Cultish: Decoding the Enneagram Pt. 2

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The three synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are about Jesus. John is about Christ.

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And the reason we have so misused and misinterpreted John's Gospel is this is the eternal archetypal

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Christ talking. He can say, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

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But he's not talking about Jesus. He's talking about this mystery, this amalgam of matter and spirit, which is the way for everybody that you discover spirit in this material universe.

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That was true for the native religions, was true for Judaism, was certainly apparent in Hinduism if you've ever been to India, where gods are everywhere, the sacred is everywhere.

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They're always anointing everything, especially the male and female genitals, even in the temples.

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It's all sacred. It's sort of shocking for us prudish Christians. This is sacred too.

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It's all one sacred universe. We got a lot of unlearning to do. And that's why we teach contemplation, because contemplation is mostly unlearning.

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All right, welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to Cultish, Entering the Kingdom of the Cults. My name is

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Jeremiah Roberts. I'm one of the co -hosts here. Super excited for this episode.

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Second time is the charm. Somewhere out there, there is a part two of the

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Enneagram series, somewhere out in Computerphile, Tronville, somewhere out there in the digital archives.

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And so this is actually a re -recording of part two of our discussion. I'm here with Andrew, the super sleuth of the show.

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Good to see you back for part two of part two of the Enneagram series. It's been kind of a trip to see all the efforts.

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Like I said, if you guys listen to this now, we appreciate your patience. Like I said, we just had some major audio issues that happened and it took a while to try and recover those files, but then it turns out the best thing to do was just to re -record with our guests.

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So Andrew, I'm super excited to talk with our guests once again. So am I. Martian Montenegro, how are you?

02:09

Hi, I'm doing pretty well, thank you. I'm glad that we could do this.

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Yes, yeah, it's great to get reacquainted again. And so just real quickly, just tell them a little bit about yourself, your ministry.

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You've got a website out there and you're always putting content out online, but just in case people wanna find you, as a point of reference before we get into this discussion, where can people find you?

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Sure, yes. Well, I have a website, christiananswersforthenewage .org.

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There are lots of articles there. If you go to the articles page, there's quite a few articles on New Age and occult topics, including what we're gonna discuss tonight.

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I'm also on Facebook. I have a ministry page called Christian Answers for the

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New Age that you can like and follow. And I post a lot of stuff there, sometimes every day.

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I do a lot of posts. So those are two ways that you can see what

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I'm writing and see what I'm discussing. And yeah, my background is that I was in the

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New Age for at least 20 years, a very long time. I was a professional astrologer.

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And I was involved in Eastern spiritual beliefs and Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, and then

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Zen Buddhism. And I did Eastern forms of meditation. I took psychic development classes.

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I had to row cards. I took numerology. I was pretty much touching a lot of the areas of the

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New Age during those years. And then the Lord intervened in my life. And I didn't even want to,

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I mean, I wasn't trying to leave or anything, and God just intervened and pulled me out of there.

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It was kind of a process before I actually had the moment when I trusted Christ.

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But that story is on my website under A Strange But True Spiritual Journey.

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So it's there if you wanna read it. And I've also done quite a few podcasts and interviews where I give my story as well.

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Yeah, excellent. Yeah, the first time I even heard about you, there's a segment, I don't believe it was released in the actual film of American Gospel, the second one.

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Oh yeah. And that was, what was the second one titled again? Christ Crucified. Christ Crucified. And I believe there was an extra clip that might've been even shared on your website.

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Someone shared it and I saw it. And I just remember people messaging us about the

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Enneagram. And then there, I saw like your video there. So it's good to be able to talk with you and get acquainted.

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Right. So real quickly, in our last episode, we had talked about really the origins, kind of the historical origins, the history, where it came from.

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We kind of named some real major players. And one of the things we really kind of hit across too is that the fundamental foundation of the origins of the

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Enneagram was originated by spirit contact via automatic writing.

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And the process of automatic writing is where you're basically in contact with some sort of higher entity and you just write whatever comes down.

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This is similar to Christian science. It was Mary Baker Eddy who did that.

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And that's one that she did. She was involved in automatic writing and that's been a huge part of the occult. And that's where the numbers came from.

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But then eventually, you know, it kind of worked its way up through different new age schools and people like that.

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Even schools that were involved in different psychedelics and other things that are becoming more normalized.

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But what we're focused on in this episode is Richard Rohr because he's the one from your book, and you had talked about this in our first episode, our first part two, the first part of part two, which we're now rerecording, is that Richard Rohr was the one you kind of,

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I'll say, use a quotation mark, Christianized it. But what we're gonna demonstrate, what

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I want you to go in depth with is that even Richard Rohr, who's made, really is the one who's tried to normalize it, and now it's just exploded all throughout it.

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We've got tons of messages about, you know, different, even local churches here that are now having their own -

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Certificate programs. Certification programs, so you can figure out your enereotype. You know, we had the audio that we played of the pastor from Sandals Church in California.

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Right. Who is doing - Put your Bibles away. Yeah. We're not gonna talk about - Put your Bibles away, and we're gonna use the

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Bible to talk about your eneotype number, which is originated from something that God says, don't do.

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This is abomination. This is unlevel child sacrifice. So, all that being said, what we wanna focus in on is

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Richard Rohr, and fundamentally, let's start off categorically in his theology, because that's what it really comes down to.

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This is not about attacking Richard Rohr as a person, his character, anything like that.

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I'm sure, you know, just from you listening to the audio, he definitely sounds like a nice, warm, and gentle person.

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I believe he's sincere. I think he's really trying to help people. However, his theology is not,

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I would argue, is not something that lines up with Scripture, nor is even remotely Christian at all.

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So, let's start, if you can. Let's go ahead and just start with his

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Christology. What does he say about Jesus? Because I noticed he differentiated between Jesus and Christ in that opening clip.

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So, maybe just for starters, can you just tell us a little bit about Richard Rohr, and what does he believe about Jesus?

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Sure, yes. Richard Rohr does make a distinction between the historical

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Jesus and what he calls the universal Christ. And at one time, he used the term the cosmic

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Christ. So, you can still find some older videos online or talks that he gave where he uses the term the cosmic

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Christ, which he actually got from Teilhard de Chardin. So, what he believes is that, first of all, the first incarnation of Christ was creation.

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That was the first incarnation of Christ. So, creation is like Christ is in creation, and creation is like his body, and his spirit is in creation.

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The second incarnation was Jesus. So, there you have

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Jesus is the second incarnation of Christ, not the first. And he believes that Jesus, while Jesus was living his life on earth, he had the universal

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Christ. But after the resurrection, the universal

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Christ was more or less released out into the world.

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And these are my terms, by the way. I'm not quoting Richard Rohr, I'm explaining it as I understand it from him.

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The universal Christ was sort of released. So, Jesus was like a vehicle to bring the universal

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Christ to that level, because the universal Christ, I guess being in creation was sort of trapped there in creation, but after the resurrection could now kind of be released into the atmosphere, for want of a better term, and is a power, that universal

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Christ is a power that is pulling all creation and everything and everyone in creation towards a future point of perfection.

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This idea is similar to Teilhard de Chardin, and Richard Rohr has openly talked about Teilhard de

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Chardin and clearly he got some of these ideas from him because Teilhard de

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Chardin was a Roman Catholic, he was a scientist, I think he was a paleontologist, and he wanted to reconcile evolution with the teachings of the

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Catholic Church. But he, and for whatever reason, I don't know if that had to do with his universal

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Christ or his cosmic Christ is the term he used, but he had this idea of the cosmic Christ pulling everything, which is kind of like evolution.

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So evolution is progress, and you're progressing in this evolutionary way towards this point of perfection, and this is being done by the cosmic

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Christ, and that's the term he used. I am no expert at all on him, I only know a little bit,

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I know enough to see how it parallels Richard Rohr's teachings so Richard Rohr, this is what

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Richard Rohr teaches. One of the illustrations he gave for this, which was on his website and still may be there, is he has a illustration of Jesus as holding a kite.

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Jesus is holding the kite, and the kite is the universal Christ. So the historical

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Jesus is down here on the ground level, and the kite is floating way, way up here so that everybody can see the kite.

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So you can see the kite, you can see the universal Christ, even if you can't see

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Jesus down on the ground holding it. It's not necessary for you to know about or to see

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Jesus. You can see, as long as you understand this universal Christ that's sufficient to realize who you really are and what's really going on.

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That's the bottom line of it. So that's pretty much what he's teaching. He said

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke talk about Jesus, John and Paul write about the universal

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Christ. So I have a question too. What I was hearing in terms of Christ, the first incarnation of Christ being essentially creation,

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I'm hearing panentheism, right? Can you explain that to our listeners?

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It sounds like this is the main theology that drives pretty much like the lens that he puts on, which through he interprets all of scripture through is this core panentheism.

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Could you explain that for the listeners? It is an important view for him, correct?

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Yes, panentheism is not pantheism. So just because it is easy to confuse them.

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Pantheism is that all is God and God is all. So basically God is identified with creation.

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God and creation are the same, one and the same. Panentheism is that God is contained in creation.

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Creation is in God, but God also transcends creation. And panentheism really, even though the word is relatively new,

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I think somebody came up with the term, I think even in the 18th or 19th century.

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So it's relatively recent, but the idea of it goes way, way back, even to ancient, like ancient

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Greece. And so panentheism has always been there, but most people don't hear about it because I think most people don't know about it basically.

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They don't have a reason to know about it. They hear about pantheism because that's more obvious and you can see that in some of the animistic religions and things like that, but panentheism is more subtle.

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And so since it's not so outright, God is creation, but God is in creation, it can even sound good to people.

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They can even sound Christian if they're not really properly interpreting scripture, they don't have a proper understanding of who

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God is because it does cause a different God. When you have panentheistic

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God, you have a different God. You don't have the God of the Bible. You have a God who's part of creation, who's subject to things that happen in creation and in time, and it really changes the nature of God.

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But this is a very core belief of Richard War and he openly professes it and he openly discusses it.

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He has no problem at all admitting it and trying to explain it.

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If you go to his blog, he has a lot of things that he's written on it. I mean, he like kind of explains it even in that opening clip.

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Like it sounds like the Enneagram, in terms of him using the words, we need to unlearn many things.

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It's because essentially to him, we would have a divine DNA that needs to be untapped and it's the Enneagram that helps you do that, to unlearn these things, these things that have blocked us from reaching that stage essentially.

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So very important. Yes, yeah, and notice he said that's why we do contemplation is to unlearn. Contemplation, which is a big part of his teachings is using these contemplative methods that actually just did another program today on this very topic.

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And it's using what I call contemplative practices that are based on several different things, medieval monasticism and mysticism, and then a more recent movement, the centering prayer movement, some of which is based on Eastern meditation techniques from Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington.

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And I have articles on that on my website. And these techniques are not based on the

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Bible. This is not like your normative prayer or your normative biblical meditation, which is meditating on the word of God, or maybe you can meditate on the nature of God.

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That's a biblical Christian meditation. But these are techniques that you do, and you basically are not really thinking, you're suspending your thinking mind.

