What if the moment your faith falls apart isn't the end, but the beginning of flight? Comparative theologian Jon Paul Syndor joins Jeromy to explore panentheism, non-dualism, and why God shows up in far more places than we were ever taught to look.
What if the moment your faith falls apart… isn't the end, but the beginning of flight?
What happens when you take the infinity of God seriously? Comparative theologian Jon Paul Syndor spent his career refusing to stay inside one tradition's walls — a PhD from Boston College studying Christian theology alongside deep immersion in Hinduism and Buddhism, two years in the Peace Corps reading every religious text he could find, and a dissertation bridging the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher with the Hindu theologian Ramanuja. The result is his book, The Great Open Dance, and a theology built on a question most of us are taught never to ask: what if God is too big for any single religion to hold?
In this conversation, Jon Paul makes a crucial distinction that reframes the whole "all paths lead to God" debate: it's not the structure of a religion that leads to the divine — it's agape, God's unconditional, universal love, wherever it shows up. Some religions cultivate it. Some don't. That single criterion changes everything about how we evaluate faith, culture, and each other. Jon Paul walks through panentheism — the belief that God is both within creation and beyond it — and how it transformed his relationship with nature, Scripture, and the sacred itself. We dig into non-dualism, the idea that we were never actually separated from God or from each other, and why "love your enemy" might be the most radical, non-dualistic command in all of Scripture.
This episode also reframes deconstruction itself. Jon Paul argues that tearing down the structures we've placed around God doesn't empty faith out — it endorses the infinity we were always trying to contain. Using the image of a nestling pushed from the nest, he makes the case that the disorientation many of us feel when our theology starts to crumble isn't falling. It's the beginning of flight. We also take a detour into near-death experiences, the mysterious and strikingly consistent reports of encountering overwhelming, unconditional love on the other side — and what they might tell us about the God Jon Paul believes is always bigger than we were told.
Whether you're deconstructing an inherited faith, exploring other religious traditions, or simply trying to figure out what's actually holding your spiritual life together, this conversation offers a way forward: trust God, not the structure. Look for love everywhere. And maybe, just maybe, you were always meant to fly.
Jon Paul's Substack: https://jonpaulsydnor.substack.com
You're Not Falling, You're Flying—Deconstruction, panentheism, and the God who shows up in every religion (Jon Paul Syndor)
00:00:00 Jeromy Johnson: Hey everyone, welcome to the podcast. I am here with John Paul. He wrote a book called The Great Open Dance. What if God isn't small enough to belong to one religion? What if no religion has an anchor? No religion has control. No religion has the full picture of who God might be. John Paul has a very interesting story and I will let him get into that. But John Paul, welcome to the podcast. We're glad you're here.
00:00:31 Jon Paul Sydnor: Thank you for having me, Jeremy. I'm looking forward to the conversation.
00:00:35 Jeromy Johnson: This strikes near and dear to my heart. I feel like I am, I always have been a little bit more of an ecumenical Christian. Um, meaning a lot of the, the denominations, I felt told a whole story, a broader story, a more full story of God and who God is that has really since spilled over into other other faiths, other religions that I don't think any one of us has, has kind of that truth. Um, I view capital T truth as almost like a like a ginormous sphere. I don't know the size of the sun. Right. And we're all standing on one part of it. And those of us who put a flag in there say, this is it. This is the one. They haven't looked around enough. They haven't really opened their heart up enough to see that. No, it's a lot broader. It's a lot bigger than I think that we think it is. And you've kind of explored this a little bit, haven't you, Jean-Paul?
00:01:29 Jon Paul Sydnor: Oh yeah. That's that's basically my whole career. Um, in theology. When I decided to get a PhD in theology, I knew that if I only studied Christian theology, I would feel claustrophobic. And so I actually went to Boston College specifically to study comparative theology, because at Boston College, I knew that I could study a Christian theology in depth, but also the theology theology of other religions in depth. So while I was there were particularly with Frank Clooney and Hinduism, but also did a lot of work with John Makransky and Buddhism, and I just found it deeply informative to my own, um, theological journey.
