Spiritual Hot Sauce

E16 "A Conversation with H.L. Hussmann: Unlearning Religion”

• Chris Jones • Season 1 • Episode 16

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In this episode of Spiritual Hot Sauce, Chris Jones sits down with H.L. Hussman, founding pastor of Daylight Church in Louisville, Kentucky, a community created for people who don’t quite fit the traditional church mold. H.L. shares his remarkable journey from being a traveling Christian apologist and author to questioning his own teachings so deeply that he chose to destroy his own published books. The conversation explores themes of religious trauma, evolving faith, the meaning of sin, and the rejection of eternal torment theology. Listeners will hear a candid and profound story of conviction, transformation, and redefinition of spirituality that challenges conventional religious ideas and offers a welcoming perspective for both believers and skeptics.

https://www.daylightchurch.com/

pastorh@daylight.com

Episode 16 of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  
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SPEAKER_00:

On this episode, I talk with H.L. Hussman, our first guest of Spiritual Hot Sauce, founding pastor of Daylight Church in Louisville, Kentucky, a community for people who don't quite fit the church mold. After starting as an apologist and author, H.L. would ask a question that would change the course of his life. The answers led him to destroy his own books in an act of conviction, choosing faith over religion. This episode is his story and his journey. 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 just jump into the deep end, this exploration promises to challenge us all. This is Spiritual Hot Sauce. All right, so I'm with H.L. Hussman, author, former apologist, and current pastor of Daylight Church, a church for not so churchy people. Welcome.

SPEAKER_02:

Good morning. It's a thrill to be here, a privilege. I'm a big fan of the sauce. I like the flavor. I'm a regular listener and just sent it to a friend recently.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I appreciate it, man. I'm glad you're on the sauce. So I've been looking forward to talking to you because there's a couple things that stand out about you that's very remarkable and it's very unique that you don't find amongst other people. And I'm just going to put this out front and then we'll go from there. But I've never heard of an author burning their own books. That's crazy to me. That it's kind of a book is a culmination of all of your craft brought together in one point of all your ideas and put out there. That even if later you disagree with some of it, you might have it taken out and not really push anymore. But to go out and burn it takes some serious conviction of something. There's something there that would cause somebody to burn their own books. How many books did you have?

SPEAKER_02:

As far as quantity left?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, how many books did you write?

SPEAKER_02:

Two and a half.

unknown:

Two and a half.

SPEAKER_00:

So you had two and a half, and you just said, okay, I'm done. Yeah. What? Oh, so which books was it? Was it all of the previous books, the first two books, or that I so I didn't technically burn them, I trashed them. You trashed them?

SPEAKER_02:

I threw I threw hundreds of them in a dumpster.

SPEAKER_00:

Are you kidding me?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

How do you do that? So when did this happen? I mean, when did you throw the books away? And was it both of your books or was it just one book?

SPEAKER_02:

It was both eventually.

SPEAKER_00:

Both eventually.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

When what date are we talking? What timeline?

SPEAKER_02:

So eight or eight or nine years ago, probably.

SPEAKER_00:

So this because I mean, daylight's been around for 10 years plus, is that right?

SPEAKER_02:

That's exactly right.

SPEAKER_00:

And so these books were out there at the beginning of daylight.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, in fact, I used one of them as promotional material for daylight when we started. I went door to door passing out copies.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. And then you threw them away. Yeah. Okay. So all right, man. So let's let's back up. Let's start over there. So tell me about you, just a little briefly. Who who is H.L. Hussman? Tell me a little bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm H.L. Hussman. I'm the father of four children and wife or wife. I'm not a wife. I'm the husband of Kara Hussman and pastor of Daylight Church. I was a campus minister for many years, a couple decades almost. And an author. I traveled the world teaching apologetics and what what we called evangelism in those days.

SPEAKER_00:

So what year would that have been when did you was traveling the world and apologetics?

SPEAKER_02:

That would have been post-college graduation. So let's see, 1996 was when I graduated. 1990. Yeah, 96 is when I graduated. So I was a campus minister after that, wrote the books sometime around early 2000s, and then traveled the world and the country for about a decade.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Powell What was the book about?

SPEAKER_02:

The first one was called God's Greatest Passion, Every Christian Everywhere Sharing Jesus, and it was about evangelism, how each person has a priority and a responsibility for basically converting people to Christianity was So I'm assuming this was a very religious book.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. Very dogmatic. So And so you had these books that were very religious, apologists out there traveling and speaking. And how long did you do that?

SPEAKER_02:

About a decade. Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

The traveling speaking gig was about a decade. I was a campus pastor for 20 years.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a long time. And so was there any evolution of your belief or faith that started moving outside of religious ideas that you had, or was you always in these religious ideas up until a moment?

SPEAKER_02:

It kind of starts with a question. And that question was we had a speaker come to our campus that was an a young earth creationist and espoused a six-day creation with seventh day of rest. And I was helping him pack up his books. He was a traveling speaker and apologist. And I was helping him pack up his books at the end of his lecture. And I asked him the question, why don't we find trilobites and horses in the same rock strata? And I remember his answer disappointed me tremendously. His answer was, Well, we don't, but we find cockroaches in all of them. Which I felt like circumvented my question entirely. It didn't answer my question. But I asked him again and he he reiterated, we find cockroaches in all of them. And I felt challenged by that. And then I started studying Big Bang cosmology, and that led me to a search of the scriptures as far as like what scripture is supposed to be, how how it's supposed to be interpreted. And it kind of started from there. It was a snowball. And people people talk about the slippery slope. And I believe in the slippery slope, but I don't think it's as dangerous as people think it is.

SPEAKER_00:

So you started with this question that you had, which led to a whole different process and a whole different path. How long did that take? I I guess what I'm trying to say is, how long did that take? What did that evolution like? How so over a decade? And was there a time when you've had that kind of that epiphany, that aha moment where you realized something's wrong?

SPEAKER_02:

You've heard the expression death of many cuts. It's kind of that. And I I I want to be careful how to describe it because I don't feel like the old me has passed away so much as the old me has evolved. So I I don't consider it a distinct and marked separation from what I used to believe.

SPEAKER_00:

There was no death of what you used to believe. This was an evolution, an evolution into something different. Yes. Is that how I'm to understand that?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, and it's taken it's it's still going on. I still, to this day, questions and face off with those questions.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Powell As you went through this process, it was about a decade of that. At what point did you decide that you were going to start a church?

