E02“Suffering in Things We Can Not Control"

In this powerful episode of Spiritual Hot Sauce, we explore suffering you can’t control — the storms that strip identity, reshape purpose, and force transformation. Chris revisits the North/South compass of emotion vs. discipline and introduces East/West: faith that suffering has purpose versus the belief that life just happens. Using Jungian archetypes, Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey, and Jesus’ Garden → Cross → Tomb → Resurrection cycle, we map a spiritual framework for enduring loss, trauma, illness, divorce, and other life-stopping crises. Learn how post-traumatic growth, disciplined surrender, and a faith-centered lens can change how you navigate pain and emerge transformed — not simply healed, but reborn with new identity and witness.

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Episode 2 of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Welcome, I'm 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. Whether we are joined by an insightful guest, or we just jump into the deep end, this exploration promises to challenge us all. Are we getting it right? This is Spiritual Hot Sauce.

UNKNOWN: 0:31

Spiritual Hot Sauce

SPEAKER_00: 0:37

So we've been in a discussion about suffering. And in the first episode, we talked about suffering and things that we can control. In this episode, I want to talk about suffering and things that we can't control. And that's everything from minor little setbacks that happen daily in our lives to bigger things, storms in our lives or seasons, adversity that how we go through with patience and how we endure, how we choose, how we navigate often allows us to redefine who we are in our identities and even how we fit into society. But it also encompasses the big, ugly storms, those storms that take so much from us and even take our identities. It's the hard stuff in life, these storms are. They're losing someone very close to you. It's illness and health issues that don't seem to have a resolve. Natural disasters, accidents, economic hardships, divorce, trauma. I mean, the list goes on, and there is no shortage of that kind of suffering in this life. Adversity sorts itself whether we know it or not. Now, I have a saying about the storms in our life, and that is we grow. We either grow stronger, further ahead, and better prepared for the future, or we grow weaker, further behind, and further frustrated with life. But we grow. Now, how we grow is heavily dependent on how we go through the storms and the attitude we have. Now, I started the first episode with a question of why does God allow suffering? And then I came back around to that question after offering my perspective of everything, and I gave my thoughts. I'd like to do the same in this episode as well. But where I want to start is a brief recap. I don't want to go too deep, but we need a place to start to pick up where we left off, and that is the compass, north and south. Now, the compass was meant to help us get an understanding of our battle within of how we go through life of choosing. Our emotions versus our will. So he said that North represents our emotions and South represents discipline. North is our emotions. Emotions are our wants, our needs, our desires, our fears, and that emotions want immediate gratification. They do not understand long-term investment of behaviors. South represents discipline, which represents our our kardia, Greek word for our heart. It's our center, our essence, who we are, how we choose. It's our will. And those two things are pitted against each other, and it is our constant battle within of how we choose to move forward. Now, we said that in discipline, a lot of times it's micro-dosing and suffering so you can avoid big suffering later on, or so you can get to the really good stuff later on in life, that life was a marathon It's not a sprint. And the really good things come from life when you can stay in the center of that compass for the longest durations, the longest periods of time. Now, you're either going to have to go south through certain parts of your life or north through certain parts of your life as you navigate through some of these problems or adversities, these sufferings. Now, we did say that it can get very complex, that the way I presented it makes it sound very easy and simple, but it's not. There's a lot of variables to this. And you can spend a lot of time learning and studying to try to figure out the best ways to navigate with North and South in this compass idea. But we said a good religion that sits right on top can do it pretty quickly and effectively for you. It's like an operating system. It just sits on top and makes it easy. This week, I want to introduce concept of East and West. East, I want you to think of, represents purpose in suffering, that there is a reason or a purpose in the suffering. West represents there is no purpose. Life just happens. You just have to move on. I think of this as the spiritual part. North and South is the religious part. East and West is the spiritual part. There's this term that says the you can grow emotionally and you can heal emotionally and be stronger than you were after trauma. It's called post-traumatic growth. But your identity is probably going to change. So with that, we start to understand that if we give the element of faith in post-traumatic growth, it exponentially increases your chances of success of growing after trauma. What's that mean? If you think that God is in it with you, or you feel like there's purpose in this or preparing you, or there's something greater to it, then your chances of success will exponentially grow. So it's a good thing to have that faith. And I think it's, again, it's a spiritual thing. So why don't you just make all