The Gospel for the Enneagram 2
The Helper
The 2’s: The Helper
The Enneagram is divided into the heart, head, and gut centers. Numbers 2, 3, and 4’s lie in the heart center. These numbers are the most disordered in how they use feelings to gauge love. By the way, when I say love, I mean other’s good regard, lovingkindness, and understanding. There are different parts to love—real love gives others power, it’s fair and gives security—, but that’s how the Enneagram uses love in this context.
So the 2’s, the Helpers, most value and feel the need for God’s compassion, care, and loving-kindness. The 2’s are the behind-the-scenes nurses, caretakers, mothers, waitresses, saints, and martyrs. They are more commonly women than men. The 2’s try to obtain love by giving love.
If they’re hungry, they make someone else a sandwich because they intuitively know that meeting of their own needs is somehow connected to meeting others’ needs. And they’re sort of right. Our receiving from the Lord naturally leads to our giving to others. However, the 2’s have this backwards. They think that they MUST give to get. So they do to others what they wish others would do for them.
In church, the 2’s coping mechanisms are especially encouraged in teachings such as “die to yourself,” “take up your cross,” “consider others more important than yourself",” “defer to another,” and “be a servant to all.” And the 2’s are like, “Okay. I wanted to do that anyway.” See, the 2’s have come to believe that their own needs are shameful and that it is selfish to allow others to serve them.
The 2’s are highly sensitive to other’s emotions because they feel good about themselves through other’s emotions towards them. They often change who they are depending on who they’re with. 2’s can tend towards co-dependency, and have a difficult time saying no and putting up boundaries.
Their primary sin is pride due to always being the helper and not accepting help themselves. They feel that they are more loving, more compassionate, more caring than everyone else. Rohr and Ebert—Enneagram experts—point out that those who give too much are just as much of a burden on a community as those who take too much. Because eventually those who give too much ask to be paid back, and who can give as much as a 2?
Examples of 2’s: Eleanor Roosevelt, Elizabeth Taylor, Monica Lewinsky, John Denver, Josh Groban, Dolly Parton, Bellatrix Lestrange, Cinderella, Peeta Melark, Marmee in Little Women. They are frequently supporting characters in movies, Martha in the Bible had 2 tendencies.
If you are a two let me remind you: You are not any more or less needy than anyone else, and God likes you with your needs. He made you with those needs and he loves meeting them with tenderness and understanding and empathy. He wants you to ask him for what you need. In fact, he modeled this for you in the person of Christ. The Shepherd, that is Jesus, became a sheep. Jesus became fully human, acknowledged his needs and looked to God to fulfill them. See, it is only through becoming a needy sheep that we can ever serve others from God’s abundance. “For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd.” (Rev 7:17)
Jesus freed us from having to have transactional relationships. He died to free us from being a slave to ignoring our desires. We don’t have to give to get, but we do have to open our hands and acknowledge their emptiness.
That is the gospel for the Enneagram 2.