Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 177 | Personality Tests

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Seemingly more popular than ever, personality tests like the Enneagram have pervaded both popular and Christian culture. Today we examine some of the issues with these assessments that Christians need to be aware of. 

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Hey, guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. I hope everyone had a great weekend. Today we are going to be talking about personality test. This is something that a bunch of you have asked me to talk about specifically to address and explain the Enneagram. And I'm going to do that. But I really want to talk about personality tests in general and how we as Christians, should be thinking about them and how we should approach them and some of the problems that we should contend with as believers in God's word. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country

aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answer. wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular.

This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. Let's get into this. So I haven't wanted to talk about personality tests. I haven't wanted to dedicate an entire episode to it because I think a lot of Christians

seem to have been talking about this recently. this is a hot topic and I just wasn't sure if I had anything unique to add to the conversation. A lot of this stuff, a lot of the critiques that I've been hearing from Christians about the Enneagram have been really solid, really thorough, really good. So I thought does Relatable really have anything original to bring to the table here? But because so many of you have asked me to talk about this, I realize that you might not be listening to all of the podcasts that I listen to and you might just be coming to Relatable for your information, which I love. Thank you for that, by the way. So I decided that it is my duty to my audience who has been asking me to address this

to do so. If you haven't noticed young people, young women especially, and that makes up the majority of this audience, and young Christian women, even more especially, love personality tests. The Ineagram has seen a surge in popularity among Christians. There are Christian Enneagram Instagram accounts. There are church and ministry teams that I know personally, that require their team members to take the Enneagram. When they join their team, Christians and non-Christians alike, put their types in their Instagram or in their Instagram profiles. There are discussion groups about the Eniogram.

You can get certified in the Eniogram. There is a Christian Enigram account that I know that I think actually sells some kind of course that you can walk through to better understand and analyze the Eniogram. this is wildly popular and pervasive stuff and it's only gotten more popular and pervasive recently. And even though personality tests have been around for a long time and we're actually going to get into a little bit of the history of it because that's really important as we discussed this, they seem to be more prevalent than ever. And I think that there are probably, in my opinion, a few reasons for that.

One reason personality tests are popular is a really basic reason. It's true in all areas, no matter what, not just right now, because it's really human nature to love learning about ourselves. We naturally love ourselves. That's something that we've talked about on this podcast when Jesus says in the Bible to love your neighbor as yourself. It is not a directive to love yourself. It's because that comes naturally.

And again, I just want to clarify, those of you who have listened to my podcast for a long time, you already know what I'm about to say as I kind of explain this. But for those of you who are new, when I say that it's natural, to love yourself. I'm not saying that it's natural to wake up and think that you're beautiful and awesome and capable and wonderful and worthy all the time. What I'm talking about is that it's natural to care for yourself. It's natural to meet your own needs. It's natural to avoid your own pain. Anything outside of self-love, like self-sacrifice, takes effort. It takes discipline. It takes getting away from your basic human instinct or basic human nature to just

serve yourself and to go outside of yourself to serve others or to do something that's good for everyone else around you and maybe disadvantageous to you. So self-love is natural. Self-preservation is natural. Even people who struggle with anxiety or depression, even get to the point of suicide. They're doing that not necessarily because they hate themselves, but because they are trying to avoid pain. Now, you might feel some kind of self-deprecation, but even that is a symptom of self-sitterness. The antidote to self-deprecation or feelings of self-loathing or low self-esteem is not self-love. It is God's love.

That's what we've talked about many times on this podcast before. So I think that is one of the reasons why this is so popular because we love ourselves, naturally. We love learning about ourselves. We love talking about ourselves. we want to be understood. We like reading about our quirks. We like reading about our strengths, our weaknesses, what drives us, and that we are simultaneously special, and that we are also like other people who share our same

personality types. Personality tests meet too deep and fundamental needs in all of us, and that is to be known and to belong, to be a part of something that's bigger than ourselves. We learn that we are a certain type and that within that type, we see. see what we already know about ourselves reflected and we may feel like we learn new things too. And we are part of a group now that is not just us as an individual, but other people who are like us. I also think they're more popular now because of the increased focus of our society and self-love. Yes, self-love has always been around. If you read John Calvin's little book on

the Christian Life, which is a compilation of teachings on John Calvin, he talks about the evils of self-love and the obsession of self-love, and that was hundreds of years ago. So this has been around since the dawn of time, but it used to be regarded, especially within Christianity as a vice. Now it's seen, even within Christianity, as a virtue. And this has become more and more true recently, this obsession with self-love, with self-care, with self-help, with self-empowerment. We are told by the mainstream culture, whether that's via mommy blogs or

