Latest / Spiritual Hot Sauce / “Beyond Believing: The Journey of a Disciple” Ep#26

Transcript

“Beyond Believing: The Journey of a Disciple” Ep#26 · Spiritual Hot Sauce

• 0:00
  Chris Jones: What if you could read the Bible without ever being influenced by religion?
• 0:03
  Chris Jones: How would you read the text?
• 0:05
  Chris Jones: And I mean nothing, nothing from churches or preaching or teaching or even religious ideas in our culture.
• 0:12
  Chris Jones: Think about it.
• 0:13
  Chris Jones: How would we see Jesus?
• 0:15
  Chris Jones: If we could separate Jesus from the religion built around him, would we see Jesus differently?
• 0:21
  Chris Jones: What would change?
• 0:23
  Chris Jones: There's actually someone who did this, and they documented their journey.
• 0:28
  Chris Jones: He saw Jesus completely outside of religious traditions.
• 0:32
  Chris Jones: And the outcome?
• 0:34
  Chris Jones: It might surprise you, and it's definitely going to challenge you.
• 0:38
  Chris Jones: Welcome.
• 0:39
  Chris Jones: I'm Chris Jones.
• 0:41
  Chris Jones: This is where believers and skeptics alike are invited to embark on a journey of faith, philosophy, and life from a different perspective.
• 0:49
  Chris Jones: Whether we are joined by an insightful guest or we just jump into the deep end.
• 0:54
  Chris Jones: This exploration promises to challenge us all.
• 0:57
  Chris Jones: Are we getting it right?
• 0:59
  Chris Jones: This is Spiritual Hot Sauce.
• 1:02
  Chris Jones: Wow, is it cold out right now where I am at?
• 1:12
  Chris Jones: It's one degree outside.
• 1:14
  Chris Jones: Thank God for hot coffee and heat.
• 1:18
  Chris Jones: Anyway, Jul and I are hanging out in the studio right now.
• 1:22
  Chris Jones: Jul is my cat.
• 1:23
  Chris Jones: Her name is Jul, not J-E-W-E-L, but J-U-L, short for Julie Newmar.
• 1:30
  Chris Jones: And if you know what that means, then I'm impressed.
• 1:32
  Chris Jones: Send me an email.
• 1:33
  Chris Jones: Let me know you got it.
• 1:34
  Chris Jones: I hope the weather's better where you're at, and that you're nice and cozy, because this one is challenging.
• 1:40
  Chris Jones: It might even make us a little uncomfortable.
• 1:42
  Chris Jones: It's going to force us to look at what we hold to be religious truths and challenge them in a good way.
• 1:48
  Chris Jones: So let's get challenged.
• 1:51
  Chris Jones: There was this man born in India, and this would have been in the mid to late 1800s.
• 1:57
  Chris Jones: Now I don't know if you know anything about the caste system in India, but this man wasn't born to an upper echelon caste.
• 2:04
  Chris Jones: He was born to just kind of regular folks.
• 2:07
  Chris Jones: And he didn't come from money.
• 2:08
  Chris Jones: He came from a very humble background.
• 2:10
  Chris Jones: And on top of that, he was living with adversity that most of us can't even comprehend.
• 2:16
  Chris Jones: He was a second class citizen in his own country, his own home, because at that time India was under British rule.
• 2:23
  Chris Jones: Now he grew up as a practicing Hindu, and though he never went to church or learned anything about Christianity, he did have experiences with the Christian missionaries, and he didn't like them because he said they were very demeaning and they made fun of him for his religious practices and beliefs.
• 2:41
  Chris Jones: How strange is that that in your own homeland, what is the predominant religion, you're made to feel awkward for it.
• 2:48
  Chris Jones: But that's exactly what happened.
• 2:50
  Chris Jones: Now, while growing up, he heard a poem, Gujarati, Didactic Stanza by Shamal Bhatt.
• 2:57
  Chris Jones: Now the poem is about giving good for evil.
• 3:01
  Chris Jones: It famously states, give a meal for a bowl of water.
• 3:05
  Chris Jones: He said it gripped his mind and his heart when he learned it as a child.
• 3:09
  Chris Jones: He said the precept, return good for evil, became his guiding principle, and that idea would set the stage later in his life for something bigger.