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In fact, Thomas Keating says in one of his books, if you're going to pray, if you're going to wanna be close to God, then you can't think about God.

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He actually says that. So Thomas Keating was a friend of Richard Rohr, and Richard Rohr has referred to Thomas Keating, clearly admires him.

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And Thomas Keating is sort of the big pooh -bah of this contemplative stuff. He died about two years ago,

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Keating did. I heard him speak in person in 2005. So the contemplation, he says you have to unlearn.

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And that is true. If you do those practices over and over and over on a regular basis, your mind will become more open and suggestible to new ideas.

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And so he's right when he says that it will help you unlearn. I agree with him on that.

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I don't think it's a good thing, but I think he's right. Yeah, and in fact, so the reason

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I think why we're bringing this up, and so why does this matter when it comes, so we're talking about the Enneagram, so why are you kind of talking about this idea of Christ consciousness?

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So it's interesting to me, it's interesting and providential that we're having to push out the series and then we had our conversation with Stephen Bankart, who was here in our previous episodes.

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And it was really focused in on the aspect of really kind of debunking the idea of Christ consciousness, the fact that it's not something that's biblical.

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And for a while, it took me a while, even when we first recorded our series with you, and now being here, I feel like I understand and grasp it a bit better.

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Again, is that what the New Age does is that they differentiate between Jesus and Christ. So there was a point to where Jesus was just Jesus, but eventually he became

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Christ, and that was this sort of state of awareness that he was part of this divine all, or divine nature, or pantheism, depending on which world view you're attesting to.

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So what you notice is that, again, that's refuted, because Christ really is just the

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Greek for anointed one, and there's only one person that's ever referred to in the Bible as Christ, and that's

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Jesus of Nazareth. And then also John the Baptist said,

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I am not the Christ. And Jesus said, there's no one, not a more righteous man on the earth, essentially, than John the

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Baptist. So when you look at that, if everyone has Christ in them, why would

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John the Baptist say I'm not the Christ? So the point in being is that you're looking at fundamental, can

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Christians use the Enneagram? What's the fundamental basic Christianity that all

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Christians believe and hold to the fundamental essential elements of the faith? And that is the eternality of Christ, the fact that he was eternally

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God, and he became fully God and fully man, the incarnation. This is basic, orthodox, fundamental

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Christianity for thousands of years. Richard Rohr fundamentally rejects that. So if you go back, listen to the audio clip again, and in light of what

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Marjorie just said and what we're saying, and again, don't take our word for it. Listen to what Richard says about Christ and listen to what we're saying, and then ultimately take it to the word of God.

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But then ask, again, like we said, is this tool that has been quote unquote

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Christianized, that's now being popularized in Christian churches, from that has occultic origins and now has been quote unquote

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Christianized by someone who fundamentally denies the basic fundamentals of the deity of Jesus?

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That's something we'd really implore you to consider. Yeah, and I think it's really important to think about this too.

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Marjorie was talking about contemplative prayer, right? This process of unlearning. Well, this is what the

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Bible says about scripture. It says in 2 Timothy 3, 16 through 17, all scripture is God -breathed and useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

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What need is there for contemplative prayer? And my question for you, Marsha, too, because I think this is extremely important in terms of Richard Rohr's worldview, what does he make of the word of God, right?

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What's the Bible to him? Oh yes, yes, I can explain that a little bit. He believes that there have been cycles for humanity that humanity has gone through, evolving cycles.

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And so originally, man was at this very low level, very basic kind of primitive survival level.

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There's like seven levels. He adopts this from Ken Wilber's Spiral Dynamics.

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And let me just say something about Ken Wilber real quick because he's a very important behind -the -scenes figure that probably most

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Christians never have heard of him, except I've been posting about him a lot. But he's still not very well known.

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Ken Wilber is not a Christian, does not claim to be a Christian. He is a perennialist.

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He believes that all religions come from the same core and all have the same

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God or divine reality. And of course, Rohr is a perennialist, too. That's something else that maybe

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I'll talk about a little bit later. Of course, yeah. But Ken Wilber and Richard Rohr are friends.

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And Ken Wilber also has influenced Rob Bell and Brian McLaren and some other people who we call the progressives.

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And so Richard Rohr and Ken Wilber and all these progressives are all kind of in this thing together.

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And so Spiral Dynamics is Ken Wilber's view of the evolution of man.

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And so you start off in this primitive level and then it goes up a little bit and then it goes up a little more and then it reaches like what they call the intellectual level and the scientific level.

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And then you're going up again and again and the highest level is the non -dual level.

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That's what Ken Wilber teaches and that's what Richard Rohr believes. So Richard Rohr believes that the

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Old Testament, for example, a lot of the Old Testament and the earlier part of it was written when man was at these earlier stages.

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And so his understanding of who God is and what life is about is on those lower levels.

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They didn't have the full understanding or picture. And so more time had to go by and then you get to even the gospel writers were still back there and they weren't up on a higher level.

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And then you have, he does think Paul and John saw that Jesus was really here in order to bring the universal

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Christ into being. And so that's how he sees it.

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So the way he would put it is, well, yes, you have all that war -like stuff in the

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Old Testament where they're going to war against the Canaanites and they're having all these battles. And that's because at that time there was this very war -like imagery.

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Mankind thought he had to go to battle and had to fight his enemies, et cetera, et cetera. So he'll explain it that way.

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So if you look at the Bible in this evolutionary view then you can look at a lot of parts of the

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Bible as something that's limited in its understanding. And it didn't really understand the true

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God or even in the New Testament, the first part of it who Jesus really was.

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So that's more or less how he rationalizes what the Bible says.

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Hmm. No, that's really good. And in fact, one of the quotes that I saw that Andrew handed over to me, we're sharing a book here today, which is by the way,

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Richard Rohr and the Enneagram Seer, would you help write that? And it's a great and fantastic read. And we'll have it definitely hanging around the very end.

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We'll have an offer for anyone who wants to get that book. Really great resource. We'll be talking about that in a little bit. But this is a quote on page 74 in regards to Rohr's view of the

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Bible. And he says this, he says, just as the Bible takes us through many stages of consciousness and history, it takes us individually a long time to move beyond our need to be dualistic, eternal, accusatory, fearful, blaming, egocentric and earning to see as Jesus sees.

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And in fact, what even better explains his view of the Bible. And again, you want to ask too, this is the person who brought the

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Enneagram, something that had a cultic origins through automatic writing via spirit contact, which God says, don't do.

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This is an abomination. But this is another quote of how, how does Richard view the Bible? And you got to ask yourself, is this fundamentally

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Christian? He says, quote, the Bible is an anthology of many books. It is a record of people's experience of God's self -revelation.

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It is an account of our every human experience of the divine intrusion into history.

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The book did not fall from heaven in a pretty package. It was written by people trying to listen to God.

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I believe that was the spirit, that the spirit was guiding and listening the writing process.

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We must know that humans always see through a glass darkly and that all knowledge isn't perfect.

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Yeah. Yeah, see like this one big issue for anyone who's listening to, in terms of the

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Enneagram, can you hear a theme here? One of the biggest themes is this is a very, the Enneagram is a man centered thing, right?

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Panentheism in itself is also a man centered view of God, this spiral dynamics from Ken Wilber, if you think about it, literally it is a man centered way to view history.

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It all has to revolve around this coming into the truth, right?

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Not essentially all history revolving around Christ, like the Bible makes very clear that Paul is talking about in the book of Colossians.

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He says that there was a mystery hidden throughout ages and generations, but has now been revealed to the saints, which is

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Christ in you in the terms of Jesus. So all of the Bible's central aspect and focus is about God, not about man.

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This is a very man centered way to view everything essentially. Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things to also notice too, is that when you look at the evidence that's put forth, as far as the

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Bible, when we talk about this is a reliable collection of historical documents, but you need to talk about all the authors. Well, that's a good, in many ways,

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I like that apologetic, but it's just important to realize and to think that someone's going to view the evidence ultimately through the lens, the worldview in which they see it.

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So it does make perfect sense, Marcia, if Richard Rohr has a view of mankind evolving to a higher level of consciousness continually throughout history, it would make more sense that someone like Moses versus it was at a very much lower level of consciousness than the apostle

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Paul, right? So it does make sense about that. Go ahead. Yeah, no, that's true.

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And so this evolutionary view dominates the way that he sees things, the way he sees history, the way he sees the

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Bible, the way he sees Christianity. It just really dominates, that's just very much a part of his worldview.

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And he, along with the perennialism, which is another big part of it. And so, and since he's the man, just to kind of reiterate, maybe what we talked about in part one, he is the main reason the

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Enneagram got into the church. And the first two books were written by his disciples.

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He had mentored Suzanne Stabile, who wrote, throw it back to you, with Ian Cron, who was a very close associate of Richard Rohr.

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And then the sacred Enneagram, which came out the next year, was by Chris Horitz. And he was mentored by Richard Rohr, plus he had three

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New Age teachers. And so those are the first two books that impacted the church and opened the door for the

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Enneagram. And you have very unbiblical ideas. I recently did a

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Facebook post on all the red flags I saw in chapter one of The Road Back to You.

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And I said, these should not have been missed, especially by pastors. And I said,

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I don't understand how some of these red flags weren't missed. And I go through them one by one and list them.

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And some of them, I don't expect some people to really have caught on what was being said.

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So I explain it. Some of them are more blatant. And to me, it's very disturbing that this book, which does not, it doesn't ring like a

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Christian book to me when I read through it, was accepted as a Christian book.

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And therefore, that made the Enneagram Christian because this was a Christian book. It's published by a

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Christian publisher, into Varsity Press. And then Zondervan did Chris Horitz's book.

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Now that they've put out so many books, I think my co -author, Don Vino, has counted over 28 titles have come out on the

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Enneagram for Christians. These are the Christian Enneagram books. I can't even keep up with them anymore.

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And there was only one in 2016. And now there's at least 28. And I can't,

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I just did a post on another one today. I can't even keep up with them anymore. I said in an earlier program,

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I said it's like the tiger has been let out of its cage and it is running amok in the church.

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Right. And a lot of times, I mean, you think about having discernment, the discernment that Christians should be having, but it seems that discernment and protecting the flock and the body has been replaced with supply and demand.

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That there's a huge hunger and demand for this. So let's just pump out as many books. It reminds me of the early, you know,

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I'm 39. And I think about the books like the Prayer of Jabez that was around 2000 that came out by,

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I can't remember his name was it, something Wilkerson. And it was basically a verse out of context that said, you pray this prayer and this will bring all these blessings upon me.

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And it was very like law of attraction. It was hugely popular. There are Prayer of Jabez journals, there are

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Prayer of Jabez, like you name it. It was like Prayer of Jabez jewelry, t -shirts, like the whole nine yards.

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Like Jesus calling. Yeah, yeah. And so you see these things that are huge sellers. And, but then when you look at it about where the origins come from, and even

30:46

Sarah Young, when you look at how she wrote Jesus Calling, that's not the Jesus of the

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Bible. Right. And I realized that too, I had no idea what it was. And so a lot of times, my point is a lot of times when it comes to the industrial

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Christianity literature complex, there's not an aspect of, is this really spiritually healthy?

