The Enneagram and Evangelicals

Conversations That Matter

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Conversations That Matter podcast, I'm your host, John Harris. Last night, I went to an event

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I need to share with you. Before I get started with anything else, I'm just thinking about it. I went to a panel discussion on the

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Chinese Communist Party and the threat that this party poses to the United States. It was very interesting. And it was probably about two hours long, an hour of talking and answering pre -written questions.

00:38

And then it was audience questions. So I was in the audience and I asked a question about why don't we hear a lot about this from mainstream conservative news outlets, and especially from the more evangelical leaning news outlets or those focused on politics who are evangelical.

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It's just not on the radar that much. And so here's the funny part. One of the panelists, actually,

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I had already mentioned Trevor Loudon that I was going to be making a documentary. I was in the process of making a documentary on the threat of the

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Chinese Communist Party. And Trevor Loudon was one of the people that I was working with. And so the interesting thing is one of the panelists says to the entire audience, and this is, again, a secular, if you want to call it that, political meeting.

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She says, oh, Trevor Loudon's great. You need to go see his documentary, Enemies Within the Church. And I'm sitting there.

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I don't know if she recognized me from the movie, but she said it about three times, that you need to go see

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Enemies Within the Church. It's really eye -opening. And then she proceeds to share a story.

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And she shares the story of being at an event with Trevor Loudon. Now, she didn't say where it was.

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She said it was a Christian institution. I knew where it was. It was Mid -America Baptist Theological Seminary.

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And she said Trevor Loudon was scheduled to speak, and he did speak, and he was scheduled to present the documentary,

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Enemies Within the Church, and they stopped it. They prevented him from doing it. And she said, to Trevor Loudon's credit, he got up there, and he called them out for it, and he made somewhat of a stink about it, but he was bold and courageous and all that.

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And I just, I'm sitting back there, and I thought, wow, this is so interesting to me because secular political meeting here on the threat of the

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Chinese Communist Party, and to some extent, how that's related to the indoctrination in our schools and communism as a threat more broadly.

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And here she's mentioning something that happened at Mid -America Baptist Theological Seminary. It stuck out in her mind from over a year ago now, and how

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Trevor Loudon was prevented from sharing the film Enemies Within the Church. And I thought that was so,

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I don't know what it is about it. It just, it was the merging of two worlds. I wasn't expecting to hear that at a more secular venue.

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But there are people watching, as J .D. Greer likes to say, the watching world, right?

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And in this case, who was pushed away from, in this case,

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I would suppose, Southern Baptists or evangelical Christians, who was pushed away?

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And I'm putting on the framework that J .D. Greer and Tim Keller and others like to put on. We need to be winsome, we need to be compelling, we need to be welcoming, we need to be inclusive.

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Who felt excluded? Who felt like they weren't being acknowledged, their opinions weren't valid, they weren't being reached out to, their opinions didn't matter?

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It was political conservatives. And I don't even know if I want to say the individual's name just because I don't want her to get a lot of messages.

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I don't know if she would, but just in case. She hasn't given me that permission. But this is someone from the political conservative world who noticed what took place at Mid -America

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Baptist Theological Seminary, and it disgusted her, and it should. And anyway, some of you don't know what

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I'm talking about. I covered it in a podcast over a year ago now. And you can go check that out.

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It's just, to me, I wasn't expecting that. But waves are being made in various places, and that was one of the places that I didn't expect to see it.

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Well, anyway, welcome once again to the Conversations That Matter podcast. If you want to support the China documentary, the documentary on the

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Chinese Communist Party that I'm involved with, you can go to the link in the info section, and I would greatly appreciate your support.

04:37

This is crowdfunded, and there's a whole story behind why it's crowdfunded. It's something that I am convinced, after doing some of the research for a previous project, needed to be done, and it was, a lot of the work that we had put in to putting a documentary out there is, let's just say the institution that wanted it done no longer wants it done.

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And it's too controversial, it's too hot to handle, and we think that the information needs to go out there.

05:08

You need to know how the Chinese Communist Party has affected and impacted a lot of things negatively in this country and across the world.

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And there's this sort of debate, I guess, going on. I see it in some of the comments when

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I talk about this, that China's just a paper tiger, they're collapsing, their economy's terrible. There's some truth to some of that.

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In fact, that was discussed in the panel discussion last night. Doesn't mean that they are not exceptionally dangerous, even with a bad economy.

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It doesn't mean that just because they rely on us, and we do rely on them to some extent, that does not mean that they are not dangerous, and that their military force doesn't pose a threat, and that their

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Belt and Road Initiative and colonization efforts and influence on the WHO and the

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World Economic Forum and all these other places, that that doesn't pose a threat. It certainly does, and I think it's way underestimated.

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So anyhow, that being said, you can go to the link in the info section if you're interested in contributing to that particular effort.

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I wanna talk today about the Enneagram, the Enneagram a little bit. This is a little bit outside of my wheelhouse, right?

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I don't talk about personality tests or psychological issues all that much, but I'm realizing more and more that this is not just popular, but this is important, because there is currently an attack on biblical counseling, euthetic counseling, if you wanna use the older word.

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There's an attack on that. It's people who think the Bible is sufficient to counsel soul matters are somehow causing abuse.

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They're missing things that they would see if they had an expert background in psychology. And this is happening while, at the same time, the

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Enneagram is becoming extremely popular in Christian circles. In fact, when I Googled Enneagram, on the first page of Google, can't remember if I was using

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DuckDuckGo or Google, whatever search engine I was using, the first page was filled with Christian ministries.

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And this was not even an attempt of mine to find out what Christians think of it, but Christians are certainly buying into this more than a lot of other groups, maybe any group.