• 3:18
  Chris Jones: Now he left home to go pursue higher education at a college in India, but he was doomed to fail before he even started.
• 3:26
  Chris Jones: His father would die, and it would cause grief and he would be homesick and he would academically struggle and ultimately drop out and go back home.
• 3:35
  Chris Jones: Now later on, he would have a very unique and rare opportunity to go to London, England and study law.
• 3:42
  Chris Jones: Now he completely seized this opportunity, and his family supported him financially, and though this was such an achievement, not only to get around the caste system in his own home country, but to go to London, England, an elite school and study, where even as a British citizen, this was an honor and a privilege.
• 4:02
  Chris Jones: Now his mother wasn't so big on this idea.
• 4:05
  Chris Jones: She was terrified of her son leaving and going to London, England.
• 4:10
  Chris Jones: But reluctantly, she agreed.
• 4:13
  Chris Jones: Now, once he's in London, he's not just immersed in these studies.
• 4:17
  Chris Jones: He's immersed in a whole different culture.
• 4:20
  Chris Jones: It's an alien landscape.
• 4:22
  Chris Jones: It's different ideas, different thoughts, different ideology.
• 4:26
  Chris Jones: And he samples them all.
• 4:28
  Chris Jones: He'll take the book or the writings of the religion or the philosophy or ideology, and he'll read it from front cover to back cover.
• 4:37
  Chris Jones: And once he's done that, he'll go and challenge himself by allowing the experts or the leaders in that thinking to try to transform him or convert him into their way of thinking.
• 4:49
  Chris Jones: Now, any kind of religion or any kind of philosophical thought, including atheism, he challenges himself with this method.
• 4:58
  Chris Jones: Now, he enjoys learning all these different philosophies and religions and these different ways of thinking.
• 5:04
  Chris Jones: And though he finds value in them, there's nothing transformative for him in them.
• 5:09
  Chris Jones: Now he had a friend that was working his way through college by selling Bibles.
• 5:14
  Chris Jones: So he bought a Bible from him because he had to challenge himself with this one too.
• 5:21
  Chris Jones: And he started reading it from front cover to back cover.
• 5:24
  Chris Jones: Now he said the Old Testament was painfully boring, but he was committed.
• 5:30
  Chris Jones: He was going to do this, so he worked his way through it.
• 5:33
  Chris Jones: But as painfully boring as the Old Testament was, he said when he got to the New Testament, he found life.
• 5:39
  Chris Jones: And he said, once he started reading the teachings of Jesus, it came alive for him.
• 5:44
  Chris Jones: And he said, Jesus is one of the greatest teachers in all humanity.
• 5:49
  Chris Jones: And the more he read, the more he immersed himself in it.
• 5:53
  Chris Jones: And the more it spoke to him that it was that transformative.
• 5:56
  Chris Jones: And that he was convinced that this is the way.
• 6:00
  Chris Jones: This is how everyone should be living.
• 6:02
  Chris Jones: It was like taking the poem that had spoken to him as a child and bringing it to fruition.
• 6:09
  Chris Jones: Now, he says that he found his religion.
• 6:13
  Chris Jones: This is it.
• 6:13
  Chris Jones: He is planning on converting.
• 6:15
  Chris Jones: He's going to go meet with these people and expecting fully that he is going to convert and become a Christian.
• 6:22
  Chris Jones: But that's not what happens.
• 6:24
  Chris Jones: Because when he sits down to talk to the leaders of the church, what he finds is how he read it and how they're presenting it are two different things.
• 6:34
  Chris Jones: He would later say that he would be a Christian if it wasn't for the Christians.
• 6:39
  Chris Jones: Now, the major points that he really disagreed with are these things.
• 6:44
  Chris Jones: See, the church believed Jesus' death was for forgiveness of their sins, and therefore you could give your sins to him and he would cover it for you.
• 6:55
  Chris Jones: You were forgiven.
• 6:56
  Chris Jones: He rejected that idea because that idea totally bypasses the commandment of Christ of being discipled and transforming and becoming like him in his commandment of love.
• 7:08
  Chris Jones: Because how they were presenting it is much like how we sometimes see it.
• 7:12
  Chris Jones: That seeing Jesus as God means that God can forgive us for our sins.
• 7:19
  Chris Jones: So therefore, sometimes we use Jesus as an excuse for our sins instead of using Jesus as a template in how we live our life.