SPEAKER_02:

It's an interesting story. I was asked many times when I was traveling and speaking when I was going to start a church. Everybody wanted me to start a church. But it was a pretty sweet gig. You didn't have to deal with people so much when you were a traveling speaker. You could just come in and kick people around and let the pastor sort it out.

SPEAKER_00:

That's awesome. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I knew too many pastors to want to be a pastor. It's it's a hard job. Yeah. It's a soul-sucking job for a lot of people. But I was at a conference of pastors, and the speaker was talking about church planting, and I was a campus minister at the time in a room full of lead pastors of churches, and I had a button-up shirt on, but jeans with holes in the knees, and he was he was talking about a church he had gone to that year where he met a guy in the foyer that was wearing a white t-shirt with jeans in the holes, with holes in the knees. He said it wasn't even a nice white t-shirt, it was a Hanes-Pack white t-shirt. And he said he went into the service, and it turns out the pastor was the guy in the Hanes-Pack white t-shirt. And then the speaker at this conference pounded the pulpit and said, Guys, it's the most powerful service I've been in in years. And we need churches like that in Kentucky. And you know, I have this running dialogue with Jesus in my head pretty constantly. And I said to Jesus, I could do that. Meaning, and I didn't mean I want to do that or I will do that. I just meant if I was going to pastor a church, that's what I want, that's how I would want it described. And then that dialogue with Jesus continued, and I said, I said, if we if I ever did start a church, I want to have I wanted to have a really cool name that nobody else has. It's one of those goofy things that just happens to pass through your head. And immediately Daylight Church popped in my head.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a good name.

SPEAKER_02:

And I thought, well, there's got to be dozens of daylight churches. So I got on my phone while the guy was still preaching and found out there's one Daylight Christian community center in Detroit, Michigan, and nobody else. Daylightchurch.com was available. So I bought daylightchurch.com with my phone while he was speaking. And I went home to my wife that night and I said, I think we should start a church. And she said, Let's do it.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow. So she was supportive from the get-go.

SPEAKER_02:

Very much so. And she had a sweet gig too. She had a really good job, and our second child was on the way.

SPEAKER_00:

And so Life was happening.

SPEAKER_02:

Life was definitely happening.

SPEAKER_00:

And right in the middle of it, you say, Hey, I'm going to switch gigs and I'm going to go be a pastor.

SPEAKER_02:

In fact, she gave birth to our second child, and the next day we moved to Louisville.

SPEAKER_00:

Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

Got in the car, loaded things up, and moved.

SPEAKER_00:

So why Louisville? Because yeah, they like churches in Louisville. So why did you pick Louisville?

SPEAKER_02:

I had always said that if I you know, I had I'd I'd been teased about doing a church forever. And there were there was there's more to the story than this, but I had always said if I was going to do it, I'd do it in Louisville. And oddly enough, it's because of Ramsey's Cafe on the World, a restaurant in the Highlands. Great restaurant. Ramsey would love to hear that, I think. Yeah, yeah. We we years before had been at a conference here and had eaten at Ramsey's, and I just had such a wonderful experience. It was it was like this marked place in my mind that I loved the vibe, I loved the atmosphere, I love the people, I loved the highlands. So I had a long-standing love for Louisville based on that one experience that was just like planted in my brain. And so when I said, let's go start a church, I said, I I think I said we should move to Louisville and start a church. And then it also had the benefit of being close to family and close to where I was planted and that sort of thing as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Because you're a foodie.

SPEAKER_02:

I am a foodie.

SPEAKER_00:

So Louisville's an ideal place for you.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh man, it's it's a beautiful thing.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Okay, so you started this church. That's a difficult thing to do in and of itself.

SPEAKER_02:

I actually got up the next morning and got on Amazon and plugged in church planting books, and I bought 14 of the top 20 books that popped up, and that's how I do you recommend that method? Oh boy, I don't know. It were it worked for us. We've we've we've got a wonderful, beautiful church at this point. But I didn't know what I was doing, and so I read books to figure it out.

SPEAKER_00:

I gotcha. Okay. So you you moved here, you started prepping, doing the groundwork, and then you started in a movie theater. Is that right? That's right. Why a movie theater?

SPEAKER_02:

It was affordable, it was interesting, it was a place for not so churchy people. It had all the markings of the kind of church that Daylight wanted to be.

SPEAKER_00:

And why a church for not so churchy people? Because you haven't even got to the point where you're burning your own books yet. You haven't got to that moment yet, but you've already started a church for people that probably wouldn't fit into a typical church. So why that?

SPEAKER_02:

It's a good question. I think that's the heart of Jesus. You know, there's the parable of the of the lost sheep. And in my even in my book, God's Greatest Passion, it was all about helping people find Jesus that were far from Jesus. So I've always had an interest and a hunger for that. I didn't I didn't I didn't want to make a church where churchy people would come and be more churchy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

That never interested me at all.

SPEAKER_00:

There's a lot of those already.

SPEAKER_02:

But we are a church for not so churchy people. So the the church for part is important because we are a church that has a passion for. So if people are churchy, if people like hymns, if people like a liturgy, you know, they're not excluded. We don't we don't exclude people who have church history and experience. We need people with church history and experience to be for the not-so churchy.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I gotta say, from my perspective, it doesn't feel fake and it doesn't feel contrived. It feels natural. But it also feels like no matter who you are, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and I hope I I hope we are that, and I hope that we go beyond welcoming to including. Because there's a lot of churches that will welcome anyone, but then when they want to be included, they have to cross X, Y, or Z barrier before they can be.

SPEAKER_00:

Before you can get into the club. Mm-hmm. Gotcha. That's that's a hard fight up a mountain. That's a difficult thing.

SPEAKER_02:

That's why I recommend starting your own church.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Because when you start your own church, you can be what you want to be and let God sort it out.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So if you take over an old church or try to reestablish a church that's long has a long history, it's hard to make shifts like that. But if you start from the beginning and set up culture in a particular way, it Which doesn't mean it was w without its challenges.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

I managed to preach our services down from about 135 people to where about about 70 people now.

