Latest / Spiritual Hot Sauce / “Doubt: A Path to Faith” Ep#30

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“Doubt: A Path to Faith” Ep#30 · Spiritual Hot Sauce

• 0:00
  Chris Jones: Doubt.
• 0:00
  Chris Jones: Most of us grew up believing that doubt in religion is a problem, and it was something that needed to be dealt with.
• 0:07
  Chris Jones: People would gather around and try to offer advice and insight to help you back to a place of belief.
• 0:14
  Chris Jones: And sometimes it was even seen as a sin, that we just needed to embrace what we were taught.
• 0:20
  Chris Jones: Is it possible that doubt isn't a problem or a sin, but a tool, a necessary tool to help you navigate your faith and find your truth?
• 0:31
  Chris Jones: Welcome.
• 0:32
  Chris Jones: I'm Chris Jones.
• 0:34
  Chris Jones: And this is Spiritual Hot Sauce.
• 0:39
  Chris Jones: Are we getting it right?
• 0:41
  Chris Jones: The big question for me is, am I getting it right?
• 0:45
  Chris Jones: I spend a lot of time in front of the mirror challenging myself, doubting myself, doubting, am I gravitating to the easy road and the easy path rather than where I should be?
• 0:57
  Chris Jones: I think the reality is you find your truth in the struggle.
• 1:02
  Chris Jones: It's not easy.
• 1:04
  Chris Jones: It wasn't meant to be easy.
• 1:06
  Chris Jones: You know, recently I had John Williamson on the show, and he brought up a good point that we all start on square one.
• 1:13
  Chris Jones: And I think we all do start on square one.
• 1:16
  Chris Jones: And the idea is to move along and progress and grow.
• 1:19
  Chris Jones: And when we had that discussion, I brought up the metaphor of the bow elephant that I use often.
• 1:24
  Chris Jones: Now, if you've never heard me use this metaphor or you need a refresher, let me just give a brief recap.
• 1:30
  Chris Jones: The bull elephant represents a true firsthand personal encounter with the divine.
• 1:36
  Chris Jones: The jungle is what stands between you and the experience of the bull elephant.
• 1:41
  Chris Jones: Everyone's jungle is different, but it does represent adversity that happens internally and externally, things we have to overcome.
• 1:51
  Chris Jones: The community represents organized religion, where we often trade personal journey for the comfort of community.
• 1:59
  Chris Jones: Now, my conversation with John, I had said that you can be together in community and talk about the bow elephant that's out in the jungle.
• 2:08
  Chris Jones: You can sing praises to the bow elephant, you can teach each other about the bow elephant, you can even have someone there that's had experiences with a bow elephant and tell you what you need to do and to make the bow elephant happy and how it should work.
• 2:24
  Chris Jones: But until you leave the community and go through the process and the journey in the jungle of finding the bow elephant and having that experience, until then, you've just been in community.
• 2:39
  Chris Jones: You've never had the real experience.
• 2:41
  Chris Jones: But it's in navigating the jungle is the adversity.
• 2:46
  Chris Jones: That's where you are grown.
• 2:47
  Chris Jones: That's where you're made stronger.
• 2:49
  Chris Jones: And it is a process.
• 2:51
  Chris Jones: It's not an event.
• 2:52
  Chris Jones: You don't just walk out and go look at the bow elephant.
• 2:55
  Chris Jones: But the tool that I said that you take with you to like a machete to navigate through the jungle is doubt.
• 3:03
  Chris Jones: Doubt should be one of your primary tools.
• 3:06
  Chris Jones: I mean, without doubt, you have no true way to navigate the jungle.
• 3:10
  Chris Jones: You'll just be roaming around.
• 3:12
  Chris Jones: I mean, and don't get me wrong, the journey is most of this process to get to your experience of realization.
• 3:20
  Chris Jones: But you'll never get to that realization unless you use doubt.
• 3:25
  Chris Jones: So doubt isn't unbelief, it's a tool.
• 3:29
  Chris Jones: Two different things.
