The Enneagram - Personality typing

Carl Emerson said:

Well part of my university study was Psychology and as a secular 'science' it has little or nothing to add to what we understand in scripture when it comes to the redemption of our natures.

I was once a guest lecturer at a Masters class in psychology and they were unaware of what repentance and renounciation was, yet this is fundamental to spiritual release and sanctification.

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Psychology and similar branches of science are a valid part of God's creation. As you have studied them, it is surprising that you don't respect them more.

The more radical your encounter with Him, the more the things of the world grow strangely dim in the light of His Glory and Grace.

To be fair I will explain a bit more...

I feel psychology and sociology are not pure sciences.

Yes He has given us a mandate to explore and enjoy His universe and our selves individually and collectively.

The problem is that human behaviours do not respond to the experimental method with the same precise outcomes we see in the physical universe.

As best we are limited to dealing with probability - we may know that 3 out of every 100 will have a certain behavioural outcome but we don't know prior who the three are.

As humanity was corrupted at the fall we are dealing with trends in an unredeemed state of being and these are being heralded as significant and helpful. Individuals identify with these and they become part of their self awareness.

To me this is folly, as our aim should be to identify with the redeemed state, that which is Christ like. In Jesus we have the opportunity to become free of unredeemed traits that can render us captive and limit in our expectation for better character.

Ask Jesus what He wanted us to be like, and to attain to, that would be a better approach.

It is even worse when one contemplates that the majority of the population is captive to the demonic, their father being the father of lies.

The social and individual traits then can be a function of demonic influence and should not be 'owned' by believers but rather renounced.

What glory does it bring to Him to embrace such identities when He has much better for us.

I note that the anointing of Jesus is associated with setting the captives free.

This is where our focus should be.

deleted as getting off topic

mkgal1 said:

To a certain degree - I believe we have to pay SOME healthy attention to ourselves.

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agree, if we never look at ourselves, who we are, what we're doing, some introspection, how will we know if we're improving & heading towards what God wants us to be

interestingly, having done a Myers-Briggs years ago and then again in the last year, my personality did change but only to one closely related

believe it's because of being a parent & forced out of my comfort zone re some areas of my personality (changes for the better) God works in mysterious ways