SPEAKER_00:

So you've done a good job. Not everybody likes it for sure. Right. No, it's very it's it's got its own flavor for sure. So you start this church, it's fairly successful, but yet you keep evolving through this to the point where you start throwing away your books, I guess about two years later after starting the church, is that correct? That's right. What happens to cause you to throw away your life's work like that? Because I think from anybody who creates anything, and I can relate to this, even if you come to a point where you've outgrown that, to throw it away is such man, it's such a statement that you didn't even want to recognize that anymore. What was it that made you cross that threshold where you would destroy your own work?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't feel like it was particularly heroic or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I came to see what I espoused as garbage. So that's where it belonged.

SPEAKER_00:

What was in the books that you felt were garbage?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, the the first one was was easier to describe as garbage than the other. The first one about evangelism kind of painted a picture that everybody is on the outs with God and needs to come to the ends. And to cross those boundaries, you have to do X, Y, or Z a ritual.

SPEAKER_00:

It's creating a mountain to get to God. Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

And and it it starts with you are bad, only God can make you good.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02:

And I've come to reject that line of thinking as far as what people are, how people are, what sin means, what righteousness is, what judgment is. I've really I've really done deep dives into the original languages and the original postures of the early church, and I'm just not there anymore. And I also rejected eternal conscious torment in hell. I I think you've probably heard me say eternal conscious torment is the biggest blight on the church at this point and the biggest mar on the character of God that there could possibly be.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And my book was very much an advocate of eternal conscious torment. I had a chapter on hell that started was describing it, and it was brutal.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, just real quick, I don't want to go too deep in, well, maybe, but where do you think the whole idea of eternal torment came from? Because you're right, it's kind of hard to land on that. Other religions, from their perspective, they use hell, but it's more about hellish life here and now, you know, that you get to a place where you never get to the good stuff. You're constantly being tormented in this life now. So how it's presented in Christianity as a literal place, and not all Christianity, but where do you think or how where does it come from?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know precisely, and it's something I'd have to study, but I think Augustine had a lot to do with it. Yeah. I always paint him as my least favorite of the early church fathers.

SPEAKER_00:

I think it was about control for him?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't uh I think there's good faith people that believe it.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_02:

So I don't I don't want to I can't I don't know Augustine. I didn't know Augustine. I am not a scholar of Augustinian literature. So I can't say what his motives or heart were behind it. But and I'm sure there were other early church fathers that espoused it, but there were plenty that didn't.

SPEAKER_00:

You know, one of the things that bothers me about the church, and this actually this is more about Webster's. Webster's doesn't like give us the foundation for our language. And if we start veering off of it, it kind of anchors us back and pulls us back to no, this is the definition of that word. That if you have enough people that start misusing a word and they start veering off, Webster's just changes it in the dictionary. And that's what happened with the word eternity. That it got where it could be interchanged with everlasting. But eternity originally, in how it was used in the Bible and its original meaning was it had no beginning, had no ending, it's always been, it will always be. That that's what is eternal. So it gets into a weird, a weird dark place if you start talking about eternal punishment. Because now it's a punishment that's always been, that will always be, and had no beginning and has no ending. That gets that gets into stuff that nightmares are made out of. So it's beyond nightmares. It is. And so I'm to take that and then change that into like an everlasting, it it it kind of is like that old game where you'd have to twist around, twister, and and you gotta get in some awkward positions to make that theology work.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Powell I've I've always said that hell traumatized me. And if it hasn't traumatized you, you haven't thought about it enough.

SPEAKER_00:

Ah, that's uh that's pretty profound.

SPEAKER_02:

We're we're talking about sadism. We're talking about a God who is sadistic. And it's completely incompatible with God's love. Yeah. I don't care what selfistry you try to spin, I don't care what proof text you think you can come up with. The foundational truth to me is that eternal conscious torment is contradictory to God's love and they're irreconcilable and always will be.

SPEAKER_00:

Was it the idea of hell in your book that you were so strongly opinionated, which is why you found it to be garbage?

SPEAKER_02:

My book espoused negative judgmentalism towards virtually every human that you came across. It was these are lost people. I had a chapter called What is the Gospel, and it starts with the gospel is good news, but I have to share some really bad news first. And the bad news is that we're all born helplessly wicked. Which I reject at this point. I don't believe that. I I I believe we're all sinners, but I think sin is defined really poorly in the church. Like the homartheology of the church is miserable.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And so I think we're all frail, we're all people that are weak, we all miss the mark. None of us are perfect, but that doesn't mean we're all wicked.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And so there's a difference between wickedness and sinfulness. And my book espoused an idea that everyone is wicked and only God can save them from their wickedness. And then it was our task to convert them from wickedness to under the banner of Jesus to be healed from their wickedness. And I don't think that way anymore.

SPEAKER_00:

And that's when you said, I I don't even want this to exist, and you threw it away. Because that's strong conviction that throw you away your own work, even if you say, Well, I had it wrong. But there's still some good stuff in there. I'm just not going to push it anymore.

SPEAKER_02:

But to take it and just Well, like I said, it wasn't particularly heroic. It was part about partly about the cost of storage. Well, so I reject it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't describe I wouldn't hand it out to people. I wouldn't encourage people to buy it, I wouldn't encourage people to read it. So why store it?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I don't know if I'd even see it as heroic as so much as it it points heavily to that strong conviction. If you're so convicted that it's all it's not heroic to throw it away, it's just this is garbage. But to get from what was once your your baby, what was once what you were working on. It was everything. And it was a culmination of your life's work and presenting it in such a way until you finally get to another place in your life where this is garbage. And I don't want anybody reading this, and I don't even want to think about where I'm going to store it at. It's just taking up space. It's like you said earlier, you are evolving into a different person.

SPEAKER_02:

It's hard because, like you said, it it does represent more than a decade of my life. And that probably marks part of my hesitation about writing now is because I don't know who I'll be 10 years from now.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And so it's it's challenging to put ne put put pen to paper at this point.

SPEAKER_00:

I think though that's part of your legacy because it's hard to find anybody with that kind of conviction that spoke at that level, was an author, apologist, speaker, campus pastor, that put their faith above their religion. I think that speaks to your integrity, though. You know, because you had a success. And I've even heard it said by you that if you would go back to speaking like that, your church would have to get another building because it would be full every Sunday. But you would rather have people there that have been through religious trauma. And I've heard Daylight Church described like that. It's a triage for people who've been through religious trauma.

