Latest / Spiritual Hot Sauce / “Deconstruction to Reconstruction: A Different Kind of Faith (Lonnie Fuson)” Ep#53

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“Deconstruction to Reconstruction: A Different Kind of Faith (Lonnie Fuson)” Ep#53 · Spiritual Hot Sauce

• 0:00
  Chris Jones: Today I sit down with Lonnie Fusen as he shares his story of deconstruction and reconstruction and why he felt it necessary to take that path.
• 0:09
  Chris Jones: Though Spiritual Hot Sauce isn't a deconstruction podcast, we don't shy away from it either.
• 0:15
  Chris Jones: Is it just a modern buzzword, or is it something actually prescribed to us in the scriptures?
• 0:21
  Chris Jones: A forgotten discipline that we desperately need to recover.
• 0:26
  Chris Jones: Welcome.
• 0:26
  Chris Jones: I'm Chris Jones, and this is Spiritual Hot Sauce.
• 0:34
  Chris Jones: Lonnie, welcome to the sauce.
• 0:36
  Chris Jones: It's great to be here.
• 0:37
  Chris Jones: Thank you for having me, Chris.
• 0:38
  Chris Jones: Absolutely.
• 0:39
  Chris Jones: I'm excited to have you on here.
• 0:41
  Chris Jones: Lonnie has been a huge supporter of the show from the very beginning.
• 0:45
  Chris Jones: He's always been very encouraging.
• 0:47
  Chris Jones: And Lonnie has a powerful story about his deconstruction and reconstruction.
• 0:53
  Chris Jones: So thank you for coming on and agreeing to share this.
• 0:56
  Chris Jones: Glad to be of service.
• 0:58
  Chris Jones: You started out as an atheist, correct?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I was an atheist my last year of high school and all through my college years and a couple of years after that.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Did you grow up in a religious household?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: I did.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me about that.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: I say I came to Jesus at 16 years old, but what I didn't understand was that all of us actually create God in our own image in our own likeness.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then the religious community that we joined, that we're a part of, they add to that image and likeness of who God is.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And the God that I created was a was a horrible God.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: He actually ended up looking like an uncle who had lived with us and my dad.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: That was a lot of abuse.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: By the time I was 19, I just couldn't live with this God anymore.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_02: Would you open that up for us?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, they're they were very abusive.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Dad was extremely narcissistic.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_02: My uncle was, quite frankly, psychopathic.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, I don't have a clinical clinician saying that, but he certainly ticked off all of the boxes on the list of what a psychopath was.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: This was from earliest childhood, and so of course I hated myself.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't believe anybody could love me.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_02: When I came to Christ, I didn't know anything about God.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't know anything about Christ.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_02: I guess I knew enough to come to Christ, but I didn't know any more.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_02: So I started filling in those places that I didn't know about God.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: No surprise, I got it wrong.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: And God ended up being a mean, cruel, hateful, condemning, impossible to please deity.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I got to, I was, I'm I'll never forget.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: I was, I was sitting on my bed.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was 19 years old, sitting on my bed, looking at a pornographic magazine.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: And this thought popped into my head, is that love?
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: I was instantly furious.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_02: I said, I don't know what love is, and I probably never will, so I'll have to settle for this.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_02: That was pretty much the end.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure you've heard of a come to Jesus meeting.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I had a go away and leave me alone meeting with God.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_02: I said, we're done.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you're not, this isn't working out, and I can't, I can't do what you want me to do.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_02: And that was that was it.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I went from that to basically agnostic.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_02: But within the next few years, I was I was full-blown atheist.
• 3:08
  Chris Jones: Yeah, that's a very dark image of God.
• 3:10
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 3:11
  Chris Jones: How long were you an atheist?
• 3:13
  Chris Jones: Seven years.
