E04“Defining Good: How We’ve Defined “Good” Wrong Since the Beginning of Us”

Dive into an enlightening journey on this episode of Spiritual Hot Sauce as we explore the intricate relationship between suffering and how we define 'good.' By examining the compass of life—our emotions, discipline, purpose, and the uncontrollable—we uncover the pivotal role of redefining goodness away from societal norms. Discover how the ancient archetype of the Hero's Journey and timeless parables, like that of the Good Samaritan, offer profound insights into this redefinition. Through the lens of Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and the teachings of Jesus, we unravel how intrinsic knowledge and behaviors rooted in compassion can guide humanity towards a less suffering-filled existence. Tune in to transform your understanding of morality and redefine your life's compass.

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Episode 4 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

This is Spiritual Hot Sauce. Welcome. I'm Chris Jones. Defining good. This is where we start to transition away from suffering. I say transition because I think it's in how we define good we'll find the source of our suffering. And I'm talking about all of humanity from the beginning of us. Now, we've been talking about this concept of a compass. which is a tool meant to help us navigate through adversity of life. And we said that North represents our emotions, our needs, our wants, our fears, our desires, and that emotions want immediate gratification. They don't understand long-term investment of behaviors. We said the polar opposite of that was South, which is discipline. And discipline is the opposite. It is choosing to do difficult things and make difficult decisions, but it creates a culmination of good choices and behaviors that helps us navigate away from big adversity or get to a better place. This is North and South. We said this represents suffering and things that we can control. Now, East and West, we said, represents suffering and things that we can't control. East represents a purpose of suffering. There's something to it that helps us in losing a part of ourselves, but transitioning into something different, a different identity. West represents suffering with things we can't control, but there's no purpose to it. Life is just life. This happens. We said right in the center of all of this is this Greek word It's our heart, our center, our essence. It's who we are at our core. It is our will. It's how we choose. It's the hand that navigates our compass. It's the rudder of our life. And in our cardia should be how we define good. Everything that we do should be filtered through how we define good. Now, how we define good is the important part because it kind of calibrates the compass. And if you have an improper definition or slightly off, your compass will be slightly off. And if you're off a few degrees in a short journey, you're still probably going to be able to get to your destination. You might have to put forth some extra effort to get there, but you'll probably still make it. But now once you get to the long haul, A few degrees means you're going to be way off the mark. You're going to be nowhere near where you want to be. So it's really important that we have a proper definition of good or this definition we're about to talk about. Carl Jung gave us this definition. word, the archetype, which describes this intrinsic knowledge that lives in the collective consciousness of all humanity. Joseph Campbell talks about it in The Hero's Journey, the monothology. And there's something about this piece of information that once it makes it to our conscious, we struggle with what to do with it. Now, this story, The Hero's Journey, it happens in all religions, in all mythology, in all cultures. It predates the written language. It from the oracle traditions, and it's intrinsic. We know it's intrinsic because it happens in isolated cultures. The story still emerges. It finds its way into us. If you think this story is archaic and ancient and just historic, you're wrong. It is still emerging right now in movies and books and in games. It's still happening. Our most popular characters come from the hero's journey. We are still heavily drawn to it. And again, we struggle with what to do with it. We either deify and we worship this character, or we idolize and we pedestal, but there's information. I think we just don't know what to do with it. Now, we talked about that Jesus was a part of this archetype, and Jesus is definitely one of the characters from the hero's journey. That is definitely him. But what makes him different than the other characters? is that Jesus kind of, not kind of, but he has this weird way of saying, don't just hear the story, be discipled by it. Be discipled by my behaviors. And in doing this, you'll find life. because it's counterintuitive. He's the only one I know that does that. The Bible gives us this imagery that from a tree of knowledge of good and evil, the serpent would give us a fruit that is the poison to all of humanity. It was with us from the beginning. It's in our origin story. But later on, it gives us this imagery that from a tree, Jesus would give us a fruit that's the antidote to that poison. Now, when you hear fruit, it represents behavior. So it's saying that in the very beginning, this how we define good, this ideology, it made its way into us and behaviors, which is the source of our suffering. But Jesus gave us a fruit that is the antidote to it. Again, there's this strange story that happens, and Jesus gives us the definition of good. But yet, even those who are in the religion of the worship of the deity of Christ still miss it. For those of you who are interested that would like to go find this story, it comes out of Luke chapter 10, verses 25 through 37. But it's the story of the Good Samaritan. It's the parable he tells. There's this lawyer. who comes to Jesus and he asks a question. Now, it's important that you know a lawyer is an expert of social construct. That's extremely important. That's going to come up later. But this lawyer asked Jesus, how do I inherit eternal life? And Jesus asked him how he reads it, which means he knows he's a lawyer. And he quotes Leviticus 19.18 and says, basically, love thy neighbors thyself. And Jesus says, you're correct. Do this and you live. But then the man asked Jesus, well, who is my neighbor? And that's when Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. He says there was this man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. Now, this road was about 17 miles. And he said thieves jumped the man, beat him, and took his clothes, his belongings, his animal, and just left him for dead. But