[Music] everybody I have a special guest with me today my friend Alexa Kramer she's basically my long lost Greek sister we are going to talk about a topic of the inogram today a few months ago I asked on my social media you guys hey give me your best Arguments for the inag and I compiled them the best that I could uh of course we can't go over every single argument but but we compiled them together and I asked Alexa to come on to address them to talk about them to have this conversational uh you know video about Arguments for the inag and the problems that might be there with those arguments and I think it's going to be a lot of fun I don't think anybody's really done a video like this kind of addressing the arguments and Alexa I want to thank you for coming on to help me address those yay thanks for having me I'm excited yeah yeah me too so why did I ask you to come on tell us your background briefly who you are and why we're basically long lost sisters yes true um so I'm uh I'm a mom from Michigan um I write for the mama bear apologetics blog and a few years back um 2019 I went through uh a faith crisis I went through doubt I had been a Christian my entire life um and and I found myself wondering if God even existed and so the Lord used apologetics to bring me out of that which ignited a passion in me um and I just since then I had realized that I had bought into some subtle ideas some lies uncritically had no idea was completely blind to the fact that I did this um that really planted some seeds like years earlier that kind of grew into I think weeds really um down the road that nearly completely destroyed my faith um so now I am just really passionate about trying to help expose those lies and encourage fellow Believers to um not be apathetic in Discerning truth from lies and comparing everything to the word of God and it really is a joy to do it it's fun and so then I got to meet you because I went to the CIA training apologetic speakers training and um I did my speaking topic was on the anog and so here I am yeah so yeah the CIA is a cross-exam and instructor academy uh which cross-examined with Frank Turk they do it they do it every year they travel around America and it's it's a lot of fun it's intense but it is a lot of fun and so that's where her and I met it was here in Albuquerque and it was a lot of fun to meet you and get to know you in that regard so it's it's nice to have you on with this so let's let's go ahead and jump right in so I've done a video uh before on the enag and it's just kind of like what it is and I would the thing that shocked me the most uh is the origins and a lot of people kind of just shake their head when they hear this because they're like really the origins we're going to get into the yeah we're going to get into the origins because uh there's a fallacy out there called uh what is it the genetic fallacy thank you thank you I was going to say the origin fallacy yeah the genetic fallacy where it's like oh just because thank you yeah you're on it and it's like just because it has these kinds of Origins doesn't mean that it's you know necessarily wrong or bad and I kind of want to get into why that doesn't apply here but first uh let's why don't you tell us what is the anagram where did it come from and who is the man that is associated with it and why it got popular in the church Okay so the neogram is typically presented as a personality typing system and it's a shape it's a nine-sided figure diagram um with nine points and each point is assigned a number and a list of traits associated with it and everybody can supposedly identify with one main point and that is your number your entire life and then once you figure out your number the anagram becomes like a map um and so you find there's lines all over connecting all the numbers and you find your path to to your true self um and so you are trying to identify am I in health am I in stress and every inogram teacher uses different words there's integration versus disintegration um but the whole point of it is to Enlighten you and um bring awareness to whether you are you are in your true self or whether you are exhibiting false self uh behaviors I have a question about that what does that mean true self versus false self can you define those terms a little bit okay so there are a lot of different an neogram teachers and you've got the Christian teachers and you've got the new agers and so the Christian neogram teachers are going to say well it's just interchangeable with the old self new self but that it doesn't work when you look into it so okay the true self is really your essence um which is different than your personality so the idea is that your personality traits are developed over time I love this the skepticism on your face um the personality following I'm following your personality traits are really um just patterns like it's basically um when you're a child you have to fit into society and so you are almost being like oppressed by expectations and so as you experience trauma and you grow you're developing these patterns of behavior you're developing these personality traits and your so your personality is a false identity meant to protect this Inner Essence this inner true self a social construct yes okay all right so you have the true self the false self so I remember making uh I was reading uh Martian montenegro's book on this and joy Veno and Don voo uh it's called Richard Roar and the inag secret it was great it was a great book because it goes with the origins they are very good resource for the origins and one of the things I remember is that uh it's nine points back to your God like your your true self your God self now when I think of the anagram I think of Richard Roar uh can you tell us yes the roarer yes uh what does Alisa call him the the pope of progressive Christianity um oh yeah yeah so why would I do that why is Richard Roar associated with the inag so he's basically at the root of the inag becoming christianized yes so he learned the inag loved it and brought it into the church and for some reason it's like Progressive evangelicals that have really that have really become captured by it um and so if you are to read any Christian published an neogram book listen to any um Christian anog influencer all roads lead back to the roarer like he's pretty much had had a huge influence on a the first Christian the first Christian published books were written by students of Roar so he basically discipled them um so a lot of the Christian view or Christian Perspective if you can call it that of the anagram comes back to his ideas the reason why Richard Roar is a red flag guys um we can make a whole video just on him is uh like I said he's called the pope of progressive Christianity by Alisa but he's like a schores board of of all this spirituality and should be marked and avoided fundamentally uh the teachings that he's he he has this book called the universal Christ you know which is uh you know basically the god Consciousness within us all and uh uh it's the true self uh the true self the false self all the things all these buzzword that we keep saying it it it makes sense in uh going over why he's like the origin story of the inogram with in in in Christian Circle so I'll leave a link in the description if you guys want to know more about him because uh he's an interesting guy to learn about but I I definitely think Christians need to know about him in general but let's get more into um tell me more about the the origins of this why is this such a red flag and why does this not commit the genetic fallacy okay if the origin of something if the if the thing is still associated with its origin if it's still being used in the same way that it was made to be used like tarot cards then right then it's you're not using the genetic fallacy to say that the origins are relevant like the genetic fallacy comes into play when you're saying