Latest / Spiritual Hot Sauce / “God Is in the Exhale | Final Chapter, New Beginnings” Ep#55

Transcript

“God Is in the Exhale | Final Chapter, New Beginnings” Ep#55 · Spiritual Hot Sauce

0:00
Chris Jones: When I was a kid, I was a different person around my grandparents.
0:03
Chris Jones: The second we left, I'd exhale.
0:06
Chris Jones: Today's episode is about that exhale, about not having to perform, even with God.
0:12
Chris Jones: No answers, just questions.
0:14
Chris Jones: This episode marks the end of an air.
0:17
Chris Jones: It's our final audio-only release before we transition over to video.
0:22
Chris Jones: That means it's likely the last time you'll hear this theme music open the show.
0:28
Chris Jones: And the last time that I'll open it quite like this.
0:31
Chris Jones: Welcome.
0:32
Chris Jones: I'm Chris Jones, and this is Spiritual Hot Sauce.
0:40
Chris Jones: I watched a video the other day, and it was a kid probably, I don't know, between 10 and 12 years old, and he was in a church, and the pastor was on the stage, and there's a bunch of other little kids, and they were just having some conversations.
0:54
Chris Jones: And the kid told a joke I I would have got slapped for if I said in church when I was little growing up.
1:01
Chris Jones: You know, it wasn't appropriate for church.
1:04
Chris Jones: And the pastor had a reaction, you know, in a in a way that you would assume a pastor would react.
1:09
Chris Jones: He wasn't inappropriate, wasn't over the top, it's just, you know, correcting the child appropriately.
1:16
Chris Jones: But it made me think if this would have been in a different setting.
1:20
Chris Jones: I mean, same people, but if they would have came together in a different social environment, what would the reaction have been then?
1:28
Chris Jones: Would it still have been everybody gasping?
1:31
Chris Jones: Or would it have been some laughter and some chuckles?
1:35
Chris Jones: What happens then?
1:36
Chris Jones: And why is it different?
1:38
Chris Jones: That just doesn't seem genuine to me.
1:40
Chris Jones: Why is your behavior different at a church or a synagogue or a temple or a mosque than it is out in the world?
1:47
Chris Jones: What I'm saying is this, I think the whole concept leaves me a little confused.
1:52
Chris Jones: It appears to me we're taking the idea of the temple and trying to superimpose that onto a modern day church.
2:00
Chris Jones: And even if you think about Jesus, he didn't lead people to the temple to praise and pray, worship, sing, learn about God.
2:08
Chris Jones: He talked to people in their homes, out in the fields, in the city, in the streets.
2:15
Chris Jones: He talked to people anywhere.
2:16
Chris Jones: And everybody seemed so startled in the stories in the Bible when this happens.
2:21
Chris Jones: And a big part of the reason why that was is because God lived at the temple.
2:26
Chris Jones: So if you needed to work something out with God, that's where it happened.
2:30
Chris Jones: But Jesus was meeting people where they were in life.
2:34
Chris Jones: It didn't feel performative, it felt genuine to these people.
2:37
Chris Jones: No longer is it that you go over there when you want to get close to God, that you're blessed, because when you go in the city, when you go out of the city, when you're working, when you're in the fields, wherever you're at, whatever you're doing, you have God with you.
2:51
Chris Jones: So Jesus didn't just rock the boat with social etiquette.
2:55
Chris Jones: He destroyed it, knocked down the walls, the line that separates us from God.
3:00
Chris Jones: It kind of seems like to me, anyway, that Jesus kicks down the walls and opens it up to the world, and then we build walls, and then we close ourselves off from the world in the church.
3:13
Chris Jones: It starts getting kind of weird to me.
3:16
Chris Jones: I value the community, I respect the community, and I respect how you want to live your religion out.
3:24
Chris Jones: But I have to question what are we doing?
3:26
Chris Jones: Not the church.
3:27
Chris Jones: I mean, I don't, I'm not throwing rocks at the church, don't get me wrong.
3:31
Chris Jones: What I'm doing is I'm asking us, you and me, what are we doing?
3:36
Chris Jones: What's our intent of our heart?
3:37
Chris Jones: Are we performative or are we genuine?
3:40
Chris Jones: Is God with us here in life or is God over there in the building?