• 3:14
  Chris Jones: What brought you back to God?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's an interesting story.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: I had been abused, and so I had also, as a child, been abusive to my little sister.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have anybody else.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so I I was I'd be abused, and then I would turn around and I would do the the same kind of things to her that were being done to me.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_02: Hurting people hurt people.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I I don't say that as an excuse, I say that as an explanation.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: In 1986, she had graduated high school.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_02: I was in college still, and I went down for a weekend from school.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: I was at U of L.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_02: Home is Elizabethtown, south of here.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Mom and dad were out of town on a trip, and we were just talking, my sister and I.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: She said something about somebody in the family, and I didn't like that person.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, you know what I think about that person?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: I think that person's cruel.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Her immediate response was, Well, you know who in the family I think is cruel?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_02: And my heart about stopped because I knew she was going to say, I think it's you.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, oh boy, I'm gonna.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_02: I thought about getting angry, throwing the fit, and you know, making myself the victim and all of that stuff, what we call, we call that narcissistic behavior today.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: But I chose not to do that.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: I I that would have been like my dad.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't, I didn't want to act like that.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: So I said, okay, who?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, you, and then she spent the next hour and a half peeling me like an onion, is how I say it.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: Layer by layer by layer of horrible, awful things that I did to her in our childhood.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: And when she got done, I said, You're 100% right.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: I did all of those things, but from today on, I'm I'm changing.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: I will never treat you like this again.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I did.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_02: I changed.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_02: It was not a religious experience because I was an atheist, but I I started changing.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I told her, I said, Look, I said, I owe you the biggest apology there ever could be, but I'm not going to ask you to forgive me.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: I, the reason was because my dad played that kind of trick.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I, you know, I went down front to the altar and asked God to forgive me, and he forgave me, so now you have to forgive me.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: And besides that, that's that's a heavy burden to drop on somebody that you've done horrible wrong to.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: This expectation that they have to let you go.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: They have to let go of all of this, all of the horrible pain that you did to them.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's a heavy burden.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: I wasn't going to burden her any further than I already had.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: But I said, if you ever come to a place where you could hear me give you an apology, I said, I will get on my knees and I will beg you for forgiveness.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I said, you don't ever have to forgive me.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_02: I don't ever expect you to forgive me.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: But no matter what, I'm changing and I'm going to change for good.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I did.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: What was her response?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, you know, her response was, okay, uh, you know, I don't think she obviously believed me.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I I, of course, she didn't, she didn't need to.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: That was fine.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: But over the next, you know, over the next two or three years, I certainly showed evidence of of change.
• 6:22
  Chris Jones: Did Jarl's relationship change?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_02: It did.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it didn't, we didn't get any closer.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: I became a much more caring, kinder, much more giving person to her.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she didn't really respond good or bad.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: She just, you know, just it was just kind of there.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: Gotcha.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then by 1989, again, I was at a very, very bad place in my life, graduated college.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: I had got a job as a car salesman and I had failed miserably.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: And by the end of 1989, November or December, I was really close to suicide.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: I I was gonna pack it in.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And she called me.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know why I remember this, but she called me.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: It was a Tuesday, it was about nine o'clock uh PM.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, I have accepted Jesus Christ and I forgive you.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I I was just dead silent.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Do you know what I'm talking about?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Oh, yes, uh, I know exactly what you're talking about.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, I said, Oh, thank you.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I I I I really, I was so completely blown away because it was impossible.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: I could never forgive my dad or or my uncle.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: The things that they did to me, I could not forgive.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: And so I knew that she could not forgive me.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was an absolute impossibility.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, well, you know, I it's nice that she thinks that she's being forgiving, but nah, that's not even possible.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: And it just wouldn't leave me alone.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_02: She's forgiven you, she's forgiven you, she's forgiven you.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, I just, I mean, really, it just kind of, I don't know how to explain it.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: It hit me.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: She really had forgiven me.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that created a huge problem for me.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_02: Because if he had forgiven me, she could not have done it on her own.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_02: So God had given her the forgiveness to give me, and that meant God existed.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: I tried to think my way around that one.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely couldn't.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: And she started calling me every month, and she would tell me all the things that Jesus was doing in her life.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_02: It was torture.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was torture.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_02: It was horrible.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because I I I don't know why I I experienced it this way, but it was like God started traveling towards me.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_02: She would call me, she would tell me what was going on in her life with Christ.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it just felt like God was coming for me.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought God was coming to get me.
