God, Politics and the Enneagram

(Note: I am not going to advocate for any particular political party in this post, but I am going to say some things that are likely to ruffle feathers. Please hear me out before becoming offended, and please remember that offense is a sure sign that we are trying to defend our false self.)

I’ve been mulling over this post for a week, wondering exactly what I wanted to say and how to say it. I got a lucky break on Sunday, when the guest speaker offered this great quote by Jack Hayford, which feels like a good place to start:

“Not only is God not a Republican or a Democrat, he’s not even an American.”

In college, I heard a Christian speaker say, “I don’t know how anyone could be a Republican and a Christian.” I have since heard the opposite view espoused. Who’s right?

I am reminded here of the conversation Joshua had with the angel of the Lord before the “battle” of Jericho [Joshua 5:13-14]:”Are you for us or for our enemies?” The angel replied, “Neither, but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.”

In other words, there are often more than two sides. So, it also means that neither of the political views above is “right.” The truth is somewhere between the two, or above them altogether. Each side can point to the ways in which their viewpoints back up Scripture – and the ways the other side doesn’t. But here’s another truth: your personality, that is, your false self with its set of patterns that make up your Enneagram type, is the primary determiner of what you believe about God and about politics. There, I’ve said it.

You have perfectly rational reasons for what you believe, or so you think, but rationality has little to do with it. For the most part (not including directly hearing from the Holy Spirit), you focus on certain issues and not others, both in faith and in politics, because you are following the script of your type.

I am including myself in these statements. And I’m not saying that what we believe is wrong; I am saying that it is incomplete. We see through a glass, darkly. It is a lens carefully ground over time by the Inner Critic’s directives. Of course our beliefs make sense to us, and we assume everyone else should follow along (yes, even the Nines, who don’t necessarily know what they want but definitely believe everyone should get along!) because what’s true is just so obvious. If others don’t agree, they are wrong.

Now, I’m not talking about the non-negotiables of the Christian faith; I absolutely believe in those absolutes. I’m talking about where Christians go from that foundation, how we filter the Gospel through our personality.

This is why recognizing the Inner Critic is so critical to our spiritual growth. (See my posts on the Inner Critic here and here.) The IC makes distinctions all day long: I am this, not that. I like this, not that. This is the right way, that is not. It tries to define us by excluding everything that threatens its sense of who it is defending: the false self. And so we create and live in a me/not me, us/them kind of world.

I encourage us all, then, to question what we believe, all the time, with rigor and with compassion. We didn’t make ourselves, and we cannot fix ourselves. But we can become aware of the assumptions that we hold about why we believe what we believe. We can pray, “Holy Spirit, lead me into all truth.” And we can become less afraid of being wrong and more aware that when it comes to who God made us to be, there is nothing to defend.

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