Latest / Spiritual Hot Sauce / “Reborn in Hope : Rebuilding Faith (Part 3 of 3)” Ep#41

Transcript

“Reborn in Hope : Rebuilding Faith (Part 3 of 3)” Ep#41 · Spiritual Hot Sauce

• 0:07
  Chris Jones: Welcome.
• 0:08
  Chris Jones: I'm Chris Jones.
• 0:10
  Chris Jones: This is Spiritual Hot Sauce.
• 0:15
  Chris Jones: From a tree of knowledge of good and evil, a serpent would give us a fruit that is the poison to humanity.
• 0:23
  Chris Jones: But Jesus hanging from a tree would give us a fruit that is the antidote to that poison, making him the tree of life.
• 0:31
  Chris Jones: But what does that mean practically?
• 0:33
  Chris Jones: How does this play out for you and me in our lives?
• 0:35
  Chris Jones: I mean, because it's beautiful, but what does it mean?
• 0:39
  Chris Jones: Now, this is our third and final part of our series, Rebuilding Faith After Deconstruction, where we've been talking about that we all start on square one of our faith, and that we are all supposed to move on to square two, three, and four in the natural progression of growth.
• 0:56
  Chris Jones: However, our paths look completely different from one another, although we all start at the same place.
• 1:02
  Chris Jones: The problem happens is when we stop moving forward and we start building on top of square one, creating a religion, a merit-based mountain to God where you earn your way to God.
• 1:15
  Chris Jones: So rather than the community serving its purpose and encouraging you to continue on your journey, instead, the community is focused on the mountain.
• 1:24
  Chris Jones: Now, what should be encouraging us to get to our destination is in many cases keeping us from it.
• 1:30
  Chris Jones: All right, so let's get back to where we started that from a tree of knowledge of good and evil, a serpent would give us a fruit that is the poison to humanity.
• 1:40
  Chris Jones: When we're talking about the tree of knowledge of good and evil, that fruit is the behavior that comes from that ideology that the tree represents.
• 1:50
  Chris Jones: Think about it this way: think about how you define right and wrong.
• 1:54
  Chris Jones: Where did you get that from?
• 1:56
  Chris Jones: That was a learned behavior that you got from school, from your culture, from the laws of our society.
• 2:03
  Chris Jones: I mean, there's a lot of different places that forms our ideas of good and evil or right and wrong.
• 2:10
  Chris Jones: It's a learned behavior that's been passed down from the very beginning in that ideology of defining good and evil.
• 2:18
  Chris Jones: And you and I have both learned this.
• 2:20
  Chris Jones: So here's the thing: it also tells us how we define right and wrong, that's the poison that's in humanity.
• 2:28
  Chris Jones: See, it's from that definition, which is what allows or creates our mountains to God in these merit-based religions.
• 2:36
  Chris Jones: In other words, this poisonous behavior has found its way into our faith.
• 2:41
  Chris Jones: So let me back up here because I'm coming in pretty hot.
• 2:45
  Chris Jones: But the reason why is this is very difficult to explain.
• 2:49
  Chris Jones: I mean, it's very simple, but it's so counterintuitive.
• 2:52
  Chris Jones: It takes a little bit to get our head around it.
• 2:54
  Chris Jones: But once we do, you can't unhear it.
• 2:58
  Chris Jones: Jesus explains this very clearly, but yet we still miss it just because we are so indoctrinated with this ideology.
• 3:06
  Chris Jones: Now, it's in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and it's a lawyer that comes to Jesus and he asks, How do I inherit eternal life?
• 3:15
  Chris Jones: Now, a lawyer is an expert on this ideology that we're talking about, on how we define good and evil.
• 3:21
  Chris Jones: It's in law that clearly lays that out in black and white.
• 3:25
  Chris Jones: Now, Jesus, knowing he's a lawyer, asks him, How do you read it?
• 3:30
  Chris Jones: In other words, how do you interpret the law?
• 3:33
  Chris Jones: And the lawyer quotes Leviticus 19, 18.
• 3:36
  Chris Jones: He says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, might, and soul, in other words, your whole being, and love your neighbor as yourself.
• 3:44
  Chris Jones: And Jesus says, You are correct.
• 3:46
  Chris Jones: Do this and you will live.
• 3:47
  Chris Jones: Now, I've heard this interpreted a lot of different ways, and typically theologians would say that when the lawyer asks, Who's my neighbor?
• 3:55
  Chris Jones: He's wanting to draw Jesus into a debate.
• 3:58
  Chris Jones: Now, I'm not saying that's not correct, but I don't want us to miss what I believe in my interpretation to be the main point.
• 4:06
  Chris Jones: I think what the lawyer is asking is, let's define neighbor.
• 4:10
  Chris Jones: Geographically speaking, into my location where I live, who's my neighbor?
• 4:15
  Chris Jones: When does it stop being my neighbor and just being somebody in my town or in another city?
• 4:20
  Chris Jones: Where is the line where they are no longer my neighbor?
• 4:24
  Chris Jones: Jesus goes right into the parable of the Good Samaritan.