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Is this really spiritually dangerous for someone versus how profitable is this going to be?

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And that just seems to be, while some of it, I don't know, some people may be good intentions, but there is a dangerous aspect too of the commercialized

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Christianity literature book industrial complex of just getting the stuff out as long as people will buy versus actually like thinking in their best interest.

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But anyways, go ahead. Yeah, you know, thinking about in terms of how the

31:36

Bible is viewed, it seems to me in this worldview that Richard Rohr has that the immutability of God is totally diminished, right?

31:44

And the cohesive view of scripture that the Holy Spirit, since it's authored by God, the cohesion isn't there.

31:52

You know, it says in Numbers 23, 19, God is not a man that he should lie nor a son of man that he should change his mind. There is no evolution of consciousness going on in the

31:59

Bible, right? We can't just throw away the book of Exodus or the book of Leviticus. This is spiritually relevant to today, right?

32:07

God does not change. And I think we can rely on that. And if you actually, you know, butcher that like Richard Rohr does, you actually have nothing, no standard to actually rely on, to discern between what is right and even wrong.

32:22

And I think that would even bleed into how Richard Rohr would probably view sin, the atonement, resurrection and salvation.

32:31

How does he view those things, Marsha? Yeah, that's another important area.

32:37

He does not think sin is an issue. I haven't heard him actually come out and he doesn't deny it.

32:46

He likes to focus on something else instead of sin that I'll say in a minute, but sin to him in his book,

32:54

The Universal Christ, he said it was an act that was committed a long time ago between the

33:02

Tigris and Euphrates rivers. That's what he says. So it was committed a long time ago, you know, reference to Adam and Eve.

33:09

And kind of like, well, it was so long ago, you know, and really it doesn't have an impact on us because he believes since we are all part of creation and we're in creation and creation is the incarnation of Christ, then we are in Christ.

33:27

And he believes that that divine DNA, we have a self, the true self that has never been separated from God.

33:36

So if you have a self that's never been separated from God, you don't need salvation.

33:42

There's no need for reconciliation because sin hasn't separated you from God. So he doesn't believe there's a need for salvation or redemption.

33:50

He doesn't believe Jesus died for sins. He absolutely, you know, rejects that.

33:56

So there you have a completely different view of the cross. And he says things like,

34:03

Jesus died on a cross because the Romans, you know, hated him and they were a violent empire.

34:12

Jesus died. I think he said Jesus died to show love, but he's also said, well, the cross is a, reality has a cruciform shape.

34:23

And he also thinks in terms of archetypes. This is another important thing. I think I had another point there at the beginning of what

34:29

I said I was gonna get into and I've already forgotten what it was. That's right. I was like, okay,

34:35

I wanna say something about that later. Oh, I just remembered. Perennialism. I can't remember. Okay, let me go on with this. So this is what happens when

34:42

I do these things because everything's so bundled together. It's hard. You start off on one thing and it leads you to like 10 other things.

34:48

He is a big fan and follower of Carl Jung. Okay. And so he sees things in archetypes.

34:57

Carl Jung is famous for his archetypes, which are supposedly these images that all of us have.

35:04

There's a collective unconscious of humanity that we all share and tap into. It's kind of like a big giant, think of it as this big giant consciousness out there and we all are connected to it.

35:16

And these archetypes are in that big collective unconscious. And it's an archetype is like the mother, the fool, the lover, the teacher, the martyr.

35:28

It's these kind of iconic figures you find in literature and history and stuff.

35:35

And so you've got the savior, the redeemer and the martyr. And so one of the views of people who follow

35:43

Jungian thinking on Jesus is Jesus was like an archetype.

35:49

He was a real person, but he identified with this archetype. And I read somewhere recently and put it in an article that,

35:59

I think this is my article on David Benner, who is another person, I don't know if we'll have time to talk about him, but he teaches, he's a master teacher at Warwick School and he's a perennialist and his books are read in Bible colleges and in seminaries.

36:13

So he's a really important person to talk about. And he also supports the Enneagram, although I don't think he teaches it.

36:20

But I heard, I think, in fact, in the video we played today, didn't Richard Rohr say something about the archetypal

36:26

Christ? I think he used the phrase archetypal Christ. He did, he did. Yeah, yeah. And so there's this idea that Jesus recognized he was fulfilling this archetype.

36:41

He recognized or that he could fulfill this archetype of the martyr and whatever else they think the archetype is.

36:50

And so he lived it out. He lived it out so he could live out this archetype for humanity, because humanity needs to see the archetypes lived out.

37:01

And this is all going back to Jung's very messed up pagan thinking. And I tell people,

37:07

Jung wasn't really teaching psychology so much as he was teaching a spirituality. I definitely agree with that.

37:14

But yet Rohr is a huge fan and David Benner is a depth psychologist and a depth psychologist is somebody who uses

37:23

Jungian psychology in their work. So there's a big connection there.

37:29

Carl Jung is another piece of the puzzle there. I've got an oddball question for you,

37:34

Marsha, that was making me think about. So if Christ is just this archetype and there's this cosmic

37:39

Christ or we have all of this divine DNA, say I unlearn everything, can I actually have the same powers as Christ?

37:47

It's to say if I do the Enneagram correctly, will I obtain that? What do they do with all of the healings that Christ did, the miracles that he produced that are in the

37:57

New Testament, that the eyewitness healings that were written about? What do they make of those things?

38:03

I am not sure, actually, and I would not find it, and I could be wrong, but I would not find it unusual if Richard Ward did not even believe that Jesus did supernatural healings.

38:16

Oh, wow, okay. I think maybe he would have a different take on it, that Jesus did things that people took to be healing, that maybe,

38:28

I don't know who knows, power of suggestion or the placebo effect or maybe something else going on, or maybe it was just stories people told.

38:37

I really need to look into that because I'm speculating here, but I have not heard Richard Ward really talk in terms of the supernatural in the

38:45

Bible or in some way give recognition to Jesus as having performed supernatural.

38:51

Now, he may think that Jesus did, but even if he did that, I don't think he would carry that over to the idea that we could do it because even if we have this divine

39:01

DNA, we are not, we were not the vehicle for the universal Christ, and maybe that was a special thing for Jesus because he came at a special time and he had a special role and a special place, and we're not, we're just like the regular people that are living here and learning about it.

39:21

So I can kind of see him going either way on that, but that's interesting. I'm gonna try to find out what he thinks of the miracles of Jesus.

39:28

Yeah, and so one of the things I just wanna mention too, it's just incredibly interesting is that when you talk about how you view the

39:34

Bible, it really is dependent and contingent on not only your worldview, but also what do you truly believe about the nature of God and what do you truly believe about the nature of man?

39:44

And that's gonna, even that will be a confines, will be a lens in which how do you actually interpret

39:49

God's word, which is the standard for how we determine truth. So if you fundamentally believe that man is continually evolving in consciousness throughout history, and that's what the

39:59

Bible is really about, then ultimately enrich the world's view is that the Bible is not about Jesus. The Bible is not about, and it's not really about his story, about God moving sovereignly in history and about his glory.

40:13

This is fundamentally about ourselves. And all that, and all really Jesus Christ is, is just a vicarious, really high -end, good -looking mirror for us to look at ourselves and make it all about us.

40:26

And so that's what I'm seeing fundamentally what's being propagated in Roar's worldview, fundamentally.

40:32

So in fact, it's interesting too, because now we're getting close and it's been such a weird year and it doesn't even feel like Christmas one because we're in Arizona, it's still 90 degrees here.

40:42

So there's that variable. So we're trying, we're like, come on, Arizona, like calm down already. But anyways, we are coming upon the

40:49

Christmas season, which is gonna come up sooner rather than later. But in a 2009 interview, this is according to your book, and this has really caught my attention that Roar said, again, it's about terminology.

40:59

He said, incarnation is already redemption. Bethlehem was more important than Calvary. So what he basically is talking about is that he believes the incarnation of Jesus was bringing the universal

41:10

Christ into form so that Christ could be unleashed, or this Christ could be unleashed at the resurrection, pull everyone and everything into redemption.

41:19

So again, you have something that this is so off base of just basic fundamental

41:26

Orthodox Christianity. So again, bringing it back to the Enneagram, I would really want to challenge, and you can give me your thoughts on it too,

41:34

Marsha, is that for someone who fundamentally denies really every basic fundamental aspect of basic 101

41:42

Orthodox Christianity, we got different denominations, people who disagree about when to baptize someone, what sort of music you should play in church, what is, how do you formulate the worship service?

41:56

You know, like, what do you use? Like, do you use instruments? Do you sing the Psalms? Those sorts of things that Christians can have discussions and passionately disagree about.

42:07

Even when it comes to, there's even areas in soteriology between like God's sovereignty versus free will.

42:13

Those are conversations that Christians can have passionately and should have them. But even in those passionate discussions on issues that are important but essential,

42:23

Richard Rohr fundamentally denies every single aspect of that. So can you just bring it back to the

42:29

Enneagram? Can you fundamentally believe or practice in a tool or find your primary identity, can you call yourselves a two or a five or a nine, again, off of something that is occultic in origin, was originated by automatic writing through your spirit contact, which is contact with demons, if we just call a spade a spade, and then it gets

42:52

Christianized by someone who fundamentally denies every single basic fundamental aspect of Christianity 101.

42:59

Getman cults and cultish movements, they do this. They ape terms from Christianity. You heard Jerry read the quote,

43:06

Richard Rohr used the word redemption. What does redemption mean? The action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment or clearing of a debt, right?

43:15

Or the action of saving or being saved from sin. We already know Richard Rohr doesn't believe in sin is the way the

43:22

Bible defines it. When Jesus died on the cross, there was a literal act. He was, there was something being exchanged, right?

43:28

He was giving us his righteousness and taking our sin. His death had a meaning and had a purpose. But what we see here is he's using

43:35

Christian terms like Jerry was saying, he's speaking Christianese, but the definition behind them is 110 % different and we can't be blind to the worldviews, right?

43:43

We need to actually, as Christians, be discerning, you know, and hopefully this episode, if you're listening to it right now, you can hear some of the distinct distinctions between like biblical

43:54

Christianity, the Christ of scripture and the Christ of Richard Rohr. And I think even talking about the aspect of sin and it being different to Richard Rohr's theology,

44:05

I think we could even talk now about perennialism, right? So Marcia, what is perennialism?

44:13

Yeah, perennialism is something, I heard about it years ago, but I didn't,

44:18

I just had a vague understanding of it, but I've had to look into it because of Richard Rohr and because of this whole

44:24

Enneagram explosion. It is a view, and I've read some essays now by some perennialists.

44:32

It's a view that it's almost kind of like a religion in itself, well, it really is.

44:38

And so what they believe is that there are all these different religions out there, of course, and they look different, you know, they're different rituals, they have different creeds, et cetera.

44:50

But despite all of those outward differences, in the core of all of these religions, they all draw from the same root, they all go back to the same reality, they all go back to the same

45:05

God. And so even though they look different, they say that's the exoteric.