then the priest came down the road and saw the man. Now, when it says priest, understand, at that time, that would have had to have been a priest from the temple. That's where you went to, to give a sacrifice, and the priest would give the sacrifice on your behalf so you could get forgiveness from God. In order to be a priest back then in the temple, you had to be of a certain blood lineage from the Hebrew people that would have been a Levite. So this person traveling down the road would have been a Levite priest, that person that fulfills that purpose in this social construct of how you go to God to get forgiveness. He saw the man, but he didn't stop. He kept going. And then it says a Levite. This would have been the person that took care of the temple and helped you get to the priest. He also saw the man, but he didn't stop. He kept going. Then it says a Samaritan saw the man. Now, if you don't know what a Samaritan is, a Samaritan to the Hebrew people at that time would have been heavily looked down at. They would have been prejudiced towards this person. There's an ancient saying from that time that it's better that a good Hebrew pass through the Jordan River than go through Samaria. But it's him that goes to the beaten man, puts him on his own animal, takes him to an inn, tells the innkeeper, fix him up. I'm paying the bill right now. I have other things to do, but I'm going to come back. And I'm asking that you nurture him back to health. I'll pay the bill, whatever it is. It's the equivalent that today we find somebody that hurts. We put them in our own vehicle, and we take them to the hospital, and we tell the hospital, listen, I'll pay the bill. Just take care of them. And then Jesus gives the man how you are to truly define good. From the perspective of the man laying on the side of the road dying, who would he say is his neighbor? And then the lawyer says, the one that did good. And Jesus says, you're correct. So when we hear this story, we have a little bit of inner struggling going on. And I'll kind of share with you why. See, the robbers, they represent selfishness, self-centric. There is no restraint. There is no refrain. They do what they want. They take what they want. They'll hurt what they want as long as it's good for them. The Levites are also self and self-centric. However, they live in a place of refrain and restraint of hurting others. They are obeying the social construct. They are obeying laws. They would never hurt the man. They would never steal from the man. They're just staying in their lane, trying to take care of their own. See, we look at it being right or wrong, two things, and Jesus is showing, no, it's three things. The third thing is what the Samaritan was, is the good thing. That is the definition of good. What we do and what has always been the poison, the source of our suffering, is how we define good. It is social construct. It's the laws of social construct, and we use that to define good. I think we mistake social construct's laws of refraining, of hurting other people as the definition of good and our morality. I've heard brilliant people, atheists and theists, debate where we get this idea of good from. Atheist argues that it comes from social construct, and the theist argues that it came from God. The problem is, is we both agree on good. Jesus, the archetype, is showing us how we are defining good is the problem and has always been the problem. It's the source of our suffering. It's the poison. The poison that is in humanity that has brought us suffering comes largely from defining good based on social construct. By taking this different idea of good, though, into our cardia, our center of us, the part that controls our compass, we, as in humanity, begin to move into a different place. See, the Samaritan gave on need versus deserve, didn't judge, didn't condemn, didn't condone. What was centric in his life was the person that had the need. So Jesus is showing us that it's not two things, but three things. The thieves represent wrong, but the Levites don't represent right. They represent obeying the laws of social construct. Jesus is speaking to a lawyer, an expert of social construct. In the story, the robbers represent a dystopian society. A dystopian society doesn't have laws. They don't have criminal laws because they don't need them. It's up to the But in that situation, you start having problems because in an emergent society, you have all these different cultures coming together to form something bigger. You have different ideas of justice, which creates a very unstable society. The leaders of these emergent societies would see the need to establish laws so that there is a form of justice that is in society so the blood flow of society itself can continue Which is trade and commerce. That represents the Levites. They are obeying the social construct. And this is how we've come to define good, which Jesus is showing us is the poison. In a society of laws, we are taught refrain from hurting other people. We still do that today. But we're still selfish and self-centric. We just don't hurt others. See, a dystopian society and a more utopian society have a similar earmark. Neither require criminal law. We think that getting closer to a utopian society means legislating the perfect set of laws that governs the citizens' behaviors. But with this lesson of what Jesus is talking about, the archetype, we start to understand the citizens themselves must antiquate the laws. Therefore, criminal law is required. With this, humanity begins to move away from suffering, at least in a large part. See, this part of the story represents the Samaritan, which is disciple of Christ kind of behavior. We start to hear Zoe, this life, not just life after we die, but life here and now. Humanity getting to a better place, further away from suffering. See, I think as we grow up in the social construct, those laws of refrain from hurting others, we confuse with morality. And that's the message, that good is something else completely. I'm reminded of something Jesus said, and he said of his disciples, though they are in the world, they're not of it. Another way to say that is, though they are in the social construct, their morality is not defined by it. That when they have the chance to do good, they do good. If we in the mirror challenge ourselves to this, of defining good, and we put that into our heart, our cardia, our center, where we control our compass, how we navigate life, our choices become different, our behaviors become different, and we start to alter humanity, and humanity starts to move away from suffering. 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 updates and information. 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.