this person said claim made this claim you have to evaluate the claim on its own and whether or not this person is actually trustworthy or not you actually have to look at the claim and determine if that's if it's true or false the anagram is still the origins are baked into what it is it's still a part of it and the origins completely invalidate it so like it's it's at the very least it's completely invalid at the very worst it's spiritually dangerous so what are the origins where does it come from okay so a lot of people think that the anog um is ancient because a lot of people claim that but that will'll talk about at some point we're going to talk about different tactics that are used to make the neogram seem more trustworthy um that is a tactic that people like um psychics and mentalists like and like people that are uh fortune tellers they will make claims of ancient origins of a deck of tarot cards or whatever tool that they're using because it it makes it seem more mysterious and it makes it seem like you're tapping into some kind of ancient wisdom but there is absolutely no evidence that supports the idea that the inrim comes before the early 1900s yeah so it came from a man named George GFF who was a Mystic and it had nothing to do with personality at that time he taught that this shape held all the laws of the universe and all the knowledge of the universe and he used it to create mathematical equations and dances and if none of this makes sense to you it's probably because you're not on psychedelics and so fast forward a little bit to the 60s and you have an occultist named Oscar Razo who ran an occultist school and he took the anagram and he added what's called ego fix what he called e ego fixations to the nine points these are the sins of the indogram on if I don't know if you have an image if you want to put that up so you can see the different sins um don't you worry though he doesn't mean sins in the yucky Christian way as if we've like violated God's moral law he means anything that blocks you from your full potential basically okay okay so then his student um claudo nanho who was a uh psychiatr no I'm I'm losing the word not psychiatrist psychologist sociopath occultist my brain just had a brain your head um occultist all those no okay yeah psychiatrist yes sorry um brain you can brain now uh so so he as a student of Oscar razos he added the types to the anagram numbers he turned it into a he wanted to meld psychology with the spiritual that was his goal he said that he went to medical school in his early 20s but he was disillusioned by medicine and science because he wanted something more spiritual so he he wanted to bring these two things together so I'm saying this I'm emphasizing this because a lot of Christian and neogram promoters just try to make him out to be like a scientist like he was just science-minded he was just taking all of his research and his knowledge and putting it into this uh into the anagram when no he was an a cultist he was trying to tap into the spiritual realm and there's a video that a lot of people have seen already where he um claims to have gotten the types for the inogram through automatic writing so that kind of blew up in the Christian World um but then so a lot of people automatic writing is basically Spirit contact where did you just make a video about this I just made a video because what happened is with this first video that a lot of people have seen um a lot of the Christian anagram promoters and influencers came out and they all made videos or they wrote it on their website that nobody should worry about that because what claudo nanho was probably talking about was that he was just kind of doing this stream of Consciousness writing that he was drawing from all of his years of knowledge and research even though his context was in an ultic context it made perfect sense that he was talking about automatic writing is what it normally means is your it's a spirit cont it's a spirit writing through your hand basically so I was doing research and just kind of binge watching claudo nanho videos just trying to get into his head and learn like what is he thinking like what what is the anagram to him and I stumbled across a video where he explains his experience of automatic writing where he came home from a spiritual Retreat and his hand started moving and I think he said twitching or moving so he put a pen in it and he said and I started to write and he said no it wasn't me I was not writing and his hand wrote and wrote and wrote and that's where all of the types the information or the majority of the information for the anagram that we have today came from from and so then he went and he asked Oscar Razo a year later he said he said does this come from you or those behind you and he said Oscar Oscar said both which I think is hilarious that Oscar chazo took credit for for that yeah okay nothing to do with it all right so that's very interesting and that was the video that you just made uh that you just discovered which is very interesting okay so yeah that's uh very suspicious Origins now okay so now we have this this problem where we have the inogram not just in the church but oh my like lots and lots and lots of Christians use the inogram so with having so many Christians use the anagram and having it be a tool for them let's get into the arguments for this okay so with that as a background let's go into the the questions that you all sent in to me uh which thank you by the way they're not even questions they're I mean the arguments that you guys send in to me and I want to thank you guys for this because this isn't like a oh we're going to debunk you and we're going to come expose you no it's not even that at all it's hey give it to me like let's let's talk about this and so all right so let's start with this first argument here it says uh there seems to be some hypocrisy from Christians on these sorts of topics I've heard that the roots are demonic but I think like anything if used correctly it can be a tool if you are making any aam and Idol that is wrong but you can use it to the glory of God then so be it Chiropractic Care came from an occultist but I don't see any Christians up in arms when they go to the chiropractor why is it any different with the inogram and fun fact on this one the founder David Daniel David Palmer of the Chiropractic world was an avid spiritualist and believed that the body had wisdom that we needed to listen to when your spine is misaligned it constructs this inner wisdom what do you think about that Alexa okay so I think this person is saying um Christians are inconsistent in accepting versus rejecting something with oul Origins yes and that's a a valid thing to talk about and bring up but this is a bit of a logical fallacy called the appeal to hypocrisy um and so you still have to kind of like the the uh genetic fallacy you still have to evaluate the thing on its own because whether or not Christians are being consistent or being hypocritical doesn't have anything to do with whether that thing in question is permissible for the Christian so they I mean whether or not it's permissible doesn't have anything to do with whether the other thing is if that makes sense or if they're being consistent about it yeah and then you also have the question of um the purpose of each one you know like we could talk about Chiropractic Care sure let's put that on the table let's talk about that but right now we're talking about the inogram which is actually a spiritual tool that isn't just adjusting something in your body like you're talking about two different things that might have questionable Origins which again we can talk about but the the function of each seems to be different in each person's life like you're going to go to the chiropractor and move on with your life where with the inogram it kind of can consume your life so that's that's an interesting