00:02:14 Jeromy Johnson: What would you say to someone? Because this is some of the pushback that I would get. Um, so are you saying that all roads lead to God?
00:02:23 Jon Paul Sydnor: Oh goodness gracious, no. No. There are roads out there that are absolutely horrible. There are mean, violent, misogynistic, horrible religions out there. And, uh, so I, I, I think what leads to God is agape. And I think we can find agape in a lot of places and we cannot find agape in a lot of places agape. I'm defining as God's universal, unconditional, inclusive and celebratory love. So, um, that, that leads to God and that leads to God in a lot of different ways, a lot of different forms, a lot of different ideas and practices and rituals. Um, but there are a lot of religions that are about things much, much other than agape.
00:03:12 Jeromy Johnson: HMM. So you're kind of hinting at that. It's less about the actual structure, right? Like all, all of Hinduism will lead to God. It's like, well, maybe not, but maybe there's parts of that that that will, it's less about the structure and the buildings and the walls and the divisions and more about the spirit.
00:03:29 Jon Paul Sydnor: Yeah. It's more about how loving that particular denomination of the religion is. Does it teach love of neighbor neighbor? Does it teach hatred of neighbor? Um, does it practice, uh, universalist ethic in which all are treated kindly? Or is it does have a particularist ethic in which, you know, people who are like me are treated kindly and people who are different from me, I'm going to treat horribly. So there's a lot going on in the world's religions. And there are some religious leaders who hate people who are different from them and teach their followers to hate people who are different from them. I don't think that's of God. I don't think that leads to the same place up the mountain. I don't think they're drawing from the same. Well, I think I think we have to be think critically and lovingly when we think about the religions.
00:04:24 Jeromy Johnson: I think The Shack said to kind of that question, do all roads lead to God? Kind of like, that's the wrong question, but God will meet you on all roads. Like no matter what road you're on, God will meet you there. And I think that's the. Sure.
00:04:38 Jon Paul Sydnor: Absolutely.
00:04:39 Jeromy Johnson: That's the heart of it, right? Almost. It's almost like that picture of the father who's going after, or the shepherd who's going after the one sheep or the one son or the one lost ring.
00:04:49 Jon Paul Sydnor: The lost coin. Absolutely. And if anything, I kind of use agape as my standard by the criterion by which I determine how faithful a religion is or denomination of religion is to God. But I mean, God's probably even more promiscuous than I'm allowing for. And he knows is, yeah, probably redemptive of the soldier who just participated in some type of horrible war crime and now is absolutely torn with moral injury. And probably I would say, no, that person's done. That person's outside the love of God. I'm guessing God still loves that person. I don't want to pretend in any way whatsoever to get into God's head. But for my purposes, when I study religions, try to learn from religions and try to grow spiritually through interaction with a religion. The criterion I use to select the religions that I learned from is the extent to which they are Agapic.
00:05:46 Jeromy Johnson: Take us back. You took a journey kind of which led a little bit to this book, right? Like you sat with and have been to a number of different religions and traditions. Can you walk us through some of that experience, some of the high level things that you did and what you learned and what you saw.
00:06:04 Jon Paul Sydnor: Sure. So I think the book kind of is the book I wish I could have read when I was twenty five years old. Um, I was kind of on a spiritual quest, spiritual journey. You look around, you're reading everything you can, and I couldn't quite find the exact thing that I was looking for. So I think what I did was just went ahead and got a Master of Divinity degree and then a PhD, and went ahead and wrote the book I wished I could have read when I was twenty five, I was I was raised Presbyterian, my dad's Presbyterian minister. Um, I was, I have, I was raised in a kind of a leftist center Presbyterian church. People there were kind. Everybody believed in Darwin's theory of evolution. People did not talk about other religions going to hell all the time. I have friends that have religious trauma syndrome from growing up in controlling churches. I don't have any of that. So it was a very positive experience.
