It's time to rip the cover off what really works to ditch addiction, depression, anger, anxiety, and all other kinds of human suffering. No, not sobriety. We're talking the F-word here: Freedom. We'll share, straight from the trenches, what we have learned from leaving our own addictions behind, and coaching hundreds of others to do the same—and since it's such a heavy topic, we might as well have a good time while we're at it. [00:27.6]
Bob: Okay guys, the Bible says is it's time to like look at something with as much respect as we can, but to look at ways that you and I have manipulated ourselves or been manipulated or manipulated other people by virtue of what the Bible says or what scripture says. If you use different sets of scriptures and how problematic that has become and how much that has produced suffering in other people. And so, with all due respect to the fact that you love your spiritual tradition and your experiences with the Bible, what I want to do is make that more meaningful to you. And while at the same time, freeing you of needless suffering. So, if that's a possibility for you, if that's something you're interested in, keep listening, because we're going to look at things a little bit differently. [01:18.2]
I had a guy reach out to me the other day. He looked at my Facebook posts, a couple of them, listened to a couple of videos, and then he sent me a message. And he's like, Bob, you're about as far away from Jesus, as you could possibly get. He had seen some, like I wear a ring that is made of copper and it's in the shape of a snake. And so, he assumed he assumed something around, possibly assumed something around that being like some demonic worship thing, when it doesn't have anything to do with that at all. You know, he listened to ways that I talk and he just assumed that that was at odds with his way of looking at Jesus and how things really go. And he just jumped into the fray there and he just made this judgment on a Sunday, like, Hey, I've decided on my Sunday that I'm going to go looking over Facebook and I'm going to see what other people are saying. And I'm going to decide that I know best what Jesus meant. I know everything about what he says. I understand him perfectly, this son of God, whose ways are not my ways and who looks on the heart. Well, I look on the outward appearance, but I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to assume that I know everything about what he said, despite the fact that even the people who walked with him some number of years ago, day in and day out, didn't get what he said. And many of them left or many were only there for the miracles and some of them just didn't get it right even while he was there. [02:33.5]
And they didn't have a language barrier or a cultural barrier or a historical barrier between them, they were living through the same experiences and still they didn't get it. But I'm going to go ahead and say that I know exactly what Jesus meant and that what he meant is different than what you're doing. And so therefore, I'm going to go ahead and judge you on a Sunday and say, you are far away from Jesus and I need to save your soul from that. Now I listened to that and I was like, wow, that’s really, really arrogant. That was the word I used. Yes, I know. That's a judgment word, but it's really arrogant to me to assume that I know what Jesus meant. Now, sometimes I'll put forward things that I've said that seem probable, but let me acknowledge here and now, even if in the past, I have been all cocksure of myself that I don't pretend to know what Jesus actually even said since his words were written down, passed on by oral tradition and then written down sometime later in a time in history when oral tradition itself allowed for massive variations on things being said and spoken. It was expected that the, the bar not do the play the same way twice, that wasn't expected that it'd be word for word iconic. [03:43.1]
And I know nowadays we have this idea that back then they had better memories and they might've had better memories, but that doesn't mean that that's what they were after, that they weren't after point for point thing. So, we sit here and we parse the grammar and we look at things and what we're looking at is the grammar and the way that the person who wrote it down interpreted the words of Jesus. Now, if Peter doesn't get it right, and Peter doesn't get it right. And Peter doesn't get it. Right. And then eventually Peter writes something down because he's next to Jesus. And we say, Jesus said, this does that mean Peter understood what Jesus said. Wasn't there a phrase in there where Jesus looked at him and he said, how is it that you don't understand? Will you also go away? Didn't he ask a lot of people, this question, people that were all around him, and they didn't understand. If he truly was an enlightened being, having had an experience of life and what it's all about in a way that is very different than your average human. And we're going to sit here and say, well, me as an average human, who's not experiencing life that way understands what it is that he said, isn’t that a little bit arrogant? [04:40.4]