• 8:45
  Chris Jones: You were still seeing God as that punitive, narcissistic, angry God.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, absolutely.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I kicked him to the curb.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought now he's gonna come and get me and he's gonna take me out.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh which shouldn't have bothered me as a person who was suicidal, but it it really did.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_02: And so she calls me and then God gets closer.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: She calls me, God gets closer.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: She calls me.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: And finally, June 28th, she called, and I really felt like God was just outside my door.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_02: And I I started bawling.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, okay, he's here, I'm gonna die.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: And okay.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I kind of was accepting.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_02: Then this wave of peace hit me.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I I didn't know what to do with that.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_02: And then this, this, this, this, just this sense of love, this overwhelming sense of love.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I started crying again, but this time it was very different.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: And God had indeed arrived.
• 9:42
  Chris Jones: So through this time, this is about six months.
• 9:44
  Chris Jones: So you went from being suicidal, and then your sister out of the blue calls you in this dark place and says, Hey, I forgive you.
• 9:52
  Chris Jones: I found Jesus and I forgive you.
• 9:55
  Chris Jones: And then that hits you like a ton of bricks because God existed.
• 9:59
  Chris Jones: There's no other way that's going to happen.
• 10:01
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 10:01
  Chris Jones: And now she starts calling you monthly to say, hey, this is the update.
• 10:06
  Chris Jones: God is getting closer and closer and closer until finally you feel like, okay, here's God.
• 10:13
  Chris Jones: Yeah, and I it it worked.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_02: I came to Christ and I started changing.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: And this time, even though I did still was seeing God as this sort of angry, sort of punitive, you know, very judgmental God.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: This time I I knew that God loved, I knew that God showed mercy.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't really understand how that worked.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_02: Just knew that he had given it to me and and and I needed to follow.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 10:36
  Chris Jones: Did you go join a church?
• 10:38
  Chris Jones: What happens after that?
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I went and I joined a church, and uh that church had a lot of different ministries.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_02: One of them was a soup kitchen.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so I managed to find a guy who was mentoring me in the church, he and his wife, and his area of oversight as a pastor was this soup kitchen.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, well, my mentor's there, so I'm gonna go down there and see if I can get involved there.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_02: First time I went, I just kind of looked around a little bit and I noticed the person that was supposed to be there to wash dishes that day didn't show up.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I went back and started washing dishes.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: I spent my whole time on this first visit just washing dishes, which was kind of funny because one of the things I hate most is washing dishes.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: But really, I mean, it was it was great.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, you know, I felt like I was doing something worthwhile.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, I'll be coming back next week.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, and that's what I did.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I got there the next Saturday.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, I had to work all week, so I couldn't, I couldn't go during the week.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, they were only open for a few hours in the afternoon to feed people lunch.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: So I went back the next Saturday and my mentor and his wife were there, of course, and I started washing dishes.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And then I came out after about, I don't know, 15, 20 minutes.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: There was a lull.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: And my mentor's wife came over and she said, Hey, could you give a message?
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: She said, just about, you know, 15 minutes.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, uh oh.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: And then I thought, okay.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I just, I just said.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_02: I said, okay, I think I could do that.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then I I turned around.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to start speaking at the very top of the hour.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so I had about five minutes before I was going to start speaking.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I just turned around and kind of faced the wall.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, okay, God, you got something for me to say?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because I don't, I don't know what to do.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_02: So I need you to, I need you to help me with this.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_02: I need you to give me something.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: And immediately something popped into my head.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't remember what it was, but I had it immediately.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: And so I turned around and I started speaking right at the top of the hour.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, dead straight up, I started out preaching it.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: When I finished, I turned around, I looked at the clock, it was 15 minutes on the dot.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, okay, maybe there's something here that I need to do.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so I spent the next four and a half years at that soup kitchen preaching.
• 12:51
  Chris Jones: Really?
• 12:52
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 12:53
  Chris Jones: What did you learn from doing that?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I learned that ministry is really difficult, but it's really worthwhile.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: It was it could be frustrating because, of course, people don't change quickly.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: But it didn't make any difference because I knew God was there.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_02: I knew God loved these people.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_02: All of the frustrations just kind of didn't matter to me.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_02: I was there to love God and to love those people.
• 13:16
  Chris Jones: You had shared with me that there was a conflict between what you were hearing in the church and what she was experiencing in the soup kitchen.
