Your Enneagram Type Constricts Your Ability to Love

I had my first internet troll experience recently. It was bound to happen, but it still surprised me. The episode brought into stark relief just how much our personalities cost us.

Here’s the backdrop. I’d posted a photo on Instagram of the Temple of Luxor and added as a caption a quote that aligns with what I do: “Man, know yourself and you will know the gods.” Of course I don’t believe in Egyptian gods – does anyone anymore? It’s just a cool quote that demonstrates that people have been thinking about self-knowledge and God-knowledge, and how the two are related, for a long time.

I decided to promote the post, since it seemed to be resonating with my followers. A thought flitted through my brain just before I hit the “Promote” button: What if some Christian gets offended by this? But it seemed impossible, and other Christians who follow me liked the post, so I ignored the thought, hit the button and went on my way.

Later that day, I saw two comments in my feed, from the same person. The first said, essentially, “There are no other gods but YAHWEH!” with a Bible verse – I think Deuteronomy 6:4, if memory serves.

The second was a comment from a snap I took last December of the huge fake tree outside Macy’s at Christmas time. So, this person had taken a moment to scroll through my feed to see if anything else did not meet with her approval. This one said, “Where did you ever see Christmas in the Bible? Or Easter, or Sunday for that matter? You are a false teacher, leading people straight to hell!”

WOW.

I checked her Instagram profile. It starts out with, “Yeshua follower. Torah keeper.” And her Instagram handle includes the word “diligent.” Aha. Here is evidence that validated my suspicion: this woman is an Enneagram One. She is a lady who likes rules, and she’s angry. She is most likely a Social-dominant One, which means she is out to reform the planet.

I understand this mindset well. As an emotionally stressed Seven, I lived at One for a lot of my childhood years. It turned me into a self-righteous, angry Pharisee. I felt smugly self-satisfied because I knew the rules. And I felt safe. If I was following God’s rules, he wouldn’t be mad at me.

So, I asked God to heal this woman’s fear and anger and went on my way. But no! I was treated to her irrational vitriol one more time:

“This keeps popping up on my feed! I’ll have to block you. But I figured it out: you’re a Freemason! You believe in the worship of Saturn, and sun worship! I’ll be praying for you.”

I am a fairly creative person. I have won writing awards in three genres, but even I couldn’t make this stuff up. Yes, it stings a bit to have such venom lobbed at you, but what hurts more is to know that such people still exist – and always will. People who claim to know Jesus and try really hard to “be good,” all the while missing entirely his message of love. That hurts the most, that these precious beloved people whom God made are laboring under the false burdens that their personalities place on them.

Russ Hudson says, “The cost of being right is love.” Though this woman was not right about me, she was “right” according to her skewed version of what it means to follow Jesus. There was little love in her comments, though she did want to pray for me – perhaps a Two wing impulse.

Obviously, this is an extreme example, but it highlights the fact that all of us are limited in our ability to love to the degree that we are operating on our personality’s autopilot. When we are busy defending our personality, as this woman was, we are not thinking about the inherent worth of the other but only of ourselves.

Somebody says something that offends us. Rather, it offends our false sense of self, but because that’s who we assume we are, we must defend our “selves.”  Offense and what comes after it are reactions; they are not love. Gurdjieff said, basically, “Only one who is present to himself can love and be love.” That’s because when you are present to your true self, you understand who you are. You see that you are utterly beloved. There’s no need to defend anything. There is no need to “react.” You just “be.”

That’s why Russ Hudson says, “Presence and love are not different things.”

So, my “reaction” to this woman’s screeds is to mock her as a religious freakazoid. But from a place of presence, I can have compassion for her. My heart can be broken for her, in fact. And it is. She is a reminder of how we all, to one degree or another, fashion God in our own image, of how our faith sees through a personality glass, darkly.

Have you ever been trolled? If so, how did you respond? How hard or easy is it for you to have compassion on those who attack you? In what ways do you notice your personality type limiting your ability to love? Please share your experience so that we may all learn together.

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