45:12

The exoteric view is when you're looking on the outside of the religion and you're seeing how different the religions are from each other.

45:19

The esoteric view is the view that you see behind the scenes, the underneath view, where you see this common root they're all from.

45:29

Now, you don't just suddenly see that and think, oh, okay, thanks for telling me that, now I understand.

45:35

There is a process of getting to this point. So perennialists believe that they have gone through that and they now see this great grand truth of this common core of all religions, but they will each still follow a particular religion.

45:53

So you can have Hindus, they're following Hinduism and they're doing worship of their

45:59

Hindu God or whatever, but they are a perennialist. You have Jewish perennialists. I recently saw a conference and it was perennialists and one of them was a

46:10

Jewish, one of the teachers was a Jewish man. He's a Jewish perennialist. You can have Christian perennialists,

46:17

Buddhist perennialists, et cetera. So you follow a certain religion, a certain path and they'll often say, okay,

46:24

I am following the Hindu tradition or I'm following the Christian tradition or I am following Christian wisdom or the

46:31

Christian wisdom tradition. Those words are all kind of indicators of somebody who's following a perennial belief system.

46:43

Now, I don't wanna say that's absolute proof because people can use words in different ways, and so I don't, somebody might innocently say something about Christian wisdom, so don't jump up and accuse them of being a perennialist.

46:56

I just wanna, what I'm doing is giving some kind of terms that might indicate it.

47:01

So Christian wisdom, the Christian tradition is very commonly heard. I've heard

47:07

Ian Cron, in fact, use some perennial language in an interview he did with a

47:13

New Ager named Beatrice Chestnut. He actually did a seminar with her on the Enneagram. So here again, you have a problem right away, why a

47:21

Christian should be doing a seminar considered on a spiritual topic with a New Ager.

47:28

And then she interviewed him and that really revealed a lot about where he is and I feel convinced from that that he's a perennialist, which isn't surprising since he's an associate of Richard Rohr's.

47:41

So they'll say things and you may not be able to tell at first that there's anything different, but you may think, oh, this person is a

47:48

Christian. And that's because they will use the familiar terms, but they mean something else.

47:56

And really a master at this is David Benner. Yeah, David Benner, who

48:02

I mentioned a little earlier. I do have two articles on my website on two of his books that I read just since this summer.

48:09

I read The Gift of Being Yourself, which is the book used on a lot of Christian college campuses and in seminaries and recommended in Christian counseling programs.

48:22

And in fact, on one of my posts the other day that had something to do with Benner, someone just wrote,

48:27

I think yesterday, she said, I had to read this. I had to read this book in this course I was taking that had to do with a ministry she was in.

48:36

So it's out there. People are reading The Gift of Being Yourself. And he wrote two other books. It was like a trilogy, all published by IVP.

48:45

I read The Gift of Being Yourself. And then I read a book called Living Wisdom, which is very, it's very upfront with a perennial view.

48:53

I mean, there's no way you could read that and think that it was even Christian. It's like so in your face.

48:59

But The Gift of Being Yourself is more subtle. And that's the book that Christians have been reading.

49:04

But my article goes through because he uses phrases like the Christ in me and the

49:12

Christ self. Now, if you're reading that as a Christian and you've been told this is a

49:18

Christian book, and maybe your Christian college professor, your seminary professor said, this is a good book, read this book.

49:25

So you're assuming that this is a Christian guy, right? You're assuming that this writer is

49:31

Christian. And so you read Christ in me or Christ self and you stop and think, well, you know, I don't know that I've never heard that term.

49:38

I don't talk about my Christ self, but I'm sure he probably just means that, you know, now that I have trusted in Christ, I'm united with Christ by faith.

49:48

I have the Holy Spirit, you know, Christ is with me. So that's the Christ in me, you know, that's

49:53

Christ self, or maybe the Christ self is my redeemed self, the self that's being redeemed, that's been redeemed by Christ.

50:01

So you would kind of like be able to explain it to yourself and then you would just move on.

50:06

But see, that's not what it means. When he's saying the Christ self, he's meaning the self that has never been separated from God, that is really part of Christ and part of God.

50:18

And that is the true self, which the Enneagram is all about finding the true self. And so David Benner talks about that and the gift of being yourself, if you think about the title, it doesn't to me even sound like a

50:32

Christian book, frankly. You know, the gift of being yourself. It's like, well, you know, I don't know that being myself is such a great gift.

50:39

I mean, I'm glad God gave me life, but you know, I'm not supposed to sit around and like, oh, I'm so grateful that, you know, that I'm myself.

50:45

And you know, I have this great gift of being myself. So, but he makes it sound very spiritual so that, you know, it's using all this

50:54

Christian language and I can see how deceptive it is. And so I've read the book and took notes and wrote about these things so that people can see some of the red flags.

51:06

When you see a term that you're not familiar with, like Christ self or the Christ in me, you know, you need to stop and think, wait a minute, maybe something is amiss.

51:18

Maybe there's something here that isn't really biblical.

51:23

And then you might notice, if you start wondering, you might notice that he never gives the gospel.

51:30

He never talks about being redeemed or the atonement. He never talks about Jesus dying for sins.

51:36

As far as I remember, I don't think he talks about sins. Then you notice what's missing, what's not in the book, you know, and if you're gonna talk to a

51:44

Christian about yourself and who you are, to me, biblically, that would be talking about how you've been redeemed, how you have a fallen self, you know, that Paul calls the flesh, and now you've been redeemed.

51:57

You have the new self in Christ, you know, and you have the recreated self.

52:04

You are a new creation in Christ. That's what I'm trying to remember. You are a new creation in Christ.

52:11

And that's where my mind would go in anything about the gift of being yourself as far as coming from a

52:18

Christian viewpoint. But that's not in there at all. He does, that's absolutely missing. And he talks about the spirit of wisdom inhabiting creation.

52:28

Now, to be fair, I can't remember if that's in that book or in Living Wisdom book, but he has some other things in the gift of being yourself.

52:36

And he and Rohr are on the same page. Rohr actually has endorsed, I think, all of David Benner's books, and he wrote the foreword to one of them.

52:47

Neither book I read had the foreword by Richard Rohr, but he did write the foreword.

52:52

I think it's called The Living Presence, Living Presence. That's the title, those two words are in the title.

53:01

Richard Rohr wrote a foreword to that, and his foreword even indicates, even shows his perennialism.

53:07

And then Benner is supposedly a master teacher at Richard Rohr's school, and Benner also runs an online school based in Canada called the

53:17

Cascadia School of Living Wisdom, or Wisdom.

53:22

So when you see that word, see that word wisdom and tradition are repeated a lot. Red flags. And those are all red flags, especially if you're near anybody who, if you're near Rohr, anybody who works with Rohr.

53:35

Yeah, and one of the things I would say, Marcia, too, I find it interesting when you come to perennialism is that if there is a divine reality at the center of every religion, then there's no such thing as idolatry.

53:46

Right, that's true. Because, and so in other words, there's nothing wrong, then all of a sudden you shall know other gods before me becomes obsolete and becomes meaningless.

53:55

And then also the scores of hundreds of Bible verses that talk about idolatry and condemn idolatry.

54:02

In fact, if you look at, it was, let me pull it up here.

54:08

Yeah, it was Psalm 135, 15 through 18. It says, the idols of the nations are silver and gold, the works of human hands.

54:16

They have mouths, but do not speak. They have eyes, but do not see. They have ears, but do not hear.

54:23

But is not there any breath in their mouths? Those who make them become like them.

54:30

So do all who trust in them. So in other words, it's differentiating between these idols that are made out of silver and gold that ultimately come from a religion.

54:43

If perennialism is true, this would come from a religion that has some aspect of the divine self. So it's nonsensical to try and condemn something since we're all part of the universal self.

54:53

So in other words, according to Rohr's worldview, then you have to take all of these

54:59

Bible verses, including one of the 10 commandments, you have to make that obsolete if you're going to hold to a view of perennialism.

55:05

See, and that's what I was talking about earlier with the immutability of God, right? God does not change. The Holy Spirit inspired scripture so we can't just delete these things, right?

55:14

And the death blow to perennialism is this. It's Jesus. He says, I am, and I am statement here.

55:20

I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. That's the death blow to perennialism.

55:28

I mean - Yes, although notice that Richard Rohr used that in that one minute clip that you played at the beginning because he interprets it completely differently.

55:37

And he says, yes, Jesus can say that because he is the way because he's creation and we're all in creation.

55:43

And so he is the way because, you see how he turns that around? Right, right.

55:48

And he says, yeah, I agree with Jesus saying that. I agree with that statement.

55:55

You know, Jesus is the way because he had the universal Christ and the universal

56:01

Christ is now here because of Jesus and Christ is in creation and we're all in creation and the universal

56:09

Christ is working on us all to bring us to this point of perfection. So yeah, yeah, he is the way.

56:16

You see how it's incredibly, it's diabolical. It is. It's diabolical.

56:21

It is and it's easy to take certain texts and use them as proof texts, but then we can go back to other words of Jesus, like where he says, unless you are born again, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.

56:32

And even in John six, it says, unless that you were given to me, all that have given to me will come and I will raise them up on the last day.

56:40

And it's just amazing to think in terms of what people who hold to the

56:46

Enneagram and trying to find their true self, the fundamental error, if you call yourself a

56:53

Christian trying to look to discover the true self is that the beautiful thing about scripture, it shows us as no, we are fallen.

57:00

You don't want to be the best of your fallen abilities. No, you want to, like you said earlier,

57:06

Marsha, we want to put on the new self, right? Jesus is the one who gave up himself as being

57:12

God, right? In the flesh, dying on the cross for our sins in order that we may have a correct view, number one of God, so we can have a correct view of who we are and how we stand before him in order to actually now live like Christ.

57:28

We don't want to live like ourselves and Jesus died so we don't have to. And when the

57:34

Holy Spirit indwells us, it doesn't make us want to be more like us. It instead makes us want to be more like Christ.

57:41

Right? And the scripture says in Romans eight and another place,

57:46

I think maybe Ephesians, we are being conformed to the image of Christ. Amen. That's what, that's, you know, forget being my true self or being a healthy four or I need to be a healthy nine.

58:00

No, that's not, it's not about you. It's about who Jesus is and being conformed to his image and looking to him.

58:10

We look to him as the model. We look, that's what our focus is supposed to be on Jesus Christ.

58:16

And this Enneagram thing completely just destroys that. It just takes it away.

58:23

I've seen attempts to, you know, they talk about Jesus to try to make the Enneagram sound.

58:29

Christian, you know, like there's one teacher who says, Jesus is the sum of all nine types and Jesus is the center of the

58:37

Enneagram. Wow. Okay, that was said by Bill Gaultier who has shepherding, shepherding soul, soul shepherding ministry.

58:47

He said that at Saddleback, it's online, it's on YouTube. I did a post on that, but to hear that to me was almost like a blasphemy.

58:58

You know, Jesus is center of the Enneagram. I'm like, oh my goodness, please don't make Jesus the center of an occult tool.

