Origins of the Enneagram on this edition of Truth and Love.

I'm Dale Johnson, and you're listening to Truth and Love, a podcast of the Association of Certified

Biblical Counselors, where we seek to provide biblical solutions to the problems

that people face. And this week, for a second time, I am bringing Dr. Ren Cherry to visit us on

the podcast to talk about this important subject that's sweeping across Christian evangelicalism

in the church, the Enneagram. Ren is our director of finances and donor relations,

and he's an adjunct professor of biblical counseling at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I remind you, he's married to Terry, his wife, and he has two grown children. Jack in Agie land,

he's a Texas A&M Aggie. I almost hate to say that, but I love Jack,

so I'll say that. And his daughter, Carly, who's married to Daniel, so he's inherited a

son-in-law as well. And it's a wonderful thing. I love to hang out with his family as well.

And so today we're going to dive in. And we want to get right into this.

And as I mentioned last time, this is going to be just informative.

I pray and give you some background and understanding and probably dive a little bit deeper

than you ever would have considered or wanted to.

But I think this information is very helpful to consider the Enneagram properly.

And it should raise some questions as we get into this.

Why are we so infatuated with this personality typology within Christian evangelicalism? It does raise the question. And I can't wait for you to hear some of the information.

And Wren and I've had, we have some unbelievable conversations. I was as PhD supervisor, so we've been talking about this for several years. And I'm just delighted that we finally come to a place where we can let you guys sort of in on some of that conversation that we had. And this is sort of the product of a lot of those conversations. And I'm excited that we're at this point. So without further delay, we need to get into some of this information. And, Ren, I want us to talk today about where it came from. What in the world is the Enneagram and where in the world did it come from? So let's start with that question. What exactly

is the Enneagram?

Okay, so a proper explanation of the annaagram, you first have to make a distinction between

the symbol and the personality typology. So the word itself is formed from the Greek words Enia, which means nine, and grandma, which means that which is drawn. There have been various nine-pointed symbols throughout history, but the symbol that would currently be identified as the nine-point enneagram was brought to the Western

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