suffering about purpose? Well, because it's a process. It's not an event. And we're going to go through some of that here in a minute. And it takes time. And if you take everything in your life with it has purpose and you need to go through that process, you might find yourself spinning your wheels and not getting to the good stuff. Keep in mind, the ideal place to be is in the center. So the more time you spend pegging the compass over to east, the more time you're not spinning in the good stuff. However, it may be necessary. But then again, it might be necessary to see things as life just happens quickly get through it and navigate. So you might see what I'm talking about. Now, you could have a northeast where it's emotional and it has purpose, or you can have a southeast where it's disciplined and it has purpose, or you can have a southwest where it is disciplined and it has no purpose. You just have to get through it. I mean, in the compass, now you can navigate a lot of different ways and directions. But east and west, east represents purpose of suffering, west represents no purpose of suffering. That is what I would say the part of the compass which represents your spirituality. Now, I want to pivot. This is the spiritual hot sauce part of it. I want to go outside and come back to what we're talking about from a different perspective. And I want to start with... an odd place, and that's the archetype. Carl Jung talked about the archetype and talked about collective consciousness. He's the father of analytical psychotherapy. I don't want to do a big, huge, deep dive into that. I don't think it's important to what I'm talking about, but I think there's some ideas of what he's talking about that's going to help us have better understanding in the circumstances that can't be changed when the path ends. Now what? So in the archetype, and this is really cool because what Carl Jung is saying is that we all in our collective conscious of humanity, we have some information in us that we don't consciously always have. And it comes out in weird ways. So Joseph Campbell said a monothology that in all religions, in all mythology, in all cultures, in all the civilization, predating written word, this goes back to oracle traditions, we all had this intrinsic knowledge. They all had the same story, that we all intrinsically understood it. But how we understood it is always the same. We still have the same story today. It's in this understanding of something that resonates with us that on a rudimentary level, in our core, our essence of who we are, and we don't even really know why. And if you don't know what the actual story is, it's the hero is kind of tapped on the shoulder by God or the universe or fate, and they go on this big journey, and they learn lessons, and they are tested, and they're put through trials, and they go through losses, and they have success, but they learn different things. Their identity begins to shift and change, and there's something about them that seems But then they come to this place that Joseph Campbell calls the cave and that in all of the religions and mythology and all these stories that the hero goes to the cave and they either die and are reborn into something that's more pure or they like slay a dragon and they get something from slaying the dragon or whatever it is they do that adds to them and changes them and evolves them into something that's more pure. better, then the hero will go back to their community and they save the day and they find immortality in that. We always receive that story the same way. We always receive it where we worship in religion the hero or we idolize in mythology or the story, the hero, but I think we miss an important key to what we're talking about in adversity, where the path ends. I'm going to go to one of the archetypes, one of the characters that goes through this, but gives us a whole different understanding than any of the other stories. This is where it gets really interesting. It's the story of Jesus. Now, hang on with Because Jesus says some things that when you start looking at it through this lens, it gets really cool. And it gets very, I think, helpful. It's from the Bible in John chapter 8, 31 through 32. And it establishes in these verses that Jesus is speaking to the believers. And he says to the believers, if you continue in my word, you are my disciple, and you shall know the truth. That's a strange thing to say. Now, you can be a believer in the religion of the worship of the deity of Christ and have nothing to do with discipleship, being a disciple of Christ. You can be a disciple of Christ and have nothing to do with the religion of the worship of the deity of Christ. But Jesus is establishing the difference here between a believer and a disciple. And he says, If you will go through what I say, my logos, my word, and my demonstration, you are my disciple. And as a disciple, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. The difference between a disciple and a believer is this. A disciple becomes just like the teacher. A disciple will cut their hair, talk like, act like, speak like, eat the same food as the teacher. But Jesus is saying, don't be disciples. in any of that, except for my word and what I'm about to demonstrate. I want you to become my disciple in it. And in this, you will know the truth, and this truth will set you free. Not as a believer, but as a disciple. Again, you can be a believer that worships the deity of Christ, but have nothing to do with discipleship of Christ. Now, from that perspective, the difference between a disciple and a 16, 24, and 25 in reference to what we're talking about. Jesus says this,"'Deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me, that whosoever loses their life for my sake shall find