Now there's a lot of assumptions that go into it, but often too often, you and I possibly definitely other people I've seen. I know I've done it. Use scripture as a way to brow beat other people into doing what we think is right. When all we've done is read what we think is right into the book. And sometimes yes, those books can correct us, can show us things. So, I'm not going to say that at all. And that's not just true with scripture. That's any book that seems to hit you square between the eyes at any point in time in your life. I mean, if God can use books to help you, why can't you use different books and why can't he use doctors and why can't he use plants and animals and anything else, you know, to teach people like he did plagues in Egypt. [05:20.6]
So, let's say any book could do this. Sometimes those things do hit you square between the eyes and definitely scriptural books have a combination of teachings and writings that might have that capacity for a lot of people, for sure. And if you're engaging with them that way, looking for it to kind of challenge things in you that bring it up so that you can look at it. I think that's a really beautiful way of looking at scripture. But the minute we go, Oh no, I got this out of it. Therefore, that's exactly what the person who wrote it meant instead of that, just being an insight for you and I. That's the second that we're making these truth claims that we don't actually know are true. We might believe that's what what's there, but we don't actually know. So, if you look at the history of how the Bible was put together and other books of scripture are similar in certain ways, I mean, obviously the Quran was written by one person over a period of time, right. And so, he has the ability to be a little bit more uniform with it. And so, there's that the book of Mormon with the Mormons is definitely translated by one person, right. And so, there's definitely more, but it was written by multiple people, right. In each, there are greater and lesser prophets, according to Jesus in the, in the Bible that John the Baptist was, the greatest amount was the one of the greatest among them. [06:30.8]
And so, everybody's at a different level of understanding. Everybody's at a different level of, of grasp of what's there and the people writing it down well, they're at a different level, they're each at their own level of understanding. And so, to suggest that the way they wrote it down, that that was what was actually meant is already problematic. So, you take your books in the Bible who wrote them, what was their background? Were they in a divine state when they were, when they were penning these, or was this effort over time? Were the words accurately written down the way that we have them nowadays, or were they different? What was the parrot? Who, why were they writing it? Was there a political idea or something going on? What was going on with that? And these are all questions that need to be looked at in order to, for you to really grasp and not be tossed side to side by what's being written until you know, like we talked about how not to be duped, right. Until, you know, that was a few that was several months ago, but like, until, you know, like a few basic things about what's being written, including not just the main points in the supporting articles, but also what are the values of the person who's writing? What are their beliefs and what is their purpose in writing it? If you don't know that it's going to be hard to see through all the stuff that's there. And even if you do know that there's still biases and assumptions that we all have together, that we forget to look through. [07:50.4]
And so here you have in the Bible, a collection of stories, a collection of writings that have been written down by other people in their inspired state for the people at their point in time, at that time in, in, in history to be given as advice for those people. And so, some of the stuff in there can be very contradictory because it was given to different people in different States and, and with different ideas and things on their mind. So, it can be very contradictory sometimes, or it's written by diff, two different people. And so, you have one person saying, you know, faith without works is dead and another person's like by faith alone. And then we come in and we try and reconcile that and we end up making our own Bible out of it. Does that make sense? [08:30.5]
You've got four gospels. Everybody's got their own take. And if we try to harmonize the gospels well, that's, that's okay. But that's us making a harmony of them, that's not actually what's written there. And there are some differences in them. And then some dif different orders of events, different things that are highlighted different things that are spoken and to try and make them harmonious is an assumption that all of them are speaking the same story and that all the pieces that they spoke were one accurate, two happened in the order that they happened, and three, it's just our own misunderstanding that's making that happen. It's fine, that's an easy way to look at it, but that doesn't mean that it's true. So, as you're reading scripture, as I'm reading scripture, and you hear people start to talk about what the scripture teaches again, it's time to let him that hath ears to hear, let him hear. It's time to see with your own eyes. Yes, if they say something that feels really good to you continue to examine it, don't just take it on face value. [09:24.7]