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Same thing on YouTube. If you type in Enneagram, you're gonna come up with a lot of Christian -related content.

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So I think it's important to talk about this. And some of my thoughts are not 100 % developed on this,

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I'll be honest with you. I am trying to understand, to the best of my ability, what's happening, but I think

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I have some observations that you'll see is outside the box, meaning that they're not the conventional ways that Christians who are opposing this perhaps are thinking about it.

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And I know because I spent most of the afternoon looking into all the ways that this is being debated and opposed, and I have,

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09:54

All right, well, let's get into the Enneagram. There's a lot going on right now, I know.

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In the Southern Baptist Convention and in Christianity as a whole, and in fact, I got an inbox full of things going on concerning Saddleback Church, and concerning the

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Johnny Hunt suing the Southern Baptist Convention, and there's just a lot. But I think we need to focus on this right now, because if,

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I don't wanna be a slave to the news cycle, just so people who listen to this podcast understand my rationale. There are things that matter, and there's things that don't, or there are things that I've learned it's best to wait on until there is a cumulative amount of information, and I can give you something that is helpful.

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Sometimes when these stories break and they're new, the story hasn't really been given enough time to develop, and maybe that's more the historian in me than the journalist in me.

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Some things need to be shared right away, but some of the issues that I know some of you care about and want me to share about,

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I'm aware, and I will hopefully do that to the best of my ability when I have a chance. But to me, this is more evergreen.

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This is something that, at least for the next few years, I think we're gonna be contending with, and I wanna dip my toe in. I wanna give you some thoughts, and maybe the comments that come in and your reaction will help me think through this better, and we can put out some even more material.

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But I have some preliminary things to share with you, and so this will help those who don't know what the Enneagram is, and hopefully it'll help those who do know what the

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Enneagram is. Let's start here, if I may.

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Not there, let's see. I have a slideshow for you that has some of the information

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I wanna share. So this is a picture of the Enneagram, and there's multiple, if you go online and you

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Google this, there's multiple variations of this. I mean, the thing they have in common is that there are nine different personality types, if you will.

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And they're organized in different fashions. There are different tests that you can take that are supposed to tell you what type you are or types you are, and there's types and there's subtypes, and it can get extremely complicated.

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This is a very basic chart, and I wanna start off basic. There are nine personality types according to the

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Enneagram. Now, you might be thinking this is like Myers -Briggs, this is like some of those other tests.

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In a sense, I suppose, it is similar. But when I was listening to secular

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Enneagram coaches talk about this, they were very adamant it's not like the Myers -Briggs, that this gives you a greater window into yourself than Myers -Briggs does, that Myers -Briggs is more observational, and the

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Enneagram is more motivational. So Myers -Briggs can tell you something about yourself based on your habits and questions that are asked about your habits and your preferences, whereas the

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Enneagram, although it does do that to an extent, it is supposed to give you a more holistic understanding, a total understanding of who you are, what motivates you, and that will in turn show you why you do the things you do or I suppose what your great strengths and your weaknesses are.

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And so it's more, I get the impression you're more locked into your

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Enneagram type than a lot of the proponents of Myers -Briggs. But I think, here's the thing, this was

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John Harris's opinion I think they can both be used in very similar fashions. So I'm not about splitting hairs as much.

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What I think is interesting though is those who seem to be the most adamant about using the Enneagram, they have a very fully formed opinions on this and they for some reason, many of them want to separate it.

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And the reason is because the Enneagram has more explanatory power or more insightful analysis of the deep part of who you are.

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And to me that ties in more directly to a spiritual component, which we're gonna get to here. So what's the history?

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Well, there's alleged history. And I think I need to frame it that way because this seems to be a story that's told that is not perhaps entirely accurate, but this is where some of the inspiration supposedly comes from.

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In 399 or the late 300s AD, Evagrius who developed the seven deadly sins,

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I believe he was one of the desert fathers, a mystical kind of monk, believe there were eight different kinds of monks, i .e.

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eight different personalities. That's not nine, but that's eight, right? And this is alleged again, that Raman Lal, who lived in the 1200s believed there were nine different qualities of God.

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So there's the nine and that God had these, and you're gonna, by the way, see this in a moment as I play for you an evangelical who is basically saying the same thing using the

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Enneagram to say it, that there are these nine different aspects or parts of human nature, that the image of God, if you will, and that Jesus was all of them.

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And then you have George Gurdjieff, who is probably the father of this more than anyone else,

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I would suppose, but there's still some question about where he got it from, but he allegedly discovered the

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Enneagram at a Sufi monastery, Sufis are mystical Muslims, in Afghanistan. And he taught the diagram, he taught that the diagram taught sacred knowledge.

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So we don't have any personality types yet, but we just have this pattern, that there's this, if you will, a principle to the universe, like there are laws of physics and motion, there's this law called the

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Enneagram, and they didn't call it that perhaps, but there's a pattern to life that is in nine.

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Nine is a sacred number, nine, there's nine aspects to humanity. And so it's starting off with this assumption, this presupposition that, it's really a religious presupposition,

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I guess, you could say, even though, I mean, you see Muslim mysticism, you see

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Christian mysticism, supposedly being the motivators or the inspiration for this.

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And so there's this religious aspect. Now, is this biblical? Oh, no, you're not gonna find this in the

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Bible. I mean, the closest, what do you come to in Revelation? The seven spirits of God.

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I mean, that's the closest I suppose you come to. And I think even that understood rightly is not anything close to what the

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Enneagram is purporting. Well, here's the more recent history. This is actual history here.

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Oscar Echazo, who died actually recently, started the Erica School in Chile.