• 3:31
  Chris Jones: We all want the new thing.
• 3:33
  Chris Jones: We all want to feel the growth.
• 3:35
  Chris Jones: We all want something better.
• 3:38
  Chris Jones: But here's the problem: nobody wants to leave their comfortable chair.
• 3:43
  Chris Jones: We don't want to get up and go find it.
• 3:45
  Chris Jones: We want that experience to come to us.
• 3:49
  Chris Jones: Nobody wants change because change is scary.
• 3:53
  Chris Jones: Change is terrifying because we don't know what's on the other side.
• 3:57
  Chris Jones: We want absolutes.
• 3:58
  Chris Jones: We want to live in a place that doesn't have the unknown.
• 4:03
  Chris Jones: We want safe unknown.
• 4:05
  Chris Jones: We want new, but we want it brought to us where we are.
• 4:09
  Chris Jones: I think that's why we love movies and video games because it allows us to sit in our chair and experience an adventure that doesn't require risk from us.
• 4:20
  Chris Jones: It allows us to experience it without experiencing it.
• 4:24
  Chris Jones: It's hearing the story of the bull elephant in a grandiose way.
• 4:28
  Chris Jones: In some ways, I think that's why we are so comfortable with taking the tool of doubt and placing it on the altar of the church.
• 4:37
  Chris Jones: And then sitting in our chair of certainty while somebody tells us about their adventure with the bull elephant or tells us a story of someone else's adventure with the bull elephant.
• 4:48
  Chris Jones: There's no risk in this.
• 4:50
  Chris Jones: It gives us the sense of adventure without the adventure.
• 4:53
  Chris Jones: It gives us the sense of the seeking without truly seeking.
• 4:59
  Chris Jones: See, in that situation, change isn't required.
• 5:02
  Chris Jones: And that's what we fear is change.
• 5:04
  Chris Jones: Change is uncomfortable.
• 5:05
  Chris Jones: Change is even painful, even if it's for the better.
• 5:10
  Chris Jones: And I think that's why we're so comfortable with trading our adventure of the journey for the story about the journey, because change isn't required, and our comfort is intact.
• 5:23
  Chris Jones: That's why we need to embrace the uncertainty of change.
• 5:28
  Chris Jones: Why is this so important?
• 5:30
  Chris Jones: Well, think about it like this.
• 5:32
  Chris Jones: When you go to church, well, I mean, even if you go to temple or mosque or a synagogue, wherever you go, but when you go in this gathering, we're always present a God in a one size fits all.
• 5:45
  Chris Jones: In other words, it's about us assimilating ourselves to that God.
• 5:50
  Chris Jones: And I'm not saying there isn't some assimilating yourself to God.
• 5:53
  Chris Jones: That's not what I'm saying.
• 5:55
  Chris Jones: But what I'm saying is a one size fits all God, a one-dimensional God, isn't realistic.
• 6:02
  Chris Jones: That if you think about the disciples and Jesus, what was their relationship with him?
• 6:07
  Chris Jones: Was it the same?
• 6:08
  Chris Jones: No, it wasn't.
• 6:09
  Chris Jones: Peter had a different relationship with Jesus than John the beloved did.
• 6:13
  Chris Jones: If you asked John the beloved, what was your relationship like with Jesus?
• 6:18
  Chris Jones: He would tell you Jesus was very loving, very nurturing, very calming, very peaceful.
• 6:23
  Chris Jones: He calmed his anxiety, he calmed his worries, and he brought him this beautiful place of rest in uncertainty.
• 6:33
  Chris Jones: But if you ask Peter, what's your relationship like with Jesus?
• 6:36
  Chris Jones: Peter would tell you, mine's nothing like John's relationship.
• 6:41
  Chris Jones: Jesus challenges me, he pushes me.
• 6:44
  Chris Jones: At times it even seems like he forces me into a little bit of that anxiety and that uncertainty to experience it.
• 6:51
  Chris Jones: So why is their relationship so different?
• 6:54
  Chris Jones: Well, because each of them needed to experience Jesus in that way.