So, some people will talk about recently a guy came to me and he's like, look, I've had these pastors talking to me about how we need to have an identity in God, or we have to have our identity at others, or we're not going to have one at all. And if we, if we have an identity in ourself, we're all broken and we're worthless. And without, without God, we're nothing and we'll never be able to meet, meet anything anywhere. And while that's a beautiful sermon for a lot of people, they love that because they find a lot of value and hope in their life by believing that. So, we don't want to take that away from it. But does that mean that it's factually correct? Does that mean that it's factually correct? That you really are nothing and you're worthless without God. Does that actually mean it's true? Or is that phrase being used in spoken in order to produce certain feelings in you or certain ideas in you, or to get you to do certain actions that are going to be really beneficial for you or beneficial for the person speaking? You know, why is it that being spoken? What's the purpose behind it? What are the values being spoken there? [10:21.0]
The notion that you are worthless in and of yourself as interesting, right? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. I think that's how it goes in English. So apparently this worthless planet of ours, this worthless planet of ours is worth enough and everything on it that God would send his only begotten son. Does that sound like you're worthless? Or you're only worthless because Jesus came. Is that why you weren't, you weren't worth anything until he sent Jesus, but didn't he send Jesus because you were worth something? Does that make sense? These are the ideas they break down. It doesn't mean that you're an arrogant sob that runs around killing people and committing all kinds of whoredoms. That's an idea that's been planted into our minds by a lot of people. That's like, well, if you don't have morals, you're automatically a bad person. What does that even mean? I want you to consider this clearly. Morals are rules that have been put in place for people who lack perception. Think about it. I will give you an example of my kids, right. [11:34.1]
We have rules in our house and when they're young, they can't cross the street without holding our hand. Why is that? What does holding hands have to do with crossing the street? Nothing. It doesn't have anything to do with crossing the street. It's just that the kids are not perceptive enough yet to know when a car is coming, when it's not coming and what a car is going to do to them, if it whacks them. And so, we tell them they have to hold our hand while crossing the street. At a certain point, though, now we tell them, look both ways and check for cars. And so, they still are asking permission and we're telling them now they have to look both ways. Now they don't have to hold our hand every time, but they'd still need to look. And then at a certain point, they don't need to ask our permission anymore, they can just go and walk. Because they've learned to perceive and pretty soon, they're just going and crossing the street whenever. [12:19.5]
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Why would we have the rule in place to hold hand? It's because they lack perception. But as soon as their ability to perceive what is needed in that given instant around crossing the street shows up, they don't need the rule anymore. It doesn't mean that the rules are bad. It doesn't mean that they're wrong, but they're built to be a placeholder until you have some level of understanding about what's happening so, you have some perception. So, morals around sex, is it good to have rules around sex? Well, if you're just going to have the rules there without ever building perception that I would say it's stunting growth. But if you're going to have the rules in order to keep the kid like somewhat safe and protected until the kid can perceive all that's involved in what's going on so that they can then make their decisions for themselves, then I'd say, then you're in a good space because you're protecting them from the cars so that they don't get run over. But then you're still teaching them to look deeper and deeper instead of just accepting the rule at face value. [13:47.9]
The problem is that people have looked at Bible literature, they've looked at all kinds of different things like this scriptures, sermons, pastors, inspirational stuff at all of all kinds. And they've developed a set of rules for life, a set of commandments for themselves, a set of moral codes that they live by. And then those are not necessarily bad, but then we try to impose those on others as right and wrong while we're running around judging the rest of the world. And then we're telling them, Oh no, you can't have an identity in your shelf. Or you must have an identity in God. If you're not identified in God, then you're not going anywhere. When none of us have ever died, gone to whatever happens next and then come back and be like, Oh, yo, this is the case, this is what's there. Even visions are not death experiences. Neither are nor near-death experiences. Those are still visionary in nature. And while the person may have a vision, that doesn't necessarily mean that that vision is a direct reflection of what's real any more than your vision of what happened on the street yesterday is a direct reflection of what everything that happened on the street yesterday. It's simply what you saw. It's simply the way you made sense of what you saw. [14:52.2]