• 13:24
  Chris Jones: Would you mind sharing that with us now?
• 13:27
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_02: And it pretty much started from the very beginning.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_02: I was just hearing some things that I thought just didn't sound right to me.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how specific to get with this, because if I say the the the theological position that was being taken, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about, the the the particular religious movement.
• 13:47
  Chris Jones: Well, it's your story, so share whatever you are comfortable sharing.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Well, the teaching that I'm that I'm thinking about was basically God wants you to be wealthy.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: The prosperity gospel.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: And and of course they used 3 John 1.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: I would that you prosper even as your soul prospers.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: And they took that and took a fit.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they just went crazy with it, I thought.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I I could I just so I went and I studied it.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: It's a greeting in a letter.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: This is not the this is not good theology.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_02: This is not good doctrine.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's just a greeting.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, I hope you're doing well.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_02: And I really I just it just floored me.
• 14:32
  Chris Jones: So this started on threading.
• 14:34
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 14:35
  Chris Jones: Open that up and explain that for me.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_02: I had been lied to and gaslit and put down all of my life by my dad.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so I needed something solid.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: I needed a God who was solid, who was real, who was loving, who was merciful, who was kind, and I ran into a big old wall of gaslighting.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_02: I ran into a big wall of, hey, this is what you need to believe.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_02: I investigated it, I did my due diligence, and it was nonsense.
• 15:05
  Chris Jones: But at the same time that this is going on, you're at the soup kitchen and you're preaching.
• 15:10
  Chris Jones: Oh, yes.
• 15:10
  Chris Jones: What was it about the soup kitchen specifically that made it seem so real?
• 15:16
  Chris Jones: The soup kitchen was a completely different world.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: Religion was not really a part of that.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_02: We were giving simple gospel messages, singing the old hymns and things like that.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_02: We were feeding people, and really there just wasn't any room for all of the extra stuff that that gets preached in churches.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: None of the really churchy, churchianity kind of things that I was that I was seeing.
• 15:44
  Chris Jones: So it was less performative.
• 15:46
  Chris Jones: It it felt more genuine.
• 15:48
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 15:48
  Chris Jones: Okay.
• 15:49
  Chris Jones: At the soup kitchen, what did your interactions look like with the people that were there and how did that impact you?
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: We had everybody come through those doors.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: This was in a in a very rough part of town.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: So we had alcoholics, hardcore drug addicts, and we had sex workers.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't particularly have a problem with sex workers any more than I did with alcoholics or or drug addicts, but one sex worker gave me, upset me very, very much.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I call her Lily.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: That's not her name.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Lily was a prostitute.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: She was HIV positive, and she was still working in the streets, which meant she was endangering people's lives.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: What year was this?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_02: This was 1993.
• 16:37
  Chris Jones: Oh, so this was basically death sentence.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there there they there were treatments that were that were becoming affected, but we weren't quite there yet with all of it.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I mean, it was still very, very bad, pretty very much life-threatening.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I I s and she was the hardest person I had ever seen.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she could just, you know, people say, well, that, you know, they can just look right through you.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_02: That was her.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: She was actually kind of intimidating.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: She wasn't a big woman or anything, but she just just that attitude that she seemed to give off was very, very off-putting, which was fine because I didn't want to be really hang out with that kind of thing.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so, but over four and a half years, I started hearing some of the stories of the, I started calling them the ladies of the oldest profession instead of hookers or prostitutes.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: I started hearing some of their stories, pieces of their stories.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I came to greatly respect these women because of the hell that they had been, most of them had actually been born into, horrible abuse, addicted parents, parents that would sell them, would traffic them to get drug money.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's nothing I could do but respect these women because of what they survived and what they endured.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_02: I really changed greatly from when I first started to when I left.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: And even just a little bit towards Lily, even though I just kept thinking maybe God's got me here, and maybe I'll see her turning a trick, and then I could be a witness against her.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to hurt her.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_02: I just wanted to stop her.