SPEAKER_02:

I hope it's a refuge for people. I I I wouldn't want to say that building a megachurch is easy, or that you just have to espouse a certain theology to bring people in mass.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But there's bet definitely been a sorting process. So as as I've transitioned and changed how I view the world theologically and what what it looks like to be connected to Jesus and to God, there are people who want to go on that journey with me, and there are people who aren't very interested in that journey. Or or even even really good faith people that still think that I'm just wrong.

SPEAKER_00:

But believe you're sincere.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And it's it's okay that they don't want to attend my church.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh Daylight Church is not the church for everybody. Right. For sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

And I've grown very comfortable with that reality.

SPEAKER_00:

So why how's that impacted your relationships with your friends, your colleagues, even family?

SPEAKER_02:

There are people that I feel like a black sheep with at this point.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But there's also people that connect with me or reach out to me that feel safer with me exactly because of the transitions that have occurred in my life.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I think. I would imagine. Because anybody that has that much conviction to basically burn their life down, you know, even over time, slowly and change it and go a whole different direction. It's one thing to do that if you're not successful. Okay, I get it. But if you're successful and you do it, that's a whole different that's a whole different ball game, and that is that's conviction. That's that's putting your faith above everything else.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, like I said, I'm I feel a little uncomfortable accepting that kind of compliment.

SPEAKER_00:

But I don't know if that's a compliment or if that's just a fact. Because as me looking at it from the outside looking in, I don't know how else you would look at it. You know? And I and I don't mean to be over complimentary, but I would look at it as inevitability. Inevitability.

SPEAKER_02:

Really? I I I don't think there was another path I could have walked.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. So recently you gave a message that you said is your most important message you've ever given. And that when you die, this is the message you want to be remembered for. And the the message was called, There are religious people who will harm you in the name of God. And I gotta tell you, so with that title and with your background, because I hear, I don't hear like deconstruction, I just hear more gentle evolution. But it makes sense why people that deconstruct and are looking to reconstruct would find you. But when I hear that title, it sounds like, okay, here we come with the soapbox. This is a very easy way to get a crowd around you. And it's this idea that always speak for something, but don't speak against anything. Because once you start speaking against something, you become kind of divisive. And I think in a conversation we had, you shared with me that once you start speaking against something, it's easy to get people to come together with you or come and surround you and kind of give you power and give you a platform because you've created an enemy. But that's divisive. It it makes more, it's it's the harder road, but it's more correct to speak for something, which means go walk out on the ledge and have a true message of something that's hopeful. And then let the people judge that that's a scary thing to do. So when I heard this title, I just naturally clicked. Yeah, it sounds like, man, he's gonna get his soapbox out, and here we go. He's gonna get, but the only person I heard you point a finger at in the message, because I've heard it twice, is yourself. And you said that you worry that you've created religious trauma in your past with others, and that that weighs on you.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Powell Well, forgive me, but I I doubt that I ever said don't speak against anything because that's that even creates a logical conundrum that speaking against not speaking against anything. So I I I suspect I've never used those words, but I have said that in order to create an army, you have to create an enemy.

SPEAKER_00:

It's how you build a regime, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And there's there's a lot of people out there that gain power and money and wealth and status by painting the other as awful. And I don't want to do that. And I I don't I don't want to utilize clickbait.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But in that particular situation, I was almost quoting Jesus verbatim. Yeah. I was I was summarizing the passage that we were tackling. And he basically says, there are religious folks that will kill you. Yeah. And whether he means kill you figuratively or literally is neither here nor there. And they'll do it in the name of God with the So the title was just a summary of the passage.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha. So I've heard you mention this before, but you said that it weighs on you that you feel like you may have created religious trauma in others in your past. I mean, how how much weight is there with that?

SPEAKER_02:

There's a lot of weight in the sense of desire to reverse course and make it as right as you could. But I'm also pretty comfortable in my own historical skin, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02:

I I think I'm on a journey just like everybody else. I believe in the mercy of God. I believe in the evolution of every human as far as what God wants to do in their life. I I think God works in spite of us as much as He works because of us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And I don't even those times, even those books, even the apologetics lectures and the the bounded set theology that I embrace, I I could see that Jesus ebbs and flows in all of that in ways that I don't understand that are mysterious to me. Yeah. So I don't feel deep shame or like deep psychological traumatic regret. Gotcha. So much as I say what I was teaching wasn't true, and the fruit of it wasn't good. So I want to correct that going forward.

SPEAKER_00:

Your most important message. So for the man that threw away his life work with these books and then took a path, and when he finally says, All right, this is the message I want to be remembered for. So what made that message so important?

SPEAKER_02:

It was a culmination of many transitions that I've experienced over the years that results in seeing God and Jesus in an entirely different light, which I believe is good. And it had to do with the definitions of words. So in that passage, Jesus says, There are religious people who will kill you in the name of God. And again, I want to I want to point out that there are people in good faith doing such things. For sure. It doesn't necessarily paint them as wicked, perhaps just misguided. But but there are wicked people who do it as well. There are power monongers and power graspers that use religion as a tool and a weapon. Oh, for sure. But in that passage, he says, basically, the religious folks have gotten three words wrong or three concepts wrong, and it's sin and judgment and righteousness. He says those specifically. And I, along with words like heaven and hell and wrath and repent, there's there's all kinds of words in the New Testament that I think when they're translated to English lose a ton of nuance. And when understood well, which I want I want to admit that I I'm still a student. I don't know that I understand these words well, and I want to always issue that caveat. I'm not a Greek scholar. Right. But I'm becoming well read on the topic. When those words are understood well, it shows this picture of a benevolent God who is on our side, who is for us, who is not looking to smite us, who's not looking to drag us down, who is not he doesn't have a smite button on his keyboard like the old far side cartoon.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

He's he's a coach, not a referee. He's he's a father, not a police officer. It it seems human nature to beat ourselves up, which is part of our hamartia. It's part of our sinfulness when sinfulness is translated appropriately.

SPEAKER_00:

It sounds like failing, doesn't it? It fell it sounds like that you're messing up. You're breaking a a law. There's like a God's got this big book of laws up in heaven. Here's what you've done. Right. You're in trouble. Write that down. So how how how should it be taken? I mean, what does homertyah mean?

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Powell So I think you're right. People have this jurisprudence view of sin and and righteousness and judgment where God is banging his gavel and pronouncing folks guilty of felonies or misdemeanors, whether you call them mortal or venial sins, or people use the word asin, like a misdemeanor.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they do.