• 4:28
  Chris Jones: There was a man traveling on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.
• 4:32
  Chris Jones: Robbers saw the man and they jumped him.
• 4:34
  Chris Jones: They took from him his money, his animal, and even his clothes.
• 4:38
  Chris Jones: They beat him badly and left him for dead on the side of the road.
• 4:42
  Chris Jones: Now a priest and a Levite both passed by.
• 4:45
  Chris Jones: They both saw the man, but they didn't stop.
• 4:49
  Chris Jones: They both prioritized their journey of where they were going above the man on the side of the road.
• 4:55
  Chris Jones: But it was a Samaritan.
• 4:57
  Chris Jones: A Samaritan saw the man, he had compassion.
• 5:00
  Chris Jones: He went and gathered the man, put him on his own animal, took him to an inn, told the innkeeper, nurse him back to health.
• 5:08
  Chris Jones: I will be back and I will pay the bill of whatever it is.
• 5:11
  Chris Jones: Just take care of him.
• 5:13
  Chris Jones: And then Jesus asks the lawyer, from the perspective of the man laying on the side of the road in distress, who would he say his neighbor is?
• 5:23
  Chris Jones: And the lawyer says, the one that did good.
• 5:25
  Chris Jones: And Jesus says, You are correct.
• 5:28
  Chris Jones: All right, so let's get back into this.
• 5:30
  Chris Jones: What does that mean?
• 5:31
  Chris Jones: How does this apply to what we're talking about?
• 5:35
  Chris Jones: Okay, so think about it like this.
• 5:38
  Chris Jones: Think about the robbers.
• 5:39
  Chris Jones: The robbers don't care about the laws of our society or religion or our culture or community.
• 5:46
  Chris Jones: What they care about is what they want at other people's expenses.
• 5:51
  Chris Jones: By anybody's definition, that's bad.
• 5:54
  Chris Jones: But it's the priest and the Levite that we struggle with.
• 5:58
  Chris Jones: Because we know there's something wrong, but when we try to apply it to our own moral compass, it starts getting murky.
• 6:04
  Chris Jones: It starts getting weird when we try to connect it, because it shines a light on the poison that's in us.
• 6:12
  Chris Jones: And here's what I mean by that.
• 6:14
  Chris Jones: Think about laws, what we're talking about, or sins, how we would say it from the mountain in religion.
• 6:20
  Chris Jones: That like the lawyer, we would define good and evil based on do nots, like do not steal, do not hurt other people, because that is wrong.
• 6:29
  Chris Jones: That's the robbers.
• 6:31
  Chris Jones: So good is don't steal and don't hurt other people.
• 6:36
  Chris Jones: But the priest and the Levite, neither one stole, neither one hurt anybody.
• 6:43
  Chris Jones: Nor would they ever hurt anybody or steal from anybody.
• 6:47
  Chris Jones: That would be doing bad.
• 6:49
  Chris Jones: That would be breaking the laws of their society.
• 6:52
  Chris Jones: That would be breaking the laws of their religion.
• 6:55
  Chris Jones: They would be sinning.
• 6:56
  Chris Jones: See, that's the behavior that we're talking about.
• 6:59
  Chris Jones: That's that fruit that came from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
• 7:02
  Chris Jones: That learned behavior that they were demonstrating is the same one we demonstrate.
• 7:08
  Chris Jones: That we see bad as hurting other people or stealing from other people, but we see good as not stealing from other people and not hurting other people.
• 7:19
  Chris Jones: And Jesus says, that's not good.
• 7:22
  Chris Jones: That's just refraining from doing wrong.
• 7:25
  Chris Jones: Now let's stand back for a second and think about that.
• 7:29
  Chris Jones: If we define good as not hurting other people or not stealing from other people, we put that into a religious context, we start to see where that mountain of religion, of earning your way to God comes from.
• 7:43
  Chris Jones: We start to see how we see God as a legal system of earning our way up to God.
• 7:51
  Chris Jones: And we start to see Jesus as this rubber stamp that gets you permission to get to the mountain.
• 7:58
  Chris Jones: But there's something in that that is self-serving.
• 8:03
  Chris Jones: It's self-righteousness.
• 8:05
  Chris Jones: If we think about the tree of knowledge of good and evil, and I'd said that that's the poison that was put into us, is how we define right and wrong, and I just showed that to you.
• 8:15
  Chris Jones: But who gave that to us?
• 8:17
  Chris Jones: It was the serpent.
• 8:19
  Chris Jones: How did the serpent convince us to take such an ideology?
• 8:23
  Chris Jones: This is where I get the phrase, the serpent's venom.
• 8:26
  Chris Jones: This is where it comes from.
• 8:27
  Chris Jones: And it's what the serpent told Eve.
• 8:30
  Chris Jones: You will be like God.
• 8:32
  Chris Jones: Why is that so seductive?
• 8:34
  Chris Jones: Because it allowed them to define good based on what was good for them as long as they didn't hurt other people.
• 8:43
  Chris Jones: Now think about the priest and the Levite that passed by the hurting man on the side of the road.