• 18:14
  unknown: Yeah.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_02: And if she went to jail, that stopped her.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_02: But that didn't happen, fortunately.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_02: This was like a week before I was gonna uh my last Sunday where I would be there.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: I was moving on, I'd move into a new church, moving to new ministry opportunities.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I was gonna be leaving ministry at this kitchen.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: We had a lull, and so I walked around with a and I would clean off the tables with a rag that had disinfectant on it.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: So I was cleaning off the table, I was up front in front of the doors, in front of this, these windows, and I look out, here comes Lily.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm just looking out at her, and this thought drops into my head.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: All I have ever wanted for her to know is I want her to be my beloved daughter.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: All I have ever wanted her to be is my beloved daughter.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was completely condemning towards Lily.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_02: I really had very little, I had no good thoughts toward her.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that was, you know, she was just hurting people.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm standing there and that completely flipped my perspective.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: I was sinning, seriously sinning.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was sinning against Lily, I was sinning against Dod.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was sinning against myself because I was condemning and God loved her, and God wanted her to know that He loved her.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: The first thing I realized was that how really horrible my sin was in this situation, and how really amazing, overpowering, and mighty the love and the forgiveness of God was.
• 19:46
  Chris Jones: You're experiencing God in a way that you've never considered.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I I never ever could have imagined this.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: I I I was not, that wasn't the direction of my thinking.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_02: I had deconstructed God some from that first iteration of God, but I still saw him as a judgmental.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: He loved me, but the people who were against me or the people who were sinners were, well, kind of not.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they needed to come to Christ in order to be loved by Christ.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And that was kind of how I thought.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, this is this completely, completely destroyed that version of God, utterly shattered it.
• 20:22
  Chris Jones: Wow.
• 20:22
  Chris Jones: And so this is a this is a transformative moment.
• 20:26
  Chris Jones: Absolutely.
• 20:27
  Chris Jones: I was it was like I was being born again.
• 20:29
  Chris Jones: That's a powerful statement.
• 20:31
  Chris Jones: You have this moment with God in a soup kitchen watching a prostitute that has HIV that's knowingly giving it to others, but it's in that moment you have this real experience with God that changes your DNA.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I yeah.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it it it it it started that change that day, and that change has never stopped.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm still experiencing it.
• 20:53
  Chris Jones: So what happened with Lily?
• 20:55
  Chris Jones: What happened when she came in?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Oh boy.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: She she came in, and she hadn't changed any.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: She was still just this very, very hard person.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_02: And I felt at that point really intimidated because I felt like God wanted me to say that how much he loved her and and and what that looked like.
• 21:15
  Chris Jones: So you feel like God wants you to go talk to this person, but you're thinking this isn't gonna go well.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, this is exactly right.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_02: No, I thought she was gonna tell me to go F myself.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I really expected.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: And and I and I think if I'd approached her differently, that's probably what I would have gotten.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_02: If I had approached her the way I I used to be, you know, religiously, then yeah, she would have absolutely chewed me up and spit me out.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I didn't say no to God.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: I just said, this is not gonna go well.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't have a chance to talk to her that day.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the next week, the next Sunday, I didn't I was there Saturday, she didn't come in, and I was there Sunday and she came in.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I just looked at her and I said, I said, Lily, I said, I'm getting ready to leave here and not come back.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: I've always Wondered if I could just pray for you.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: Would it be okay if I just prayed for you?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: And she said, Well, yeah, that would be all right.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Okay, I said, Why don't you get lunch and uh when you're done, then I'll I'll come over and I'll just pray for you.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: She said, Okay, that'll be fine.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: So she went, she ate, and I saw her get done, and then I went over and I sat down and I started praying.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Father, you you love Lily and and God, you never intended for her to be hurt.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: You never intended to her the bad things that have happened to her, you never intended for men to abuse her and use her.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_02: And she goes, Oh, yeah.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: And how all men ever want to do is just use me.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: That threw me too.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, wow.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, look, you might get a prostitute to bow down at your feet, but it's gonna be when you hand them money to do it.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're not gonna come out with that kind of thing and admit that they, you know, they hate being used and abused.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: So that was shocking in itself.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: But then I went on and I said, God, I said, all you've ever wanted her to know is that you want her to be your beloved daughter.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: All you want for her now is for her to be your beloved daughter.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: I prayed a little bit more and then I ended it and I looked at her.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: There was this bright, smiling human being in front of me that I had never seen before.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was it was shocking.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: She was just almost glowing.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And but that was it.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't have a, we didn't have a salvation prayer.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't get anybody baptized that day.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: But I left knowing.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: I just knew that God had whole of her life.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: I knew he had her, and I didn't need to worry about it.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: And it wasn't until, I don't know, probably four or five years later that I found out that she had in fact come to Christ.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't necessary for me to learn that because I I knew it.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: I just knew it in my heart.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: But it was a great confirmation to get.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so all of that time that I had believed that about people's sin and confronting them and being condemning and shaming, I found out firsthand that that that doesn't work.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: But when God tells you that he loves them, that will change people's lives.