• 7:28
  Chris Jones: He didn't like the idea that Jesus is the only Son of God.
• 7:33
  Chris Jones: He's seen all of mankind as sons and daughters of God, and that Jesus was the template in how we are to live our life and how it heals us.
• 7:43
  Chris Jones: It's like I say, there's a difference in the religion that worships the deity of Christ versus becoming a disciple of Christ.
• 7:51
  Chris Jones: He was seeing it as being discipled by the commandment of Christ and his teachings.
• 7:56
  Chris Jones: Now he went to several different church leaders and allowed them to try to convert him.
• 8:02
  Chris Jones: However, he could never get around this point.
• 8:05
  Chris Jones: So he would leave Christianity exactly where he found it.
• 8:09
  Chris Jones: But when he left, he took the Bible and he took Jesus with him.
• 8:14
  Chris Jones: Now, after he graduated, he would go to South Africa to practice law, representing a trading firm.
• 8:20
  Chris Jones: However, when he got there, fully expecting to live the life of a barrister, instead he ran head on right into racism, where all non-whites basically had no rights.
• 8:32
  Chris Jones: So he started unifying people of color together, all different colors and all different nationalities that was non-white.
• 8:40
  Chris Jones: However, he made sure that whatever he led, everyone had to obey this law of love, because this commandment, this teachings of Christ was above everything else in his life.
• 8:54
  Chris Jones: He was a disciple of it.
• 8:56
  Chris Jones: And he says, hate dissolves under the transmission of love.
• 9:00
  Chris Jones: Love is the only remedy for hate.
• 9:03
  Chris Jones: Anger begets anger and hate begets hate.
• 9:07
  Chris Jones: It's like I've said before on this podcast that if someone has been poisoned, you don't give them more poison.
• 9:14
  Chris Jones: You give them the antidote.
• 9:16
  Chris Jones: And the antidote to the poison of hate is love.
• 9:20
  Chris Jones: It's a weird thing, isn't it?
• 9:22
  Chris Jones: It's like if they hit you and they're beating you.
• 9:25
  Chris Jones: If you fight back, they'll point to the moment you hit them and use that as the excuse of their actions.
• 9:30
  Chris Jones: But if you never hit them back, if you never defend yourself in that way, and I'm talking specifically for this situation, that you never choose violence, then eventually they're seeing themselves in the mirror of you.
• 9:46
  Chris Jones: And then when they stand in front of a mirror, they'll say, I can't do this anymore.
• 9:51
  Chris Jones: This is evil.
• 9:52
  Chris Jones: This is wrong.
• 9:54
  Chris Jones: And he says, Because it's not that they're evil people, because they're not.
• 9:58
  Chris Jones: They just don't know any better.
• 10:00
  Chris Jones: And we all have to learn.
• 10:02
  Chris Jones: See, it's not just about refusing to hate them with his actions, but he's refusing to hate them within himself.
• 10:10
  Chris Jones: He is choosing love to love them as himself.
• 10:15
  Chris Jones: And if he loves them as himself, he's not going to choose violence.
• 10:20
  Chris Jones: It's very different.
• 10:21
  Chris Jones: And he calls the movement satyagraha.
• 10:25
  Chris Jones: It's Sanskrit, and it literally translates to truth force.
• 10:29
  Chris Jones: Now he defined it like this: active, nonviolent resistance to evil pursued through self-suffering, compassion, and refusal to cooperate with injustice while clinging to truth with soul force or love force.
• 10:45
  Chris Jones: Now, by unifying everyone through this movement he calls satyagraha, he is able to make changes in South Africa in giving people of color more rights.
• 10:55
  Chris Jones: Now it didn't fix everything, but it was a huge step forward, something they'd never seen before.
• 11:02
  Chris Jones: Now, when he leaves South Africa and goes back home to India almost 20 years later, he receives a large hero's welcome.
• 11:11
  Chris Jones: His nonviolent campaigns against racial discrimination in South Africa had already been widely reported in Indian newspapers.
• 11:20
  Chris Jones: This had helped grow and establish his reputation.
• 11:23
  Chris Jones: Now, after settling in, he took the first year or so just traveling around India observing conditions.
• 11:30
  Chris Jones: Now, after he witnesses everything that's happening, he begins the movement of Satyagraha, and slowly it builds momentum.