59:04

You know, I'm like, that's like saying Jesus is the center of the Ouija board or something. It just was atrocious to hear those words.

59:12

And I was very angry when I, when I get angry, actually, it's sometimes a good thing because it gives me a lot of motivation.

59:19

I love it. And I get all worked up and I'm like, I'm gonna do a post on that, you know? And you know,

59:25

I have to work on it and everything. And by the time I work on it and try to get all the words right and organize it, I've calmed down, but it kind of gives me the fuel to get started.

59:34

And, you know, and then another thing, both in Cron and Suzanne Stabile said in an interview, and they were repeating

59:41

Richard Ward when they said this, the Enneagram is the face of God. Yep. Yep. So you have these sayings about the

59:49

Enneagram trying to make it sound Christian. And really when you know what the Enneagram is, it's just repulsive.

59:55

It's a different Jesus. Yeah. It's a different Jesus and different gospel. Yeah, it is. It's a different Jesus. Exactly. I did, in fact,

01:00:01

I did a post on the Enneagram Jesus is a Gnostic Jesus. That's right. And it is, it's a

01:00:06

Gnostic Jesus. So, you know, that's what you're getting with Enneagram. Gotcha.

01:00:12

And then one other question too, because you're, again, we're going back to just defining terms.

01:00:18

This is Richard Ward's worldview. And again, he's fundamentally taking terms that fundamentally are

01:00:23

Christian and then redefining them. But he's also slipping in new age terms that if the user is not familiar with.

01:00:31

Fake switch. It's also, wait, what does he really mean by that? So you'll hear a lot, not just with Richard Ward, but other sort of progressive new, sort of like new age, like Rob Bells and people like that, or just people that are much more progressive

01:00:45

Christianity. And even a lot of new age gurus, you know, both online, offline, et cetera, they'll use the term dualism and non -dualism.

01:00:53

So would you be able to explain just a little bit about what essentially, when you talk about defining terms, what does

01:01:00

Richard Ward mean when you say that? Or what are the terms mean? And how is he trying to fit that in to, how is he trying to define the

01:01:07

Bible and Christianity in that light? Yes, he does use the term dualism and non -dual because he's saying we need to be non -dual.

01:01:15

That's like the big goal and that contemplative practices are supposed to help you be non -dual.

01:01:22

And what I think of this is that he's not, he doesn't use the terms really the way they are meant.

01:01:30

You know, non -dual means no distinctions at all. And so dualism, of course, is there are distinctions.

01:01:36

And of course we believe there are distinctions. There's good and evil, you know, there's truth and falsehood.

01:01:43

God is distinct from creation and God is distinct from us. So there's definitely, you know, things are not all one.

01:01:51

So, but he uses dualism as a way to put down basically what the

01:01:58

Bible teaches. Like he'll say, oh, you know, we don't want to have a religion where, you know, you're in,

01:02:05

I'm in and you're out, or he's in and she's out, or, you know, he's going to heaven and she's going to hell, or that's bad, that's wrong, but this is true.

01:02:16

You know, he makes it sound like if you make any kind of declaration that something doesn't belong or is not part of something else that's good, then you are being dualistic.

01:02:32

You are making distinctions that you shouldn't be making. You're making judgments, basically.

01:02:38

He's basically saying you're judging things and that's wrong because non -dual would be everybody's in, we don't, you know, we don't say that anybody's bad or anybody's wrong or anybody's religion is false, or, you know, we don't say, look, you can't be a

01:02:55

Christian just because, you know, you also believe in Hinduism or whatever. You know, he doesn't think that you should make any distinctions, spiritually speaking, and that's how he tends to use that word dualistic.

01:03:10

He likes to say that a lot, and I have seen, because of his influence, his influence in the evangelical church is incredible, and it is really growing, and I'm telling you that it's something that has even taken, kind of taken me aback, and it's kind of hard to shock me, really, but I've been taken aback by that.

01:03:31

I have seen people repeat him and say things like, well, you see these progressives, you know, well, you know, we don't wanna be, we don't wanna say who's in and who's out and who's right and who's wrong.

01:03:44

You know, that's not what Jesus was about. He didn't teach that, and they'll just, and I can tell they got that from Richard Rohr, and, you know, it's incredible.

01:03:52

People hear this. It sounds good to them, and they think, yeah, you know, I don't wanna be unfair.

01:03:59

I wanna be open to everybody. You know, I wanna, I believe in diversity, and if they're already kind of leaning that way or already in some way disillusioned, maybe with Christianity for some reason, this sounds really good, and Rohr is very popular.

01:04:15

One of his biggest groups of fans are the millennials, and a lot of them disillusioned millennials.

01:04:22

I don't think really atheists are coming to Richard Rohr. I think disillusioned Christians are coming to him.

01:04:28

You know what's interesting to me? Just thinking about the terms non -dualism, it almost sounds like there's this strive for relativism, but we know that that's impossible because already trying to create this non -dualism, you're already putting yourself into a category that's anti -Christian, right?

01:04:48

It's already gonna actually separate Orthodox Christians from what you believe. It's impossible, and you can't even be non -dualistic in morality, right?

01:04:57

What about the person who wants to worship God by murdering children, you know? Like, it gets to that level where it's almost a philosophical absurdity to try to absurd dual, non -dualism in a world that God created where you live by his laws, and you do die because the wages of sin is death, and you would better hope that the

01:05:17

Christ of Scripture has paid the price of your death on the cross so that you could have peace with God.

01:05:23

You know, you can't escape living in God's world. Your ontology, your being is different than God's.

01:05:29

You know, you aren't God, and you can't control even any fundamental aspect of your life in the terms of, you don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow, but God is, he knows the future from the past.

01:05:41

He can tell you what's gonna happen, and he can also tell you why what happened happened in the way it did, you know?

01:05:47

Like, there's, it's an impossibility to have non -dualism because you're already telling people who are, like, die -hard

01:05:55

Hindus, you're telling them they're wrong, right? You're telling Muslims they're wrong. You're telling

01:06:00

Christians they're wrong, and you are right. You've already created a dualistic approach to religion.

01:06:05

Exactly, it's the same thing when people try to go against logic. Like, in the

01:06:11

New Age, they're very anti -logic, and, you know, they think logic is a Western concept, and, you know, it's, like, evil and everything, but if you just say,

01:06:21

I think logic is evil, or, you know, I think logic is not needed, I mean, you've just used logic.

01:06:28

Right, right. You have to use logic even to make a sentence, and you can't escape the way, like you said, the way

01:06:35

God made the world, and the way things are. You can try to escape it, but it becomes absurd because if you try to be illogical, you have to be logical to try to be illogical.

01:06:46

Yeah, true, and even a kind of like piggyback of this, and again, this is when it comes to understanding that everyone's made in the image of God, everyone knows, while they try and pretend that they don't know the

01:06:59

God of the Bible, they just suppress the truth and unrighteousness, and you'll hear it come through their worldview, and ultimately you'll show that fundamental

01:07:06

Christianity is ultimately true because of the impossibility of the contrary. So even, like, the idea of, when he goes against dualism and talks against it, he's dueling against dualism, and therefore he's gonna be an internal dualist.

01:07:20

He's a dualist, yeah. So it's self -refuting in nature. Exactly, self -refuting, that's right. Yeah, so I think in summary, and this is really, again, just to kind of wrap up here, and I'll just kind of repeat what

01:07:32

I've been saying from the very beginning, is that if the Enneagram is by what we've shown, and again, we have a blog that's already up live at thecultistshow .com.

01:07:41

We have part one up. You're gonna be dropping part two, kind of like going over Roar. It's very informative, at least the first one, talking about the occultic origins of the

01:07:48

Enneagram. So we have that, and then we're gonna be having more information, but just in summary, there is a, like, do you want to, is it okay to use a tool that's fundamentally occultic in origin, that's derived by spirit contact through automatic writing, which

01:08:05

Scott says don't do, and was sugar -coated slash Christianized by someone who fundamentally denies every single aspect of the basic Christian faith?

01:08:16

Is that something you want to find your identity around as someone who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ?

01:08:23

That's just something, like, I don't know. That's up to you to decide, and we're laying out,

01:08:29

I think we've laid a very good foundation to kind of argue for both cases here. Yeah, and if you do go to that blog at thecultistshow .com,

01:08:36

it's called Decoding the Origins of the Enneagram, the information that I actually got most of this blog post from is from the book

01:08:42

Richard Rohr and the Enneagram Secret, and we're interviewing one of the authors of this book, so you need to go sell your shirt and buy this book.

01:08:49

You hear Pastor Jeff say that all the time. Sell your shirt, buy the book. And if you do, Marcia, there is a way to get a pin, right?

01:08:56

Can you explain that? Yeah. Yes, if you go to the website enneagramsecret .com,

01:09:05

it's basically a resource page on the Enneagram. It has, of course, it has where you can buy the book, but it has the endorsements.

01:09:14

You can read chapter one there for free, and it has a lot of podcasts and video casts on there.

01:09:21

There's a place, a contact, where it says contact us or contact. If you do that, and if you buy a book, if you buy, and there are three places you can buy it from there.

01:09:31

If you buy a book on Amazon, let's say, just do that contact thing and say, my name is

01:09:40

John Smith, and I just bought your book on Amazon, and give the order number.

01:09:45

Here's the order number. You will be mailed a free no -enneagram pin that was designed by a friend, our friend who's morally and other ways supported us,

01:09:58

Roger Corbin, and he just had a whole bunch of these produced.

01:10:03

We were gonna give them out at a conference in March, and then because of COVID, the conference didn't happen.

01:10:09

And so he's got all these buttons, no enneagram. It's an enneagram with a big red slash through it. So if you just go to that page, and if you forget it, just find me on Facebook and ask me about it, and I'll give it to you.

01:10:24

And just do that, and just give your order number wherever you buy it, Amazon or christianbrook .com

01:10:30

or wherever, and then you'll get the button. Yeah, so this is definitely really good.

01:10:38

And so again, we'll say this at the beginning of the podcast. We'll post this on our social media once we release the episode for good.

01:10:44

No more re -releases, we're gonna release it for good. But what I wanna do is I really appreciate hanging out here, and again, this is sort of a fun, long, extended episode.

01:10:52

It's not over. It's not over. I want this, we have a lot of people who ask some really good questions in last time.

01:10:58

And in fact, I feel like even now getting a better grasp on it, we can ask people even more in -depth questions. The first one

01:11:04

I wanna bring up, this was someone in a group that I'm part of. This is a Facebook group, the Fight, Laugh, Feast Family Party.

01:11:10

So if any of you are listening in, you saw me at the Fight, Laugh, Feast party over in Nashville, Tennessee.

01:11:16

Just wanna say hello. I appreciate you guys reaching out to me, and hopefully next time I'll bring SuperSif along. Yay! Someone in the

01:11:22

Facebook group, this lady, Rebecca, she was talking to her boss, and she,

01:11:31

I guess, had objections. She was trying to explain to him her, she wasn't really viewing the

01:11:36

Enneagram in a positive light and saying this is a spiritually dangerous tool. And she had gotten a text basically saying, the reason

01:11:43

I asked was a bit of a trick, and did like a wink emoticon. Says, do you know that Christmas trees are rooted in pagan culture with the worship of trees?