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He corresponded the nine deadly sins, including the seven from Evagrius to the

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Enneagram. And then you have Claudio Naranjo. Claudio Naranjo also died recently, but he went to that school, the

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Erica School in Chile. And from that school, he brought the Enneagram to the United States at Esalon, which was a new age center in California and developed the

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Enneotypes through automatic writing. And I'm gonna play for you a clip from him in a moment where you'll get a better sense of the history of this.

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Now, from there, it went in all kinds of directions, but the one that we need to be concerned about is this.

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Bob Oakes was authorized by Claudio Naranjo to teach what he learned from Naranjo to the

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Jesuits. And so he also, again, died recently, 2018, but he taught this to Jesuits.

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And from there, it got picked up by a number of others, most notably for our purposes, Richard Rohr.

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And he released the Enneagram, A Christian Perspective in 2001. And so from there, from my understanding, this got into the

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Emergent Church and the Progressive Church. Now people are calling it. It got into all kinds of places in left -leaning

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Christianity. And now it has finally made its way into the evangelical world.

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So that's a little bit of background to the Enneagram.

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Now, I wanna share with you, Claudio Naranjo, what he says about this history.

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And some of you, if you have watched anything critiquing the Enneagram, you've probably seen part of this clip.

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I'm gonna play for you more though, because I think there's something very significant that a lot of the folks who are critiquing the

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Enneagram leave out. And so I'm gonna play for you the whole thing. Well, or at least a large portion of it.

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So at the conference, I told them, I had made up this tale that all this came from millennia ago.

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And that this information came from the Sufis. I told him that actually,

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Oscar Richardson had not described any of the Enneatypes either. Actually, in the seven months we spent with him, he devoted about six hours to talk about the

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Enneagram, but he never came to describe any one of the types. That was Enrica. That came from Enrica Chile, yeah.

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So that came from my own observations, but mostly from automatic writing. Automatic writing?

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Yeah, it came to me through automatic writing. What did? The specific information.

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Enneatypes. About Enneatypes, which I then verified through observation, because I was surrounded by people

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I was teaching and exploring with. Now, something to point out here, Claudio Naranjo right now is saying that he obtained this information from, let's just be honest, from a

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Christian perspective, from demons. Automatic writing, a spirit controlled him.

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There's different ways this can take place, but he probably was not even aware of what he was writing. That's what automatic writing means.

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And so a spirit is using him to bring the truth of the Enneagram to the world, or to his people.

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You're gonna find out it was supposed to be, not to the whole world, but to the people, his students, the people he taught, his disciples, is what he calls them, interestingly enough.

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And so this is where it gets, the personality types get started. So really,

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Claudio Naranjo, more than anyone else, is who you should be looking at to say, who formed this Enneagram? There's all this background, but a lot of that is, as he just said, made up.

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It's really, we're not sure,

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I'll put it that way. We're just not sure exactly what streams have come into the

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Enneagram and are influencing the modern version that we know of today. Claudio Naranjo is probably the one who, you could say most notably, gives us what is being popularized today.

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Although he has something to say about that, which I find fascinating, which when

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I was watching this, I was like, whoa, this is so interesting to me because this is what happens with things like yoga and with things like, trying to think what other things have been

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Christianized, new age things have been Christianized. Well, yoga is probably the best example I can come up with right now. And it starts out with an

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Eastern mysticism and trying to release the Kudalini force. And the

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Enneagram is similar. It has this origin in demonic stuff and liberating yourself from, or understanding yourself to be able to liberate yourself from constraints that you have, being able to have deep secret knowledge about the way the universe works and the way yourself works, right?

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And now we have this pop version that's like, oh, it's just personality types. It's just who, it's something that is self -evident that everyone has, it's just an observation.

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But what Claudio Naranjo just said there is that it was confirmed by observation, but it didn't come from observation.

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It came from automatic writing. So there's a spiritual dimension here. That's the origin. And then it's supposedly confirmed.

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It's a lot different than something that comes from a pagan who is rightly practicing principles that come from natural revelation, scientific principles, mathematical principles, right?

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That don't just exist in his head, but that actually exist in the real world.

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This is different than that in that it's not someone who's starting off with mathematics or starting, you can't find this in a laboratory.

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This isn't something that can be tested, except for you can, after learning about it, see if the observations or the boxes, the personalities, these types, if they match up to what you see.

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So it's not so much a, it's not so much something that is drawn from observation and inquiry so much as it is confirmed supposedly by those things.

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And those are two different things. But anyway, here's Claudio Naranjo expressing his disappointment at what's happened and this brings us to the present.

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I had friends in Eureka who told me essentially the same story that there was no mention of, no others besides, who said there was no mention of any of the types except from you.

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Yes. So that you were the origin of the eneotype concept. And you were the origin of the word eneotype.

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Yes. You suggested it and I adopted that idea. So I thought I would,

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I have called the people who created this movement, the

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Enneagram movement, now it's called rather the Enneagram community. The people who gave birth to that were people who had received filtrations from what

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I was teaching, which was supposed to be secret, but some people could not keep their mouth shut because the more narcissistic ones can be counted on talking.

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And so, and to some extent I had given permission to, like to Bob Oakes, a

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Jesuit with my group, I said authorize to teach a specific group of Jesuits in Chicago.

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And the notes from that group came to Riso who then wrote one of the first books.

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Right. Who had never received an experiential. Those were borrowed.

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Understanding of it. Those were borrowed notes. More than borrowed, yes. That's what I'm, I'm being kind.

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Yes, in this age of copyright, it's called something different. Yes, I never accused somebody of outright you know what.