or fitness gurus or even supposedly Christian influencers, that we can meet our own needs. In an order for us to meet our own needs, whether it's a need for confidence or success or weight loss or whatever, we have to understand our needs. And to understand our needs, we need to know ourselves. And to know ourselves, we are typically told that we need these personality tests as tools to aid in that introspective journey. We are today obsessed with introspection, with analyzing and thinking about ourselves, assessing what we want, how we think, why we are the way that we are, and we are told by the same very self-focused group that this is a necessary exercise in being all that we can

be in order to become fully, in order to become our full selves or, come fully into our own to reach our potential and to be happy, we must understand what makes us tick. Personality tests are also used to help people interact with, work with, understand those around us, whether that's friends, spouses, coworkers. I have taken probably every personality test out there. I can even tell, well, I think I can tell you what I am. This goes to show that I haven't spent a whole lot of time thinking about this, but I've taken the test before. Myers-Briggs, I think that I'm an INFP and might surprise you that this test tells me that I'm an introvert, but I think that according to Myers-Briggs I am, and I think according to the

eneagram, I've taken it. I used to take it in college. I was obsessed with this stuff. So I think that in college when I took it, I was like a one with the two-wing, and then I've taken it again at a certain point, and I'm an eight. I don't really know. I haven't done as much digging into this as a lot of people have. So I say this to say as I'm talking about this, I've had personal experience with this. And as always, know that I'm not coming from a place of judgment or not, you know, not knowing what I'm talking about because I haven't ever taken one of these tests. I have. I'm not coming from a place of self-righteousness.

As I talk about some of the problems that Christians need to wrestle with when it comes to personality tests, I talk about them as someone who has wrestled with them myself as recently is over the past year. It's been over the past year that I've been learning about this stuff and kind of realizing, maybe this is something that Christians, that Bible believing people should be wary about. Maybe we should pause and reconsider the importance and the validity of these tests. And what made me start to kind of take a step back and say, hmm, I'm not so sure about this anymore, was seeing, like I said, very recently within the past year or two, the obsession of people on social media with these tests,

especially the Enneagram, especially in Christian circles, in Christians that I was talking to in these ministries and local churches saying, oh yeah, we use the Enneagram as kind of our way to not just get to know one another, but to decide how we're going to work with one another and how we're actually going to accomplish our goals. It started becoming, to me, from what I could see,

a kind of primary or at least secondary identifier or a lens through which people are seeing the world and other people. People saying, you know, I'm, you know, I'm Ali and I'm a one. What are you saying like, well, because I'm a one, this is how I see it or this is how I react or this is my struggle. And it has seemed like the enneagram is becoming a not just a lens, but a dominant lens through which its users are seeing the world, are seeing themselves and are seeing, other people. I also have started to wonder if the focus on personality types is being used as a way to trivialize or even normalize sin. So for example, saying, ha ha, you know, I'm an eight. So I might just say something that hurts your feelings. That's just who I am. I'm just going to be blunt. I'm just

going to be insensitive or saying, oh, I'm a two. So I'm probably just going to make or say anything that makes you happy, whether or not it's true. But that's just how I'm. I am. And these things may even be framed as struggles when Christians are talking about them, but really they're seen and characterized as nothing more than quirks. So watching this happen in real time in Christian social media circles and wondering if I have been guilty of doing this, which I have, by the way, using my personality type to excuse sin, I've realized that this world of personality analysis deserves a deeper look. Because remember, we, Christians know that there is no neutral ground. Here is a quote by C.S. Lewis, a quote that I

personally need to keep in mind a lot more than I do. There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch, every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. I just want to repeat that because I think it's so good. Those of you who have been following me for a while know how much I love C.S. Lewis. There is no neutral ground in the universe. Every square inch every split second is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan. That means that this subject, which may seem like no big deal, it might seem like I'm just blowing something out or blowing something out of proportion that doesn't even need to be talked about. It's not worth any of our future thought or any kind of deep analysis. It's important because there is no neutral ground. So first,