thing to think about um all right let's talk about the intent what about the intent does the intent matter if you are using it to just understand your personality traits better and not for the reasons it was created for should that matter for example I think too many wedding oh I think too many wedding traditions that have nefarious Origins bridesmaids who were supposed to fool the evil spirits as to what the actual bride does the ring on the finger throwing rice Etc doesn't tend matter or is the simple fact that it's described as the inogram automatically make it an evil thing what are your thoughts about that well demons don't care about your intent so there's there's that but also we we have to go back to what is the anagram because these other Traditions have really been completely disassociated from their Origins if that's their true origin I mean that's nobody's thinking about that these days in our culture but um I just last my train of that uh the inent brain demons don't care about your intent yeah yeah I don't think that your intentions don't matter at all but when you're still you're using the anagram that has inherent ideas and beliefs you have to buy into certain ideas in order to use the anog so there's no way to disassociate it from its original intent that's the problem with it there are other things like eyeliner apparently was make meant to ward off evil um spirits but we don't associate with that anymore and wearing eyeliner doesn't come with ideas and we are we are told to be constantly Discerning as Christians as we mature in Christ and in our sanctification constantly discerning so that that takes our mind we have to be thinking everything through and comparing everything to scripture that's actually that's a solid Point that's a really good point because I mean I we wear wedding wedding rings and I don't have to ascribe to a system of beliefs to do that that's that's a really good point um okay what about this argument we can redeem it well I don't know about you but I am not Redeemer The Lord Is Our Redeemer so if someone's going to be redeeming it's going to be God that's going to do the redeeming um we do not have permission to try and go into the ult and redeem I mean have you I don't know if you've seen this but on Amazon you can buy basically a Ouija board but it's meant to contact the Holy Spirit okay someone's trying to redeem a Ouija board no we can't do that um so we just we don't have that permission yeah you know it it reminds me in I think it's acts nine uh you know you have all these people that are coming together to like Sorcerers and and and occultic books basically uh they they they pile up all the books and what's interesting what they don't do is go through it and think oh let's see what we can redeem here let's see what we can redeem for the church no no they burned them like um I think that's very very interesting and you know thing that they did there there are certain things that you can't redeem you divorce and uh yes yeah that's very interesting okay all right let's get into another uh category here of it's it's just a tool it's just a tool so what what I did is that I categorized uh all the arguments because they all fell under certain categories whether it with Origins it's just a tool it helps whatever it is and so I compiled those and now we're in the category of it just being a tool so here's one one argument uh in that category I think it's just a personality test uh just like Meyers Briggs voices culture index and predictive index I don't know what those are but I I know what Myers's Briggs is I believe it helps identify strengths and growth areas heavy on the growth a lot of people see the weakness of their inogram and ride that out instead of becoming healthy and it should not become our our Identity or or Idol what are your thoughts on that yeah so I think she's saying it's no different than any other personality test and you can take anything too far um but so this might depend on how the anagram was presented to this person cuz if they're in like a work setting and it's not presented with any kind of spiritual aspect to it or it's not emphasized at least um then it it comes across it comes across like no big deal it comes across like a personality test so I understand that at the at the onset the way I um was introduced to it it just nothing spiritual stood out to me at all um and so the thing is though if you dig just a little bit beneath the surface if you go home and you start looking up the anagram or you start listening to a podcast or you read a book you're immediately going to uncover this is primarily a spiritual tool so this is UN and that's what most people say that they like about the yagr is that it's not just this like it's not just about your preferences and like personality basically most uh personality tests like Myers Briggs really has more to do with your pref your preferences and patterns but not your moral Behavior so much at least not in my experience with it but the anagram is based its core of it is is morality it is the explanation for why you do why you sin and why you do what you do so whenever we're in the realm of uh the moral realm basically that's a spiritual issue for the Christian from a Biblical worldview if we're talking about right and wrong we're talking about Sin um we're talking about virtues we're we're talking about spiritual things so the anagram is inherently a spiritual tool it's not just this psychological neutral non-spiritual tool that can just be used you can't use it like that it's just not it's not made for that yeah and you know and i' I've seen people kind of get really engrossed in it where it is something they think about every day and it is something that frames how they view people and I especially in the last few years I've seen more of that and I'm like oh that's not cool like you're you're going to put me in that box and you're going to make an assessment on Me based on an inogram number that you think I am and I thought that was really strange um I don't usually see that with you know maybe astrology signs where it's like oh you're you're a Taurus that's that's why you're acting that way I'm like um no I will take responsibility for my own bad behavior thank you very much you know what I mean it's like um yeah there's something very unique with the inogram when it comes to to that and in that regard um it's something that you wake up and do which we'll get into later there's arguments with this because there's like anagram coaching and things like that um all right so here's the next argument this tool brought me to the gospel I learned about myself in a way I had never known before and it changed my entire way of thinking I'm a Believer because of the inogram what do you think about that well praise God for for this person that they came to know Christ I mean I think no matter how you come to come Christ or come to know Christ that's wonderful I have a lot of questions um I if I were able to have a one-on-one conversation with this person I'd want to ask them some questions so I'd want to know like um what is your new way of thinking what would you say is the gospel um when we are saved sometimes it takes a lot of time like there's the difference between salvation and sanctification and the moment we are saved doesn't necessarily mean we have all the answers and we understand God correctly and God is very kind and he's very patient with us and um I know he's been very very patient with me the anog cannot actually bring you the gospel because the gospel is a specific message and it's a message that the anog not only does the neogram not carry this message but I will argue at some point probably um that it has ideas that undermine and that work against the gospel so I don't think it's possible that the anagram brought this person the in the uh the gospel however it may have played I don't know their story so that's