00:00:00.000Welcome to Real Christianity. Today we are talking about yoga, Enneagram, and the progressive church.
00:00:08.140Alright guys, a lot of you have been asking me for this episode, and I tried to fit like three topics into one episode.
00:00:16.120So, I'm doing this as a solo show, just so I can fit a lot in, and this is also going to be an audio-only episode, just so I can reference my notes here.
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00:03:25.660So, guys, let's dive in on these topics.
00:03:29.640I'm going to actually open up with kind of the progressive church, and then we'll kind of lean into yoga and then to the Enneagram.
00:03:35.680So, if you're not aware, the church, you know, is kind of a hot mess in the West.0.63
00:03:42.080And, you know, biblical Christianity is, I would say, becoming the minority and the enemy is kind of birthing a variety of perverted and distorted versions of the gospel every year, it seems like.
00:03:55.860Doug Wilson, he recently said in one of his podcasts, he said,0.62
00:04:00.560As it is not possible to make a good omelet with rotten eggs, even with the best recipe and superb equipment, you cannot make a sound church with a rotten gospel.
00:04:12.120We're a deceived church because we're an untrained church.
00:04:17.100And we're an untrained church because we would rather be entertained as a church
00:04:22.220than be a church that loves doctrine and wants to study the word.
00:04:28.700And what I'm saying is this, that the reason Christians are falling prey to all these heresies
00:04:34.220that are part of kind of this progressive movement,
00:04:37.640the prosperity gospel, the workspace gospel, the repentance-free gospel,
00:04:42.160you know, all these things that we'll be discussing today in addition to this.0.71
00:04:46.920You know, on top of that, I would say even the cultural fads
00:04:49.900is because many people in the church don't know their Bible.
00:04:54.100And in turn, they don't understand the gospel.
00:04:56.660And when you don't understand God's truth and God's grace,
00:04:59.420you can't understand God's expectations for how he calls us to think, act, and speak.
00:05:05.700And as a result, the church becomes vulnerable to all types of counterfeit doctrines and cultural ideas and experiences.
00:05:12.700So to give us, you know, an objective point of reference, let's use biblical Christianity as our mark for a second.
00:05:19.780And all Christians should aim to be biblical because the only reason they heard the gospel or heard about the gospel is because it was passed down in writing.
00:05:34.800And what I mean by that is, you know, we're Christians because we heard the gospel by means of the Bible.
00:05:40.980And how weird is it to accept the gospel from the pages of the Bible while rejecting other doctrines from the same book?
00:06:08.680I want to first contrast against biblical Christianity, progressive Christianity, or what some are calling moderate Christianity against, again, biblical Christianity.
00:06:20.760And I think after that, we'll touch on yoga and then the Enneagram.
00:06:24.840So to be a moderate Christian is just like a sanitized way of saying you're lukewarm Christian or you're a lukewarm Christian.
00:06:34.760So this, it espouses the idea that if you're, you know, a quote, well-balanced Christian that can find harmony with the culture, that you're somehow a more evolved or woke or enlightened form of a Christ follower.
00:06:51.460And this idea is not found in scripture.
00:06:54.160Like, you know, in fact, Jesus says in Revelation 3.16,0.99
00:06:58.860So then, because you are lukewarm and neither cold or hot, I will vomit you out of my mouth.
00:07:05.220And so God would rather you deny him fully than accept him partially.0.97
00:07:09.360And so God hates partiality and half-heartedness.
00:16:55.560When the Lord your God cuts off before you the nations whom you go in to dispossess, the land of Canaan,0.76
00:17:02.160and you dispossess them and dwell in their land, take care that you be not ensnared.0.87
00:17:09.220So first it says, take care that you be not, this is command, be ensnared to follow them after they have been destroyed before you.
00:17:17.120And that you, quote, do not, here, inquire about their gods, saying, how do these nations serve their gods, that I might also do the same?
00:17:24.560Verse 31, you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
00:17:39.420So first, this passage in Deuteronomy tells us that there is a way to worship the Lord, and it's not by adopting the worship practices of other religions.
00:22:15.640And it's probably, you know, yeah, probably the most influential book at the time.
00:22:20.280I've actually spoken to Suzanne for about an hour to fully understand the Enneagram a few years ago.