And so, we sit here day in and day out, we listen to these people who have these firsthand experiences, or we read texts from people who supposedly had them. And then we just, we make up what we think they mean, and we make our own gospel out of it and then we turn around and we tell other people, this is what they meant. There is no way that that could possibly be the case, unless you have lived and had all of their life experiences and are speaking from their level of perception necessarily what you think they said and what they actually said is different. Necessarily what I think they said and what they said is probably different. And when you add into that, all of the different times in history, when things got smudged or fudged, or, you know, books were lost or things were translated differently. And you know, how many years went before somebody wrote it down, then you start to say, Hey, look, we have this book here that's super inspiring for a lot of people and it has changed a lot of lives and there's value in it. And I believe it to be true. And I can even believe it to be the word of God. I really can, but I'm going to acknowledge you. That's a belief. I'm an acknowledged that when I hold that belief, it's very powerful for me, but I'm not going to pretend to call it a fact. And I'm going to allow everybody else the permission to look at and decide what they're going to believe and what their facts are. [16:06.3]
And if I'm not okay with another person believing something, well, guess what God seems to be okay with it because they haven't died. He hasn't wiped them off the face of the planet. They're still here. So, if he's okay with them, believing something different than you, then maybe just, maybe you ought to be okay with it too. And instead of imposing your view or my view on to other people like this is a view right now, you may, you may disagree with it. That's totally okay. But instead of saying, Hey, this is the truth. This is a fact. Instead of saying, look, I really, I believe this. I like believing this. When I believe this, it feels good for me. And we just leave it at that. And instead of trying to make everybody else believe the way we want, that's just our own insecurities. We let them have permission to believe the way that they want, to live their life and to let them have their own eyes, their own, our ears, as God has given them to them to see and feel what their own hearts and to make their own decisions and learn from their own life. Instead of us trying to live their life for them, by telling them what they should and should not believe. [17:04.6]
I think a lot of us would be served exceptionally better if we were willing to look at these volumes of scripture, that clearly have some value, or they wouldn't have stood the test of time and to look at these volumes of scripture, but then also look at our own life. If this world was really made by God's speaking and the world was, then this world is the word of God made flesh. And when you study the way this world works, when you're really looking at it, a scientist, if they're not reading other people's opinions and is studying what's in front of them, they're studying the word of God made flesh. And if you're studying the way your mind and body work, then you're studying the word of God made flesh. And there has been loads of people all through our histories. Many of them illiterate does mean that they are somehow don't know, have access to the word of God or divinity, not true at all. They all have access to it in your own body and your own mind is the word of God made flesh. And when you discover things that make it work at an optimal level, then you're discovering the way God designed it. [18:06.2]
And if that's the way God designed it and your beliefs are true, then if it works in reality in real life, then it's probably gotta be in your religion somewhere. And maybe you haven't found it yet. And maybe it seems at odds with the way that you have read those scriptures. But if it works in reality, then it's true. And the Hebrew word for truth is Emmet, right? And it, it means that which can be relied upon. It's something that, that you can rely on, like reality. It's real. It's true. It's there all the time. You can go back to it. Thoughts, these change all the time, psychologies philosophies, everything. They change all the time. Beliefs change all the time. That's why we sit there and we keep trying to be like, no, no. I got to maintain my belief because we recognize instinctively that our beliefs will change with the way that we see the world. [18:54.8]