• 11:38
  Chris Jones: And more and more different religions, cultures start to surround him and embrace this movement.
• 11:46
  Chris Jones: Now, from the beginning, he's made it quite clear that we will not choose hate in response to hate, and we will not choose violence in response to violence.
• 11:56
  Chris Jones: That we want the British to leave, but we don't want them to leave as enemies, we want them to leave as friends.
• 12:03
  Chris Jones: Remember, he doesn't see them as evil.
• 12:07
  Chris Jones: He just sees them as not knowing any better.
• 12:10
  Chris Jones: Now, as this goes on and on and gets rougher and rougher, and the British use violence, there will be some times that in resistance to it, they respond with violence.
• 12:24
  Chris Jones: But when they do, he stops and says, I'll fast.
• 12:27
  Chris Jones: I'll fast until I die.
• 12:29
  Chris Jones: If you don't stop, this movement will be on its own.
• 12:32
  Chris Jones: And he does.
• 12:33
  Chris Jones: There's even a time where he fasts so long that his kidneys begin to shut down.
• 12:37
  Chris Jones: He is truly dying.
• 12:39
  Chris Jones: But they know they have to have him in order to stay unified in this movement.
• 12:44
  Chris Jones: So peace prevails.
• 12:47
  Chris Jones: And ultimately, they do follow his direction and they do follow his leadership.
• 12:53
  Chris Jones: And the man the world calls Gandhi will watch the British leave, not as enemies, but as friends.
• 13:01
  Chris Jones: Now there's a whole lot of misinformation about Gandhi out there.
• 13:05
  Chris Jones: I mean, I have never seen such a lightning rod of misinformation from different political ideas and factions and religions.
• 13:13
  Chris Jones: It's really unbelievable.
• 13:15
  Chris Jones: All of the information that I've shared with you, his personal beliefs, his ideas on Christ and his faith all comes from his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth.
• 13:27
  Chris Jones: He describes how he rejects the religion of Christianity, but fully embraces the teachings in Christ.
• 13:35
  Chris Jones: You know, I've said before that Jesus didn't come to start a religion, he came to make disciples.
• 13:42
  Chris Jones: I don't know of another example of a disciple who went on to change the world like Mahatma Gandhi.
• 13:50
  Chris Jones: He said of his lungs that one lung was the Bhagavad Gita and the other lung was the teachings of Christ.
• 13:58
  Chris Jones: See, his religion was a Hindu, but he lived his life like a disciple of Jesus.
• 14:03
  Chris Jones: Now, I don't know if you're aware of this, but Martin Luther King Jr.
• 14:08
  Chris Jones: did not get his ideas of nonviolent love from the Bible as a pastor.
• 14:13
  Chris Jones: He got them from Gandhi.
• 14:15
  Chris Jones: Not that Gandhi replaces the Bible, but Gandhi manifested the teachings of the Bible in a way that religion hadn't.
• 14:24
  Chris Jones: So without Mahatma Gandhi, we probably don't get Martin Luther King Jr.
• 14:29
  Chris Jones: And some of you might say that neither one of these men are perfect.
• 14:32
  Chris Jones: And you would be right, neither one of these men were perfect.
• 14:36
  Chris Jones: But why are we trying to deify them?
• 14:38
  Chris Jones: What we should be doing is be inspired by them and realize that when common men take the commandment of Christ, of love, as a template, they change the world.
• 14:52
  Chris Jones: All of us have the ability to change the world around us.
• 14:58
  Chris Jones: That's why I say we all can become the antidote to the poison.
• 15:03
  Chris Jones: Well, Jul is giving me the nod.
• 15:07
  Chris Jones: It's time for me to get out of here.
• 15:09
  Chris Jones: Listen, if you like the flavor of the sauce, then follow us.
• 15:13
  Chris Jones: Give us a five-star, share us, and if nothing else, email me and say hi.
• 15:18
  Chris Jones: Spiritualhotsauce@gmail.com Thanks, guys.
• 15:23
  Chris Jones: We'll see you next week.
• 15:24
  Chris Jones: Come on, Jul.
• 15:26
  Chris Jones: Jul, come on.
• 15:28
  Chris Jones: Jul
• 15:32
  unknown: Come on.
• 15:34
  Chris Jones: Dang cat.