where I'd want to ask more questions it may have played a role in in their Journey at some point and and that may be true um but the gospel is not going to or the inogram is not going to it doesn't talk about Jesus it doesn't talk talk about um your new identity in Christ in his kingdom and the fact that he died for your sins um that he is now our high priest and that uh we uh have been redeemed and that we can be reconciled with God the father because we are covered in Christ's blood and his righteousness actually maybe I'll just go into it right now because the anagram says that you are inherently good and that your bad behavior your false self is um coming from Good Intentions I mean even the Christian and your gr teachers will tell you they will tell you explicitly that you even your sin is coming from Good Intentions because it's coming from some fear which is the flip side of your core desire which your desires are always good and you've just somehow bought into some false beliefs and some false narratives of yourself and that is where your your sin comes from if that were true and we are inherently morally good why does Jesus need to cover Us in his righteousness and his blood so we can be Rec reconciled to God it completely undermines that concept and and that makes total sense with the roarer because he'll just tell you straight up that you were never separated from God yeah he completely redefines the idea of sin um if you want to hear that you want to hear what he says about Sin yeah like a change of mind in that like he redefines what it like he literally he totally redefines it yeah it's like a it's it's a ignorance is that how he yeah Hees say sins are fixations that prevent the energy of life God's love from flowing freely they are self erected blockades that cut us off from God and hence from our own authentic potential and he believes that God God is in you whether you are saved or not that because he's a panentheist so he believes that God is in he believes God is in his dog that Christ is in his dog yeah um and so that makes sense like that you're cutting by cutting yourself off from your true potential that is the same thing as cutting yourself off from God it's a complete redefinition of the concept of sin it undermines the whole message of the Gospel it's complete counterfeit false gospel and I know that or it seems to me that a lot of the Christian and EOG promoters try to kind of disassociate themselves from some of those teachings but when you really examine what they're saying it's still in line with that teaching even though they use a lot of really theologically sound sounding um words I mean they kind of just Place biblical words on top of that has that is at least what I've perceived as i' I've listened and read I mean I try to be really charitable but when you just get down to it it it's um completely undermines the need for Christ to save us you know it's funny what it reminds me of you know I just got done writing a whole book about you know new thought and all the things that go along with it and every chapter needed a Nuance for this reason because you have these helpful and good things that go along with what these are you know whether it's positive thinking or maybe some self-help books or you know Fillin the blank whatever it is and so I had I had trouble kind of uh describing the problem with that and that's the point I think that's the point is that it's like like a imagine reading like a cookbook okay you're reading a cookbook and you're following the instructions and you're like oh man this is this is a good C cookbook and you start making the the food and you're eating it and you're having this feed you but what you don't know is that what goes along with this cookbook is a particular diet that you don't know about and you're ascribing to Without You realizing that's what you're ascribing to because you're eating the food and it's helping you but little do you know that this diet is actually made for a certain particular purpose to nourish you in the long term not for the better right like let's just say it's a diet that's really high in certain nutrients that over time will deplete you and your body of of energy and sustenance you don't know that though had you had known that oh that's what that diet is I probably never would have read that cookbook and followed this diet that's kind of what it reminds me of it's like oh you're you're signing up for these for for this diet if you will without knowing that's what it is you're ascribing to this worldview this belief system with a personality tool a personality test that that that it's marketed that way but it comes with this other stuff that over the long term as we can see it's like oh this is kind of a religious thing like this is something that you you kind of have to uh sign up for in that way that was a great analogy that's the best analogy I've heard for this the next argument says nothing about the Christian approach to the inag is encouraging sin but rather the inogram serves as a tool that points out our need for God's grace and forgiveness and helps us walk in alignment with the truth of the Gospel what do you think of that okay well we talked a little bit already how the ideas behind the inogram undermine the gospel um but this whole idea that it shows you your need for Grace I think it has the veneer of that but I think it actually diminishes your perception of your need for Grace because it's saying that like who do you need more grace for do you need it for the person that does this bad thing um but then they um you understand their you get to know why they did what they did they had all these difficult circumstances tragic circumstances led to this behavior and now you have compassion on this person do you need more grace for this person or do you need more grace for the person that is just selfish and rebellious and that may maybe they've repented like who's going to get who who requires more grace the one who is straight up selfish or rebellious so if the anagram is telling you you know what there it's saying have Grace for yourself because you did this because a b and c and giving you all this explanation it goes back to your childhood and this is why you struggle in this area and there I'm not saying there's no truth to these things that like you said before there's kind of a mix of Truth and lies that's why it can get really Tangled um but the the biblically our sin comes from our will our heart not from we can't blame all of our sin on external circumstances that were outside of our control we do have agency and choice and we have rebelled against God and we are sometimes just straight up selfish and doesn't NE it doesn't always come from Good Intentions like in the neogram teachings so this idea that the inogram enlightens you to how much grace you need from God I think it does the opposite I think it's show trying to show you that you don't need as much grace as you think you do H interesting okay well that kind of Segways into the next argument the inogram is a communal tool which means contemporary inag teachers do not necessarily follow previous teachers ideas beliefs or practices on the contrary you will find that each inag teacher presents the inag according to their worldview often adding subtracting or reading defining Concepts contained in the inogram what do you think of that well you're you're taking the anagram you're taking something so yes it is true it's kind of like reminds me of um Hinduism which is not really a like a world religion with a set of doctrines it's kind of an umbrella term for a lot of different various philosophies and ideas but there are ideas that underg all of Hindu philosophies same with the anagram that it can be taken and used and added to but there are ideas that underg the inogram and some of those ideas I think are the true self and the false self which we talked about um