If you’re a regular subscriber, you probably know by now that this newsletter is named after my Enneagram type. Type 9. It’s not even close to the most important identities that I have, but my Enneagram number makes an appearance in my Twitter and Instagram bios mostly because the Enneagram has been a helpful tool for me in assessing how I’m wired and the information it’s presented me with has helped me to become a more self-aware individual. It’s no secret that the Enneagram isn’t just a personality test like a DISC assessment or the Myers-Briggs test. It’s got some mystical origins that are shrouded in modern psychology, spirituality, and even possible communication with other entities. The internet’s got all the receipts, and the people of God have been all over it for decades, especially these days.
So this past weekend Christian poet, author, and teacher Jackie Hill Perry posted an Instagram story about the origins of the Enneagram in which she concluded that after two days of her own research, the renowned personality test was demonic and a “doctrine of demons” and she needed to repent for promoting it.
In her story, she linked to a statement made by Enneagram developer Oscar Ichazo, who said that he received instructions about the Enneagram from an angelic being named Metatron (which Ichazo later denied) and she included an interview with one of Ichazo’s students who’s been a major promoter of the Enneagram in the West, Claudio Naranjo, where Naranjo states that the description of the types “came to me through automatic writing”, which is also known as channeling, where in a spiritual state, a message is conveyed from a spiritual or paranormal entity to a human.
If you want to know more about the origins of the Enneagram, then, like Jackie Hill Perry and many others, including myself, do your own research. But the focus of this article isn’t as much about the Enneagram’s origins as much as it’s about a recurring pattern when it comes to Christian engagement with the allegedly demonic.
I’ll summarize my thoughts briefly for those of you who aren’t in for the long read. I think there is a significant portion of Christianity in our context that has an overreaction to the demonic and spiritual realm. There’s a greater awareness of and sensitivity to things like Satan and his agendas, evil, and the demonic than there is for the activity of God. Without generalizing, this is the perspective that’s prone to believing that everything evil in this world has an evil spirit being behind it and any mention of things mythical, supernatural, or spiritual outside of the Judeo-Christian standard is automatically demonic and met with the strongest resistance - unless CS Lewis or JR Tolkien writes it. What’s most interesting about this perspective is that although it utilizes the Bible for its justifications, it doesn’t develop its understanding of demons and spirits from actual texts in the Bible but reads into those texts its assumptions about demons and spirits.
To be clear, I’m not saying that Jackie Hill Perry subscribes to this way of viewing the demonic and spiritual, but rather, this perspective extends widely across a variety of Christian circles. It often reveals its influence when we’re looking either to justify our intuition about something that “feels off” or when we discover something that doesn’t align to our theological leanings or understandings of spiritual things. Hear me out, I’m also not saying that spiritual wickedness and demonic activity aren’t real. I believe they are. I am saying that we, as cultural and historical outsiders from the contexts in which the Bible merely mentions these concepts in passing, have a million interpretations of what the demonic and spiritual are. We are more prone to re-interpreting or re-defining what is demonic and evil on our own terms and then reading our interpretations and assumptions back into the Bible. What’s interesting is that in many circles, when someone claims to have seen or heard from Jesus directly, they often face far more scrutiny and disbelief than someone who claims to have seen or heard from a spirit of some kind. In my experience, the latter is automatically believed and consequently condemned without question.
So, because of this hypersensitivity, and even taking its origins into account, I’m hesitant to label the Enneagram evil, demonic, and irredeemable as it currently exists. As much information as there is available, I hardly know enough about the circumstances and understandings of the people who developed the Enneagram. Furthermore, the results of their efforts aren’t an anti-God religion, but mostly just beneficial psychological and practical information for many of the people who voluntarily take the test.
That’s the gist of this post and my perspective on JHP’s story. I’ll stop the bus for those who want to hop off and then below I’ll elaborate further below as to where I believe this sensitivity comes from. You can skip to the last paragraph if you want to know what I offer as a better way.
So listen, what I’m not saying is that the origins and sources of things shouldn’t be investigated or that people shouldn’t use discernment. Both of these things are important. I believe that what’s been called “conflict theology” shapes much of what we believe about spiritual warfare, the demonic, and how we encounter it in the world in which we live. In their book Demons and Spirits in Biblical Theology, John H. Walton and J. Harvey Walton define conflict theology as
“Conflict theology” is a label we assign for convenience to a trend, most notably within conservative evangelical or fundamentalist theology, of assigning superlative or primary doctrinal priority to the idea of an ongoing war between God and Satan and their respective underlings, either as a dogma in itself (i.e., “something all Christians must believe”) or as a necessary element for understanding fundamental points of doctrine such as the power of God, salvation and atonement, or the mission and role of the church.
Springing out from this perspective (and many times not even directly from the Bible), we’ve seen moments and movements in our contexts like the Satanic panic of the last few decades, protests against particular agendas, and even prominent or powerful people as demonic or demonically influenced. There are certain, usually more charismatic sects of Christianity that claim to know what demonic powers are over territories and regions while others have databases of names for demonic spirits. Culturally, everything from The Smurfs to slowed-down-and-reversed songs to Superstores are frequently accused of participating in Satanic agendas that must be resisted in this ongoing war between good and evil (ultimately for the “souls” of people or the “soul of the nation”).