• 6:59
  Chris Jones: Because it wasn't about whether they saw him correctly, it was about what they got from it and how it impacted them.
• 7:06
  Chris Jones: It was for them.
• 7:08
  Chris Jones: It was helping them in their path, in their journey, and helping them in what they needed to do in their life.
• 7:15
  Chris Jones: So why would we think when we assimilate together and presented a one-dimensional God that that will work for us?
• 7:23
  Chris Jones: And if some of you are still struggling with this idea of doubt as a tool, I get it, think of it like this.
• 7:30
  Chris Jones: It was Thomas, doubting Thomas, they called him.
• 7:33
  Chris Jones: It was in his doubt, not doubt as an unbelief, but doubt in his path that brought him to the place where he had the experience with Jesus, where Jesus says, Thomas, touch my scars, that he finds his truth.
• 7:49
  Chris Jones: Now think about this.
• 7:50
  Chris Jones: Thomas was with him when he performed all these miracles.
• 7:54
  Chris Jones: He saw it firsthand, personally.
• 7:56
  Chris Jones: He was his inner circle, his disciple.
• 7:59
  Chris Jones: For three years, daily, he witnessed Jesus raise the dead, heal the sick, feed the masses.
• 8:07
  Chris Jones: But yet he doubted.
• 8:09
  Chris Jones: But it was through his doubt is how he found his truth.
• 8:14
  Chris Jones: That's how Thomas needed to see him.
• 8:17
  Chris Jones: They all needed to see him how they saw him because it was about them.
• 8:23
  Chris Jones: It was about how it impacted them and how it changed them.
• 8:27
  Chris Jones: It's doubt that pushes you deeper into the jungle.
• 8:31
  Chris Jones: The experience of the bow elephant doesn't mean you physically see God.
• 8:36
  Chris Jones: It means you get to a point of realization of how you see God.
• 8:43
  Chris Jones: Which will be the way that you need to see God.
• 8:46
  Chris Jones: This whole journey is about you having the moment you need in order to develop your truth.
• 8:52
  Chris Jones: But you need to hear me.
• 8:54
  Chris Jones: Part of the process of this, as I've already mentioned, is the adversity of navigating the jungle itself, the adversity of using doubt to push in to uncertainty to figure it out.
• 9:06
  Chris Jones: And I don't mean sitting around and just thinking.
• 9:08
  Chris Jones: I mean this is an experience of navigating your faith.
• 9:12
  Chris Jones: And it's through this adversity is where you are formed in the journey.
• 9:17
  Chris Jones: Peter and John learned more about Jesus and how they should see Jesus when they were going through adversity and he was there for them during those times.
• 9:28
  Chris Jones: That is where their true relationship with Jesus was formed.
• 9:32
  Chris Jones: It was in the adversity, it was in the struggle.
• 9:35
  Chris Jones: As we go through the jungle, the struggle, that's where we learn what God's like.
• 9:42
  Chris Jones: Spirituality is born out of adversity.
• 9:45
  Chris Jones: It's not born out of religion.
• 9:47
  Chris Jones: They're two different things.
• 9:49
  Chris Jones: But just know whether this is going to be through controlled adversity of forcing yourself into your uncertainty, or it's going to be external adversity that's going to push you out of your comfort zone and you're going to have to choose.
• 10:03
  Chris Jones: It is through this process I'm talking about is how you navigate it and how you find your truth, how you need to see God as you go through this that changes you and forms you into something different.
• 10:18
  Chris Jones: So just know this is about dealing with adversity within ourselves and challenging ourselves, that we are the jungle, that we are what keeps us from the experience of the bull elephant, that it's within ourselves of what has to be navigated with doubt in order to get to this truth.
• 10:36
  Chris Jones: And that means we have to give up certainty, certainty of things that our whole life sometimes we've held on to as truth.
• 10:44
  Chris Jones: Everything has to be challenged, and that's hard to do, but that's the path.
• 10:49
  Chris Jones: So now do you see what I'm saying?