00:06:57 Jeromy Johnson: So you never took a cultism class?
00:07:00 Jon Paul Sydnor: I didn't. And my and my church, thank God, was not a cultism. Yeah.
00:07:05 Jeromy Johnson: Good. Well, you missed out.
00:07:06 Jon Paul Sydnor: Yeah. But then, um, I joined the Peace Corps. I served in the Peace Corps in Poland for two years. And, you know, you just have a lot of time to read when you're in the Peace Corps. And I read everything, I read philosophy, I read, I read the Bible all the way through. I read, um, other religions. So and I just kind of sensed that God was at work in a lot of places, not just one place. And I kind of felt like if God is at work in a lot of places and not just, you know, the place that I'm familiar with, then there's probably stuff to learn about God from those other places. And so I should start checking those out and learning from them. Yeah. And for a while, I wasn't sure if I was going to be Christian or not. I mean, and I could have converted to Buddhism or Hinduism or something. Um, I just, I just never did because frankly, I just find the person of Jesus. Um, absolutely compelling. So, um, I'm not Christian by force. I'm Christian because because of Christ, but these other religions that I've encountered have transformed my Christian faith and deepened it. And I would also say deep in my relationship with Christ. So I'm very thankful for them.
00:08:19 Jeromy Johnson: Tell me more about that.
00:08:20 Jon Paul Sydnor: Well, one example is I've always felt, uh, profoundly moved by nature. And I've always felt when I experienced nature, I just don't think it's pretty. I think nature is all inspiring, beautiful and thin. I think it's sacred, right? I think there's, I think that God is within it. Yeah, yeah. God was, is within nature. Okay. I see a sunset and I, I think it's not just beauty created by God. God is within that beauty. So, but I, in my Christian tradition, especially in my Calvinist tradition, and I got my master of divinity at Princeton Seminary, which is Presbyterian and Calvinist. you couldn't think that God was in the sunset. You had to think God made the sun sunset, but you were not allowed to think that God was in the sunset. Yeah. And if you think that God is in the world. So that's pantheism. You think God's within the world and beyond the world at the same time. That's called panentheism. And I didn't really have any model for panentheism. Yeah.
00:09:22 Jeromy Johnson: You just felt it, I imagine like this felt.
00:09:24 Jon Paul Sydnor: It, but I could not articulate it. But then I studied, uh, Hindu theologian named Ramanuja. I actually wrote my dissertation on Friedrich Schleiermacher, German theologian and Ramanuja, a Hindu theologian, and he provided a very detailed, coherent account for how God can be in heaven. God can be inside you, inside me, and God can be in the cosmos all at the same time. And it's very, very coherent. It's very powerful. And basically, that's the theological cosmos that I live in now. I think God's a person. I think God is not me, but God is within me. At the same time, I think God is the within the cosmos. I think the universe is the the body of God and God is the soul of the cosmos. And so now when I experience a stunningly beautiful sunset that seems transcendent to me, I actually believe it is transcendent and it is transcendent because God is within it. But it doesn't exhaust God. God is beyond the sunset. God is in God's place, in the sunset, in you, in me, in everyone. So let's treat nature kindly. Let's treat one another kindly, and let's, um, be faithful to God at the same time.
00:10:40 Jeromy Johnson: Reminds me of a verse. Christ is all and is in all.
00:10:44 Jon Paul Sydnor: Correct, correct.
00:10:46 Jeromy Johnson: I think that's the beauty is as you you put on different lenses, right, of how you see God as you grow up. And as you get older, you really look at Scripture differently and you start seeing like I, I memorized that verse.
00:10:58 Jon Paul Sydnor: Mhm.
00:10:59 Jeromy Johnson: But back when I was an evangelical. I don't even know what that meant to me. But now I look at that and it just echoes what you're saying.