• 8:49
  Chris Jones: They could literally, on a mountain of religion, of merit, stand in superiority to the robbers and call them out for their sin because they're trying to earn their way to God and merit of not doing wrong.
• 9:07
  Chris Jones: When you are able to define who your neighbor is, then you stand in judgment of everyone else.
• 9:14
  Chris Jones: And that's what Jesus was showing.
• 9:17
  Chris Jones: Jesus gave us the Samaritan who would have not been by that culture standards a neighbor.
• 9:25
  Chris Jones: Because Jesus was saying there is no stranger.
• 9:29
  Chris Jones: Who's your neighbor?
• 9:30
  Chris Jones: Who's the one that's hurting?
• 9:32
  Chris Jones: By doing good for other people based on their needs, you're stepping outside of how we traditionally define good and evil or right and wrong through law or sin in religion, and you're giving based on need.
• 9:47
  Chris Jones: When Jesus was asked, what is the most important law from the mitzvah, the Old Testament, we would call it.
• 9:54
  Chris Jones: Now he hadn't given his commandment yet, but this is the same one he names, love thy neighbors thyself.
• 10:00
  Chris Jones: But the last commandment he gives, the night before he is to be crucified and fulfill everything that he's come to do, he tells them in John 13, 34 and 35, now this is my commandment to you, is that you love one another as I have loved you.
• 10:18
  Chris Jones: By this the world will know you're my disciple.
• 10:22
  Chris Jones: In other words, you've been told what love looks like and how to take care of your neighbor, but how I did it, the example I gave you, that's how I want you to do it.
• 10:34
  Chris Jones: I want you to be just like me and how I loved, how I took care of the needy based on need versus deserve, how I went into the ditch to help others in the ditch to get out, that I fed the hungry, I healed the sick, not as a doormat, but as a good steward, taking care of others as they had need, becoming the good Samaritan.
• 11:00
  Chris Jones: You're not here to judge the robbers or the priest or the Levite.
• 11:05
  Chris Jones: You're here to love the hurting.
• 11:08
  Chris Jones: This is a complete different ideology.
• 11:11
  Chris Jones: This fruit that Jesus was giving them is the antidote to the poison that's in humanity.
• 11:17
  Chris Jones: Now there's a lot of different ways you can look at this from different perspectives and lenses.
• 11:23
  Chris Jones: But we're talking about physically from religion and our path and our journey of what we are to become, our destination.
• 11:30
  Chris Jones: And Jesus is the tree of life that bears the fruit of love, that heals, that takes us to a better place.
• 11:40
  Chris Jones: So we all start at square one.
• 11:43
  Chris Jones: We all get the fruit, and in the fruit's a seed.
• 11:46
  Chris Jones: That seed, if we will take that into our heart and we start on our process and our journey, our path of growing in that, of square two, three, and four.
• 11:57
  Chris Jones: And again, we all have different paths, but it's all about getting to our destination where we grow and mature and we become a fruit-bearing tree as well.
• 12:08
  Chris Jones: And we continue on what Jesus started, that we bear his fruit and not the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
• 12:16
  Chris Jones: There's something about that that is alive, that's not legalistic, that's not on the mountain of earning your way to God.
• 12:24
  Chris Jones: There's something that seems like the Father's love and helping all of us to get to a better place.
• 12:31
  Chris Jones: And once you start reading the scriptures through that lens, it changes the scriptures.
• 12:36
  Chris Jones: They start hitting different.
• 12:38
  Chris Jones: The meaning starts shifting and changing.
• 12:40
  Chris Jones: And your perspective, you're seeing humanity differently.
• 12:44
  Chris Jones: You start to see God differently.
• 12:45
  Chris Jones: You start to see yourself differently.
• 12:48
  Chris Jones: This is what I mean when I say a worshiper of the deity of Christ versus a disciple of Christ.
• 12:56
  Chris Jones: I mean, think about this.
• 12:58
  Chris Jones: You could be on a mountain trying to earn your way to God and this idea of good and evil and right and wrong, with Jesus on a pedestal as you worship and thank God for him, while you are producing the poison.
• 13:12
  Chris Jones: Or we take the fruit that Jesus produced, we consume it and take that seed into our heart and we let it grow in us.
• 13:22
  Chris Jones: Square one, two, three, and four, and we become like Jesus as a disciple in his love.
• 13:31
  Chris Jones: And we become a part of the tree of life, becoming the antidote to the poison.
• 13:40
  Chris Jones: That completes our series, Rebuilding Faith, Finding God Again.
• 13:44
  Chris Jones: Guys, thank you.
• 13:46
  Chris Jones: I truly appreciate it.
• 13:48
  Chris Jones: Thank you for allowing me to do this.
• 13:50
  Chris Jones: I hope I've earned your follow and your share.
• 13:53
  Chris Jones: And if I have, let's make that happen.
• 13:56
  Chris Jones: Reach out to me.
• 13:57
  Chris Jones: I want to connect.
• 13:58
  Chris Jones: Hit me up at spiritualhotsauce at gmail.com.
• 14:01
  Chris Jones: Thanks, guys.
• 14:02
  Chris Jones: I'll see you again next week.