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I once, I once questioned a Franciscan who's very well known and very respected as a

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Franciscan authority and theologian. And I said, why you keep repeating the things

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I say in my workshops and don't give me credit. In the academic world, it's a habit to give credit.

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It's not considered moral, ethical to present the ideas as yours. He said, we

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Franciscans operate differently. We don't give credit, we're not interested in this notion of property.

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Right. I think he owns that idea. He owns. All right, so here's what's going on.

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Claudio Naranjo is upset. He's saying these people stole my ideas.

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They took them and marketed them to, or just used them in an audience that they weren't supposed to use them in.

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So the virus escaped the lab. And he's like, that's mine.

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Why am I not getting credit for it? So people are putting their own spin on it. They're using it for their own purposes.

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And he's upset. Now there's something else he says here though that also clues us into how he feels. This is the person, again, who developed the personality, the types, how he feels about what's going on today.

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Well, it's true that they have created that kind of movement.

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Like Max Weber used to say, all spiritual movements have a charismatic stage and then a bureaucratic stage.

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Another way of saying that is. It's gone into the culture of accreditation. Like all our educational institutions that are not there for teaching people, but for selling tickets to get work opportunities that will give them more money.

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Did you have. It's said that every crusade eventually becomes somebody's racket.

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That's very good. Yeah, very good statement. When you're. Okay, we're not gonna watch Russell Moore yet.

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I wanted you to hear that last thing he said because what he's essentially saying is that the Enneagram was this pure thing, more so.

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It was this spiritual thing that I taught to my disciples. And I didn't want it going far and wide.

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This was secret knowledge. This was important for a select group of people to know, but not to get out there.

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This was powerful knowledge. And some leakers let it out of the lab.

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And now it's wreaking havoc and it's subject to market forces. So now there's a stage in this movement, this

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Enneagram movement that is not pure anymore. It's about marketing, it's about something else.

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And so that actually casts some doubt on what the Enneagram that we're hearing about in the pop version of the

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Enneagram, to what extent is it connected? Now, I think it is connected, but it's watered down or it's changed or it's marketable more and it's lost some of that spiritual purity.

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I think that's what he's complaining about. That's what he's saying. And he's lamenting this fact that this has happened.

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So I think this explains some of the debate in Christian circles over this because you're gonna hear in a moment

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Russell Moore talk about it. And his defense is a very typical of people who use it, a very typical

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Christian response. So let me play that and then let me apply what you just heard to what

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Russell Moore says. At say the Enneagram or any of these tools, what you're seeing is really just observation.

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Sure, there's no scientific accuracy to that. There's no scientific accuracy to a lot of different things.

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The Proverbs talk about watching these patterns of observation.

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You know not to grab a dog by the ears, for instance. You can see certain things that work with the grain of the universe and certain things that don't.

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And the Bible presents people with different sorts of personalities and different sorts of motivations.

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Almost everybody tends to make those classifications, even just between say introverts and extroverts.

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There are all sorts of exceptions to that but you can tell if you're kind of basically energized by being around people or not.

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Or if that's an emotional expense for you and that can be helpful. Okay, so let's stop there and talk about that.

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So this is the typical thing you'll hear. Russell Moore is saying it's just observation. What you just heard though was that from the person who came up with the personality types that it wasn't just observation.

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This is a very key difference. It was confirmed by observation but it came from automatic writing. So its origin is not observation.

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And that is a key difference I think between that and Myers -Briggs. Myers -Briggs as I understand it is more observation.

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Now I have my own, I have a story. I don't know if I've shared it on the podcast going through North American Mission Board training.

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Well it was just like a weekend thing. And the whole thing was based on Myers -Briggs. And I was like, what? For me,

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I look at scripture. I don't see any of that. The man of God is equipped by the word of God and God's given tools.

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And the personality type thing, some people say it's very helpful for them to know their personality type and stuff.

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I tend to think that a lot of that is a distraction. That's just, I'm giving you John Harris's opinion here.

30:56

But my wife and I have different personalities in the sense, and this is a self -evident thing, in the sense that we function differently in the world and we think about things differently.

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Being a guy and a girl is one of the differences. But there's other things too, right? Not all guys think the same, not all girls think the same.

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So I do think it is self -evident that we behave differently and there's different factors.

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There's nature and nurture both factor into this, I'm sure. But that doesn't mean that we should get hung up or obsessed with it or give it too much, give that so much weight that we're literally figuring out who should be a church planner and who shouldn't based upon those kinds of things.

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Or constructing in business, this happens a lot, constructing your team based upon these personality types.

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What you find, I think especially in war, honestly, war settings, high stress settings, is that the people who end up rising to the top and leading the way, they actually come from all kinds of different personality types.

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And the question, because some people would say, no, they're all a particular type of personality, that's the leadership personality.

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The question that you have to ask yourself is, were those people always that way? Some of the greatest generals in history were quiet, were disciplined, some were not as disciplined.

32:19

And they were bold, and they were aggressive, and they took chances. And there's all kinds of different temperaments, if you want to call it temperaments, that people can have, and they can still function in particular roles.

32:35

And that's what I see coming from Scripture, is just the assumption that we function according to the law that God has given us, the commands and instructions and responsibilities we have, regardless of our personality type, regardless, we're just expected.

32:52

And I don't see this being a factor. It's not even a factor, it's not even talked about, right?

32:58

So I think it's easy to look at Scripture, and as Russell Moore said, say, okay, there's different maybe types of behaviors.

33:05

People, Peter is different than John, who is different than all the other disciples.

33:12

And you can see these differences, perhaps. But in fact, that's a good example right there.

