Finding the Log in Your Eye or (What Gets Between Me and God)
Why is it always easier to see someone else’s faults and miss our own? Hypocrisy is something we excel at without even trying. We are told to look first to the log in our own eye instead of the speck in someone else’s. But how do we find what we aren’t even aware of is there? What gets between me and God, more often than not is me and not the other.
As a child I loved the story of the group of blind men who “saw” the same elephant with their hands and described what an elephant looked like through their experience. The one who touched the ear said an elephant is thin and flexible. The one encircling a leg reported the elephant was strong like a massive tree. And so each described the elephant according to what they touched; the tail, the trunk, the side, etc. Each had a portion of the truth, but each also lacked the understanding of the “whole”, because their sight was limited. We look at the world within our focused, limited viewpoint.
As an adult I attended a church council meeting and found the same principle applied. We all sat in the same meeting, but later in the parking lot or on the phone; we discovered we hadn’t all heard the same thing. When the nation listens to a public presidential debate between candidates; we all come away with a different understanding of what was said. It is not just because of what the people actually said (a typed manuscript can reveal that), but it is because each of us listening heard the words through the filter of our own past experiences and hoped for expectations.
“Don’t judge, or you too will be judged,” Jesus warns. We think we see and understand clearly, be we don’t. We see partially because we see through the haze of the perceptions of our own personality.
We are hypocrites and don’t realize it. Jesus urges us to learn to focus on the log in our eye and to be aware of it and work on taking it out. The first step in spiritual discipline is to see what you see; to become aware of what is, not what you think or what you want. Only as one understands our own log or faults and inclinations can we offer help to others to dislodge the speck in their eye. For some reason other people’s faults bother us more than our own.
The greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord Your God with all your heart, mind, strength and soul.” If that love is the foundation of your life, than you will follow with the second command, “And love your neighbor as yourself.” Spiritual disciplines are methods that help us quiet our own internal voices and filters, allowing us to be sensitive and aware. Prayer, listening and speaking, creates the relationship that gives us entry to this full life. We need a way to learn to see clearly; to observe honestly without casting fault, blame or praise. Then when we see, we need a way to intercede in ways that give life and not death, that build and don’t destroy recklessly.
The Enneagram System
The Enneagram is an ancient psychological and personality identification system that has experienced a renewal in our age of psychological awareness. It is a way to understand the patterns and habits of emotions, thoughts and actions we create in our lives. By observing our patterns we can discover ways to get out of them. People are creatures of habit loving repetition; it’s how we learn and grow. But too much of a good thing creates its own downside. We become so attuned to our habits that we don’t realize we are doing them. Habits trap us. Just try to change eating, sleeping or exercise habits! How much harder it is to change our essential nature of who we believe ourselves to be. Even the impetus that we know it would be better for us if we did change them, doesn’t provide us with the power to do so.
How do you change the core of who you were created to be? Maybe that is the wrong question. Perhaps if we reframed what we need to do to change it would be helpful. Look at your habits as patterns that you have created that once served a good purpose. But as you grew, ingrained habits became rigid and couldn’t change to meet the person you were becoming. So within you is a tension, a war against who you think you are versus who you can become.
We are created in God’s Image. In the center of our being, the essence of who we are lies buried. Spiritual disciplines don’t create our being; they allow us to discover the essential being that is already there. We have covered it up habit upon habit, thought upon thought, emotion and action upon one another.
The Enneagram is a valuable tool to help us uncover patterns inherent in our personality. It can help us discover ways to make healthy changes. Remember how the blind men looking at the elephant couldn’t “see” the “whole”. So we don’t see the essence of God in us, the mystery of our faith, the hope of glory. God has given us what we need to live and that includes a personality. We are not trying to wipe away our personality, but to see how we can live to the highest side of that personality. As we learn more, we see how we come together in community to create a whole, not just of our self, but of all of us together. As we see our own faults, we become more understanding and tolerant of others and begin to work together.
The Enneagram details nine basic types or patterns that people develop, but within that are subtypes and dynamic avenues that lend toward creativity and uniqueness within the system. Many people resist being forced into a box. But habits create types and structures that can be observed. As we awake to the patterns, the Enneagram helps individuals discover the box you are in and ways to break out of it. The nine types are observed in three centers.
The 3 Centers of the Enneagram
Finding the key to understanding our behaviors and making changes requires spiritual discipline to forge new habits, not superficial ones that overlay like a tablecloth, but ones that lie at the core of our desires. The Enneagram discovers the desires and energetic drives that push through the Emotional, the Mental and the Behavioral habits of our lives. Each person works in all the centers, but habit creates one that becomes our favorite base to live out of. Instead working to balance all 3, creating a ‘whole/complete’ personality, we often focus on one as more important, or one that we are more comfortable with.
The types of the Mental Center (5, 6, 7) focus on habits of how we think, imagine, plan and remember. It looks at fear of what was, what will be and what is; along with the courage to move forward in all ways we need. We get stuck in the fear, but God has given us at our core, the ability to move forward in courage and faith, in generosity and in clear-headedness.
The Emotional Center types (2, 3, 4) manage the image we present to the world in how we relate to God, others and ourselves. At the heart is the honesty to see what truly is; not turning to deception to create what we believe will get us what we want. Altruism, balance and hope are the jewels of this center.
The Body Center types (8, 9, 1) cope with power and control and the need to know who has it, where it is and how it manifests itself. The desire that peace, right and truth prevail comes from the integrity inherent in this center.
The Enneagram is a system to help us act courageously out of the strength and vulnerability of our inner being. There is a high and low aspect of each type we are all capable of. Time and again scripture points us to these three centers and encourages us to our higher points to love mercy, seek justice and walk humbly with our God.
As we move forward in spiritual disciplines we uncover the unhealthy habits we have tried to wrap ourselves with, revealing the essence of God within. Spirituality encourages us not just to put on new habits, but more to be willing to seek and find, like peeling the onion, layer by layer to uncover the essence of God at the core. The process transforms and seeks new wineskins.
To be able to “see” the “whole” means we open ourselves to the vulnerability of allowing God to see all that is in us. God is willing to see all and still love us. When we relax our defenses not only against others, but also against ourselves and God, we open to trust in God’s vision for us.
Working with the Enneagram provides a path in spiritual disciplines toward the center of knowing God. Knowing your type is not enough, you must be willing to work with the type through observation, study and discipline.
Rev. Andrea Andress
Las Cruces, New Mexico, [email protected], 602-570-2270
Matthew 7:1-4 from the Message
Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults – unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt?
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