01:11:52

Or what about Easter, parentheses, Oster, also a pagan holiday. Goddess of fertility, note the rabbits and egg themes.

01:12:00

So basically trying to make an equivalent between the pagan origins of these two holidays, and in order to justify the use of the

01:12:07

Enneagram, that somehow we're using arbitrary or double standards, but also to say like, you know what, I'm really okay to use it, and you're just judging me.

01:12:16

So how would you respond? We talked about this before the beginning of the podcast, but can you explain real quickly how you'd respond to that?

01:12:22

Yes, actually, I have seen that used often. That's become a very common thing. People say, well, you know, you better stop observing

01:12:31

Christmas and Easter then, if you're telling me to stop using the Enneagram. Well here, first of all, the first fact is, neither

01:12:38

Christmas nor Easter have pagan origins. This is one of the biggest lies out there. It is just unbelievable.

01:12:44

I mean, I believed it as a new Christian myself. It is not true, and I do have an article on my website.

01:12:53

I have two articles. One's called Christmas is Not Pagan, and one's called Easter is Not Pagan, and these are the result of posts that I was doing annually on Facebook for like the last six or seven years, and I finally made it into an article on my website.

01:13:07

So it didn't come, Christmas did not come from Saturnalia or any other kind of pagan holiday.

01:13:14

If you look at the history and the facts, they did not coincide, and that was not the reason.

01:13:19

December 25th was actually a date picked out by the early church. They based it on when

01:13:25

John the Baptist's father was serving in the temple because they served at certain times.

01:13:33

They only served, I think, once a year, and the birth of John the Baptist being,

01:13:39

I think, three months before Jesus. I can't remember if it was six months or three months, but they used that timing for the conception of Jesus, and supposedly, it comes out to December 25th.

01:13:51

Now, is it really December 25th or not? I don't know. I don't think it's that important, but it's not because of a pagan holiday.

01:13:58

Christmas trees were actually first put up by Christians. I think it was around the 15th or 16th century in Austria.

01:14:06

They called them paradise trees, and they tied apples to the branches, and it was a reminder of Eden before man sinned, you know, the

01:14:16

Garden of Eden, but it was an idea that had to do with redemption, and it was not a pagan symbol.

01:14:24

Yes, it is true that pagans worshiped trees, but that's not where the Christmas tree came from, and of course, who made trees?

01:14:30

I think God made trees. That's what the Bible tells me. Amen. You know, and also, if you think about this, this is a wonderful thing to think about at Christmas.

01:14:40

Jesus died, and it says, you know, whoever dies on a tree is cursed in Deuteronomy, and this is repeated in Galatians, because Jesus took the curse of sin on himself, and he died.

01:14:56

That is considered a cursed death, because he took our curse. He took it for us, and so that was on a tree.

01:15:02

You think about the Old Testament account where they come to the bitter waters in the wilderness, and God tells them to throw a piece of wood and a branch into the water, and the water's sweet because of the wood.

01:15:15

There's a tree theme throughout the Bible that points to Christ, and then you have the tree of life in Revelation at the end, and of course, you have it at the beginning, and you have it at the end, so there's a tree theme, and so a

01:15:29

Christmas tree very much fits in with the Bible. It's really beautiful when you put all these pieces together, and Easter was not named after a goddess.

01:15:39

No, there's no goddess by that name. There's no historical record of such a goddess. The only person who ever said that was that guy named

01:15:48

Bede, B -E -D -E, like in the eighth century or something. He said he had heard it, that there was this goddess named

01:15:54

Ostra or something, but it's not true. There's no record for such a goddess.

01:16:00

Easter probably came from the German word for east or eastern, where the sun rises, having to do with the resurrection of Jesus, and there's also one other theory that I can't remember, but it doesn't have to do with a goddess.

01:16:15

It just, you know, these are not true, so to say that doing the enneagram is like accepting pagan origins of Christmas and Easter is faulty, it's fallacious, because they don't have those origins.

01:16:30

Now, let's say they do. Let's say there are pagan origins. It is still not the same thing, because honoring

01:16:37

Christ on a certain day of the year, whether it's his birth or his resurrection, is not the same as using an occult tool.

01:16:45

You're using, not only are you using this occult tool, you're using it in a spiritual way to find out about yourself, and you're supposed to help your relationship with God and your marriage and your spiritual growth.

01:16:57

It's being used for discipleship now. It's being used as a spiritual tool in a church, and so that is very, very different than just a certain day, like December 25th, or the day of the resurrection, when people are going to church and singing songs about Jesus Christ.

01:17:15

So even if they had pagan origins, you wouldn't be doing anything pagan unless you participate in a pagan ceremony, okay?

01:17:22

Then, yes, you would be doing something pagan, but you have to go out there and participate in a pagan ceremony.

01:17:29

So there is no correlation at all between the two. So that is a fallacious analogy.

01:17:35

It doesn't work, and I really wanna put that to rest because I see that over and over again. People need to think.

01:17:41

They need to think through, why is a holiday different than an occult tool? There's a difference between the two, and then beyond that, those two holidays don't have pagan origins.

01:17:54

So I know that was a long answer, but that's so common out there that it's good to get the information on that.

01:18:03

Did you super sleuth? Did you sleuth around to find a question that people ask, or do you just have a thought on that? No, I just have a thought.

01:18:09

I think it's kind of interesting that there's a pseudo -history that's been in place in terms of these pagan origins of Christmas and things of that nature.

01:18:18

It's like a zeitgeist, right? But what's funny, though, is it reminds me of the supposed ancient origins of the

01:18:24

Enneagram. There's no historical basis. It's not rooted in reality.

01:18:31

So we gotta come back, snap back to reality, right? It'll take a little phrase from Eminem there for some reason. I don't know why that came in on it.

01:18:37

Maybe, oh my gosh. You signed up for that. But anyways, it's not based in reality.

01:18:43

Anyways, go back to another question, Jerry. Oh yes, another question people brought up, but just about personality tests in general.

01:18:51

I did one. There's the Myers -Briggs test, and I think there's the Myers -Briggs test people asked about. I remember

01:18:56

I did one, too, and when I was working for one job as a virtual employee a couple years ago.

01:19:02

I don't think it was Myers -Briggs. It might have been another one that was popularized, but it wasn't an Enneagram one. And I found it very intriguing.

01:19:09

In many ways, it kind of labeled me as very accurately, like I'm very much a very creative person, but sort of my personality allows for my, and this is me just sort of telling people about me, and in elements, it's true that I'm more of a creative, imaginative person.

01:19:30

You're visionary. A visionary, but through that, sometimes the daily sort of grinding and discipline sort of gets lost in that process.

01:19:38

I love it. So that's just something I'm self -aware of, and I've learned about that, and that sometimes that's how

01:19:44

I am, and you probably, it's funny you're laughing. It's probably true. No, I think you're pretty, you're good, dude.

01:19:50

Oh, you're good, okay. You get timelines, homie. Oh yeah, for sure. But yeah, so a lot of people are just asking about those personality tests in general.

01:19:57

Like, is that something, like as a very loose -based standpoint, like are those things okay, or is it just this one's bad because this one's an automatic writing one, or are there other ones that are okay, or like what's like a level -headed approach, and like how do we deal with this practically?

01:20:14

Because I've been asking myself that question too, because I don't know. Okay, yeah, I actually have several, there's several aspects of this to address.

01:20:22

First of all, the Enneagram is not a personality assessment. That was not its purpose.

01:20:28

That's not its origin. Richard Rohr and Suzanne Stabile and Ian Cron have all said it is not a personality test, and in fact, originally, when the

01:20:38

Enneagram was first being taught, you had to figure out your type. You didn't take a test.

01:20:45

You were supposed to figure out your type, and come to it through maybe even talking to people who knew you.

01:20:52

So you didn't take a test. Now, apparently, there are tests out there that you take. So it's not real, but it's not really personality.

01:21:02

As Chris Horwitz says, it's nine paths to God, and it's nine paths back to the true self.

01:21:09

That is what Richard Rohr teaches. That is what is at the heart of the Enneagram, and when it got out there into the church, they wanted to Christianize it, so it seems that they started changing it, and so now it becomes this kind of semi -psychological or pseudo -psychological tool that, you know, okay, so you're a three, and when you're not a good three, you're this unhealthy three, so you can do this, and you wanna be a healthy three, because God created you to be a healthy three, okay?

01:21:40

So that's still false, because there's no basis in psychology for it. So it means nothing.

01:21:45

It's like somebody just made it up, because really, it was just made up by a spirit, whatever spirit

01:21:52

Claudio Naranjo contacted when he did his automatic writing.

01:21:58

That's what came up, these nine types. Some of it may have been from his own brain, but it was not scientific.

01:22:05

It was not based in research. It was not based in studies, and so you've got this kind of ad hoc, arbitrary nine types, and they don't even make sense.

01:22:19

We know, my co -authors and I know a couple of psychologists, Christian psychologists who have looked at it, and they said the

01:22:26

Enneagram fails the criteria for any kind of personality assessment. It does not have the right ingredients at all.

01:22:35

It's not put together the right way, and we've had two look at, one of them is a professor at a well -known seminary who's a specialist on some personality issues and on things like the disc and the

01:22:49

Myers -Briggs, and he says that it doesn't even come close to what that kind of test could be.

01:22:58

So people are using it as if it's legitimate, and it has absolutely no legitimacy or validity to it.

01:23:03

So that's one answer. So in a way, if someone says, well, what about the Myers -Briggs or something else?

01:23:10

It's another, that's another category. Okay. So now you're asking about something that's considered a legitimate test, and then

01:23:18

I have to say this, okay? I told you there were many aspects to this answer. I have to say this.

01:23:25

The Myers -Briggs is not considered very valid in the field of psychology. It's not, people use it, a lot of companies use it on their employees, but it doesn't have real legitimacy.

01:23:38

And as far as I know, professional psychologists don't use it and they don't see it as legitimate. It was actually two followers of Carl Jung who used his data to come up with it.

01:23:48

Now, maybe some of the things about it are true enough that, and the categories are done maybe in a way that is maybe close enough to being valid that you can get answers that might fit.

01:24:01

But I've also been told, if you take the Myers -Briggs several times, you'll come out different probably each time.

01:24:08

So that's, so is it legitimate? You know, I would say ask some professional psychologists.

01:24:14

I'm not a psychologist, so I don't feel qualified to answer, but whether it is or not, it's nothing like the

01:24:19

Enneagram. Right. That's it, Danielle, I appreciate you saying that. I wanna quote who you were referring to,

01:24:24

Marcia. I'm pulling up your book here. It's J. Mendenwalt, who was working on a PhD in social psychology.

01:24:30

He performed a psychometric analysis and published his findings in January of 2019. He notes in the conclusion of his paper titled

01:24:37

The Enneagram Science and Christianity Part One, this is what he says, he says, any scientist who studies personality would simply look at the reliability scores and conclude that the

01:24:44

Enneagram test is not accurate enough to be helpful, and therefore they wouldn't use it because the potential for harm will be too high.