The church isn’t the only domain in which there’s a heightened sensitivity to the demonic and spirits. There’s always been a prevalent interest in the supernatural in books, film, and cinema, but there’s also been a growing interest in groups who are hypersensitive to finding the hidden demonic agendas in everything, even in things that don’t even profess to be spiritual.
Last week, in a similar yet more trivial example, I saw a Tik Tok video by @nizzyconspiracy that claimed that years ago a Satanist artist drew a painting of the devil that resembled the Na’vi in Avatar, and the video concluded that a demonic conspiracy was behind the movie to tell the story of Lucifer. (The only Avatar conspiracy I continue to stand by is that James Cameron took a big bite out of Fern Gully for the first movie.)
Both videos warn people about the demonic, but the major difference between JHP’s conclusion and @nizzyconspiracy is that Jackie quotes Bible verses to defend her position like Genesis 3 about Eve’s eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil and Colossians 2:8 about not being taken captive through philosophy and empty deceit based on human tradition, based on the elements of the world, rather than Christ. And this is where the issue arises. There are two points that lie beneath the conclusions that we make about demons and spirits.
The Bible Talks About Demons, Spirits, and The Devil
The Bible is filled with mentions of demons, spirits, Satan, and wicked spiritual forces. Much like the contexts in which they were written, the Old Testament and the New Testament differ significantly when it comes to their addressing and understanding of demons and spirits. But one thing that books in both testaments have in common is that everything that we know about demons and spirits and their influence is assumed. The Bible isn’t an encyclopedia that teaches us about the objective facts concerning any of these entities. Rather, it contains stories and histories that, at times, include these realities without explaining them.
In addition to this, there is also the early Jewish, Christian, and non-Christian literature outside of the Bible that included nonunified information about demons and spirits which may have influenced the writers of Scripture and their audiences to some degree and how they perceived the world they lived in. It’s safe to say that in certain aspects concerning our beliefs about demons and spirits, we’re shaped more by this literature and our modern non or extra-biblical interpretations than we are by the Bible (ex. Fallen angels and the cosmic war between God and Lucifer).
Lastly, despite the differences about demons and spirits in the Bible and extra-biblical sources, one thing is certain in the New Testament records: Jesus wins. Jesus is victorious over the enemies of God and all demonic opposition, often effortlessly and this truth is acknowledged throughout. Many scholars believe that the demonic encounters of Jesus recorded in the Gospels are there as signs that point to the messianic age not stories about the fight between good and evil. There’s no language or thought of dualism or any struggle on Jesus’ part even though Satan and his kingdom is depicted as an enemy.
We Make Our Own Assumptions and Draw Our Own Conclusions About Demons and Spirits Based on The Evidence We Have
Because the Bible mentions but doesn’t define or explain the demonic, its original audience most likely had an understanding of what it’s authors meant when they included these concepts. Additionally, the surrounding Jewish, Christian, and Hellenist context, especially during the years before and while the New Testament was written had its own understandings and assumptions about the demonic, so much so that Walton states that,
there is no unified, monolithic Christian doctrine of demons that either follows a single pre-existent strain or sets itself apart distinctly from all others.
What does this mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that demons and spirits aren’t real. It doesn’t mean that all of what we assume about demons and spirits isn’t true. It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t believe what the Bible and Jesus say about demons, spirits, principalities, and the devil. It means that throughout history and even presently, there have probably been as many assumptions and interpretations about the demonic and spiritual as there are people and therefore we should be careful in drawing quick and sharp conclusions about the nature of things and then wield those conclusions against people or things.
What I think conflict theology misses is the distinct posture toward the world that Christians are supposed to have that while aware of the sinfulness of this world and the presence of evil isn’t thrown off by it or fearful of it. Certainly, Christians are instructed to be different from the world, to be aware of spiritual realities, and to not be associated with things that are evil. But this is different than an “us vs them” posture. This is different than demonizing people. It’s different than a hypersensitive posture that’s fearfully or defensively waiting for the devil to show up around every corner.
What I believe might be a better posture concerning things that are spiritually questionable is the one taken by Paul in 1 Corinthians 8, where, while acknowledging God’s superiority over all other deities or lords, Paul’s concern isn’t whether or not Christians are going to become led astray because the food they eat is offered to idols as if it possesses some power that can threaten their status in Christ. He’s not primarily concerned about their relationship with the demonic. What he’s concerned with rather, is their relationship with others, the weaker especially, who might stumble or become offended at their freedom to live in a world where Jesus is more powerful than all other powers. His sensitivity isn’t directed mainly at the origins of the things of this world, but towards those who struggle in their engagement with them. So perhaps the better application isn’t to beware the Enneagram or yoga or mindfulness or Harry Potter, but to look out for those who might struggle or come to a different conclusion concerning these things and be willing to hold these things with an open hand while holding on to our brothers and sisters with a closed one.