But reality itself is not changing. If you pay attention to it, it'll show you things. It can be relied upon. And even if you don't like it, you can still rely upon it. Like cold is still cold, no matter how, which way you like it, it's still cold and you can rely on that. You can, you, that's something that you can learn from. And so, what I would suggest is instead of just assuming that our way of looking at scripture is real and our way of creating analogies and metaphors and, and beautiful things in life that give us these beautiful, emotional experiences, which I would submit, not all of them. In fact, many of them are probably not spiritual experiences, but just emotional experiences, which is fine. Unless you're going to say that every human experience is spiritual, in which case I will grant you that. Otherwise, a lot of them are just you working up your psychology to have an emotional experience. And that's beautiful. It's cathartic, it's useful, but it's not necessarily a spiritual shift. It's not a spiritual growth, right? It's just an emotional experience. So instead of relying on all these opinions and commentaries that we take the word of God or these books, take it down to where the rubber hits the road and test it out in real life. And you may discover that there are things in there that don't work. That some of the things written in those books, aren't all that intelligent for this day and this age, or maybe just the way that you've interpreted them aren't that intelligent. I've definitely done that. [20:21.2]
And you may find that there's some things in there that you never noticed that when you tested them out, you're like, Oh my gosh. Or you may go and study something completely different and discover something that's really powerful for your life. And then come back to those volumes of scripture and then see in there, Hey, look, it says something like that in here, but you never would have seen it, if you hadn't studied life itself. Take the books back to life itself. If what you are doing works to improve wellbeing of humankind and for yourself, then my hunch is my suggestion is whether you see it written in there or not, it's the truth and a true religion would encompass it. It would be involved in that, right? You're not going to see recipes in. I mean, there's no recipes for cooking in the Bible, really. There's not really like, Oh, this is the, this is the way the human body is designed for nutrition. You know, and when you eat a bunch of, it's not saying don't eat a bunch of sugar or anything like that. But we found that sugar is not necessarily the best thing for the human, for human consumption, right? It's you're not seeing like relationship advice in massive spades on how to handle sexual situations. We have sex counselors and stuff like nowadays and communication and whatnot. It's very terse, you know, and there are things that are guiding principles that are wonderful if they work, but if they don't work, my suggestion is it's probably your interpretation of it. If something is working, then even if it doesn't work for you, but if it's working for them, chances are there's truth in it. And if we can just get to that point and stop imposing our view of the Bible is this and this is the word of God period. Then we may surprise ourselves with discovering that we don't have to run around proving ourselves, right in order to have a good life. That we don't have to shame other people, but instead we can just take value from the books that we study, the books that we love, and we can enjoy a happy life and other people upon seeing that if it really works, you don't have to brow beat them. You don't have to tell them they're wrong. [22:18.2]
They will literally see the joy in your life and some part of them will be like, if I don't have that, I want some of that, tell me how. And then you can just share what you found that works. In other words, that, which is true and don't for a second, say, Oh, my interpretation of the Bible is the correct way. Just simply say, just, I read this and I thought this, and I tried this and they seem connected and it's really worked for me. And then they can discover the truth on their own, by their own experience, not by relying on other people's interpretations of a volume of text that has been through so many different iterations and billions of different interpretations by every person who's ever read it. That there's no way to reliably say, that's what the originator meant. Unless you're just going to say in this moment, this feels like what it means for me, in which case that's a very personal experience and it may be the best thing in your life. But don't for a second, believe that that must therefore be the, what it means for everybody else. And if you can give them that freedom and give yourself that freedom to not have to be right for everyone else, but simply have to live your life. You may find that life is a lot easier, it's a lot lighter and you make better friends cause you're not busy judging them as, as far away from Jesus as they could possibly get. [23:27.1]
And that's it for todays “Alive and Free Podcast.” If you enjoyed this show and want some more freedom bombs landing in your ear buds, subscribe right now at wherever you get your podcasts from. And, while you're at it, give us a rating and a review. It'll help us keep delivering great stuff to you. Plus, it's just nice to be nice. [23:45.1]
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