SPEAKER_02:

And a a doesn't exist in the Greek as far as connected with sin. So Hamartia, most people interpret it as acts of evil or immoral acts. Whereas the literal interpretation is simply missing the mark.

SPEAKER_00:

And it's I heard you speak on this in your in your actual message, and you gave a a really good analogy. You you you brought up someone shooting an arrow. Right. Can you go into that a little bit and open that up?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, sure. So Hamartea is in many pulpits talked about as being an archery term, and it's etymologically it is not an archery term, but it's still a good illustration of aiming for the mark and missing the mark. And there's a thousand reasons why one might miss the mark. It could be windage, it could be draw strength on the bow, it could be inexperience with the bow, it could be cataracts, it it could be made Miriam whispering in your ear right at the wrong moment, just like this the story. Right. But there's a there's a vast difference between somebody aiming at the target and missing and somebody aiming into the crowd. And most people, and even my book espouse this idea that most people, that all people aim into the crowd, that all people are wicked. And the word kaqia is the Greek word for wickedness. And kakia and hamurtia are different things completely.

SPEAKER_00:

Is it possible in Hammertia? Because I presented that the thorns. And I talked about being here, blackberry picking, and you're just gonna be able to do it.

SPEAKER_02:

Trying to get your blackberry and getting stuck in the thorn.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And then you you know, you're stuck. You watch your life walk away from you.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell, Well, that's the judgment part. That's the crisis in the Greek, the crisis part. It's the there are consequences. There's cause and effect. We live in a world of cause and effect.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Ross Powell So do you think the the sin isn't the sin as punishment as much as it is as, hey, don't go over there because it will hurt you? Is that more of a father's love for his children rather than punishment? Because do we not see this as more punishing and we we we talk about the loving father, but we don't see a loving father in action because it's never presented that way.

SPEAKER_02:

Right. A punitive retributive God is not, in my opinion, the God of the Gospels.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Powell If my father did that to me growing up, I don't think I would think very highly of my father. You know, he's there to see me win, right? He wants to see me be successful.

SPEAKER_02:

You know, in the Greek tragedies, the Hamartea was the tragic flaw of the epic hero. So, like with Oedipus, it was prophesied that he would sleep with his mother and kill his father. And so Oedipus decided he was going to thwart the God's will or this this prophecy, he was going to deny this prophecy by moving far, far away so that he was guaranteed of never sleeping with his mother, guaranteed of never killing his father. But what he didn't know is that he was adopted. And so he did end up sleeping with his mother, and he did end up killing his father. And that was and his Hamartia was his hubris that was good natured. It was a good faith hubris. He was trying to do the right thing, but he thought he could outthwart the gods, out outthwart this prophecy. So so what you find is whether it's Achilles or Oedipus or Martin McFly and Back to the Future, Darth Vader, they all have their Hamartia.

SPEAKER_00:

The hero's journey.

SPEAKER_02:

It's the hero's journey. And that that's the that's the exact right word. The point is that we're talking about the hero of the story, not the villain of the story.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And the person overseeing the story, the narrator, is rooting for the hero.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, harmartia starts sounding like something that's going to take you off your path and keep you from the good stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Homertia comes with its own punishment.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. It's its own consequences. It's the stove that's hot.

SPEAKER_02:

And the consequences can compound. I think you did in one of your episodes recently about a person who was addicted to alcohol.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And lost their family and lost their lost their job and lost everything.

unknown:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

And so A hellish existence for them.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's that's my take on hellishness at this point, is kind of people when you say there is no eternal conscious torment, people say, Well, what did Jesus die for? And I don't believe Jesus died for us to escape hell in the traditional sense so much as hellishness and a perpetual hellishness.

SPEAKER_00:

Get us to a better place.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Now, in your message and why it was so important to you of Jesus, because this ties into people, religious people will harm you. Right? Mm-hmm. In the name of God. And they're doing it because of how they understand harmatia incorrectly, that they're seeing God as very literal, that they're seeing it in punitive.

SPEAKER_02:

I call it a puree God, like a pig squealing. Pure punitive retributive.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02:

And they they they see God as a moral arbiter and behavior policeman, as opposed to a coach and a father and a friend.

SPEAKER_00:

Does that seem like when you present it like that, with that comes a pecking order in the church? That's when you start developing a hierarchy because there's something about that that lends itself to you earn your way up the mountain. It's always almost painting a bad picture of God.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Powell Well, Jesus said that you can know a tree by its fruit. And so I think the fruit of that type of s teaching and that understanding is unhealthy. I think it results in trauma. I think it results in power and class and striving.

SPEAKER_00:

It's the perfect formula that creates that. Yeah. And so your message spoke that it was exactly what you were talking about. It was it was Jesus talking to his disciples and warning them this message that you're going to bring. And that reminds me, those people who bring something that they feel is going to free the masses are often seen as heretics because they're going to want to kill you.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I think we have to be careful to remember who the original hearer was. So when Jesus said that, he was talking to disciples that would literally be martyred for their faith. Yeah. All of them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And so I don't think it's fair to extrapolate that to a modern setting where I can predict that if I teach a good father that I'm going to be hated to the point of shedding blood. But I do think there's lessons to be drawn from it that could cost you a career, though. It can cost you a lot. It can cost you friends, it can cost you money, it can cost you cause a lot of pain. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So, okay, so that's hermatia. That's sin. Now the next word was what? Righteousness. Righteousness. So explain righteousness to me.

SPEAKER_02:

So most people interpret righteousness in the English as like sinlessness or moral perfection. And in my understanding, that's not what Dikaiosune, which is the Greek word, means. It is it's more about right alignment or right orientation than it is right behavior. And so my my kids are always a good example. My oldest son, and this this seems like a stupid example, but he drinks monster energy drinks, which I think is a bad idea. I think it's bad for your adrenal glands, I think it's causes you to crash and burn. I think it's unhealthy as far as addiction and so forth. So I have this, and it like I said, very trivial. I don't I don't mean to paint this as a big picture.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

But I've told him that I I think it's wrong, and by wrong I mean unhelpful. But he's his own human being, he can make his own decisions, and he continues to drink monster drinks. But he listens to my perspective, he considers it, he still comes in my room at night and throws himself on a beanbag and talks about his day. He's still oriented to me, he's still adjacent to me, he's just not behaving the exact way that I would like him to, or that I that I think is in his best interest. And so it's it's it's do any of our children? No. Well, and that's the point. None of God's children do either. That's right.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right.