and this idea that you have one main number and that's your number until you die that is inherent in every anagram teaching and so it doesn't what I don't understand is how a Christian can say that the anagram will help you walk in alignment with the gospel when it's telling you the gospel is supposed to free you from your sin the anagram tells you you are bound to one main sin for your entire life and it's going to it's going to be a lens through which you see everything and you're always going to struggle against this sin and it's going to motivate and drive everything you do and the best you can do is to try to get onto a healthier path and redirect the these sinful urges into more healthy energies and more health healthy a more healthy path that's the best those two don't work together H I kind of have a follow I have a question for you specifically outside of the arguments why do you think that Christians specifically have been very attracted to the inogram out of every other personality tool I think that it is a overcorrection a push back to the the emphasis on maybe sin and depravity if they felt shamed um the inogram is an anti- shame path it is it is like the you know the biblically our Humanity's problem is sin the an with the anog Humanity's problem is shame and so we're solving the problem of Shame by saying every don't don't beat yourself up for what you did there's a reason for it you have this core thing it was because you know your childhood trauma and that that's what the anagram does for you it it removes shame um and I think that's so appealing in our culture not just obviously in the Christian world but also in the Christian World um we don't like the feeling of taking full responsibility and of taking but the truth is though we don't have to live in shame because Jesus paid for it he paid for our sins right so but the anagram says well but did you really even are you really even that fully responsible in the first place cuz the idea of it is that you're until you're awakened and become more aware you're kind of living automatically like you're just kind of reacting to the world around you and so that's like the self-awareness and becoming conscious is the whole process of using the anagram H interesting that's kind of like your salvation process salvation is becoming aware and understanding like your your your true self I also think that one uh issue is that a lot of Christians know that the gospel means good news mhm and then they take the word good news and and that phrase and that whatever is good news to them becomes the gospel and so it's kind of a redefining of what gospel means so there's been that and this is happening in the background I don't think most Christians are doing this on purpose or even are even aware of this and like none of this is coming from like like I'm condemning anyone this is a like hey let's be aware of this let's look out for these things and actually maybe go and do a study on what is the gospel like look in the actual scripture don't have somebody else Define it for you look for that word and what what is presented in God's word um because we've just kind of been conditioned not to do that we've been conditioned a lot of us have been conditioned to just um rely on whoever is in authority to do all of our Biblical interpretation for us and to kind of evaluate Things based on what feels right and true and that's just kind of what our Christian culture in certain circles I think um that's just kind of the direction we've gone and so that's why I'm like well let's stop doing that now let's I tend to air on the side of Grace with this topic in particular uh you know because it's not exactly a hill all die on but it's a conversation that needs to be had I think within the church like an in-house conversation and I don't think that your salvation is in Jeopardy or anything like that um I think that you can you know we that that we can go and and believe things that maybe another Christian disagrees with but I mean the the arguments need to be kind of I think parsed out a little bit and so I don't know I guess I just kind of want to reach through the camera real quick and let people know like hey man we're not like coming at you like you know we're we're we're trying to uh thoughtfully dialogue through um something that needs to be talked about um there's conversations that need to be happening here uh because there is something uniquely problematic with with this tool that needs to be addressed in a Christian context if it were secular I mean Monique danan what does she say that culture is going to cult you know like culture is going to do its thing but within the church I think that it's perfectly fair to be like hold on a second you know but I think it can be done with Grace I think it can be done with humility curiosity it could be done with all the uh in a posture of uh of you know I guess benefit of the doubt you know in in that regard so yeah I just kind of wanted to mention that but there's a whole other section here and this is the most Pro in my opinion the most uh tricky one I guess the most powerful argument for the inogram is that it helps me it helps it works and this argument can be applied to so many other things outside of the anagram that can actually help us and so let's get into some of these these arguments the first argument it says Christians seem to focus on teachers like Richard Roar uhhuh yes in their criticism which is necessary because he's a heretic but they tend to ignore the more scientific teachers who have studied who have studies to back up research around the inogram I don't know how to say her last name but I think it's a Catherine favra I'm probably saying that wrong is one of my favorite resources who leans on research and not just a fluffy personality test approach I don't think every person needs it but I have found it so helpful in understanding others what do you think about this I think that new agers are really especially good at making something sound scientific that's not necessarily scientific first of all to address this Catherine fa fa um on her website she says it that she is a triple certified anog teacher with Palmer Daniels Riso Hudson and Hurley dson and these are all either new agers or new thoughts yeah right yeah oh interesting so so these are who she's trained under she has the distinction of being the only person to have attended intensives with both Oscar eazo and claudo nanho with nanho validating her 1994 qualitative research on the subtypes in 1996 so right away we have that her biggest influences and the person that validated some of her research at least was claudo nanho himself which we already talked about how the the origins are just invalid in and of themselves like there was no science behind how the anagram came to be so so there's that um then we have I would refer people to Dr J Menan Waltz who has done a lot of research he's actually put the anram through scientific testing and it just it fails on every test that you would use to test any personality test um so I have a quote here from him he says the anagram system the experts who profit from it and the scales used to typ people have been tested in several ways and every single test contradicts the grand claims of the anog the types seem to correctly identify how some people are but in general they are inaccurate and overly simplified descriptions of people the secondary aspects of the system including the directions of growth which is the alleged mechanism for the spir for spiritual growth seems to be no more accurate than random chance H so there's that and then we have the uh an neogram is based on the three intelligence centers which is the head heart heart and the gut um and Marsha monegro who is one of the authors of the book you mentioned the uh Richard War and the anog secret she's done so much research into this she's amazing um she writes that the