I want to talk about the history of personality tests. We don't always talk about history on this podcast, but I like to give context when necessary and when possible. And as it turns out, it is both necessary and possible in this case. Personality tests have been around for a long time. Carl Jung, you've probably heard of him, was a Swiss psychiatrist born in 1875. He founded analytical psychology and his studies were the basis for tests like the Myers-Briggs. He developed what is known as individuation, which is defined as the process by which individual beings are formed and differentiated from other human beings. In particular, it is the development of the

psychological individual as a being distinct from the general collective psychology. That's fun. So individuation is known as a healing process for the individual as they learn to fully integrate their psyche. It's known as self-realization and self-actualization. It is a journey taken through your whole life. There is a spiritual aspect to this, as Jung believed this journey led to what he deemed the highest experience. Jung was extremely influenced by mysticism. He believed that this process of individuation and self-actualization or self-fulfillment is at the center of all religions, so that includes Christianity, Buddhism, Taoism, and others, which he essentially believed shared this common core. He believed that the journey to the self is simultaneous with

the journey to the divine and that the purpose of getting to know God is actually getting to know yourself. And I hope that you can start to see, even as I'm explaining, who is known kind of as the father of the at least the psychoanalysis that is the basis of personality test, I hope that you can start to see that this line of pantheist, a mystical thinking, is still influence seeing how people see and use personality test today. People see it as a spiritual experience and still believe that the journey is of self, the journey to the self, the full self is necessary to fully knowing God. And even if you haven't seen that outright, I hope that you can kind of see how that's underneath a lot of the pseudo-Christian slash new age things

that we're seeing today. Jung had an interest in the paranormal and the occult, he believed, in the ability to connect to the spirit world. His later writings, really after 1940, focused on alchemy. Jung, who supplied the psychological foundation for a lot of popular personality tests, has played a huge role in the New Age movement, which has waxed and waned in popularity since the 1970s, and now is experiencing another uptick. You've probably seen a lot of people really into crystals and altars and connecting

to the divine and the inner soul. Marianne Williamson has been a big influencer in this movement, but certainly there are a lot of celebrities in Hollywood who believe this and probably some of the people that you follow on social media. It's hard to define what exactly the New Age is, but in general it is the belief that God, little G, God, of course, we know as Christians, or the divine, imbues the universe, that he is not just or she probably in the world.

this realm of thinking is not just a monotheistic entity. He is not defined by the Bible, certainly not any ancient text like that. He is not one single being. He is everywhere in everything. They also believe that the divine is found in human beings themselves, which is different than what we believe that we are made in the image of God, but the divine is actually in the core of who you are. That's why you have to take this introspective journey to actually find it. That's why they believe that the journey of self-actualization is also the journey to the divine. There's a focus on healing and the natural world and the desire to unite somehow the spiritual and the scientific.

Its roots, the new age roots are in the occult. Occultism can be defined by a variety of viewpoints, but it includes, it's not limited to, but it includes the belief in magic, including vampires and witches and werewolves and all of that. A theosophy, which is the belief that there's a deep higher truth embedded in the mysteries of the ancient past and is found in no one religion but can be searched out using mysticism and magic. This was popularized in the West in the 19th century by a woman by the name of Helena Blavatsky.

She believed that theosophy would eventually take over all of the other world religions as humans realized that this higher truth found simultaneously. in themselves and the divine became more popular. It is heavily influenced by Eastern religions. So as a recap, Jung, often known as the father of these personality tests or the psychoanalysis underneath these personality tests, was affiliated with the occult, outwardly, apparently, even in his writings. And Jung, in the beliefs of the occult, influenced the new age movement that started in the late

20th century and has now reached a new peak of popularity. You have seen this New Age movement yourself and even if you haven't noticed it until now, everything that we're seeing about the importance of the self, the love of self, the worship of the self, the care of self, the discovery of self, the fulfillment of self as not just forms of self help, not just forms of being healthy in general, but as tools to holistic spiritual healing, you have probably seen a rise in the popularity of zodiac signs, which is also a tool of the occult. You may have even seen a popularity in women identifying as witches. Here's a recent headline from Teen Vogue, my least favorite publication, I think, in all of the universe and that is saying something. There's a PG-13 warning to what

I'm about to say. So if you have kids in the car, you might just want to fast forward. This is a headline, how to make your orgasms magical, literally. Sex magic can help you manifest your best self with or without actual sex. Here's another one, Winter Solstice 2018, which is offer a look into their Yule rituals. But the new age isn't always that obvious, although it should disturb all of us that young people are reading this kind of stuff and are encouraged to read this kind of stuff. But it also seems, or it comes across as a little more innocuous than that and a little bit harder to detect. Here's one. Decide that you care about creating your magic and pushing it out into the world than you do about how it will be received. Let me repeat that because I kind of butchered it.

Decide that you care more about creating your own magic and pushing it out into the world than you do about how it will be received. That is from Girl Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. Anything you see about the manifestation or the fulfillment of the self and the connection to the universe or the divine, no matter how much it tries to tell you it is Christian, it is not. It is part of, or at the very least, influenced by whether it knows it or not, or whether its author knows it or not, by the new age. And personality tests are a part of this world, not just because of Jung and his influence, but also because of the very similar roots of the Enneagram.