SPEAKER_02:

But you can be oriented towards God, aligned towards God, and be righteous with this imputed righteousness. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00:

It's like a man who writes a book about hell and an idea. He's still righteous, right?

SPEAKER_02:

I feel so uncomfortable with that. Like I'm something special. I just don't feel like I am.

SPEAKER_00:

But I think what it does is it gives us perspective. It shows you in a way that helps us understand your motives. So when you you're saying these things, we have to keep that in mind because that's also somebody who was righteous at that time. That didn't mean you was maliciously spewing the. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

For that reason. I would I I feel like that's what I was telling people. Paul was very zealous for God and he was killing Christians. Yeah. So was he or was he not a righteous person there? He was aligned towards God, he was on a journey. God saw the beginning from the end.

SPEAKER_00:

Right.

SPEAKER_02:

I would describe him as a righteous man who was making some really critical errors.

SPEAKER_00:

See, to me, that speaks to a merciful God.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. Yeah. That's the that's the the key point. A merciful God who's on our side cheering for us.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Powell That's a good father. Mm-hmm. So righteousness isn't something you can achieve. It's not something you can earn. It's something that's there because of your orientation and where you're headed, your path, your I mean, what is it that brings us righteousness? Is that something that comes from Jesus?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it's it's imputed in the sense that we couldn't attain it on our own. We're frail, we're fragile, we're ignorant in the best sense. To know the unknowable is impossible. But when the unknowable reveals itself to you, then orientation and alignment can happen. Yeah. So so I would say righteousness is not achievable by a human by themselves, but righteousness is kind of like something you fall into or dive into. Yeah. It's offered, it's there for every human, and you kind of orient yourself to it or turn towards it. That's that's what repent means. Metanoeo means to turn. It doesn't mean stop doing bad things, which is the typical interpretation. It means to turn. So you you reorient yourself, you turn towards different path. This loving father that cares for you, that's cheering you on, that has your best interest at heart. And of course, your best interest at heart includes certain behaviors.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

It includes not being a bonehead.

SPEAKER_00:

It's the thorns, the what keeps you from getting to the good stuff. Exactly. Yeah. And the other one was judgment. Mm-hmm. Break that out for me.

SPEAKER_02:

In English, when we hear judgment in in a religious sense, we think of God banging his gavel and bringing fire from heaven and turning people into salt salt pillars and burning Sodom Gomorrah and so forth. And the Greek word is crisis, which is spelled almost exactly like, except it's a K instead of a C, our word crisis. And so crisis is way more circumstantial than a banging gavel. It's like Ethan's story that you shared. He experienced crisis because of decisions he was making, because of it was partially upbringing. It was partially culture, it was partially society, it was partially out of his control. It could be hormonal. There could be all kinds of reasons why he walked the path he did. Some of it is most likely spiritual, but the punishment, the judgment came as a crisis, as a result of a journey. And so we we love a God who doesn't want us to experience crisis. So judgment in the in the crisis sense is not God smiting us. The word crisis or crisis in Greek is almost like an unveiling of the reality of cause and effect.

SPEAKER_00:

So judgment is almost like a self-imposed conclusion of your choices. So it's almost like you have it's like we said with Ethan, at the end of the day, it was his own choices that put him there. It wasn't it wasn't him being punished. It was just that's what happens if you go down that path.

SPEAKER_02:

Aaron Ross Powell That's right. It's it's cause and effect, and judgment is the unveiling of the results. And we we see in Jesus, people, like I said, when you reject eternal conscious torment, people always want to know why did Jesus die? Like if it wasn't to save us from burning in hell forever, what was it to save us from? And it's to save us from I I believe what Jesus did on the cross was break forever the laws of cause and effect on our behalf.

SPEAKER_00:

In what ways?

SPEAKER_02:

We no longer have to slide into death, we slide into life. We no longer have to descend into the darkness, we descend into light. No longer chaos but peace. No longer despair but hope. Okay. It's the great reverse. The hungry become fed, the blind become seeing, the poor become rich. Cause and effect has been broken forever.

SPEAKER_00:

How does that all come together now? How do you want people to hear that?

SPEAKER_02:

It's hard because, like I mentioned, trauma is a real thing. Religious trauma is real. And if eternal conscious torment and a wrathful God hasn't traumatized you, odds are you haven't given it enough thought. And so I've I've said it many times that I reject eternal conscious torment and yet it still traumatizes me. I still carry the weight of it.

SPEAKER_00:

And so if I can When you when you say that, open that up for me. When you still when you still feel that, are you talking about you still have the fear of it, or is this just ingrained in you, or is it because you went through that? What what do you mean?

SPEAKER_02:

I think some of it's neurological. The the neurons in my brain have been wired to create a path that says God is out to get me. If I don't perform well, eternal hell is waiting for me.

SPEAKER_00:

Have you ever questioned whether you've made the right decision? Am I getting this right? Am I understanding it correctly? Constantly. Constantly.

SPEAKER_02:

So can you I had a really neat experience I'll share with you that helps a lot because my church is very inclusionist. And I believe in an inclusionist gospel, and those aren't terms we need to define right now, but people can look them up on their own. But we go beyond welcoming to inclusion. And coming from the background that I came from, I remember one time just weeping in the shower because the shower was where I did my thinking and meditating and praying. I like a good 45-minute hot shower.

SPEAKER_00:

That's a long shower.