00:11:08 Jon Paul Sydnor: Well, I remember being in seminary and, um, reading the passage by Paul. God in whom we live and breathe and have our being. Yeah. I was like, wow, that sounds like God is in the universe. Um, to me, like we're in God. Not just gods, not just up there, but we're actually in God. So I was like, I wonder how Calvin interpreted that. And then I went to Calvin's interpretation of that passage, and he's going line by line interpreting the letter. And then he gets to that line and he just gets it just skips right over it.
00:11:38 Jeromy Johnson: Seriously. So he's literally like doing a full exegesis on each line, each word, and then just the whole sentence. He's like, oh, we're gonna skip over that one.
00:11:46 Jon Paul Sydnor: Like that is avoidant, man. Come on, you can do better than that. Just, just.
00:11:50 Jeromy Johnson: There's, it's that part. Like, I think I heard it said, like, how do you describe a sunset to someone who's never experienced light? How do you describe that? Or the taste of a mango or the.
00:12:04 Jon Paul Sydnor: Taste of a mango?
00:12:05 Jeromy Johnson: No one has no taste. And it's like the writers of Scripture are trying to describe this experience, this being this, this entity with language that is so limited language that's, you know, used to to go to buy fruit and shopping with and to talk on the phone with. And you know what I'm saying? Like it's just so it's so limited. And so I think absolutely, they're just trying to explain this incomprehensible thing.
00:12:31 Jon Paul Sydnor: And I think our attitude toward language has a huge impact on our, um, how we relate to each other and to our faith tradition and to God. Because if you think language can really capture truth about God, yeah, you can get pretty attached to that language. But if you think language is fundamentally inadequate to communicate God, then it really gives you kind of a humility about your language and your beliefs and your creeds and kind of an openness to change and kind of a recognition that we've got to play around here and use metaphor and analogy and tell stories and stuff like that to talk about God. And we shouldn't get really wrapped up in any one approach.
00:13:19 Jeromy Johnson: Gosh, I love what you just said about we gotta play around here with like theology and God, because that's the exact opposite. I mean, you went to a Calvinist who you don't play around with theology, right? This is serious stuff.
00:13:30 Jon Paul Sydnor: Right. You don't you don't mess with it. And, and you don't change anything and you don't challenge it. And it's, it's, um, I find that very stifling. And it's especially stifling if you feel like language can't really capture God. It's like you're forcing God into something too small. And then they're saying, well, you've got to be happy with that. Two small thing that we've told you is authoritative and you're just kind of like, I can't there's there's more, I know there's more. And for there to be more to, to reach that more, you need to be kind of open and playful, I would say.
00:14:08 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. I didn't get hired by a church because I said that my theology, my belief about theology used to be like, it's a rock. It's a, it's a movable. And now my understanding of theology was it's more like the water that's moving around the rock, like it's fluid. And my understanding is going to change over time. And they said, yeah, no, we're not going to hire you. Wow.
00:14:28 Jon Paul Sydnor: Um, I'm sorry you didn't get the job, but I'm kind of glad you didn't get. Yeah, I think I probably would have worked.
00:14:33 Jeromy Johnson: Out probably a good thing. But you you argue that we don't really experience reality directly, but through interpretation. And sometimes that can be the issue, right? We don't think that we view reality through our interpretation. Uh, when did that click for you personally?
00:14:50 Jon Paul Sydnor: Oh, you know, I remember as probably my mid late twenties when it really clicked for me and like five.
00:14:57 Jeromy Johnson: ten years ago.
00:14:58 Jon Paul Sydnor: Yeah, I'm fifty seven. So that was much longer ago than that.
00:15:03 Jeromy Johnson: Oh, man. Well, you look like you look great.
00:15:05 Jon Paul Sydnor: Thank you. Um, you might be tricked. I have the, uh, things on my camera turned way up, so to touch up my appearance. So I might look younger than I actually am. The problem is that when I go look at myself in a mirror after seeing myself on the screen, I look. I'm just absolutely horrified.
00:15:20 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, they need soft filters for mirrors, don't they? Yeah.