The Enneagram has its roots in Eastern mysticism. It was first made known by the early 20th century, Russian, Armenian, mystic philosopher and occultist, I cannot say his last name. We're going to try. George Gurgiff. He was known for the idea that most humans exist in what he called waking sleep. So in order to awaken the true full self, one must take what he called the fourth way, which is the discipline of uniting the body and the mind and the spirit to achieve a higher consciousness. This is not that dissimilar from what Jung believes. Not a lot is known about the sources of good I don't know. I don't know how to say his name. Gergev's philosophy, but according to his book,

meetings with remarkable men, his teachings were very much inspired by his wanderings through the Eastern world. The enneagram shape that you're probably familiar with with the nine points that kind of looks like a star, it's in a cultist shape. It was used by Gerchief as a symbol of connection to the cosmos. But even his students didn't fully understand its significance. Much of the the occultist lessons are like that. They are esoteric. They are mystical, combining different parts of religious traditions in an effort to create a worldview that is, quote, whole.

Gurgief and his pupils emphasize the importance of the self. Again, that's self-actualization, self-betterment, and self-empowerment. His ideas were spread to the West by his own efforts and also his followers' efforts. It wasn't actually until the 20th century, so a little bit later when another occultist, Oscar Icas. also don't know how to say his last name, and his student, Claudio Noronho, developed the Enneagram of Personality, that the Enneagram was considered a tool for personality analysis with the aim of aiding self-observation and transcendence of suffering.

Acaso claims that the Enneagram, get this, this is important to know that this test that so many are putting stock into, that I put stock into at one point, but people are really basing their whole lives on this test. This is how this guy claims this occult. claims that it was revealed to him by the Metatron, the print of the archangels, while he was in some kind of ecstatic state or trance. Noronho, who spearheaded the integration of psychotherapy with spirituality and fantasy enhancing drugs was a leader in what is known as the global human potential movement of the 1900s. In the 1970s, Noronho students brought the Enneagram to

Catholic communities. It is still promoted by a few Catholic leaders today, like the Franciscan, like the Franciscan friar, Richard Rour, as well as embraced by many evangelical Christians, as I have already discussed in this podcast. These men were also affiliated with Theosophy, the same magic-centered religion pushed by Helena Blavatsky in the 19th and 20th century. So it all comes together. The roots of personality tests in general. The psychoanalysis of personality tests from the Myers breaks to the I can't speak for every single personality test, but even and the idea of personality tests, are in paganism. They are in mysticism.

They are in magic. They are in the occult. They are all connected by the idea that our purpose of life is to understand the self, to discover our best self, to manifest our best self. And while we do so, we are connecting with the spirit world, which is as pantheism believes in everything. So the question is, knowing the context, knowing the history, does any of this really matter?

aren't Christians in the business of redemption? Isn't there a way for us to separate personality tests from their roots and use them for good purposes? Can they actually help us? Maybe some of you might be thinking become more like Christ as we understand what our struggles are and why they exist. Can we use them to help us love other people as we understand what makes them angry, what makes other people feel most love, how they ticked, how they're best managed, or

worked with. There are going to be a variety of opinions on this, I know. And I think that I know that there are genuine, Jesus-loving, theologically sound Christians who do believe that these tests can be redeemed and repurpose for good, just as there are solid Christians who think that there is no good, that there is no good use to these tests at all. But here's what I think. I don't think that if you have taken a personality test, let me just lay this out there that you are a witch or a Satan worshipper, obviously. But while it may be true,

this is what we need to think about, what it may be true, that you learn things about yourselves and other people through these tests, while it may be true that you are able to identify with a certain personality type, it's important to know that ultimately these mean nothing in light of who we are in Christ and who we are called to be as Christians. They mean nothing.

Because these assessments are not based on God's word, they have no power to tell us who we are or what to do. Because they have roots in an anti-God worldview, they do have the power to lead us astray to emphasize the self-fulfillment and self-actualization that the world demands of its followers rather than the self-denial and the self-sacrifice that Jesus demands of his followers. It is true that according to the Bible, we are all given different gifts. We are all different members of the body of Christ, bringing our own abilities to build up the church. I believe that God and his amazing creativity made us all unique and that this uniqueness helps create dynamic workplaces, close friendships, complementary relationships, thriving churches, and intimate marriages. But it is not true. According to the Bible, that our personality type in any way dictates. how we are to act or whom we are to serve or whom we are to love or how we are to love them. God calls us all no matter our type to be holy as I am holy.