• 10:51
  Chris Jones: How can someone else's experience in their jungle finding their truth of how they need to see God become our truth of how we need to see God?
• 11:02
  Chris Jones: But rather we should hear it as encouraging and we should hear it as the call to adventure for us.
• 11:08
  Chris Jones: But I think that's one of the biggest problems is that when people come back and they've had this experience and they write a book, they start a movement because they've seen something that's unique and different.
• 11:20
  Chris Jones: I mean, we don't want to go out into the jungle and find that experience ourselves.
• 11:25
  Chris Jones: We want you to tell us about it.
• 11:26
  Chris Jones: Write the book, we'll buy the book, speak, we'll come listen to you, we'll support you, we'll hold you up and talk about what an amazing person you are.
• 11:36
  Chris Jones: I mean, but when you do that, that just creates a hierarchy, a pecking order in the community.
• 11:42
  Chris Jones: And now instead of people trying to get to this place of higher understanding of their truth of how they see God, what they're doing is they're trying to get to a place of being pedestaled in the community of the hierarchy.
• 11:56
  Chris Jones: We've placed no value on going out for the experience, and we place every bit of the value of someone that speaks like they've been in the experience.
• 12:06
  Chris Jones: But this call to adventure is for everyone.
• 12:10
  Chris Jones: It's what we should all be challenged to do and go find.
• 12:14
  Chris Jones: This is our journey.
• 12:15
  Chris Jones: This is our truth.
• 12:16
  Chris Jones: This is how we need to figure out how we need to see God, emotionally, intellectually, mentally, and physically, in all facets, in all parts of us.
• 12:29
  Chris Jones: It's in this journey is where we find that truth.
• 12:32
  Chris Jones: And the reason why we're always looking for the next big thing, the next book, the next person that's gone to see the bull elephant, and we want to buy their book and posture ourselves after them and their experience is because the experience we are having is not a fulfilling one.
• 12:50
  Chris Jones: So let's challenge ourselves to get up from the table of the community, not permanently, not leaving it like we're just being done with it, but let's get uncomfortable with ourselves out in our journey.
• 13:03
  Chris Jones: So we can come back and we have something valid to offer.
• 13:08
  Chris Jones: Now, how different does that community look?
• 13:10
  Chris Jones: Rather than having a community of people coming together wanting to hear stories of other people's adventures and wanting to see God one-dimensionally, but rather you are having a group of adventures coming together that's been out into the jungle, that have something valid to offer the rest of the community.
• 13:30
  Chris Jones: This is a community that has a more three-dimensional understanding of God together.
• 13:36
  Chris Jones: They encourage one another to keep pushing on, they comfort one another when things get hard.
• 13:42
  Chris Jones: And I think that is much more accurate of what it was to be to begin with.
• 13:49
  Chris Jones: So the elephant metaphor isn't about disassembling the community, it's about transforming it through us individually.
• 13:58
  Chris Jones: Because in the journey, you learn to love yourself correctly through God's love, which means you learn to love others correctly through God's love.
• 14:07
  Chris Jones: I mean, this is what it's about.
• 14:09
  Chris Jones: For us to get to that place, we have to pick up the tool of doubt.
• 14:15
  Chris Jones: We have to be willing to get uncomfortable.
• 14:18
  Chris Jones: We have to be willing to challenge ourselves with things that are different, and we have to be willing to push into the unknown and embrace uncertainty to discover what we truly believe and how we see God.
• 14:33
  Chris Jones: So when we go back to our community, we are not in just a religious, ceremonious posture trying to see God in a one-dimensional way.
• 14:42
  Chris Jones: That we collectively come together and we become hope.
• 14:49
  Chris Jones: Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce.
• 14:51
  Chris Jones: I'd love to hear from you.
• 14:53
  Chris Jones: So please reach out with questions, comments, andor concerns.
• 14:57
  Chris Jones: And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us.
• 15:01
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• 15:04
  Chris Jones: And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others.
• 15:08
  Chris Jones: I would appreciate that.
• 15:10
  Chris Jones: We'll see you next time.