The Enneagram or the Cross?
The Enneagram (The Nine Paths) is an esoteric, mystic, occultish new age fad that has made its way into edgy megachurches - including the LCMS. Issues, Etc. has done two programs on the Enneagram.
When I googled “The Nine Paths,” the first two hits were:
A sermon series from an LCMS church, and
Amazon’s link to an “Advanced Tarot Deck for the Spiritual Traveler.”
Isn’t it interesting that this congregation - that spent nine weeks on a sermon series preaching on the Enneagram - is a non-liturgical congregation? Is there even one LCMS parish that uses the traditional liturgy making use of the Enneagram or having a preaching series on its Nine Paths to human actualization?
This is certainly anecdotal support for the axiom “Lex orandi, lex credendi.”
Some may rightfully object that the liturgy is no guarantor of orthodoxy, as is evidenced by high church Episcopal or ELCA theologians that teach every manner of heresy. And that is true. But the Lex axiom has two parts that work together to point us to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: the Law of Prayer (liturgy) and the Law of Belief (confession). A beautiful liturgy without the bedrock of the confession of the Christian faith (Scripture and creeds) is like a magnificent ship set adrift in a storm. But likewise a church that binds itself to the Bible and the Book of Concord, but has decided that Article 24 no longer binds them, and they are free to investigate worship from outside of our tradition, will eventually look outside of the creeds and confessions - and even the Scriptures themselves - in search of the ever elusive and demanding idol of “Relevancy.”
Tradition is like a gyroscope that keeps the ship navigating toward its destination - and for the Church, that destination is one that is eternal - holding steady through storms, doubt, and diabolical challenge. But when a congregation, district, or church body begins to think they know better than the Bible and the Confessions - manifested both in worship and doctrine - the ship will be “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes (Eph 4:14).
And this is why we worship according to our confession, and we confess according to our worship. As we confess in the conclusion to the Augsburg Confession:
In doctrine and ceremonies nothing has been received on our part against Scripture or the Church Catholic. For it is manifest that we have taken most diligent care that no new and ungodly doctrine should creep into our churches.
Let us make the sign of the Holy Cross and not the sign of the unholy Enneagram. Let us submit to that which we have received from our Lord, His apostles, and their successors - in doctrine and in ceremonies. And let us not seek after a New Age other than the true New Age into which we are transported by our Lord’s Presence in the Word and Sacraments, through the promise of His second advent, through the cross, as we walk along the One Path, our Lord Himself, by receiving His grace by faith, and by taking up our cross and following Jesus to the cross and to the empty tomb - even unto the Age of Eternity.
“Let no false doctrine me beguile,
Let Satan not my soul defile.
Give strength and patience unto me
To bear my cross and follow Thee.
Lord Jesus Christ,
My God and Lord, my God and Lord,
In death Thy comfort still afford.”