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

In this episode, we dive into the exhaustion of "merit-based" religion—the constant, uphill climb of building mountains of rules and achievements to prove our worth. We explore the idea that while these structures feel significant, they often become barriers to the very truth we’re seeking. Real spiritual growth isn't about reaching the summit of a religious peak; it’s about having the courage to leave the mountain of merit behind and finally step onto the authentic path waiting for you in the valley. Part 3

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

Transcript

Chris Jones 0:07

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