as something occultic or of the new age.  I would imagine that there is evidence to support those concerns.  Other religions can use the tool for their own belief systems.  However, I'm fine to see it as an acceptable tool for Christians to approach it from their context of biblical spirituality.

I think Richard Rohr deals with the topic well.  He is a Catholic spiritual theologian who has written on the enneagram and also explains it's history and it's nature.  The video is more a series of images, but the audio is good.