• 24:12
  Chris Jones: So by you in that moment telling her that God loved her and was basically inviting her to be his daughter, made her feel seen by God.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_02: I just, and I just said what God had said to me, and it worked.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: She went from a very hard-hearted, closed, bitter person to this open, bright, beautiful.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she really just transformed in front of my eyes.
• 24:39
  Chris Jones: I'd like to use this point as a place to kind of intertwine everything that's happening.
• 24:45
  Chris Jones: Not that I want to leave this moment between you and Lily where your lives are being changed, but rather how this becomes the foundation, the anchor point that keeps you tethered to God as you go through deconstruction.
• 25:01
  Chris Jones: Can you open that up for me?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I have to go back to Lily real quick because it was part of what God showed me at that moment about where the church was.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: This is what the church needs.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: People in the church need to run into people like Lily.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it didn't need to be a prostitute, it just somebody and God show them his great love for this other human being.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: I knew that that's what the church needed.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: But my response, I I was standing there and I didn't say it really loud, but I did say it uh in a whisper.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Oh God, they'll never do this.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: As soon as I said it, I knew it was 100% true.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so what had happened was, I believe, was that God was presenting me with a choice.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: You need to leave this kind of church.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: And I knew that's what it was.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: But it wasn't, it wasn't God pushing me.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, here, here's the information.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: Now you make the decision as to what you're gonna do with it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I was too afraid.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I just stayed in these churches.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: I got moved around by my company a lot, so I went to a lot of different churches and nothing ever changed.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was just more of the same all the time.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I started measuring everything against God's love.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_02: And if it didn't measure up against God's love, then I deconstructed it.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: I took it apart, I threw it out.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: If there was something good in a teaching, then I would take that teaching.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's kind of like eating cherries.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you eat the meat of the cherry and you spit the pit.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_02: But unfortunately, we kept coming back to these deal breakers, us against them.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it never changed.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: I just got more angry, I got more bitter.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: By October 2016, I was done.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: I walked away.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: I and I never had any intention of ever walking into another church again.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_02: That was the point that I took everything and and I just threw it onto a pile.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that's a metaphorical pile, of course.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: Everything that I believed, everything that I had held dear, everything that I had been taught, all of that went on to this metaphorical junk pile.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_02: Bible reading, prayer.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_02: The only thing that I kept was I know that God loves.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: That was the absolute thing that I held on to all of that time.
• 27:19
  Chris Jones: You held on to God and you held on to God's love, the rest went.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't that was the only thing that had been made real to me through Lily, love, that love, absolute world-destroying, world-overcoming, sin-defeating truth of love was what I knew was real.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: I had seen it and I had seen it work in Lily.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so that was 100% real.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: So that's what I hung on to.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: Everything else, I started taking apart.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: I started, I started studying, I started investigating things, I started looking into the church's stance on LGBTQ people, church's stance on how they treated women and women being in leadership.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Everything came under the microscope.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: And the vast majority of those things, including the things that I just named, how to treat the LGBTQ community, women, racism, sexism, xenophobia, everything came up.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: And all of that went into the garbage.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_02: And as I made room, then I felt like God's love was able to come in more.
• 28:29
  Chris Jones: You know, this is so strange.
• 28:30
  Chris Jones: You're calling it deconstruction, and kind of what I'm hearing though is work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: I had never thought of it that way.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: But but yeah, I mean, that is what it is.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I but I think that, but I think that's is a part of deconstruction.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: I see, my question, my question is, is how do we actually get to the real God if we don't deconstruct?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: If I don't take apart this God that I have created in my uh denomination or or whatever, religious influence, whatever that is, if that's the God that they hand me and that's not the real God, then I have to take that fake God apart.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: I have to get the fake stuff off.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's what deconstruction is to me.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's not really about standing up and putting my finger in religious people's faces and saying, well, you're wrong about this, and you should, you know, that's not gonna, uh I'm not interested.