00:15:24 Jon Paul Sydnor: Um, so anyway, I, and I remember, you know, you're young and you're, you're, you're taught like there are these fundamental bedrock truths and you need those. And it's almost like you're taught that you're on the side of a cliff. And we have these, um, opinions in the, in the side of the cliff. Hold on to that and keep you safe. Right. And if you let go, you'll fall. That's kind of how a lot of theological truths are presented to us. You get to seminary and you kind of have a theology, but then you're exposed to a whole lot of different theologies, and people disagree. And then you read, you know, Bible stories that you never read before that undercut what you were thinking. You get thrown into flux, right? Your faith gets thrown into flux.
00:16:09 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, you do.
00:16:09 Jon Paul Sydnor: And it's disorienting for a lot of people. And it can be kind of spiritually discombobulating. And that's, that's when I went through my, you know, wow, we all have a lot of different interpretations. And when you put all of these different interpretations into play, uh, that's pretty scary because it, it undercuts these things that you've believed your whole life. What it does at the same time is it opens a door and you can walk through that door. And then once you walk through that door, you find that, in fact, there's a lot of opportunity there and there's a lot of freedom and you kind of start to shift from, I think, my control, my controlling metaphor for how I think about faith, my epistemology of faith, if you will, epistemology being the study of knowledge and how we know things. My controlling metaphor has shifted from foundation from like how firm a foundation, having a rock that you're standing on to more of a metaphor of flight and freedom. And I kind of feel like.
00:17:15 Jeromy Johnson: I like.
00:17:15 Jon Paul Sydnor: That we're kind of like nestlings and we're in the nest and we're happy in the nest, and we feel secure in the nest, but it's actually not our destiny to remain in the nest forever. And so eventually the mama bird just nudges us out and we think we're going to fall. But actually, what happens after we get nudged out is that we can fly. And then we realize that's our destiny. Our destiny was always to fly and not to remain in the nest forever.
00:17:44 Jeromy Johnson: That's a cool analogy. That's a really cool one. And that it makes me think of deconstruction, right? That's a big popular word right now, especially those who were in the evangelical world that were are now really starting to rethink their faith, rethink what they were brought up with. You know, maybe rethink the nest that they were still living in and they feel like they're kind of pushed out an d it's scary and you're falling. But then the wings open up. And I have talked to person after person after person, myself included, that there is so much more freedom and so much more love and so much more grace when you're out there flying. And so I almost like the term more awakening than deconstruction, though there was a part of it, right? You do have to go through that process, but then you're awakening to something. You're awakening to God's love. You're awakening to God's infinite characteristics. But what happens to a theology when you when you take seriously the idea that God is infinite, that God isn't everything, but is not everything. At the same time.
00:18:46 Jon Paul Sydnor: You start to see God in places you could not see God before, because you realize that God is overflowing and has overflowed and will overflow any container that you put God in. I think we create boundaries and walls and we create structures. You talk about deconstruction, right? Where you're.
00:19:06 Jeromy Johnson: Oh.
00:19:06 Jon Paul Sydnor: You're deconstructing the structures that we put God in. But the structures were never there for God. The structures were there for us. Yeah. And they were usually there for us to feel like we're in control, maybe in control of the universe, maybe in control of our own life. Maybe somebody created those structures to control us. Right? And so I would say deconstruction endorses the infinity of God because deconstruction is tearing down the structures within which we had limited the infinity of God. Mhm. And once that happens, People are afraid that they're going to find nothing there, right? Yeah. There's there they're afraid of nihilism. They're really afraid that they're going to find nothingness and they're going to plummet. But what happens is you find there that the infinite love of God is there, and then you find that you have wings to fly within that love. So it's a process that you can trust. And if I could say anything because I've read just so much by so many people going through deconstruction. If I could just say anything to them, it would be trust the process. Okay. God is there. The structure has not been holding you up all these years. God has been holding you up all these years. If the structure goes away, um, you'll actually realize even more so that God is the one who has been holding you up all these years.
