They'll say, oh, the book you really should get is Richard War's book, you know, the

Enneagram a Christian perspective. Well, Richard War can't give a Christian perspective on it because he doesn't confess the Christian faith.

Got a great video for you today, but I just want to remind you that my new book, Another Gospel, is coming out very soon.

You can go to AlisaChilders.com slash Another Gospel to check out the bonuses you'll get for pre-ordering before October 6th.

AlisaChilders.com slash Another Gospel.

Welcome to the Alisa Childers Podcast. Got a great conversation for you today. It's a controversial conversation.

We're going to be talking about the Enneagram and its influence on the church. Is it nothing more than a harmless personality test or is it more like a Trojan horse that could be spiritually harmful to Christians who use it?

We're going to talk about it with a special guest on today's podcast. So one of the most common questions I receive on social media and through my email is about the Enneagram.

People want an Enneagram episode so bad. Please, please, please talk about the Enneagram. And I've been, as you know, Marsha, I've been hesitant to talk about it because I personally know wonderful God-fearing Christians who are using the Enneagram and their churches that teach the real Gospel.

They're doctrinally speaking as far as the foundational elements of Christianity. They're teaching those things correctly. And so I've been hesitant to even comment on it because we do see that it becomes the Gospel in the progressive church without a doubt.

In fact, Jen Hatmaker's latest book, which I just reviewed, she essentially removes all of the meaningful elements of the Christian Gospel and just tells you, man, find your Enneagram number, learn who you are and she gets excited about this. And this is something you see all over the progressive church, largely because the books that are being written about the Enneagram for the church are being written by progressive and liberal Christians.

And so I think that's always been a huge red flag for me. I admit I've probably, up until I really became aware of the origins, how people were using it and the effect that it has on someone. I think I just viewed it as a parlor trick, you know, icebreaker, conversation or something like that.

But it has become really evident to me that I can't avoid really talking about it anymore because I do think, like I said, there are wonderful true Christians that are using it. Maybe they don't understand some of these other things about it. Maybe they can't see the long term effects of it. And so you are an expert on all of this. You have done tons and tons and tons of research. You've just written a book on the Enneagram.

So let's start with obviously everybody's heard of it. Everybody has a pretty good idea of what it is. Marsha, where did it come from? Where did the Enneagram first break into the world? Where are we seeing this?

In 2016. Okay, there we go. 1916, 104 years ago, a guy named George Gerjief, who was this like spiritual seeker esoteric type who was looking into different belief systems, not the major religions, but you know the more secretive kind of monastic type things.

He did a diagram, a nine point of diagram that we would call the Enneagram. That's what it means. It means a nine point of diagram.

And he claimed that this was like a picture of the universe that you could fit everything into the Enneagram. All the laws of the universe would fit in this. Everything could fit there.

For example, he did a musical scale around the nine points. He felt it could illustrate everything in reality. All the mathematical laws, all the spiritual laws, everything.

He came up with the idea of the law of three and the law of seven, and he applied it to the Enneagram. Basically, he was like playing around with it. How do all the different nine points integrate with each other or how they all fit together. And he would put things in there to make it quote unquote work.

It had nothing to do though with a type or a personality or anything else that is being taught now.

And his followers, he had a follower named Uzbensky. Now Gurchyve never wrote about the Enneagram, but his follower Uzbensky did write about the Enneagram based on what Gurchyve taught according to Uzbensky.

And Uzbensky was still talking about it as a spiritual kind of diagram.

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