"The Hero's Journey - Our Story, Our Salvation” Ep#25

From the Epic of Gilgamesh to Star Wars, humanity has spent 4,600 years telling one story: The Hero’s Journey. Chris Jones reveals why this primal narrative isn’t about personal glory or “demi-gods” but about the hard path of redemption, sacrifice, and serving humanity. By resisting the "serpent’s venom" of pride, we discover how to navigate our own "caves" of transformation. Drawing on the works of Joseph Campbell, ancient Sumerian literature, and the life-cycle of Jesus, this episode offers a profound perspective for believers, skeptics, and story lovers alike. 

Episode 25 of “Spiritual Hot Sauce” by Chris Jones is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.  

Transcript

Chris Jones 0:00

The term the hero's journey has found its way into our modern vernacular across movies, video games, music literature, and more. It speaks to us in a primal way that resonates deeply at our core. Joseph Campbell brought this concept to broad attention in his nineteen forty nine book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. In it, he describes the hero's adventures and how similar stories appeared in religions and mythologies worldwide, including isolated cultures. The story is as old as humanity itself, coming from oral traditions passed down by the gray hairs. It still speaks to us as powerfully as when it was first spoken and first heard. That's because it's not just a story, it's our story. And in it, our salvation. 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. And I can't think of a better way to celebrate it than to roll out the hero's journey. Because I know a lot of you have been waiting on this one. And this may very well be my best episode to date. But I gotta forewarn you, you're gonna need a glass of water because it's really dry for five minutes. I mean, it's Sahara Desert dry. It's a lot of dates and numbers and everything. But I think it's really important that we go through the dates and the origins and the history of this story so we understand the importance of it. But if you can get past those five minutes, it gets really good. I mean really good. You're gonna really like this one. So, without further ado, let's get into it. The oldest human writings that we currently have are primarily for accounting. They come from about 3500 BCE, the Uruk tablets or the Kish tablets. They were discovered in southern Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq. But they're not phonetic words, they're single characters that represent things like barley, beer, sheep, and goats. Now, our first oldest writings that we know of that show up as phonetic words show up in the Kesh Temple hymn. It's from Samaria around 2600 BCE. It's religious praise poems structured as hymns. Now, there's also another writing that shows up the same time in southern Mesopotamia, and they call it the instructions of Sherupak. It's Sumerian wisdom text containing Proverbs, advice from the king of Shirupach to his son Zezudra, and it also dates around 2600 BCE. Now the three oldest surviving written stories are Sumerian compositions from the early dynastic period, around 2500 BCE. Now these would be fragments from Abu Salabi, followed closely by early Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh, around 2100 BCE, and then the Egyptian tale of the shipwrecked sailor in 2000 to 1900 BCE. Now, every one of these stories contained the hero's journey. The fragments, of course, contained a part of the hero's journey, but it's there. Now I think you would agree that we're starting to see a pattern emerge. We start to see how our language evolved, starting with how we manage our resources and how we developed and communicated within our social construct. From there, we moved on to phonetic words, tackling ideas of spirituality and our idea of God and how we commune with Him through singing. At the same time, we start getting this understanding that we can transfer wisdom generationally through written word. So when we get to a point where we can actually write coherently stories, what is the story that we write about? It's the hero's journey. Let me just quickly go through some of the ancient and more contemporary characters that this story is about. You have Gilgamesh from the Epic of Gilgamesh. You have Odysseus in Homer's Odyssey. You have Rama from the Indian Ramayana, Sundiata Keita from West African Epic of Sundiata. From the Anglo-Saxons, you have Beowulf. From the Native Americans, you have Raven. In video games, we have The Legend of Zelda, Geralt of Rivia, The Witcher series. In anime, you have Shonen and Aziikai, Goku, Ichigo Karasaki. In literature, you have Pip from Great Expectations, and Jean Valjean from Les Miserables. In movies, you have Neo from The Matrix, Luke Skywalker from Star Wars, Darth Vader from Star Wars, Frodo Baggins from Lord of the Rings, and Katniss Everdean from The Hunger Games. But if we're being honest, if you take the hero's journey out of literature and out of movies, we don't have any literature movies. There's very little left. So think of it like this. It's been right now 4,625-ish years since we've learned how to communicate ideas in written word. And since we have started doing that, we have been telling the same story. And please note that I haven't even touched religion. So what is the story of the hero's journey, or what some would refer to as the universal monomyth? It starts like this it's an ordinary person that just seems average. They have a normal life, they're just trying to fit in, and they're just trying to be a regular person. But then tragedy usually strikes and the path that they are on ends. In other words, their identity stops. And it's at this point that they are called to an adventure. And there's something about how they are called to the venture that stands out as an extraordinary event or circumstances. The offer will come from a mentor or someone to help and guide