three centers of intelligence is a false idea man has one source of intelligence which is in which is the mind not three not only is this head heart gut idea an esoteric occult teaching yeah but we are not divided into head heart and gut so that that teaching comes from the occults yeah but that is a Core teaching in all the anag teachings okay let's bounce into another argument that kind of goes along uh with this one all of these are related I have found it has been a very practical and insightful model in both understanding myself and Those whom I serve as a therapist what do you think about that okay I think that this goes to show that that you just don't know what you don't know and so this person is a therapist um so I have another quote this comes from the full fax book of cold reading uh so this book helped me a lot in my research because it's basically cold reading is like referring to psychic readings fortun tellers um I am not saying that there's nothing demonic or spiritual going on in those situations but I can promise you that there are is psychological manipulation happening at the very least that is at least involved okay um and so I was reading through that book and I I found so many parallels to what I see in the anagram but here's one a quote from that book it makes no difference how smart highly qualified or intellectually brilliant you may be if you know how the deception works then you cannot be deceived by it if you do not know know then you can a rocket scientist can be fooled by a deceiver because she knows about rocket rocket science and not deception expertise in one field does not automatically transfer to another so if this therapist doesn't understand how the deception Works how these psychological tricks work then it might very well feel like this is working for her and for her clients H or I keep saying her it might be a man sorry I just assumed the next AR ument again these all roll over it's no different than knowing your love language which Christians don't have a problem with for the most part I don't see the big deal the anagram is simply a number system that helps to understand and categorize personality types it's not authoritative but it can be informative what do you think of that so stop being such a party pooper is that what they're saying um yeah stop stop pretty much yeah um so I'm not really sure how I I can I can all these question like all these arguments I can see why they would come at it from there yeah me too yeah yeah um there yeah they're valid questions uh well I'm I'm not sure how I feel about The Love Languages but they don't come with an entire lens with which to view people with so um something the inogram is not informative if it's false I don't know what else to say about that but if it's based on if it's based on something that is completely invalid that is false then it's not as helpful as you think it is yeah I think that there's differences there because the anagram the inogram goes hard the inogram is like its own religion it seems like there comes you don't see you don't see love language coaches you know what I mean like you don't see like uh people that are defending the five love languages you don't you don't see people online charging to be love language coaches and uh you know what I mean and and teaching this this basically like some of it kind of going alongside of of of of it in its own religious language I think there's a difference there in that regard all right this one's a big one this one's very I i' I've heard this one probably more in the it helps category the inogram helps save my marriage it helped us really know the other's perspective what so unbiblical about that what do you think okay knowing well thank God that their this person's marriage was saved praise God for that praise God not praise the anagram for that um but obviously trying to see something from somebody else's perspective that's a good thing and so like you were saying before there's some good advice with the inam um the inam is not based on anything true but it is um it does get people to just try a little harder to think about things from another perspective to be a little more gracious um just because that's what you're doing like anytime you step into any kind of self-help tool book situation you are the one that is now paying more attention to those things so if you're getting some benefit from that it I really don't think it's you can make a case that it's coming from the anagram it's just coming from your effort which is just it's a natural consequence of like giving somebody some Grace but at the same time this the anagram is giving you a lens through which like it's building a story for um why a person does what they do so if you are in relationship with that person and they're confirming that that that that's one thing but if you are typing people that you don't really know or that you are making assumptions about all the people around you you're forming these stories oh they this person is totally an eight which means that their sin is this and maybe they had this childhood experience and and you're you may be feeling more empathetic towards this person you may feel like you have a lot more grace for this person but it could be based on a complete lie that you've just bought into um and I just feel like that's you're not building your worldview based on a solid foundation you're build like it's just uh that could come that could crash and burn at some point the next argument is of all the different personality tests Myers Briggs disc strength finder Etc inag is less focused on outward personality and more focused on internal motive internal motive it helps me be aware of my strengths and weaknesses so that I can know where I'm likely to stumble or sin that's why I like it what do you think of that so in other words I think this person is saying they like the inogram as opposed to other tests because it gets to the actual root of the problem okay but as we've talked about before the root of the problem is our heart the root of the problem is not a false belief the root according to the Bible the root of the problem is is our heart and our will um and so the NR uh is about motivation but we can we can so easily deceive ourselves thinking that we have good intentions we have good motivations but if you have pride in your heart like I've experienced this before where I was completely blind to the pride in my heart I actually saw myself as very a very humble person very humble and open-minded but I look back and I'm like man there was a pride there I was pretty proud of my humility in my open mind you know what I'm saying um and so what I believed is is that everything I believed and thought I that I was doing was with good motivation and good intentions but if the core or if your if your your heart is hardened and you're not really aware of that then that you will still be led into sin Without Really re realizing it so that's that's another part of of the counterfeit gospel I think that the inogram kind of perpetuates um but do you want to talk about why it feels like it works oh yeah 100% so well yeah um because I think this part's kind of fun yeah um so I think the inogram uses several tactics or it's hard to say I the enemy is the real enemy behind the inogram okay so like the the tactics um the deception I think is coming from Satan our our enemy uh from the the the spiritual realm um so I'm not trying to accuse necessarily an neogram teachers of purposely manipulating people I think most of them if not all of them they buy what they're selling they believe what they're doing I think that the enemy is the one who's behind the manipulation so I want to make that clear that I'm not accusing them necessarily of trying to manipulate people um so there's a concept called outs um there's there's all these different uh there's all these different ta tactics that make the negr