3:44
Chris Jones: These aren't questions for the religion.
3:47
Chris Jones: This is questions for us that we need to wrestle with.
3:50
Chris Jones: I mean, maybe some of you are hearing that I really need to bear down and I start, just need to start beginning to behave like I do in the church out in the world.
3:59
Chris Jones: That's a religious kind of a message.
4:01
Chris Jones: I mean, and if that's what you feel like is right for you, then that's what's right for you.
4:06
Chris Jones: That's not what's right for me, though.
4:09
Chris Jones: I think the message of Christ is about personal relationship and less about the performative religion.
4:14
Chris Jones: And I want to be clear, I'm not saying everybody leave your religion.
4:18
Chris Jones: You know, that's not what I'm saying.
4:19
Chris Jones: You have your religion.
4:20
Chris Jones: I, you know, I like I've said in the past, I don't think Jesus came to start a religion.
4:23
Chris Jones: I think we did that.
4:25
Chris Jones: It's kind of in our nature to do that.
4:27
Chris Jones: I guess what I'm getting at is the lines need to be blurred between our faith and life.
4:34
Chris Jones: Our faith, whatever it is, shouldn't be kept in a box.
4:37
Chris Jones: I remember growing up Sundays after church, we'd go visit my grandparents.
4:42
Chris Jones: I loved my grandparents.
4:44
Chris Jones: I enjoyed seeing them.
4:45
Chris Jones: But my behavior was different when I was around my grandparents.
4:49
Chris Jones: I would leave, I remember the feeling that I would just kind of exhale.
4:52
Chris Jones: I would kind of be back to myself.
4:55
Chris Jones: When I was with them, I tried to present a certain way because I knew there were certain things they didn't approve of.
5:01
Chris Jones: I think probably for a lot of us, that's what God is.
5:05
Chris Jones: He's like our grandparents at the church.
5:08
Chris Jones: And when we go there, there's some performance, and when we leave, we kind of exhale.
5:13
Chris Jones: I remember my grandmother saying, Chris is just a little angel.
5:17
Chris Jones: Well, I wasn't an angel, but I wasn't a devil either.
5:20
Chris Jones: I was just a human being.
5:22
Chris Jones: I just kept that part from my grandmother.
5:24
Chris Jones: It was very performative because I want a grandmother to experience me in a certain way.
5:30
Chris Jones: As I'm sure she wanted me to experience her in a certain way.
5:33
Chris Jones: However, my parents saw a different side of me.
5:36
Chris Jones: They seen the true me.
5:38
Chris Jones: My grandparents saw the best of me on Sundays.
5:41
Chris Jones: See, my parents knew the things about me.
5:44
Chris Jones: I didn't want my grandparents to know things that was less than ideal.
5:49
Chris Jones: And again, I loved my grandparents.
5:52
Chris Jones: However, I don't want that kind of relationship with God.
5:56
Chris Jones: I want God to be with me when I'm acting like an angel or acting like a devil, or the vast majority of time I'm just being human and I have big questions because there was things I couldn't talk about with my grandparents, only my parents.
6:11
Chris Jones: You know, I don't want to relegate God to that box that we call the church.
6:15
Chris Jones: And in no way, shape, or form am I trying to act like I have the ultimate wisdom and I'm coming down from the mountain to tell us all how you need to live, because I am absolutely not doing that.
6:26
Chris Jones: I mean, truthfully, I'm like the woman at the well.
6:29
Chris Jones: And for those of you who have never heard it, Jesus meets a woman at the well and he asked her for a drink.
6:35
Chris Jones: I mean, this seems harmless enough, except that she's a Samaritan and he doesn't know her.
6:41
Chris Jones: See, there is a long-standing conflict between the Samaritans and the Hebrew people.
6:46
Chris Jones: You didn't associate with Samaritans.
6:48
Chris Jones: They were thought of as beneath them.
6:50
Chris Jones: And as a religious Jewish man, you would never, ever initiate contact with a woman in public that you didn't know, especially a Samaritan woman.
7:00
Chris Jones: And that's why she responds like she does.
7:02
Chris Jones: Why are you a Jew, a Hebrew, asking a Samaritan woman for a drink?
7:08
Chris Jones: And then Jesus says, Go call your husband, have him come back.