01:24:51

And that's a Christian apologist who was working on his PhD in social psychology. So just wanted to -

01:24:57

Yeah, thanks for reading that. He is one of the people that has told us this. And then the other guy,

01:25:03

I'm not sure that, I don't know if I can name him. I haven't given his permission to name him, I don't think.

01:25:08

I can't remember. But this other person is a more recent person who has contacted us.

01:25:14

And so it's not legitimate. I also had, when I was posting about the Enneagram, I had many Christian psychologists and counselors comment on my post saying, this has no legitimacy in psychology.

01:25:28

They knew right away, this is not considered a legitimate test for personality or for temperament or anything.

01:25:36

It's totally illegitimate. So I had several Christian psychologists tell me that. So it has no validity at all.

01:25:43

So there again, you can't compare it to anything else. And then I went further.

01:25:49

I went beyond this because that's usually what I do. I just go as far as I can in my head. I went to the place where I ask, is there such a thing as personality?

01:26:00

Because when you think about it, personality is a concept from psychology that's relatively recent, really from like maybe the late 1800s.

01:26:11

What is personality? You're gonna get different answers for that. I think that trying to look at yourself in terms of personality really is very limiting and maybe is even false in a certain sense because you start identifying yourself by things that you think you are.

01:26:31

Well, I'm really, really stubborn or I'm really, really patient or I get excited easily or whatever.

01:26:38

And then you kind of box yourself into that. And when you do that, it's always bad to box yourself into something.

01:26:47

And we're also very prone to self -deceit. This is why a lot of people think the enneagram fits them.

01:26:52

It's because we don't really see ourselves the way we are. And so prone to self -deceit, and we might like to think that we're somebody that gets,

01:27:01

I might like to think, hey, I'm a dreamer. Yeah, I really, I dream, I have, I'm a big vision person.

01:27:07

And it sounds good to me. So I think I like to think of myself as a big vision person. I used to tell,

01:27:13

I used to say that I was, long ago when I had to put my traits down and stuff for jobs,

01:27:20

I used to say I was very detail -oriented and that I was kind of meticulous and detailed.

01:27:26

Well, I'm not, I'm actually not. I'm not detail -oriented. I am if I have to be like in my writing, but I'm not naturally detail -oriented at all.

01:27:35

But I used to say that because I like thinking of myself that way. And so we can really be self -deceived.

01:27:42

And so I think why see, why, I don't care about my personality anymore. I mean, that's just kind of a temporary, maybe completely false way to see myself.

01:27:55

What does God look at? Does he look at our personalities? When he had

01:28:00

Peter, when he used Peter the way he did and used Paul the way he did, did he do it according to their personalities?

01:28:07

No, he did it according to how he wanted to use them and how he wanted to grow the church and grow them as Christians.

01:28:16

And when you look at the gifts of the spirit, that doesn't have anything to do with your personality. It chooses to give you certain gifts, whatever that may be, the gift of teaching, gift of hospitality, gift of administration, according to God's will.

01:28:33

And the Holy Spirit gives you that gift. It's not because, oh, Marcia, you're so great at greeting people.

01:28:39

I'm gonna give you the gift of hospitality. God is choosing on another level that we don't even understand.

01:28:47

And our personality has nothing to do with it. And whatever our personality may or may not be,

01:28:53

God overrides that because he is using us, conforming us to the image of Christ.

01:28:58

It's a much, much bigger thing than personality is the small picture of self.

01:29:04

And so I've been encouraging people to let go of the idea of personality. And I hope people don't mind, but that's what

01:29:11

I've been doing. I've had a lot of people send me private messages asking me this question about the

01:29:17

Myers -Briggs and personality. And they say, well, what personality test is good? Can you tell me one? And then

01:29:22

I go into my spiel, like, why should we even care about a personality? Do we even have a personality?

01:29:28

So anyway, I hope I'm not sounding extreme. No, it's so, no, what you're saying is so, so good.

01:29:34

And I appreciate you saying that, Marcia. Another question, and we kind of, we talked about this last time in part one of our part two, that was somewhere lost in the digital files and archives, but we're re -recording this, is that we had someone who commented on one of our social media posts, and they kind of brought up the meat sacrifice to idols.

01:29:52

And you're familiar with this response. You respond to another podcast, but essentially a lot of times what people will do, and again,

01:29:58

I believe most people who state this are well, they mean well, and they're sincere in what they say.

01:30:06

They're trying to go to the Bible. Yeah, they're trying to go to the Bible. And again, I've had this mindset too. Well, for me, I've never been, like for me,

01:30:12

I've never been in the new age, but for someone who's been in places they shouldn't be, this might be a stumbling block to them in the same sense that meat being sacrificed to idols and using that scripture, like that's, that might be, if it's a stumbling block, then don't do it.

01:30:28

But if you can do with a clear conscience, go ahead and do it. So you've heard this argument. You've heard that in many levels.

01:30:33

Again, I'm just paraphrasing. I've saw two or three comments, people kind of referring to that. So is the

01:30:40

Enneagram equivalent to the meat sacrifice to idols, or is that a valid argument, or how do we deal with that in a good and level -headed way?

01:30:49

Yes, thank you for that question. Yes, that is another common thing that people bring up is the meat sacrifice to idols.

01:30:57

Okay, if you think about it, meat itself is neutral. Okay, it's from an animal that God created and people eat it.

01:31:09

What made it wrong to some of the believers who had been pagans was that it had been sacrificed to an idol.

01:31:19

You know, the meat itself was okay, but it had been sacrificed. It was the action of being sacrificed.

01:31:24

The meat itself was neutral. The Enneagram is not neutral. It's not spiritually neutral.

01:31:32

It's not like something that really is based on research and facts, and it just, let's say it really was a legitimate tool, maybe for personality, let's just pretend that, and then somehow some new age people got hold of it, and they added a lot of new age ideas to it, and then some

01:31:51

Christians found out about it and said, oh, look, here's this personality thing, and they're looking at it, and they realize, oh, wait a minute, this is like new age ideas here.

01:31:59

No, this is not how we see ourselves as Christians. We're gonna use it in a way that fits in with the biblical worldview when we talk about who we are.

01:32:09

Well, then if it was an actual legitimate, valid tool that was neutral, you could do that, but it's not spiritually neutral.

01:32:18

It is rooted in the Gnostic and occult and new age worldviews. The whole purpose of it is a spiritual view that is in a spiritual purpose at odds with Christianity, and you can't, it's like trying to Christianize the

01:32:32

Ouija board, trying to Christianize astrology. It's like trying to take the Zodiac signs, and me saying, okay,

01:32:40

I used to be an astrologer. I'm gonna take the Zodiac signs. I wanna make them into a Christian thing, a

01:32:46

Christian guide to who you are, and so I'm just gonna change these 12 Zodiac signs into something from the

01:32:52

Bible. I'll go through the Bible. Maybe I'll link them to the 12 apostles, and actually, there are people who do this, believe it or not, and they claim that it's biblical, you know, but it's not.

01:33:03

I'm gonna link it to the 12, so maybe you're like Peter, and maybe you're like John, and maybe you're like Matthew, and because Matthew was this way, and then

01:33:12

I'll find a verse in the Bible, and oh, Matthew was a tax collector, so he was good at details, and that's whatever, and so I could actually come up with a whole system here and say, well, here you go.

01:33:22

I've just taken the Zodiac, and I've turned it into this Christian tool, and I'm using the Bible. Well, does that make it a

01:33:28

Christian tool? No, of course not, because the Zodiac itself, the concept that the Zodiac has any meaning is pagan.

01:33:35

There's no basis for it, so if you do that, you're just coming up with a meaningless kind of tool, and it's not spiritually, and it's not

01:33:44

Christian, because it's not spiritually neutral, so for example, in the meat offered to idols, notice that God doesn't say it's okay, if you're okay offering your meat to an idol, then go ahead, but if you're not okay with it, then don't do it if it hurts your conscience.

01:34:02

He's talking about eating the meat that's offered to that idol, not offering it to the idol, and so there's an activity versus the object, which is neutral, but the enneagram is bound up in its activity and bound up in its worldview.

01:34:18

It's not neutral like the meat, so that's how I explain my answer to that one. Yep, it's literally an object, right?

01:34:27

It's a tool that was an esoteric form of knowledge that was literally used with human hands.

01:34:33

They drew it, it's literally the object being used. So yeah, so essentially, like imagine there was just a bunch of churches, like I said, who decided to create a bunch of contemplative prayer certification classes, and we have this amazing

01:34:48

Ouija tool that we can move this thing around to create words of things we should contemplate and pray about that, to have a deeper relationship with God.

01:34:57

Or Bible verses. Right, so again, so you wanna look at what is it fundamentally originated in?

01:35:05

I think that's a good question. We kind of asked, someone asked, is it similar to yoga? And I believe I would say yes, too, because what is it fundamentally?

01:35:11

When we had our episode in yoga, and we may have time where we may get more deeper into it, it was a general overview when we did it, but is it, when we talk about the practice of yoga, is it fundamentally a physical or a spiritual practice?

01:35:25

And so in contrast to the Enneagram, the Enneagram was fundamentally at its core a spiritual tool to maintain your identity through contacting the other side in a way, not in a way that's okay through Christ, but in a way that's a no -fly zone, in which

01:35:43

God says don't do, because you're gonna get yourself in spiritual danger. In the

01:35:48

Bible, there's a book called the Bible that talks about that. So one other thing,

01:35:53

I wanna ask one other question, and again, this'll be my last question, unless you wanna think of any last questions, too,

01:36:00

Andrew, but when it comes, again, I'm new to understanding the Enneagram, people have messaged us about it, and I've never, up until people messaging about it,

01:36:10

I never knew, I wasn't that knowledgeable, but just in kind of researching it, and kind of just really looking, like what's the obsession?

01:36:20

I mean, I was kind of like following posts on Instagram under the hashtag Enneagram, like under TikTok post, people talking about it on Facebook.

01:36:28

What's different? Because again, I've taken regular personality tests, and again, it was somewhat accurate. I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting.

01:36:34

I think that might be accurate, but it seems to me, like this is probably the first time I've talked to you about it since the time

01:36:40

I took it, probably three or four years ago, but it seems to me there's something about the

01:36:47

Enneagram, sort of this, I don't know if it's a borderline obsession in the sense to where like your

01:36:52

Enneatype, this number almost becomes like, this becomes almost an aspect of your identity.

01:36:59

It just becomes sort of this continual, almost like a complete, like read a whole, would you call it just a personality change, or just like the replacement of one's, your own identity with now your

01:37:12

Enneatype identity, if that makes sense. There just seems to be almost this very, this obsession in a way that's hard.

01:37:19

Like I can't put my finger on it, but there's something that's, there's something, there's like a hook that gets people in.

01:37:26

Like, what do you think it fundamentally is, these nine types? Like, what is it that someone,

01:37:32

I think the average person I would see, okay, well, I'm a nine, all right, that's fine. That's kind of cool, I'll move on, but it's not that.