33:18

But that didn't seem to factor into whether or not they were qualified to be disciples, or whether or not they were going to be successful or not, or whether or not they needed to behave differently, or think about themselves differently, or know something, some secret knowledge about their personality.

33:38

Jesus never gets hung up on any of that, ever. So anyway, that's my main critique of all of this stuff,

33:46

Myers -Briggs included, I suppose. But the Enneagram has another layer of concern here.

33:54

And this other layer, I think, is what Russell Moore is missing the boat on, that it's not just observational, there's something behind it.

34:02

According to the founder, who else should we go to to get this opinion?

34:07

So here's where I see the Enneagram making its way into Christian institutions and how it functions.

34:15

So let me play that for you. And then I'm gonna show you something that's happening now, or is happening soon, in regards to this, because it's becoming more popular, and there's a summit coming up, that's actually the reason

34:29

I'm doing this podcast, on the Enneagram. But here's Darren Patrick. Darren Patrick is one of the figures that's marketing this

34:37

Enneagram stuff into Christianity, and Evangelical Christianity specifically, the

34:43

Southern Baptist Convention in particular. He is, as I understand it, an Enneagram coach and also a

34:48

Christian counselor. So he integrates these things together. And he's on with a pastor on a podcast.

34:57

Pastor is Bruce Frank, who is also the head of the Sexual Abuse Task Force for the Southern Baptist Convention. Some of you will remember that Bruce Frank, I think the first time

35:06

I ever saw him or his name, was in the First Baptist Naples controversy, a few years ago.

35:15

Marcus Hayes had come from Bruce Frank's church, I believe. And Bruce Frank had a video that they played at First Baptist Church of Naples to endorse

35:26

Marcus Hayes. And so that just kind of tells you where he is on the woke stuff. But anyway, he has this podcast, it's in 2020, with Darren Patrick.

35:34

And let's hear what Darren Patrick has to say about the Enneagram. Enneagram is like the image of God broken in nine pieces.

35:43

And I think that we have access as you grow and mature, emotionally, spiritually, access to all those styles.

35:50

They're like glasses. Like, so ideally, you've got a certain prescription that is your style that you're gonna see most clearly through.

36:00

But the goal is you can actually, Bruce, in your case, pick up your wife's four lens and actually see her and see the world through her eyes.

36:10

That's how, and that's good leadership in any realm. And that's good community. Like I can, it's empathy.

36:16

A whole. Okay, so Darren Patrick is basically saying, look, God, the image of God is split into these nine parts, right?

36:24

And where do you find this in scripture? Nowhere, nothing. I mean, you're really on a limb here, to say the least.

36:32

By talking about something as important as the image of God. But I've noticed, I'll say the image of God is used very casually today.

36:40

People just throw it around. They use it to support things like illegal migration. It's an attack on the image of God if you don't want amnesty or something.

36:49

I mean, it's just ridiculous how the image of God is so abused. No, the image of God is that what separates us from the plants and the animals.

37:00

It is in somewhat indescribable in a way, but it's the capacity that we have for moral, abstract thought and action.

37:13

The ability to create, to be creative in a way that animals can't. Animals are, they operate on instinct and humans are beyond that.

37:23

And it's because we're made in the image of God. And so we're valuable. And we shouldn't murder the image of God.

37:29

That's an attack on God when you murder, when you unjustifiably take someone's life. Now, saying that they can be split into nine parts,

37:37

I mean, I can't even imagine all the heresies that could come from that. I mean, do you even have the image of God if you don't have all nine of these parts?

37:46

Or am I just one ninth of the image of God possibly? Or if I happen to have two other types, am

37:52

I just those types? Well, what you're gonna hear a lot of them say is that we're all these types, but in different ratios.

37:57

So that doesn't help the matter though. So if I'm a type two, let's say, on the

38:03

Enneagram chart or something, and I doubt someone would say I am, but let's say that's what I am. And I have a little bit of eight in me, but it's not enough to categorize myself as an eight.

38:13

Well, then I got a problem. Man, I'm not measuring up to the image of God, right? I'm supposed to be made in the image of God.

38:19

That's what scripture teaches that I am. But yet I'm hearing from Darren Patrick that I'm apparently,

38:25

I have, the ratios are off. Or I am not matching up to the full image of God somehow.

38:32

I mean, this could really cause some hangups. It could cause you to think you have a problem, and it's not even a sin problem necessarily.

38:39

It's almost like a design flaw. He would never say it that way, but what are you supposed to conclude when someone says something like that?

38:46

He also says things like Jesus is, he was all nine, perfectly.

38:51

He was all nine. And it's like, well, we're supposed to be like Christ, so I guess there's a moral imperative now to be like all nine of these personality types.

38:58

How do you do that? Well, let's keep watching this. And this is

39:05

Darren Patrick now at Liberty University, right? Largest Christian university. Here he is talking about the

39:10

Enneagram to all the, as Rush Limbaugh used to say, young skulls full of mush who are there to learn about stuff and life.

39:18

Of the Enneagram is, we believe, if you will, a snapshot of the image of God in humanity.

39:27

Okay, what do I mean by that? Genesis one says we're made in God's image. So what that means is if Jesus took the

39:33

Enneagram test, he would be perfectly 100 % in all nine styles. If Adam, before the fall, right?

39:41

Adam and Eve, before the fall. So what happens is the image of God is there, but it's broken, it's shattered.

39:47

So it's still there, but it's not all right. It's kind of like this. Do you guys have phones, those smartphone things?

39:57

Anybody got a flip phone? Of course you don't. You have a smartphone, get it out of your pocket. All right, look at it right now. Who has a cracked screen?

40:05

Yeah. So that's, the Enneagram is like this.