7:12
Chris Jones: And it's at this point that she kind of tells a half-truth because there's some shame here, there's some embarrassment because of her relationship status.
7:21
Chris Jones: So she presents herself in the best way she can.
7:24
Chris Jones: Because she says, I have no husband.
7:26
Chris Jones: And Jesus says, You are correct.
7:29
Chris Jones: You've had five husbands, and the man that you're living with right now isn't your husband.
7:34
Chris Jones: Jesus was speaking to her like he knew her, and he wasn't condemning her.
7:39
Chris Jones: The truth was, Jesus is probably the only one that's not condemning her.
7:44
Chris Jones: And then he says, The water that you get from this well, you'll have to come back to get more of.
7:50
Chris Jones: You'll thirst again.
7:52
Chris Jones: But the water I offer you, you'll never thirst again.
7:56
Chris Jones: He's talking about spiritual things and how she experiences this moment changes everything.
8:05
Chris Jones: Jesus is saying, I want to be with you in your life and help you.
8:10
Chris Jones: Let's make the best of what you have here and now.
8:15
Chris Jones: And I'm in it with you.
8:17
Chris Jones: The woman at the well was a real person living a real life with real world problems.
8:23
Chris Jones: She wasn't flawless, she wasn't perfect.
8:26
Chris Jones: Life isn't perfect.
8:27
Chris Jones: But that's where Jesus met her.
8:29
Chris Jones: And Jesus didn't tell her, hey, you need to get to the church, the temple, your religion.
8:35
Chris Jones: The conversation Jesus had with the woman at the well, you couldn't have in a church.
8:40
Chris Jones: See, she didn't have a religious experience.
8:45
Chris Jones: All the people in the Bible, the New Testament, that had experiences with Jesus, none of theirs was religious either.
8:54
Chris Jones: These were encounters with the divine.
8:56
Chris Jones: Their DNA was changed.
8:58
Chris Jones: If your DNA is predisposed to be something, it just changes the way you grow.
9:03
Chris Jones: It changes the direction.
9:05
Chris Jones: In other words, it changes your path and it changes you and increments over time.
9:12
Chris Jones: I think that's one of the things that religion does is it gives us a false sense of we understand it all in this little box that we've created.
9:21
Chris Jones: But the truth is, true spiritual divine experiences still happen.
9:28
Chris Jones: I don't think they're everyday commonplace.
9:29
Chris Jones: They might happen just a very few times in your entire life, but they are transformational when they happen.
9:36
Chris Jones: They do change your DNA.
9:39
Chris Jones: They change how you see God, they change how you see others, and they change how you see yourself.
9:45
Chris Jones: It's the bull elephant metaphor I use.
9:47
Chris Jones: And if you haven't heard me tell it, it says that we can be together in our community.
9:52
Chris Jones: We all assimilate in our religion, whether it's in a church, a temple, a mosque, a synagogue, whatever it is, we put an image of God up front and then we all assimilate to it.
10:03
Chris Jones: And we create this idea that this is our destination.
10:06
Chris Jones: We hear stories about people that encountered the bull elephant.
10:10
Chris Jones: And when I say the bull elephant, it represents an encounter with the divine, like the woman at the well.
10:15
Chris Jones: We sing praises to the divine, we worship the divine, we encourage one another, we comfort one another, and I think all this is wonderful, but it's not an experience, it's not an interaction with the divine.
10:28
Chris Jones: It's like me going to visit my grandparents on Sunday.
10:32
Chris Jones: It feels safe.
10:33
Chris Jones: But I think it's supposed to.
10:34
Chris Jones: I think it's supposed to be encouraging and comforting to get you to go out into the jungle for yourself and experience the bow elephant.
10:43
Chris Jones: And navigating the jungle itself is part of the journey, it's part of the learning, it's part of the experience.
10:49
Chris Jones: So when you do finally see an aspect of the bow elephant, the divine, it changes your DNA.
10:57
Chris Jones: And it's not about seeing God in true form, it's about seeing God how you need to see God for your life, your path, your purpose.
11:07
Chris Jones: That's what I want spiritual hot sauce to be.
11:09
Chris Jones: I want it to be the jungle.
11:11
Chris Jones: I want it to be that place where we have real life questions, real life discussions that live outside of religion.