SPEAKER_02:

And sometimes I was taking them three or four times a day. That's a lot of dry skin right there. It's a lot of dry skin. But but that's that's where I chased after God, was in the shower. And I was crying one time and saying, God, I don't know that I'm on the right path. I don't know that I please you. I don't know. Show me where I'm wrong. And some of that is still trauma-based, is because I fear him so much that I have to get it right. Because if I don't get it right, it's big trouble. And I acknowledge that. And that's still a part of my journey. But I said, I said, I need someone to tell me that I please you. This was on a Friday. I said, I rarely pray for something specific. My prayers are rarely generalized, like, here I am, do what you want. But in this case, I said, I pray that someone would come to me and say these words, you are pleasing to God. And I I think I even said out loud, no one has ever told me that. My entire life being around Christians, as an evangelist, as an apologist, no one has ever said those words to me, you are pleasing to God. That was on a Friday evening. And it was all about this inclusion thing. It was all about this view of God that God is embracing and good and kind and charitable and compassionate. And I don't want to get that wrong. If if if I'm wrong, I'm way wrong. But that was a Friday. I said, I want someone to tell me I'm pleasing to God. That Sunday, two days later, a guy named Michael Hawk at my church comes up to me after the service, walks, walks right up to me after the service is over. He says, H, you know I'm not very charismatic, but I feel like I have a word from God for you. He said, God wants you to know that you're pleasing to him. Wow. Two days later. Wow. And then months later, I needed to hear it again. I I don't think I was in the shower this time, I think I was in my car. You're getting greedy. I'm getting greedy. But I admittedly greedy. I'm martilla as part of my life. I'll just I'll I'll own it and embrace it. Yeah. And I said, God, I need to hear it again. And it this time it took a couple of weeks, but I was at a conference and I was down on my knees praying during this really neat part of the service where the whole room was quiet. And I felt this presence over me. And it was this dude named Brad that had walked up behind me and he put his hand on my shoulder and he whispered in my ear, he said, HL, I just want you to know that I think God wants you to know that He's pleased with your congregation. He's pleased with what you're doing as a pastor. And I c I I anchor myself on those moments.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Now the the second one feels like it would be a little bit easier to dismiss because it wasn't it wasn't so immediate and so crystal clear, like exactly what I'd asked for. Right. But I would have a hard time dismiss no matter how skeptical I became, I would have a hard time dismissing that as coincidence. Yeah. And so when I asked myself, am I getting it right? I know I'm not. Hamartia is a central part of my life. But I can embrace the fact that God is pleased with me. That you're righteous. Righteous in the Greek. Not in English.

SPEAKER_00:

No, no. So that's an excellent distinction. Because we've made them two different words.

SPEAKER_02:

For sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So but in the Greek, how is it intended was right aligned in.

SPEAKER_02:

Right aligned.

SPEAKER_00:

Right oriented. We're heading in the right way. Yeah. So religious trauma. Oh boy. Yeah. Here we go. Here we go. Get a drink of water. This plays a huge part in your development. Is that the common thread that was from the beginning? Would you say that this message was equally born out of religious trauma as much as it was inspiration?

SPEAKER_02:

You hope it's the inspiration part, but I think in reality trauma has played a certain has played a a part in the journey for sure. Yeah. I I think about hell as as eternal conscious torment or infernalism. And it was a belief in hell and hearing teachings on hell and the dangers of hell that caused me to enter into situations and relationships where I experienced religious trauma. I experienced sexual abuse, physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse. And I put up with all that partially because I thought the abuser had the answers to keep me from hell.

SPEAKER_00:

And so You was willing to forgive them, but not yourself.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I've always I've always been far less merciful towards myself than others. Okay. I'm I'm still that way. But as a doctrine when you believe God is punitive, retributive, angry, jurisprudence-based, gavel-pounding, and then you also believe that you're supposed to emulate God, that's what you become. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

Deconstruction and religious trauma. People go through religious trauma and they have these emotional experiences. And so almost in a knee-jerk reaction, they're running from something. But they're not running to anything. And so they end up, to me, it looks like nomadic or lost or and there's a lot of people out there that I think don't have a path. So they're not necessarily particularly going to a place or have a strategy. For those people, what would you say? I mean, what kind of advice would you give to them, somebody that's been through that?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know that I would have good advice simply because to give it would be antagonistic to it. So as a preacher or a pastor, pretty much anything I say at this point is there's the potential of feeding the beast. So I wanna I want to say that out loud, that I understand it, that it's real, that people have reason to be skeptical of me because I pastor a church. I can only speak for myself and for others who have walked that journey, that I've thought about writing a book on hell. I've also thought about writing a book called The Baby in the Bath, and that there's a whole lot of ugly, dirty water out there that needs to be flushed without flushing Jesus.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And so if a person was had their head above water enough out of the trauma to even care about what I have to offer in the next sentence, I would say focus on the red letter print of the Bible. Turn to Jesus and Jesus' message and find out who Jesus is and walk your own journey.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Parkinson's. Yeah. You went through all of this. Get to a point where I feel like that you're in a good place. I feel like that you're really grounded and you feel good about who you've become, your faith, and who you are. And then you get a diagnosis of Parkinson's. Tell me about that.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, first off, feeling good about who I am and where I'm at. I still feel like the sinner in the parable of the public and the thief that can't even raise his eyes to God but says, God have mercy on me a sinner.

SPEAKER_00:

Is that through humility or is that through trauma?

SPEAKER_02:

Unknown.

SPEAKER_00:

That's honest.

SPEAKER_02:

I I would I suspect it's both. But that that's that's that's different than your questions. But uh I I feel awkward about the framing of the question because I don't want to paint a picture that I've got it all together.

SPEAKER_00:

Aaron Ross Powell You're still learning. You're still on your path. I don't think any of us ever get to our destination. It's just we get to a better place as we get closer.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. I I feel I I tell my therapist I feel pretty zen most of the time. I I have a lot of peace. I feel good about life and where I stand with Jesus and I feel comfortable. But that punitive God still screams in my head all the time don't get too comfortable. But as far as Parkinson's, yeah, I got I was diagnosed about a year and a half ago, almost two years now. Well, almost exactly two years now. And you had other health issues going on at the same time that probably acts or I had two spinal fusions at that that year and it was it was a rough year physically.

SPEAKER_00:

Do you think that exacerbated the situation and brought it to the surface sooner than it would have?

SPEAKER_02:

I think it was as far as Parkinson's?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Boy, I'm not a neurologist. I couldn't speak to that. But I I I hear that any downtime plays a factor in the progression of the disease. And I had lots of downtime, sadly.

SPEAKER_00:

You get that diagnosis, you're the pastor of daylight. How does that change the dynamics in how you interact with the church and prepare your message? Was that and this is this is a question for your most important message you've ever given, the one you want to be remembered for. Did that play a part in that at all coming to that conclusion?

SPEAKER_02:

As far as that, I think that was a done deal long before Parkinson's.

SPEAKER_00:

Okay. So you already had this, you just brought it together and articulated it in a way where you felt good. I finally got it out there correctly.