• 29:32
  Chris Jones: Maybe if we spent more time in the mirror challenging ourselves instead of challenging others.
• 29:36
  Chris Jones: Yeah, that's exactly that's exactly I did that too.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: God, am I really, you know, am I really saved?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Am I really, you know, are you really in my life?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_02: Am I really going in the right direction?
• 29:46
  Chris Jones: What you're describing is what the scriptures tell us to do.
• 29:50
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 29:51
  Chris Jones: I think the odd thing is this is so far outside of the norm.
• 29:55
  Chris Jones: I mean, shouldn't we all be doing this?
• 29:57
  Chris Jones: Challenging ourselves to the example of Christ versus the congregation?
• 30:02
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: I found an anchor for my faith.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_02: So no matter what came my way, and I was experiencing severe depression, severe anxiety.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: I was really in a very, very bad place.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: But that didn't change my faith that God was a loving God, God was real, did not waver.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: And it was absolutely because of that interaction the many years before with Lily, that was real.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: I could never deny that.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_02: I kept taking things apart.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: I just kept studying, I just kept checking out the beliefs that I'd had and the things that I had been taught, and and almost none of it held water.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: So by 2022, I was in therapy and I was going through big changes.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: And then I just felt like I needed to find a church again.
• 30:55
  Chris Jones: So that was about a seven-year period of kind of deconstruct, reconstruct.
• 31:00
  Chris Jones: Yeah, it was about seven years.
• 31:01
  Chris Jones: Yeah.
• 31:02
  Chris Jones: You go into therapy, which I would recommend to anybody who's going through anything in their life that is stressful and traumatic.
• 31:08
  Chris Jones: Get some help to help guide you.
• 31:10
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 31:11
  Chris Jones: After working through that, you have this need to go find a new community, a new church.
• 31:18
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 31:19
  Chris Jones: And I imagine that is terrifying after what you've been through.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_02: I was so completely really against it because I just thought I'm gonna walk right back into what I've always walked right back into.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't matter if I was in Kentucky or I was in Alabama or I was in South Carolina, I always walked into the same situation, the same kinds of, you know, uh religion.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: But these videos started showing up in my in my feed on Facebook, and this preacher was was talking about hell, and he said he didn't believe in a hell that was uh eternal conscious torment.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: I went, oh, okay, that's interesting.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I really didn't follow it beyond that.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then the next one I saw, I saw him again, and I thought, I'm gonna listen to this one.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_02: And he started talking about a friend of his, a friend that was named Bella.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_02: Bella, it turns out, was a transgender person, a transgender woman.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: And he talked about his interactions with Bella and and And I guess that was I guess that was the right combination.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_02: Hell is not a place of eternal torment, and you know, he's reaching out to LGBTQ people.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: I was still on the fence about LGBTQ at that point, but I was ready, I guess I was ready to get off that fence.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: So it took me, it took me about six months to convince myself to give this church a uh a visit.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_02: And the name of the church is Daylight.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, you know Daylight.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:41
  Chris Jones: Had HL husband on the show.
• 32:44
  Chris Jones: Yeah, the pastor.
• 32:45
  Chris Jones: Yes, yes.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: I I embrace Hamartia.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_02: Believe me, that has become part of my part of my daily saying.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, God, I embrace my Hamartia.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so then it and again, it took about another six months before I let my barriers down because I kept expecting, I kept expecting churchianity.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: I kept expecting the same old religious garbage that I'd always always heard come to come out, never did.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_02: I've been dug in now for what, four years, I guess?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's completely different from anything that I've ever experienced in any other church.
• 33:19
  Chris Jones: Aaron Powell I can help fill in the blanks for the listeners here.
• 33:22
  Chris Jones: They do a really good job not condemning and not condoning.
• 33:25
  Chris Jones: They just love.