feel like it works so well it makes you feel like you um can understand people better like you have like you're like completely awakened to oh my gosh this everything makes sense now so there's this concept called outs and this is used by magicians um psychics anybody that's doing any kind of psychological trickery and it's basically always having an Escape Route so if you look at the anog and you have lines that are connecting all the numbers together um you have one main number but you also have you're connected with lines so you're connected to Wing numbers oh yeah um and then you have growth in a stress path so you're one number but you're connected to four other numbers so at any point you can exhibit traits or look like all these other numbers Okay so no matter where you're at once you buy into the system MH no matter what you're doing you're always going to find yourself somewhere on the anagram it it can't get it wrong so I this is called yes so this is called outs um reminds me of a bethl profet oh I'm G to give just enough information if I'm right but if I'm wrong you know what I mean it's like that's yeah they'll always have a reason for it or answer or they'll say well this isn't what I meant what I me was and there's a lot of rining words it's called the fallacy of ambiguity and it's like you're you're ambiguous just enough that if you know you're right or it gives you other options just in case yeah I see what you're saying yeah MH and this people like the indogram because it's dynamic because people are not just like they feel like they're not being put into a box so that is something that people like about it but I would say that the anagram takes advantage of that fact rather than it's actually pointing you to something actually insightful I think it's doing the it's you know what I'm saying um and so another aspect of of this trickery is called the rainbow ruse and I see this all over the inogram the rainbow ruse huh um it's a it's a type of statement where it attributes two opposite traits to you in like one sentence or one statement so here's let me give you an example of a rainbow rose statement you are a very kind and considerate person but when somebody does something to break your trust you feel deep-seated anger so so it kind of gives you both extremes and it'll cover everything in between so it's kind of like a generic statement yeah very but it the person so let me give you an an an neogram example okay and I'm paraphrasing but this is I've seen this used by several this idea used by several anr coaches eights a type eight um they have a hard exterior but when you get to know them you find out they have a very tender heart so you see how they have they can exhibit both traits the tenderness and the hardness yeah okay so what happens is people are reading these statements or they're listening to these teachings and they're like this makes so much sense because they're not usually you're not coming to it with a a critical perspective you're just like does this describe me you're just trying to fill your own your you take your mind and and you are connecting it to what's being said so now your brain is doing all of this work to make the inogram and these statements and all this sound so insightful but they're really just a bunch of generic statements and so like totally yeah related to that is um something called Barnum statements um which are very similar they're just like kind of generic statements that a lot of people would say describes them um but and then they can feel very and like a lot of astrological readings are just a bunch of Barnum statements I was literally just going to say this reminds me of horoscopes yes yeah um so some examples are you have a great need for other people to like and admire you um disciplined and self-controlled outside you tend to be worrisome and insecure inside that's also a bit of a rainbow ruse right there um you have a tendency to be critical of yourself everybody though like isn't this literally everybody to some degree exactly so in the road back to you which is a Christian a very popular Christian in new Grant book yeah each number has a list of Burnham statements um but they are statements that they're meant to help you figure out which number you are so here's a few from just the type six yeah okay okay being sure I've made the right decision is almost impossible I don't like to find myself in unpredictable situations I'm generally not comfortable with extremes it helps me to have things in some kind of order so how does this work so hold on I have I I have questions um first of all when somebody is learning oh this is my inag number this is I am or whatever it is and everything this is very helpful by the way I like that you're doing this because I've never participated in the inogram I've read about it I've read the origins I'm like oh that's all I need to know I staying away from this I don't even need this is really what it is right but in what you're telling me you're saying oh this is you're insecure you might have this you might have that is there ever anything that genuinely pinpoints your flaws like like you are a selfish prideful person and this is an area of growth for you is there anything like that oh that's a good question I'd have to open the book and look for specifics not most it's mostly not it's mostly flat that's that's actually another tactic in this book is they they want to flatter you exactly because you're more like sorry you are more likely to accept what they're telling you if you feel a little bit like a little bit special like well and that's okay imagine this for second imagine oh okay imagine that you are a therapist no you're going to therapy you're going to therapy like you and your husband are going into marriage counseling and imagine for a second that the therapist responded like this to to your husband let's just say objectively that the husband is an issue okay you know what no let's just just in order to not be sexist for females let's say it's the wife all right okay because I mean we're females we know how we can be all right we we have a toxic trait we know what we know who we are okay and say that we're going to therapy and you're in there and you're let's just say that you are abusive to your husband let's say that you are very selfish um that you do not take criticism very well at all and anytime anybody tells you something that's not affirming you lose your mind like let's just say that those are four main issues that you have and that is really the reason why you're in therapy and you're sitting down and your husband's there and he's trying to talk to you and tell you these are the issues we have and your your therapist is an inogram lover she's just like oh oh he's a six she's an eight whatever it is and she looks at the wife and she's like it seems that you have insecure Tendencies it seems that you have blah blah blah you like it when things are in order you like it whenever people listen to you yes yes that's exactly how I feel without actually talking about the problem of of oh my goodness this woman is insane like this woman you know what I mean okay like let's just say it how it is all right if I went to therapy I'm looking at the therapist and I'm like tell me why I'm screwed up tell me what I can do to get over this where did tell me what's wrong with me I don't want to hear what I like I don't want to hear what I'm insecure about like give me some sust there's nothing wrong with you exactly okay you just have to be aware of that it's like gaslighting okay you know exactly what I'm getting at then is there any of this in the anagram um well that wouldn't fit and I'm I again it's a little bit more personal to me because in this last like few years I've seen people who are deeply into the inag and everything in their life revolves around seeing things through the inag like mhm um they literally wake up every