40:10

It's like a, it's like your phone with a crack in the screen, right?

40:15

Meaning there are certain styles that you can't quite access because your screen is cracked, right?

40:23

And so the goal of the Enneagram is actually that. I don't know if you caught it, but Darren Patrick just told a bunch of young people, bushy -tailed and bright -eyed, ready to start their life, ready to go do something for the

40:37

Lord, to be a champion for Christ, as Liberty University's motto says, that there are a bunch of broken, cracked screens.

40:43

Now, you could say they're sinners. You could say that they've broken God's law and they're in need of Christ's redemption, and there's hope in that, and that they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them.

40:54

That's a hopeful message. To say they're a bunch of cracked screens because they can't access certain personality types, so they're defective somehow, and we're not even talking about sin.

41:04

We're not even talking about sin. We're talking about, I don't even know, I wanna call it psychology. It's just silliness.

41:11

It's just silliness. We're just telling all these kids, look, you are defective somehow. Here's Jesus with all his personality, all the nine personality types.

41:19

That's Jesus right there. You don't match that, but it's not because of a sin problem, so it's not something Jesus can even really necessarily help you with,

41:26

I guess. It's something that you have to do something about, and that's why you gotta learn the Enneagram. That's where you get the secret knowledge, and then once you have that knowledge, you can put on all these other lenses and you can understand the other types.

41:37

You can access the other types, I guess. I mean, how is there any salvation from this state of affairs?

41:43

It's totally fake. It's contrived, and it's silly, and it's just, I'm just gonna say it, it's stupid.

41:49

It's just stupid. It's embarrassing for me to watch this kind of stuff and to think, oh my goodness, this person is lecturing at the university

41:57

I have a degree from. It devalues my degree to see this kind of thing.

42:03

Okay, tell me what you really think, John. Anyway. That God, through his Holy Spirit, begins to renew us, because I don't know about you, but for me on the cracked screen thing,

42:12

I won't go sometimes to the Apple store and fix it. Anybody like me? You're like, wait?

42:17

What do you wait for? You wait until you can't access certain parts of your screen. Then you gotta go, right?

42:24

So, that's the way with the Enneagram. Your screen is cracked, and the goal is for God to begin to fill those cracks so that you can access all of your apps, all nine styles.

42:39

You gotta be kidding me. You show me the

42:44

Bible verse, show me the Bible verse. You know, the good side of the Enneagram, that is the idea that God's Spirit is influencing us, listen, in that particular style.

42:56

So, if you're having success, so to speak, with that style, the idea as a Christian is, that's the

43:02

Holy Spirit influencing me. Now, on the dark side, the flesh, that's the part of us that's rebellious against God, or resisting the

43:11

Spirit's influence. So, the downside of your style, or if you're operating in a style, that's your flesh, and the flesh is talked about three different ways in the

43:20

Bible. It's when we wanna be God, Romans one. In Romans eight, it's that part of us that doesn't wanna submit to the law of God, that's rebelling against God.

43:28

Galatians five, the flesh is that part of us that wants to work for God's approval apart from Christ's righteousness, right?

43:36

So, when you're in your crazy, with the Enneagram, when you are offending people, what that means is, you're in your flesh.

43:48

And so, use the Enneagram to help you understand the biblical categories of spirit and flesh.

43:54

Use the Enneagram to help teach you the biblical categories of spirit and flesh, right?

44:00

The Enneagram is now a tool for that. Now, this is so contradictory and convoluted, because your personality type is not, there's not a moral dimension to that.

44:10

It's just supposed to show you the strengths and weaknesses and tendencies you have. But yet, at the same time, Jesus had all nine of them, and that's the image of God.

44:19

It's the perfect image of God. And yet, we don't attain to that. We either are boxed in in a few of them, or one of them, or we have different ratios of them, and we have all nine, but not enough.

44:30

And this is something that now, Jesus can't, I mean, what is

44:36

Jesus supposed to do when that's not a sinful thing? But now, we're kind of told, well, it kind of is, because it reflects the flesh, or the spirit.

44:44

So, if you're healthy in your type, that's the spirit at work, or it could be. And if you are unhealthy, that's the flesh at work.

44:52

And so, the Enneagram is going to apparently tell you how to understand the spirit and the flesh and how to live the

44:59

Christian life. So now, we're integrating it right into the core of our Christian life, core of our theology.

45:07

Now, this whole teaching, and there's probably so much more that can be said, and I'm probably scratching the surface, and I realize that, because I don't find this stuff all that interesting.

45:17

What I find interesting isn't the Enneagram. What I find interesting is the way that people are integrating it into Christianity, and I think subverting

45:24

Christianity with it, and distracting more than anything else. Don't get me wrong. I'm concerned about the demonic origins.

45:32

I don't like anything with demonic origins. There was something a few years ago, I remember. It was a supplement, basically, that someone wanted me to take.

45:42

And when I looked into it more, I found out that this supplement was essentially produced, or the whole thinking behind it, the ingredients in it, were from some guy who had dreams, and he would make what he saw in his dreams.

46:01

And the deeper I got into it, I realized this was demonic, that this guy was demonic. He was influenced by demons to make this particular supplement.

46:10

And I said, no, I don't care if it would cure cancer. I'm not taking that, because of the origin of it.

46:18

And it's not, so if you have something good, right, and then demons use that good thing, right, that's different.

46:25

That's not what I'm talking about, right? I mean, demons can use buildings.

46:31

Christians can use buildings. Buildings aren't evil, because demons use buildings for satanic worship or something.