• 33:26
  Chris Jones: And it's a place for anybody and everybody that wants to come and worship and be in community with people who want to love like Jesus.
• 33:34
  Chris Jones: Yes.
• 33:35
  Chris Jones: Where are you now in your faith in respect to everything we've talked about?
• 33:39
  Chris Jones: Aaron Powell I'm always going to be deconstructing.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm always going to be looking at beliefs that I have and checking them, testing them to see if they're valid, if they're real, if they're loving.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: But now I'm really doing a lot more reconstruction.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now I look at everything through God's love.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_02: Everything has to flow from, everything has to begin with love.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's like you talk about throwing rocks across the river.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: If I'm throwing the rock and it's just landing in the water, okay, that's fine.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: But I'm going to be throwing that rock with love.
• 34:12
  Chris Jones: For those of you who might be new to the show or haven't heard episode 48, it explains Throw the Rock, how we carry on the ministry of Jesus.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: Seven times in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, if you love me, do what I teach.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_02: Seven times between John chapters 14 and chapter 16, Jesus says, If you love me, do what I teach.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: That's the test that I apply to everything.
• 34:40
  Chris Jones: That's perfect.
• 34:42
  Chris Jones: Lonnie, if people are going through this and they have questions or would like to connect with you to get some insight, is it okay if they connect with you?
• 34:50
  Chris Jones: Oh, absolutely.
• 34:51
  Chris Jones: Do you have an email address where people can reach out?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: My email is Lonnie L-O-N-N-I-E, lowercase fusion f-s-o-n.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's all run together, one word, the number two at gmail.com.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: Lonnie Fusen2 at gmail.com.
• 35:12
  Chris Jones: We'll make sure that we put that in the comments of the episode.
• 35:16
  Chris Jones: I appreciate that.
• 35:16
  Chris Jones: Lonnie, thank you for sharing and thank you for coming on.
• 35:20
  Chris Jones: I appreciate it.
• 35:20
  Chris Jones: Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to serve.
• 35:24
  Chris Jones: I'd like to share my thoughts on this with you.
• 35:27
  Chris Jones: Where and how Lonnie found God and how he tethered himself to God as he went through a purification process of his faith.
• 35:36
  Chris Jones: He didn't find it in church, he didn't find it in study, and he didn't find it in religion.
• 35:42
  Chris Jones: I think all of those things are important and they had their place, but it was out throwing the rock.
• 35:47
  Chris Jones: It was out serving and carrying on the ministry of Christ.
• 35:51
  Chris Jones: I think that if we really want an experience with God, go to where God is.
• 35:56
  Chris Jones: God's where the hurting people are, just like that's where Jesus was.
• 36:00
  Chris Jones: And I get when we're in our community together, like in a church, we can experience God there too, but it's more encouragement and comfort.
• 36:08
  Chris Jones: But the experiences that carries us through our lives and tethers us to God, I think those are found in obeying John 13, 34 and 35, the commandment of Christ, which is to love one another as I have loved you.
• 36:22
  Chris Jones: By this the world will know you're my disciple.
• 36:26
  Chris Jones: I think it's in the process of discipleship that we find our faith, that we have this experience that tethers us to God.
• 36:34
  Chris Jones: I mean, Jesus' last commandment to his disciples was go make more disciples, not start a religion.
• 36:41
  Chris Jones: And again, this isn't against the church or religion, but what should we be focused on?
• 36:47
  Chris Jones: These are just my thoughts.
• 36:49
  Chris Jones: I don't have all the answers, but I do know this.
• 36:52
  Chris Jones: When you have the opportunity, throw the rock.
• 36:55
  Chris Jones: Like Lonnie did with Lily.
• 36:58
  Chris Jones: This was an important conversation that I feel like we needed to have.
• 37:02
  Chris Jones: And I hope you got something from it no matter how you believe it.
• 37:06
  Chris Jones: If you like the flavor of the sauce, please follow the show and share it with others because that really does help.
• 37:12
  Chris Jones: And if you want to reach out, spiritualhot sauce at gmail.com.
• 37:17
  Chris Jones: And remember, when you have the opportunity, throw the rock.
• 37:22
  Chris Jones: Thanks, guys.
• 37:23
  Chris Jones: I'll see you again on the next episode.