day thinking about the inogram and and how that's something that but but but they also have issues themselves and it's like can we talk about that oh we can't talk about that okay that's probably not their main sin exactly yes exactly okay so I'm talking about the toxicity you talked about gaslighting these are my own personal observations from issues that I've seen with the inogram and I'm like why is that the outcome of the inogram why aren't you like kind of tackling these issues head on it seems like there's an avoidance of it a sidestep because you're talking about shame it all makes sense it's all making sense in that regard so anyway keep going with what you were saying um but yeah if there's any general anything in general that you want to add to what I just said go ahead yeah I just I think that uh the big idea behind the deception is that it's allowing you to fill your uh whatever is in your brain into these statements and these ideas so and you know what we're not very good at really evaluating ourselves um so you know what I'm saying so you're going to view yourself probably in a more well you might go one of two ways you might view yourself in a more positive light than you should or you might you might be so down on yourself that it's all self either way it's self focused yeah yeah you know what I mean well you know we've we've gone over a lot this video could be 3 4 hours long with the kinds of arguments that we got so we had to yeah we had to categorize it um there's always more to know um I I think that this I I hope to do I hope that this has given somebody watching you know some sort of idea of of the arguments for and against you know and and in the INR like maybe why people don't find it problematic and why others do but I have an overall encompassing question for you about this okay so imagine you're a Christian watching this and you're a practicer of the inag and they listen to this whole video and they're like I so so what what the question I want to pose to you is what is the danger the overall big bigger picture of of why you believe the anagram should be marked and avoided mhm I think it is it's hard to know if the neogram is the you know the chicken or the egg um are people accepting the neogram because they've already bought into certain ideas that aligns with the inag or are people encountering the inag and then their worldview is shifting from there it might be different for different people um but I think that there is an overall subtle shift in worldview at at um Core Concepts like this idea that we are inherently good um and that we just need to become more aware of that and understand you know that just have more grace like all the things that we already talked about these are subtle ideas that have big implications and um I just think that the that I can't tell you like what specifically is going to happen to you if you use the anagram like I'm not here to do that but um I think it does shine a big light on some cracks in the foundations of of a lot of our faiths um like for me the reason I relate to it so much I didn't get that deep into the anagram before my faith crisis in my like um that was such a defining time in my life I feel like I had a different life back then um but so before that when I was using it a little bit I didn't get that deep into it but the ideas some of the ideas I had bought into that ended up when I needed to trust God the foundations of my faith had eroded and I couldn't trust him because I couldn't be sure that he was even real and that was buying into these little subtle ideas that went against the Bible and then you have to start justifying well maybe you know um maybe the Bible's not like God God's word and my faith isn't in the Bible my faith is in Christ himself um and just like these these subtle ideas have long-term effects of eroding truth a little bit here and a little bit there and they they can compile um and they there's here I have another quote for you that I think we'll just sum it up this comes from the screw tape letters um and so if you're familiar with cs lewi screw tap screw tape letters it is uh A A Narrative of a head demon instructing his student demon basically how to take down this his subject um he says it does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to Edge the man away from the light and out into nothing murderers know better than cards if cards can do the trick indeed the safest Road to Hell is the gradual one the gentle slope soft underfoot without sudden turnings without Milestones without signposts and that's I it almost took me down I mean just subtle ideas a little bit off here and there at the root will take you way off in the long run and I think that's the biggest Danger from my perspective of the inogram um we have to care about what's objectively true God gave us a physical world to help us be able to compare um uh what we to compare ideas to reality he gave us his word he gave us uh science that works because he made in a logical ordered world and so we can take these ideas that we come across and we can compare them to reality and live by truth even if we don't really understand the danger in something we don't have to lean not on your own understanding you don't have to understand every of it you have to we just trust the Lord MH and so that's that's my big thing is um we need to grow in discernment and mostly just trust God because he is a god of love he's a god of Joy he's not out I'm not saying that he's out here looking to condemn people or point fingers at people like that's not what it's all about it is just it's more about like rejecting lies and trusting in the Lord and something that's way better then the anagram is getting to know God better and I would highly recommend for people if you need something to replace that void yeah um do a study on the Trinity the three Persons Of God because once you learn um each person especially the Holy Spirit I think the inogram has kind of become a replacement for the Holy Spirit um and you'll see that if you study it like I didn't think that you could have that much Clarity on on the Trinity before I did the study because I'm like it was such a strange concept to me until I did a study on it and I'm like oh there are things to know you can actually get to know God really well so um I highly recommend the study I like is um uh he's where the joy is by Tara Lee Cabell okay yeah I'll leave link that as well for people yeah just get it get to know the Lord better he will direct your path he will do all the things that you want the inogram to do for you but he'll do it in a true in a in the right way Alexa I just want to thank you so much for coming on today and talking with me I will leave all the all the things all the links to um Alexa's social media for you guys to check her out is there anything that you want to add uh that before we sign off that maybe we didn't get to to go over I I don't think so I I think I'm I think I laid laid most of it out there I mean there's what am I saying there's tons there's so much more there's so much more yeah um I am working on a a video series to organize um all of the information and arguments that I'm putting together so if people want to check that out um they'll get they'll get more I guess because there is a lot to go over in this regard and uh I'm glad that you're making a video series on going over more arguments because I think it's so good to see both sides I think it's very healthy um I think it helps us put down our Pitchfork and think oh that's a brother and sister in Christ you know like we don't agree but why do they believe that maybe we can have an a good dialogue about this and you know it's not a hill that you know I think a lot of us should die on but it is a a in-house conversation that we do need to have so be sure to check out the description for more information let me know your thoughts in the comments below