11:19
Chris Jones: I want to have the kind of conversations that challenge us, that helps us reflect, look in the mirror, and figure out what we truly believe.
11:28
Chris Jones: I want to have the real conversations.
11:30
Chris Jones: Like, what do you do with death, the physical death?
11:34
Chris Jones: Most of us don't know what to do with it.
11:36
Chris Jones: How do I deal with that?
11:37
Chris Jones: That's not conversations we typically have in the church.
11:40
Chris Jones: Okay, where do we have them?
11:42
Chris Jones: And ignoring it isn't the answer.
11:44
Chris Jones: What about the conversation with the atheist?
11:46
Chris Jones: Do we reject everything they say because, well, they're an atheist?
11:51
Chris Jones: Where's the critical thinking in that?
11:53
Chris Jones: Is there not value there?
11:54
Chris Jones: I think there is.
11:55
Chris Jones: There's a space in between a theist and an atheist where we can't prove it is or we can't prove it isn't.
12:03
Chris Jones: But if we're being honest, that's where true faith lives.
12:06
Chris Jones: How do you know where that space is until you challenge your own faith?
12:10
Chris Jones: And that's where I want to be, is in the uncertainty because the uncertainty is the jungle.
12:15
Chris Jones: It's foolish to reject any kind of truth just because the person that's presenting it you disagree with fundamentally.
12:22
Chris Jones: I mean, that's a fool's logic.
12:24
Chris Jones: Now, I've already started recording these videos, and I and I don't purposely stay away from religion because I don't.
12:30
Chris Jones: I bring in faith and spirituality, but half my guests are atheist.
12:34
Chris Jones: And a lot of the things we're talking about isn't really religious ideas.
12:39
Chris Jones: They're life ideas.
12:41
Chris Jones: It's a place where theists, deists, atheists, agnostics, we can all come together and we can share ideas and we can find our truth.
12:49
Chris Jones: Now I've got to tell you, on the first few episodes, maybe even more than the first few, you're gonna have to show me some grace because I'm learning with the video.
12:57
Chris Jones: So yeah, there's that.
12:59
Chris Jones: But I am upgrading the equipment.
13:01
Chris Jones: I am learning how to film.
13:02
Chris Jones: Now, the guest I've been having, those conversations and the ones scheduled, wow.
13:09
Chris Jones: Incredible.
13:10
Chris Jones: Incredible.
13:11
Chris Jones: We aren't in Kansas anymore.
13:13
Chris Jones: But in the meantime, this will be the last episode that I release from audio only.
13:20
Chris Jones: The next time you see spiritual hot sauce, it will be in a video format.
13:26
Chris Jones: If the platform you listen to me on doesn't support video, no problem, the audio will still come through.
13:33
Chris Jones: But on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, that will be video.
13:39
Chris Jones: But in order to do this, it's a major overhaul.
13:42
Chris Jones: It's a huge investment of time, money, and everything.
13:46
Chris Jones: That takes time.
13:48
Chris Jones: So I don't know when Spiritual Hot Sauce will be back up and running.
13:52
Chris Jones: I do know that I'm started recording already these videos, but they've got to be mixed, they've got to be edited, and there's gonna be some time that I'm gonna have to learn how to do that.
14:05
Chris Jones: And when we do come back on, the primary release day won't be on Thursdays.
14:10
Chris Jones: It will be on Sundays.
14:12
Chris Jones: Some quiet time, a cup of coffee, and spiritual hot sauce on Sunday mornings.
14:17
Chris Jones: Just know that I'm rushing to get this done, but until then, the release cadence is stopping, which means there'll be no more episodes released until we move to the new format.
14:29
Chris Jones: I don't know how soon that will be.
14:31
Chris Jones: So when season three comes out, it's all video and the release date goes to Sunday.
14:38
Chris Jones: Thank you for being supportive.
14:40
Chris Jones: I appreciate it.
14:41
Chris Jones: Make sure you follow, make sure you subscribe, make sure you share it with others, because I absolutely want you to be there when we kick off on video in season three.
14:50
Chris Jones: We've got some big guests lined up.
14:53
Chris Jones: It's gonna be good.
14:54
Chris Jones: Trust me on that.
14:55
Chris Jones: And above all, when you have the opportunity, throw the rock.