SPEAKER_02:

But as far as preaching and teaching and being a pastor, I've I've described Parkinson's as like like the tension knob on a stationary bike. So when you crank up the tension bar, the ride becomes a little more challenging. So it's almost like the tension Parkinson's is like turning the tension bar up to a six or a five or a four, depending on the day, for everything. For this conversation between you and I, I have to focus more. I have to penetrate the brain fog a little bit more. I have to concentrate on vocal strength and speech patterns. When I drink my water, my hand shakes. So everything is more challenging. But then I would also say there are definite benefits to that life in that I'm forced to slow down. It's almost it's almost slow down to speed up. Exactly. It's almost like I'm forced to Sabbath consistently. And then I'm also forced to delegate. I'm forced to lean on others. My wife has to help me button my shirts, for example. I can I can do it, but it takes me a long time and she doesn't have the patience for that. So it helps me put on a coat, helps me button my shirts. And I'm leaning into that. We were meant we were meant to be communal. We were meant to help be helped by one another. So instead of being trying to be a rock star all the time, you can't be Superman your whole life. And now I'm forced to lay down the cape, in a sense. And it's kind of beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

That's gotta be a different experience.

SPEAKER_02:

Like I said, I tell my therapist I'm pretty zen. And that might rub people the wrong way because it's Eastern religion. So let's just say I have the fruit of the spirit, peace.

SPEAKER_00:

You're spiritual hot sauce, man. So yeah, no, you're good.

SPEAKER_02:

I I I think it's a catalyst for the fruit of the spirit of peace. I I'm thankful. I have a good support system. I'm still able to work, I'm still able to communicate. I still live in a foodie city where I get good food in my belly constantly. Yeah. My car is paid for, my kids are healthy, they're going to college. I have so much to be thankful for.

SPEAKER_00:

How's it impacted your faith?

SPEAKER_02:

I would say posit positively, in that I'm less capable and I'm just as okay. And that's kind that kind of speaks to the gospel in some sense.

SPEAKER_00:

It does. It does. It speaks to grace.

SPEAKER_02:

I've also said that if I could randomly change physical characteristics with any 52-year-old on the planet, I wouldn't. There's a lot of people way worse off than me. I just I just have so much to be thankful for. And so so it's amplify it's amplified thankfulness, which amplifies joy.

SPEAKER_00:

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02:

So the fruit of the spirit, which is the target.

SPEAKER_00:

The good stuff.

SPEAKER_02:

It's the good stuff. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and so forth. Being and feeling utterly dependent somehow amplifies those characteristics, in my opinion. Or those ways of being.

SPEAKER_00:

It forces you to kind of die to self a little bit. Yeah. And get out of the way.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, that's exactly right.

unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Was there ever a point when you got this dicause that had that was a tough couple of years for you that you ever went to God and said, I can't do this. You have to make this change. But we you know, you're you're obviously you're praying, God fix this, God change this. But was there ever a moment when you realize this ain't gonna change?

SPEAKER_02:

I think that happened on day one of my diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00:

Really?

SPEAKER_02:

I remember crying tears of joy.

SPEAKER_00:

Really? You're gonna have to explain that.

SPEAKER_02:

So gosh, it's I I'm not a saint. I've had hard days. I've had really hard days, and I don't want to pretend I haven't, and that it's always easy. But the diagnosis was calming in a sense that now I know. Now I know why I felt. The way I felt, why I've been so tired, why it's been so hard. It was it gave answers. It gave me liberty to accept it and allow my weakness. So I don't so I don't want to paint Parkinson's as a blessing.

SPEAKER_00:

No, I don't think you are.

SPEAKER_02:

But there are blessings buried within it.

unknown:

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00:

When you are going through all the symptoms and you don't have any answers, I'd imagine that's terrifying. So when you got the reason of, then at least you have a name.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And can I shout out to my wife real quick? Please do. She's one of the main reasons that I could cry tears of joy I could get emotional right now about it. She's one of the main reasons I could cry tears of joy at my diagnosis is because I knew as long as she's wrong for the right, I'm okay.

SPEAKER_00:

I heard her give a message on Hoopaminae, which speaks to this steadfastness, patience, and endurance, godly. So I was like, wow, you know, it's just got the right one.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, boy, I did well.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, you did well.

SPEAKER_02:

Married up.

SPEAKER_00:

So what do you want daylight to be known for?

SPEAKER_02:

Love is the word. For sure. But breaking it down more specifically as a refuge. I want it to be a a place where people feel safe from a retributive God. Where few people feel safe from ostracization, is that a word?

SPEAKER_00:

I don't know, but it is now.

SPEAKER_02:

It is now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I just made it one.

SPEAKER_02:

I got Parkinson's. You gotta give me some credit for spitting that sucker out there. That's pretty good. From exile, from trauma, from fear. Perfect love casts out fear.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

And so I want it to be a safe place for people that either haven't wanted to have anything to do with the church or have wanted desperately to have something to do with the church and just haven't found their place there.

SPEAKER_00:

What one word would you like to share with everybody? What idea or thought you would like to communicate to everybody that you would be remembered for if it's what I'd be remembered for, which seems kind of unimportant, it would be that God is good.

SPEAKER_02:

And that we have to really think about the theology that we espouse as to whether it's compatible with that statement. Because I know there's churches out there that say God is good all the time, as like a call and response liturgy that in my opinion also teach a punitive retributive God.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

A puree kind of God. And I don't think they're compatible, I think they're disaligned. And so if I can just get people to think about that and to somehow come closer to the God that is good and the God that is love, that feels like a life well spent.

SPEAKER_00:

How do people connect with daylight and you?

SPEAKER_02:

Daylightchurch.com or Pastor H at daylightchurch.com. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

And if somebody wants to come visit, just Google you and they'll find you at Louisville. Is that true?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, I usually recommend checking out some of our sermons to see if it vibes with you first.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

A lot of people we we see come have been listening for months before they ever show up, set foot through the door, and we're comfortable with that.

SPEAKER_00:

Man, I appreciate you coming. Thanks for jumping into the sauce. Well, you know, I love it. I love you too, and I thank you, and uh we'll talk again soon. Thank you, buddy. Love you. Thanks for joining me here on Spiritual Hot Sauce. I'd love to hear from you. So please reach out with questions, comments, andor insights. And don't forget to like, subscribe, and review it. 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.

Contributor

Chris Jones

Host