it.'" He's talking about life now, Zoe, not just life after you die, but life here and now. He's talking about truth setting you free, and now he's talking about life and something that's not obviously how you would typically think it comes out. It's different. There's something weird in what he's saying, something very strange. What's he talking about here? He's talking about the crucifixion, his burial, and his resurrection. In religion, the religion of the worship of the deity of Christ, a believer will pay tribute to, honor, thank Jesus, and remember what Jesus did. and his sacrifice on the cross, his death and his burial and his resurrection. A disciple will follow and do what Jesus did in his demonstration and his word of what he said to do to deny yourself and pick up your cross and follow me. He's not saying obviously physically be crucified. He's talking about symbolically. What is Jesus talking about here? Well, he's talking about that storm in your life that you can't stop, where the path ends, your identity See, Jesus is facing crucifixion from the Romans, and crucifixion is... Man, it is the personification of Rome's cruelty. And it's not even about capital punishment. It's about sending a message to everyone else that sees it or knows about it. This is mess around and find out. This is the cruelty of Rome. This is sending a message. This is what Jesus is facing. He is facing that kind of horrific death. So, Jesus gives us five life cycle stages that he demonstrates, and then he just symbolically told us to do in the situation. Number one is the Garden of Gethsemane. Number two is the cross. Number three is the burial into the tomb or the cave. Number four is resurrection, and then number five is witnessing. In the first step, it is the Garden of Gethsemane. It is in the Garden of Gethsemane where it says he prays two things. Let this cup pass from me, but your will be done. What does that say in modern language? So Jesus goes alone to God and prays, let this cup pass from me. Says he prays so fervently, he sweats blood. What's that mean? Any possible way you can pray, you can frame it up, you can verbalize of God, change my circumstances. That's what Jesus is doing. For a while, he's praying, God, change my circumstances. I don't want to do this. But after he realizes that this isn't going to change, Jesus says, but your will be done, which is him denying himself, which takes him to the cross, which is symbolically what we will do in this situation. It is on the cross where his will dies, his identity dies, his pride, his ego, all of that dies, which leads him to the tomb or the cave. It's in the cave where where the circumstances aren't changed, but yet the circumstances are used to change him. He is transformed. He is purified. This is the longest part of the process from regarding Gethsemane to resurrection, excluding the witnessing. It says for him, it's three days. Now Jesus resurrects, but listen to me. Jesus is not healed. Jesus is not restored. Jesus is transformed into something different. He still bears the scars of the circumstances that put him through this, but it is his scars that will witness on his behalf in ways his words can't. And then Jesus, starts witnessing for 40 days. It says he just witnesses, talks about the kingdom of heaven, and then tells his disciples, now you go make other disciples. But his identity has been changed. What do you mean by that? Well, I mean, before he is crucified, Jesus heals, Jesus casts out demons, Jesus feeds, Jesus performs a bunch of miracles. After he resurrects, he doesn't perform any miracles. Jesus is the miracle. He just witnesses about the process, about the kingdom of heaven and making other disciples. This is the hero's journey, except what makes Jesus so amazingly different is the information that we've always seemed to intrinsically have in us. And even today that we've had such a misunderstanding about, Jesus offers a clarification to it. He does it and then says, now you do it when you go through this. And he even uses the word zoe, life. And he uses the word of freedom. I would say this is salvation. I would say this is being saved. I would say this is being born again, what he's talking about. Not in the religious idea, but in this spiritual way where our identity is changed, we are transformed, but we're a walking, talking miracle. And that this life that we found, we shouldn't have had. We shouldn't have been able to get to it. People that go through this process would tell you that who they are afterwards is is much better than the person they were before. This new identity they have after going through that process is a much more desirable one. In this identity, they find peace. There's something about going through suffering like that. Again, we're talking about the suffering that happens, these storms that take our identity from us, where our path that we had comfort with, something about going through that kind of suffering, which strips away at least a piece of our identity. Because what is our identity? It's how we fit into society. So it is who we are. It is our identity. When we lose a piece of that, it is in these moments that it strips us down to our core, our essence of who we are. It's not the veneer of ourselves, but it's our heart of who we are. It's in those times where we are open-handed in the cave that we're malleable, that we're changeable, and that we can find life and we can be transformed. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you, so please reach out with questions, comments, and or concerns. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review us. You can follow us on Facebook for And if you enjoy the flavor of the sauce, then please share it with others. I would appreciate that. We'll see you next time.