01:37:39

It's this is, oh, I'm a nine, this means this about me, and all of a sudden I need to behave this way toward this person. This is why people don't understand me because I'm this, but then it's just the continual thing and people post about it constantly, and it becomes like this of their own identity.

01:37:51

So where do you think that comes from? Yeah, I think there's a couple of factors going on there.

01:37:58

One is, I think we are naturally very self -oriented. Things about, we like to hear about ourselves.

01:38:06

We like to know about ourselves. I mean, this was, I was an astrologer, and I had a constant stream of clients.

01:38:14

I didn't have to advertise. It was mostly word of mouth, but I mean, people aren't going to say, well, no,

01:38:21

I'm not really interested in, if they were open to astrology at all and didn't think it was a bad thing, it's like, well,

01:38:28

I'm not going to, I don't want to find out about myself. I don't want to really know my purpose or why I'm here.

01:38:33

I don't really want to understand my relationships. People are like, oh, I want to know all that stuff. So we're very self -oriented, and I think that in our natural self, our natural state, the most interesting subject in the world is me.

01:38:52

I am the most interesting subject in the world to me, just like you are to you, and Susie is the most interesting subject to Susie.

01:39:00

It is a natural kind of thing, and so I think that's partly what's at play here, but I think the other thing at play is the spiritual dimension of the enneagram, because the way

01:39:12

I see this very much, and this is honestly how I see it more and more, and I'm not trying to be overdramatic,

01:39:19

I really see that Satan has gotten this into the church. He has been successful, and there is a spiritual element there that is at work that is blinding people to the problem of the enneagram or making them not want to have the facts, because a lot of people just will say no.

01:39:43

I've read about it. I believe what I believe. I had one person say to me a couple of weeks ago, she said, and I was offering her information.

01:39:51

I gave her some links, because she said she was willing to see what I had to say, so I offered all these links, and she ended up saying, well, that's okay, because I'm not afraid of the enneagram, and I have the

01:40:05

Holy Spirit, and so basically she's saying, okay, I'm not afraid, so that means

01:40:12

I'm okay with the enneagram, and I have the Holy Spirit, which means the Holy Spirit won't steer me wrong, so if I'm okay with the enneagram, it must be okay with the

01:40:20

Holy Spirit, and it's this kind of idea that I can't be deceived. I can't believe something false, because I have the

01:40:29

Holy Spirit, but see, there's no guarantee that the Holy Spirit's gonna keep you from making a mistake. That's nothing, that is not in scripture.

01:40:36

The scripture says you have to, first of all, pay attention to the Holy Spirit, and then you have to react in the right way if you're convicted, or you get a, the

01:40:49

Holy Spirit is giving you maybe a discernment about something, and you're thinking, wait a minute,

01:40:55

I don't know about that. You can choose to say, okay, let me check it out, or you can choose to say, I'm gonna ignore that.

01:41:01

I just wanna go ahead and do it, and so you can just ignore the Holy Spirit, and I think that a lot of people have a false sense of security that they can't be deceived, so even though they may hear rumblings about the

01:41:16

Enneagram now, maybe not being right or not being good, they're going to go on, because once you fall in love with the

01:41:22

Enneagram, it's very, very hard to fall out of love with it, and it's got, it has a spiritual hold on people.

01:41:31

It's a stronghold, and I'm seeing this a lot of times.

01:41:36

I mean, even pastors who get the information on it just ignore it, I mean, and they're pastors. I mean, they're supposed to be protecting their flock, and so it's really alarming, so if a pastor is gonna ignore it, then the average

01:41:49

Christian in a pew, we can't be surprised if he or she ignores it, so I think it's this self -interest and self -gratification.

01:41:58

Then it's not limited there, because you can use it for relationships. You know, you can find out what types your children are and your husband, and then you can say, oh, you know, now

01:42:08

I understand why I have so much trouble with my oldest daughter, and now

01:42:14

I understand why my husband and I discipline differently, and now, you know, you start using it to explain your life, and it becomes your worldview.

01:42:22

This is exactly what happens with astrology. It works the same way. It's a poison, and you start seeing everything through this filter of, in astrology, your astrological chart and your zodiac signs, which, you know, you have a, it's not just the sun.

01:42:37

You have the moon in a sign. You have Mercury, Venus, Mars, et cetera. They're all in different zodiac signs, and so you've got this whole slew of things to see as a filter that you see things through, and with the enneagram, it's the same way, because now you're maybe type four, but you're a wing three, and your husband's maybe a type eight, and he's a wing nine, and so that means this, and you know, and you can go on and on, and now the books are multiplying, so now we have enneagram for prayer.

01:43:06

We have enneagram for spiritual formation. You know, we have the enneagram marriage books. We have enneagram for discipleship, and it's going to continue like this.

01:43:16

It's not, it's not, until God stops it, it's not gonna stop. It's the endless permutations to it, and because it's caught hold, and it has a spiritual hold, it's multiplying.

01:43:28

That's how I see it. Yeah, do you know what, Andrew, do you know what this realm honestly reminds me of?

01:43:34

What's that one meme from, like, The Office, that Office meme, where it's like Pam says, show me the difference between this and this.

01:43:41

She's like, they're the same picture. The same thing, yeah. If, like, I could make a meme that shows, like, it shows the enneagram in the

01:43:47

Scientology E -meter. Right. Like, show me that, like, they're the same picture, because I'm thinking about that.

01:43:52

Like, that's basically the same thing, where, like, people's, when you're in Scientology, your fundamental identity is based on whether you're

01:44:01

OT one, various pieces, like an OT nine to when you're clear. Yeah, it's called the bridge to freedom. Yeah, you have this, like, bridge to freedom, and this is what defines you.

01:44:09

Like, imagine if the same guy from Sandals Church did a whole sermon series on the OT types, right?

01:44:16

So I'm gonna talk about how the Bible talks about what does it mean when you're at the end of your original OT seven, which means original thetan, which is based off of something on science fiction.

01:44:23

Yeah, going clear. Yeah, so it just, that's a weird thing. So anyways, it just,

01:44:29

I appreciate you. I know you have a thought in a second, but you're very right that this is, it's definitely exploding right now, and I think this is at least good to be a beacon here to not try and condemn anyone, or point the finger at anyone, but just we're trying,

01:44:43

I believe what we've tried to do, and again, we've gotten extra innings here, and I think part of this is our way of saying thank you all for staying patient as we've had to re -record this episode.

01:44:52

We had audio issues and things like that. But we're trying, I believe what we've tried to do is in the most level -headed and loving way possible is just let's lay out the information and as Christians, as people who are supposed to take every single thought captive, and also tearing down strongholds and everything, and turning against anything that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, is that something we're supposed to do here, given the information that we have?

01:45:19

Is this, this is something we wanna have you lay out the facts, have you consider it, and hopefully this beacon of this discussion here will be somewhat of a beacon for people to see amidst all the craziness of this world and what it seems to be like a major infiltration of the church by this

01:45:34

New Age object. But go ahead. Yeah, so hopefully what we've done too is what

01:45:39

I wanna stress is pretty much you already have everything you need to know about yourself and how you can do better in terms of the, in the eyes of the

01:45:48

Lord in scripture. Right, you don't need the Enneagram. You know, there's, your issue is sin.

01:45:55

It's simple, the Bible's simple. It tells us our issue is sin. Paul in Colossians chapter three says this, and I'm just gonna read a couple of sections from it.

01:46:04

It says, if then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

01:46:10

Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

01:46:15

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you will also appear with him in glory. Now listen to this. This is our issues.

01:46:21

These are the issues we have. We don't need to discover our types, right? This is, the Bible tells us simply, put to death, therefore, what is earthly in you, sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, covetousness, which is idolatry.

01:46:33

On account of these, the wrath of God is coming. In these, you too once walked when you were living in them, but now you must put them all away.

01:46:40

Anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge after the image of its creator.

01:46:51

If you are going to a tool that is taking you away from the word of God, you are missing what your true struggle is.

01:46:57

You can identify with every single number on the Enneagram and the issues that it has. You want to know why?

01:47:02

Because we are sinners and we all struggle with sin. But the only way that we, the only standard that we have to where we can actually know what our true struggle is, is the word of God, which is by the

01:47:17

Holy Spirit, God himself, he never changes and we can rely on that, right?

01:47:22

We need to renew our minds by the reading of the word. Like you said, our conscience needs to be bound to the word of God, right?

01:47:29

It's as simple as that. We don't need the Enneagram. Throw it away. I knew,

01:47:35

I figured we were going to wrap up. I was like, man, this is probably going to wrap up on just Andrew spitting some truth here. Once again, you sleuth and you spit truth.

01:47:44

You're the super sleuth and the super spitter of truth. There we go. In the rabbit sort of way. So as far as I'm convinced, we've definitely have got extra endings here.

01:47:53

Marcia, thank you so much again for coming on and rerecording with us. And also I kind of, I really believe we've left everything on the court, metaphorically speaking, as far as really kind of laying everything out that we can for this time, this point in time.

01:48:07

Hopefully Marcia, we'd love to have you again sometime to maybe talk about the aspects of astrology or maybe some other aspects of your ministry.

01:48:14

So in case anyone's still hanging in there, before I wrap up, tell people again, where can they find you?

01:48:20

If they want to get the Enneagram button, just tell them real quickly about that and then we'll wrap up. Okay, thanks so much again for having me on and I really appreciate doing the program with you as your guest.

01:48:34

And I would love to be on again, yes. So yes, go to enneagramsecret .com

01:48:41

and look for the little box that says contact. And if you buy our book,

01:48:47

Richard Warren, The Enneagram Secret, wherever you buy it from, just fill out contact,

01:48:55

I think it goes to Don Vino, and just say, hi, I'm John and I just bought your book and here's my order number and here's my address.

01:49:04

Don't forget to give your address. And then you will be mailed a no Enneagram button.

01:49:10

It's a really cool button. And so just, that's all you have to do. So please do that.

01:49:18

Excellent, excellent. All right, well, thank you again for everyone who's listened in and thank you for hanging out with us.

01:49:24

This has been the long way of podcast and like I said, I was super excited for this episode and I'm super excited to get it out.

01:49:31

We're gonna make sure we back this up, double back it up, download, re -download.

01:49:37

We're gonna send it to probably like five different servers and five different phones. Right. Like saying we ain't playing, we're getting this out.

01:49:46

So, all right. So again, if you guys are still listening, hanging out, we went to the beginning of the show, programs like this, the ability to have, again, if you think about this is now, this whole series is roughly around three hours of content for you to enjoy the part one and part two.

01:50:01

But there's a lot that goes into this ministry. We have a lot in store for 2021, including really expanding outside the studio and even kind of really doing stuff.

01:50:12

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01:50:18

And so we have a lot in store for 2021. So if you wanna partner with us and also what you wanna do is go to thecultishshow .com,

01:50:27

go to the donate tab. You can donate one time or monthly and also November 30th, depending on when this episode gets released.

01:50:36

If it's past November 30th, we actually have cultish merch available that launches November 30th,

01:50:42

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01:50:54

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