them to make sure that they're on their path and get them to their ultimate destination. The person usually rejects this offer one time because they're still trying to figure out how to get back to their identity. Now, while all this is going on, they are given yet another offer from another source that is much darker in nature. This will also be from a mentor or a guide, but help them on their path to becoming a demigod. Now, the hero is going to want to reject all offers and just try to figure out how to get back to their path, their identity of everything they've lost. However, the universe will create circumstances that will force them to go back to these offers and they will have to choose. And our hero doesn't always choose correctly. Either way, this is where the adventure starts. Now, if they choose to go the correct path, it looks like this. Their guide, their helper, their friend will be on this adventure with them, this journey. And on this journey, the hero will be tested and tried. And if they fail to learn the things they need to learn, they'll have to go through those lessons again. And each time they go through these lessons, the lessons are painful and they're difficult and they cause great loss. Now, some of this is avoiding temptations. It's like the siren's call. They will have to stay on the hard path, the hard journey. They'll have to harness their will in order to get to their destination, which at this point they only have a vague idea of what it is. If our hero can't resist the siren's call and changes the direction of their path, and that story of the sirens, which is they're on boats when they hear it, and they can't resist these beautiful voices, and they go towards the voices, their ships will be dashed on the rocks and their journey will be over. They'll never get to their destination. Now there's other testings that's not temptation. It's having to go through over or around challenges. You have to learn new skill sets so you can circumvent them. Sometimes you just have to learn courageous sacrifice and go through it head on and allow it to define you. And not just physically and mentally, but their character is being shaped. That is through losses and through the struggles, they of who they are is being formed. Now, once our heroes reach their destination, it's never what they think it is. This is often referred to as the cave. The cave always represents transformation and change. Our hero in the cave will either have to die and resurrect into something different, or something else will be assimilated to them and they'll be transformed like a caterpillar in this cave, and when they emerge, they'll be the butterfly. But it's in this transformation as they come out of the cave, they'll serve their actual purpose of what all of this has actually been for. And their purpose is always to go back to humanity and serve it and save it, to make it better, to correct it, to take it to a better place in the sacrifice they have given of self. See, this is archetypal. This speaks to us in humanity. And there's something about archetypes that we always fail. It's this intrinsic knowledge that's within us that we never seem to have the wisdom of what to do with it. See, when we hear these stories that we are so drawn to, we don't realize the story is about us, that all of us are on our hero's journey. But Hollywood tells these stories in such a grandiose way, we fail to realize this is about our everyday occurrences, the struggles and the challenges of the mundane that we go through daily. These stories are meant to help us remember what our actual purpose is. See, this speaks to a demi-god culture, and we do have a demigod culture. Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are both on heroes' journeys. However, Luke Skywalker is staying on the path, and Darth Vader chose the path of a demigod. See, the path of a demigod speaks to your ego and your pride. I've called it before the serpent's venom. See, in the Garden of Eden, when Eve chose to take the fruit from the serpent, the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which represents the ideology of how we define good. And that ideology would bring the poison to humanity. But it was the serpent's venom that allowed Eve to choose that. And it was what he said, you'll be like God. Darth Vader in the veneer is a demi god. He is powerful. He has so much resources. He attracts, he draws, he is feared. He has power at his command. From the external, it looks like Darth Vader is in total control. However, Darth Vader is long off of his path. He has been on this path of a demi God going further and further from his actual destination. But in the moment of his redemption, when he chooses to save his son and sacrifice his own life and the life of his mentor that has taken him down the path of the demi God, which will allow Luke Skywalker to go on and save humanity. When we get off our path and we take the path of a demi God, which is our selfishness and our ego of what we want, we can get back to redemption. However, the path that is required, what you have to go through, you may have to go over a mountain, you may have to go over an ocean, you may have to go through the thorns dragging and kicking and screaming to get to that place of finding redemption. But there's no kind of redemption that can give you back your time. Once it's gone, it's gone. See, Darth Vader saves his son, and then he tells his son, Take off my veneer, I want to see you. And the moment that Luke takes off Darth Vader's helmet, he realizes that in the internal, Darth is sick, diseased, hurting and pain, alone and suffering. It's suffering without purpose. It's suffering from poor choices. And it's like a cancer in his soul. That this own pride and his ego is what is bringing him death. But don't we live in a demigod culture? Are we not given people that we call stars, actresses, actors, influencers, the rich, the powerful, the influential? Isn't