Continuing the theme of temptation, I used the enneagram in two worship services this week. At the first when I was preaching, I went through all nine types in moderate detail (note to self: 9 point sermons tend to go too long!) The aim was for us to identify the things that tempt us so we can confess our sins and open ourselves to God's transforming grace. I talked about sins not in the sense of specific moral mistakes, but in terms of our underlying motivations that are not always holy. The enneagram helps expose when we are doing the 'right' thing for the wrong reasons.
At the other service I set a circle displaying the nine divine qualities that are the gifts of each of the nine types. The enneagram is sometimes called "the face of God" because where as we are able to express some of these virtues some of the time, God always has all of these qualities.
Then as I briefly spoke to each quality I turned it over to reveal the sin or temptation by which the nine types pervert these divine qualities. After a silent meditation and prayer of confession we all turned them back over to reveal once more the gifts that each of these types can express when redeemed.
Here is the list:
The image above comes from an Enneagram Institute in San Francisco.
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