46:37

What I'm saying is that when the origin itself, the very foundation of the product, or in this case, it was a supplement, it's a tool in the case of the

46:52

Enneagram, when the very foundation is by definition demonic, then you know that the motivation of Satan is different than the motivation of Christ, that this tool is going to, maybe it'll initially,

47:05

Satan appears as an angel of light, and initially, maybe it'll look like it can help some things and maybe help you understand some things about yourself, supposedly, right?

47:13

I mean, everyone's after that, and I'll talk about that in a minute. But the danger is that it's, because Satan comes to kill, steal, and destroy, it ends up shifting your focus, so getting you off focus, not focused on God, not focused on the things you need to be focused on, focused on yourself, right?

47:36

We're all about ourselves. And it creates destruction, exactly what the devil wants.

47:47

And I don't have any examples in front of me, but I would wonder in the long run if that's what happens. In fact, there was one person

47:53

I was listening to, there was a podcast called Cultish, and they had a guest on who had been in the New Age movement and rejects the

48:01

Enneagram and basically says the same thing, this is just like astrology, and this actually causes more damage, it causes harm, and that's one of the things she sees now on the other side, being a

48:10

Christian. But it promises all these secrets, unlocking the door of understanding yourself and understanding others through this tool.

48:21

And I think that we have a tool already to understand the condition of man.

48:26

Now, I'm not adverse to, again, observational things, like even the introvert, extrovert thing.

48:33

These are, I think, psychological terms, but they reflect something, it could be as simple as, without even adopting the categories of introvert and extrovert, you could say, yeah, some people really like to go to parties and be loud, and they get energetic, and they just love it.

48:53

And then other people, if they were given a choice, would rather cuddle up with a book in the corner. There's things like that, which we just observe in people, that different people like different things, have different interests, different habits, and it's complex, we're complex beings.

49:09

The Enneagram seeks to simplify that and give you these basic nine types.

49:15

And the danger I see, too, is it boxes you in. Even though some of these teachers will say, don't box yourself in with it, it kind of is unavoidable.

49:25

The more, the deeper you get into it, and the more you live your life by it, which is what these people are doing, they get really deep into it, the more you do box yourself in, the more you do box others in, the more that becomes the way that you just view the whole world.

49:41

And so the statements are, the advice given is, use these other types as lenses for understanding other aspects of apparently the image of God.

49:54

Really what it is, though, is the Enneagram itself is a lens. The Enneagram, the assumption that this tool explains, in total, really,

50:04

I mean, it's comprehensive, in total, all of humanity, that in and of itself is a lens, because you know what, maybe it doesn't.

50:11

If it left out one thing, it's not comprehensive. And therefore it's a lie, that the full image of God is represented in these nine types.

50:21

It has to be 100 % comprehensive for that idea to work.

50:28

Anyway, there's a lot more that could be said about this. I want to show you what's happening, though, and where this is getting into, because I haven't really covered this, but it is getting into places that it was not before.

50:40

And so here's one of the places. This is the Gospel for Enneagram Summit, the Gospel for Enneagram.

50:46

And in fact, in that podcast with Bruce Frank, I thought it was kind of silly, they were talking about, well, as long as you have a gospel lens or something, and you have that gospel outlook, then the

50:56

Enneagram can serve under that somehow. It sounds like Resolution 9 in the Southern Baptist Convention. Critical race theory is fine as long as it's subservient to the gospel, and we remember the gospel.

51:05

And the gospel is being used in ways the New Testament writers never use the gospel. The gospel isn't this holistic lens for looking at all of life.

51:13

It's not equivalent to a worldview in that sense. It's not, it's the good news that Jesus has taken the sin, the penalty for the sin, that you committed on the cross.

51:27

He swapped out his perfect life for your sinful life in the great exchange, and has made a way for you to be right with the

51:35

Father if you repent of your sins and put your trust in him. That's the good news. That we don't have to be in sin.

51:40

We don't have to be on the path we're on right now to hell. We can actually be with God. We can dwell with him, not because of our own righteousness, but because of Christ's.

51:49

But now we're slapping the gospel on everything. Now the gospel for the Enneagram, you tell me how the gospel, what

51:55

I just explained, is for the Enneagram, or how you can have it for the Enneagram. It's a categorical, it's just branding at this point.

52:03

That's all it is. The gospel is like a brand. And here's all the speakers. You know,

52:08

Suzanne Stabile, the Enneagram grandmother. I don't know all these people.

52:15

Maybe there's probably all these connections that are nefarious that I don't know about, but I do know who Russell Moore is. Russell Moore is gonna be there.

52:22

Man, there's a lot of people here. Lisa Vischer, so Phil Vischer's wife, the creator of VeggieTales, and now really a leftist on Twitter.

52:32

He's, his wife's gonna be there. She is apparently an Enneagram coach. Yeah, that's interesting.

52:39

I just, I don't understand how these people who are so woke and they're like, oh, like white supremacy, everything, and it's so systemic and we need to like eliminate police or reform the police departments or take down statues and change our whole education and redistribute this and that.

52:55

How these people are like, oh yeah, like a demonic tool that was developed for new age purposes.

53:03

It's like, oh yeah, yeah, we could be a coach on that. We could make that your livelihood. I mean, form your whole life around it and somehow merge it with the gospel.

53:09

Like, it makes no sense to me how that's the same crowd. But there is quite a bit of overlap there.

53:16

It's just so hypocritical. But this is what's happening. And this is a summit that's on April 4th through 7th, so it's coming up.

53:25

And you can register and find out for yourself about the Enneagram. So, and the gospel apparently.

53:34

So my main concern with all of this, I'll just share that with you in closing, again, is the distraction.

53:41

It's not, I'm not one of these guys on YouTube and there's many of them or on podcasts who just views it as like a level 10 red alert threat because the demons are getting into the church through this.