God calls us all no matter where we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. God calls us all no matter who we are to obey him. Moses certainly didn't have the personality type for leadership, for example, and yet God called him to leadership. God continually uses people that the world would deem unsuitable, no matter what their personality assessment is. 1 Corinthians 1.26 through 31 says this. For consider your calling brothers, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

Not many of you were powerful. Not many of you were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him, you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God. Righteousness and sanctification and redemption so that as it is written, let the one who boast boast in the Lord. There is so much

that we could unpack there that really informs this specific conversation, who we are, where wisdom comes from, what our identity actually is, and why we have no reason to boast. And we have no reason to boast. in any kind of personality assessment result. The results of our personality assessment are not considered before God calls us and they are ultimately irrelevant to how he calls us. Here is the comfort for us. God knows us much more deeply,

much more intimately than the aneagram. He knows each of our struggles and our quirks and our strengths and our weaknesses and wants and fears more than any test ever. could. Our desire to be fully known, to be unconditionally loved, is found through Christ in God, not in an analysis of our personality type. And this God who knows us better than we know ourselves calls us to the same thing, to holiness for ourselves and to sacrifice for others. Think about this. When we put stock into the Enneagram or any other test, we are saying that we believe that God,

created human beings as, for example, nine different types. And we are thus claiming to know some kind of hidden truth in the universe and of human beings that God did not reveal to us in his work. This is a new age philosophy, not a biblical one. Because God doesn't tell us this in the Bible. He doesn't suggest it or indicate that in the slightest. He says that he created all human beings and his image with one purpose, and that is to worship him. And while we do have different personalities and different talents that will lead us into different jobs and careers and relationships, our sole purpose in this life is to follow our maker and to bring him glory, no matter what. A personality test can very easily become an idol when we use it to claim a sense of identity and belonging that is meant to be

found in our Redeemer alone. Or when we wrongly use it to view ourselves as ultra-special, or as different or as better than someone else, when we use it to decide whether or not to obey God, to tell God no when we assume that surely he wouldn't be asking our personality type to be patient with our kids or hospitable to our neighbors or submissive to our husbands or bold with our coworkers, when we use our personality types as, an excuse to laugh at sin, to stall sanctification, or to resist holiness. I am sure that there are many of you here who could say, like me, that you've benefited in some way from personality tests.

I believe that. I can't take that away from you. But there are also people who would say that they've benefited from meditation, from magic, from crystals, from hypnosis, these things that we know are not Christian, not biblical. A couple weeks ago, my mom and I did an episode on Christians and Halloween. And she suggested using Halloween as an opportunity to share the gospel rather than to glorify death and evil. So the question is, and I think it's a good question, how is that different than using personality tests with sketchy roots for Christian purposes? But I do think that these two things are different.

Some things are worth redeeming, perhaps, depending on their use. and you guys, of course, you can correct me if you think that I'm wrong. I love hearing your alternative biblical perspective on this. But changing Halloween to Holy Week is a way to share the gospel with our neighbors doing something tangible that is actually in obedience to God, something that we know that we are called to do. I'm not sure that personality tests can be used in the same way, but rather in my experience tend to obscure the calling that God has on all of our lives and can so easily lead us into idolatry and I'm not sure that Holy Ween has the same effect. Although if you think that it's the same

principle, then like I said, I would love to hear from you. And I do want to go on, I want to end on one other note or just make one bit of clarification. One thing I do think is different than personality test, which can lead us to idolatry and as we've talked about have all kinds of problems in its foundations and its psychoanalysis. I do think something like career assessments are different than that. I do think that something that helps you understand how your talents can be best applied to what the world needs to give God glory. I do think that those can be helpful and that can be a little bit different, I think, than this introspective journey to self-fulfillment.

It's just saying, okay, this is how God created you and here's how you can use these talents to the best of your ability for God's glory and to meet the needs of the world around you. I do think that there are different purposes for that and there are different results for that that don't end an idolatry. So I just wanted to make that clarification. I hope this was helpful for you and I hope that it spurs your own thinking. I wanted to give you food for thought rather than just crammy down your throat everything that I think about this. But of course I wanted to share the perspective that I think is found in God's work. word on these things and just give Christians a warning to maybe not to definitely not dive headfirst

into this and to use these personality tests as a lens through what you're seeing the world. It's simply not biblical and it's always going to lead you into a place of confusion like anything that is extra biblical does. So I hope that you guys have a great rest here Monday. Can't wait to hear your thoughts on this. I will hear you. I will not hear you back here on Wednesday. I will see you back here on Wednesday. Have a great week. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself.

On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.