00:22:26.480But in recent years, it's really exploded in the church and is heralded as a Christian self-discovery tool.
00:22:35.820And at the heart, the problem is really this.
00:22:39.280The Enneagram is a self-focused tool that promises deep discovery by looking inward.
00:22:47.420And that stands in contrast to the scriptures, which claims that self is deceptive and bankrupt, and the only true discovery comes from looking outward towards Christ.
00:22:58.920So it really stands in opposition to the biblical doctrine.
00:23:03.140And when you read these Enneagram books and listen to the Enneagram stories from today's celebrity pastors, you're bombarded with a lot of these therapeutic ideologies.
00:23:15.680um and some you know the language that's kind of like you know for love yourself or forgive
00:23:21.280yourself for loving yourself for finding your true self for you know uh you know be whole or
00:23:29.320becoming spiritually evolved like these are a big uh part of the language that you're going to hear
00:23:36.360from those basically the hero of the enneagram is you hence the title of the book the road back to
00:23:42.260you, right? So the Enneagram, it's like, it's this self-idolatry situation going on here. Now, no
00:23:49.700pastor is going to market it as an anti-Bible tool to find yourself. Again, they're going to try to
00:23:56.200sprinkle some Jesus on it and sanitize it for congregational consumption. And ultimately,
00:24:00.840they're doing the same thing with the Enneagram that the church is doing with yoga. They're taking
00:24:04.600a pagan and secular practice and Christianizing it. And again, you know, the initial experience
00:24:10.680with these things aren't so obviously pagan that they, you know, would deter the average
00:24:17.460Christian from engaging. The thing is, you know, yeah, so they're not so obvious like that. And
00:24:25.260I'll give you an example. Neither is a bucket of apples to a deer, right? It doesn't look like a
00:24:32.020bad idea, especially at first glance. But when you realize as a deer that the bucket of apples is in
00:24:38.600the hunter's backyard you can see that the deer was just baited and ultimately you know the
00:24:46.360progressive church yoga the enneagram in any form of deviation from i would say a vigilant
00:24:53.000and scripturally fixed set of doctrines is dangerous not just for what they are
00:24:59.760but where these ideas are going and and again i i think in many cases these are the bait of satan
00:25:09.340right they're they're they're slippery slope things that lead to other things that are more
00:25:16.220serious and sadly when a you know a pastor's salary and the church budget is dependent upon
00:25:23.840cultural popularity of the sermon preached and the music played it's not long until the pastor
00:25:30.920starts preparing sermons and messages to please the lost instead of preparing expository sermons
00:25:36.800to strengthen and edify the saints and so you got a situation here with the church that makes it
00:25:41.920like it's not focused on the it's not a committed centric church it's a visitor centric church it's
00:25:49.880It was it's not like we're doing basically we're evangelistically centric church.
00:25:56.240We're not even really doing church. We're just doing evangelism.
00:25:59.340And you can show up if you're a Christian, but really it's catered for the visitor or for the baby in the faith.
00:26:06.280And so we offer all these things that are worldly as some kind of way to show that we're not really that different from the world.
00:26:15.200and maybe like softening up or making Christianity more palatable
00:26:19.720that you actually have to die to your desires
00:27:40.460so then let us not sleep as others do but let us keep awake and be sober meaning being sober
00:27:48.160minded and titus 1 9 which is written to elders shepherds pastors it says he must hold firm to
00:27:56.500the trustworthy word as taught meaning as taught by the apostles so that he may be able to give
00:28:02.540instruction in sound doctrine and also to rebuke those who contradict it and so shepherds
00:28:09.640If you're listening here, it's your job to make sure that you're guarding the sheep from some of this stuff and that we're not progressing.
00:28:17.240We're actually fixed on a stationary, biblical, unchanging, historic Christianity.
00:28:26.380Hopefully that was helpful for you guys and we'll be edifying and waking you up and being watchful for these things in your own church.
00:28:33.400If these things are happening in your church, I would recommend having a conversation, a sit-down conversation with your pastor and with respect and honor, integrity, gentleness, but having a discussion.
00:28:48.380And depending on their answer, it may require you and your family to leave these churches and try to find a more biblically-centered church.