this what we all are taught to strive to be? Do we not allow our children to be taught that their own lust, their own greed, their own desire for power is more important than other people's needs? Do they not see the people we celebrate as demi gods when they go to the nicest restaurants? Not only do they eat for free, they're paid to eat there. They are paid to wear the finest clothes, their stay at the finest hotels are for free. People lavish them with affection because of their love for them and their desire to be like them. Some of us would even step over the homeless, the sick, the diseased, the dying in order to give to these demi gods. And some of us are the diseased, the dying, because we wanted to be a demigod. After all, isn't a demi god just a hero that's refused to go to the cave? This is the poison within us. As we look back over the past 4,600 years across all these stories, from Gilgamesh to Luke Skywalker, we begin to realize something important. These aren't just myths or creative inventions, they are the truth written deep within human consciousness. Across cultures and across time, we've been telling the same story because it points to something greater. It points to the moment when the story itself stepped into history and the truth gave us the wisdom to understand the reason of the story. That if you look at Jesus' teachings of what he taught through discipleship, you'll find the wisdom and the answers to the knowledge that's been embedded in us for 4,600 years. Now, if you approach Jesus through religion as in worship of the deity of Christ, you might miss this. However, if you approach this as a disciple and that through discipleship of his commandment, we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. So keep an open mind, because this message is so strong that if Jesus was nothing more than a culmination of our best ideas from thousands of years of how we heal humanity, or Jesus was a historical figure that had this amazing brilliance, this epiphany, and was willing to sacrifice it all to save humanity, or he was the Son of God who brought us this understanding, any one of those three, and I'm still a disciple of Christ. The message itself is that powerful. Let me show you what I mean. Jesus says to his disciples, deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me. That whosoever loses their life for my sake will find it. Jesus gave us five life cycle stages that he demonstrates and then he says to do. That's what he means when he says, deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me, that whosoever loses their life for my sake will find it. See, Jesus demonstrated when he was facing these overwhelming challenges, that at the first stage was as he went into the Garden of Gethsemane. And it's in the Garden of Gethsemane where he tells God, I don't want to do this. Any way you can think of, shaping and forming and verbalizing this to God. That's what Jesus does. And he says, I don't want nothing to do with this. Take this from me. Let this cup pass from me. But when he realizes God's not going to change the path, he says, Your will be done. That's what he means by deny yourself. Now from here, he goes to the cross. This is where he dies to his immediate identity. And that's where we die to our will, our ego, our pride. It has to die. And we'll take on something different. It's dying to self, is what this is called. That's what he means by take up your cross. Now, the third part of this is Jesus went into the tomb. This is the cave. And we too will go into the cave. This is the longest part of the process. Now, what you need to know is the circumstances of everything that puts you into the cave do not go away. But your circumstances are used to help transform you into something different. See, when Jesus resurrects from the cave, he is not restored, he is transformed. Jesus doesn't do any of the things he did before he went into the cave. In other words, Jesus didn't heal, Jesus didn't feed the multitudes, Jesus doesn't perform any miracles. All Jesus does is witness. And he still bears the scars of what he went through and the process of the cave. But his scars will speak in ways his words can't, call it scars that speak or divine scars. The other people that need to hear that will hear it and they will see it, and you will be a witness to that process that brings life. It's the five life cycle stages. It's the Garden of Gethsemane of accepting the process, going to the cross, dying to self, your ego, your pride, giving up the serpent's venom, going into the cave or the cocoon. It's where your circumstances are used to transform you and change you. And when you come out, you will have scars from the processes that you've gone through. However, your scars will speak in ways that your words can't. That's the fifth life cycle stage of witnessing. That means you become the mentor and you help other people to get on their hero's journey and help them get to their cave. When somebody else is experiencing that kind of crisis in their life, their path stops. They lose their identity. That's when you become the call to adventure for them. That's when you give them the offer. Let me show you, let me mentor you, let me help you. And your scars speak to them on behalf of a way that they could understand no other way that is so counterintuitive. However, it's truth. And that truth heals humanity and it heals us. The hero's journey isn't about the hero, it's about us. It's how we save us. It's how we transform and how we give up the serpent's venom and how we take the commandment of Christ of love and we become the antidote to the poison. And we, humanity, heals humanity. It's not just a story, it's our story. And in it, our salvation. Thank you for joining me today on Spiritual Hot Sauce. Hit that follow button and give us the five stars. And if you like the flavor of the sauce, share us with others. Guys, again thank you. We'll see you again next time.