53:55

I think demons could be, I think that's possible. But I think for most people, and this is why

54:00

I wanted to play for you the clip that I played earlier from Claudio Naranjo.

54:07

He seems to indicate that there's a pop version of it going around that he's not happy with. And I think a lot of things are like that.

54:13

I think yoga's like that. I think maybe even our celebration of Halloween is somewhat like that, where in the

54:21

United States, it's become so commercialized and it's just, it doesn't mean what perhaps it originally meant.

54:28

And it doesn't mean what it means in other countries like Mexico. The new age movement, the yoga, the

54:37

Christian yoga, there's even Christian yoga, if you believe it or not, out there. A lot of this stuff, when you start looking into it, it's like, it's using yoga poses and stretches, but they've really detached themselves as much as possible from the spiritual element.

54:54

Or in some cases, they've swapped it out with some kind of Christian veneer instead. I think it's dangerous.

55:00

But I don't think it's as, I could see how someone would just use these stretches, let's say, and that's all they're doing.

55:08

Literally, I'm just stretching. I could see how someone could use the Enneagram and they say, that's all I'm doing. I just find, it's just interesting.

55:14

It's a curiosity and a personality type thing. It explained a few things when I looked at it, because maybe, a lot of people don't self -reflect, perhaps.

55:23

And this maybe was a tool that got them jump -started on self -reflection, and now they're seeing, oh yeah,

55:29

I do kind of function that way, and then that's it. And they're not taking it any farther than that. They're not building their life around it.

55:36

They just think it's a curiosity. It's an interesting point of conversation or something. And I'm not extremely worried for those people,

55:44

I'll be honest with you. I think that this is a watered -down thing. But would

55:49

I use it? No, you couldn't convince me. I would stay away from that. I know the association. So I'm gonna stay away from it.

55:57

But I don't think that you have a demon, or you are inviting demons into your home because you took some stupid

56:04

Enneagram test online, that, I mean, there is no official Enneagram test. There's a bunch of them out there. And just because you did that, it doesn't mean that you were trying to summon demons, right, that's what

56:14

I'm trying to say. But it opens the door for you to be distracted. And one of the big critiques that I heard from Christians who are concerned about this is that it's a lot like Eve in the garden when

56:25

Satan comes to Eve and says, God didn't want you to eat of that fruit because he didn't want you to know the difference between good and evil.

56:32

And you'll have that knowledge. You'll have the knowledge of good and evil, or not the difference, but the knowledge of good and evil if you eat of the fruit.

56:39

And so Eve, that was her motivation. And it's that desiring that forbidden knowledge.

56:45

And that's what the Enneagram, at the outset, is supposed to give you.

56:51

It's a forbidden or a secret knowledge. It seems almost gnostic. And it gives you the key to understanding everything, everything pertaining to humanity.

57:01

I mean, it's comprehensive. And once you buy into that assumption, I think that's where, that's a bridge way too far.

57:08

You can't go there. That's, now you're in the, you're really in anti -biblical land at that point.

57:14

And it's not really a mystery why people like Richard Rohr are the ones who have introduced this into Christian circles.

57:23

Richard Rohr is a rank heretic. We talked about Richard Rohr before because he had some similarities with his social

57:30

Trinitarianism to Tim Keller. Tim Keller would be on the more, a little more towards orthodoxy.

57:36

Richard Rohr is way out there on a limb. That's, I think, the only time we've ever talked about Richard Rohr, but he has some weird beliefs.

57:42

He's a new age guy with a veneer of Christianity, basically. He talks about the universal

57:49

Christ or the cosmic Christ, not the Christ of the Bible, right? That's a different Christ.

57:55

And so this is the guy that's really marketed the Enneagram to Christians. So I don't think that that is something worth dismissing.

58:05

You should at least see that origin as potentially dangerous, but the effect it has with most people who are just gonna take a stupid test and not look into this deeper, the effect it has is that it can steer you in the wrong direction.

58:19

It can affect your thinking and get you focused on things that you just shouldn't be. Shouldn't be obsessed or overly focused on personality types, whatever those things are, right?

58:28

Scripture doesn't give us... Certainly when it comes to ministry settings, you don't find these as qualifying or important aspects to look at at all, whether they exist or not.

58:41

So that's the concern I have. And I think the proof is in the pudding that this has happened. The fact that there's a conference on it and it's got the word gospel in it.

58:49

I mean, that proves to you what I'm telling you, that this is more than just a curiosity, like a point of conversation.

58:56

This is something that people are crafting ministries around and lives around. The fact that before this

59:05

Myers -Briggs was so big and even determining how NAMM church plants were gonna function, it tells you everything you need to know.

59:12

That the drift has already happened because people are obsessed with it. So anyway,

59:18

I probably could say more, but like I said at the beginning of this program, my thoughts are not necessarily developed on this.

59:26

I still am thinking it through, but I felt like I needed to put something out there because it's becoming bigger and bigger and bigger and I have some real cautions.

59:33

So please be careful of this. Pay attention to the direction that people who get into this go and you see if what

59:41

I said is true. See if they go into the direction of, if it's a good direction or if it's a destructive direction.

59:47

And you can only tell that with time. We're very, this is very new. This is for Christianity, at least for evangelical circles.

59:54

But I fear that it is going to shift the standards from the ministry standards that God has given us to we're gonna now pepper in some of our own human, and it's not even psychology.

01:00:06

I don't even know what to call it, like human silliness, human silliness and fake spirituality. All right, well, tell me what you really think,

01:00:14

John. I think I've done that now. God bless. I hope that's helpful for many of you out there.