00:20:39 Jeromy Johnson: MM. The structure's been holding you in. It's been holding you back. It's been now that is. I've never heard it put that way of. I mean, structure is literally the root of deconstruction, right? And you're destructuring this thing. You're getting rid of that that structure. And I guess one thing that you saw with all of your, your experiences in different religions, because really a religion is just a structure. It's a structure that, that we and, and they're not always bad, but it's a structure that we have built maybe to just try to understand God and maybe try to understand ourselves, to try to understand, um, our place in this world. And we like connecting with like minded people, right? Like, and I think there's, there's nothing wrong with that. But when the structure becomes the thing, when the structure becomes God, when the Bible becomes God. Correct. And I think that's the error that a lot of people have is there there's this worship of the printed page of this thing.
00:21:38 Jon Paul Sydnor: Right? I'm not saying, you know, complete anti structuralism or anything like that. Structures. I mean we're human beings. We need structures, we need rituals. We need some kind of like um practices that we share an ethic that we share all that kind of stuff. Some structures are open and some structures are closed. All right.
00:21:57 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.
00:21:58 Jon Paul Sydnor: Yeah. Um, some structures are made to be, you know, for the sun to shine into them. And I remember when I was, I was young and.
00:22:05 Jeromy Johnson: Some are caves or basements.
00:22:07 Jon Paul Sydnor: Oh, absolutely. I, I was coming home from Costa Rica and going to the Peace Corps. I did manual labor. And one of the places we worked was a national security agency, um, building. And it was just this huge, massive blob of concrete with no windows or anything. Right. And that's what some structures, some religious structures are like that. But what I'm saying is that a religious structure should be open and airy and let the sun shine in, and it should be a place where people can come and go freely and whatnot. It's not like not like a prison.
00:22:40 Jeromy Johnson: No. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Some people go, well, all religions are the same. Why do we need the differences of religion? What value do they have in being different and giving us different viewpoints?
00:22:53 Jon Paul Sydnor: Oh, that would be so boring if all religions are the same. Um, it would be an insult to the infinity of God and the infinite creativity of God and the ability of God to work through many different human practices, human thought worlds, human rituals, and whatnot. I think God creates beauty in many, many different ways, many different cultures, many different religions. And we need to find that beauty everywhere that we can find it. If somebody's painting in Europe in the fifteen hundreds, you know, they're going to paint in a certain style. And then if they travel and they see how everybody else in the world paints and they it's kind of broad perspective, they're going to come back and they're going to paint in a new way, they're going to paint in a different way. If somebody makes music, say they make music in Europe in the fifteen hundreds, they make it in a certain way. But then when they travel the world and they find all these other ways that they can make music, that the world makes music, then when they go back, they can make music a different way. I just think faith and religion, they're the same thing. They they offer us a lot of different ways to interact religiously with each other, with the world and with God. And we can learn from each other and we can come to respect each other through our differences. We come to know who we are and who they are, and we can be changed by that. I don't I'm not saying we necessarily will adopt, start doing what they do or push back against it and say, no, I'm only going to do what I do and we don't have to combine them. But you can always you're always changed by the encounter. Whatever you do, if you adopt the practice or reject it or combine it with something, you're changed. So and I think change is good. We're moving toward God. We want to practice as the Bible commends theosis or divinization, or becoming more holy and sacred through time. And our religious neighbor who is different from us, can help us to do that.
00:24:59 Jeromy Johnson: When I feel like even like in talking with you, I am being changed in this conversation. And you probably are too. As you're formulating thoughts and we're exchanging ideas and those that are listening, um, are probably being changed just by this encounter that you and I are having. And so you're kind of saying that the question, like all religions are the same are almost like, well, why isn't all music the same? That's a silly question. Well, why isn't all art the same? Why aren't all animals the same? So you're almost applying that to to the different expressions of religion. It's like there's this beauty and diversity.
00:25:33 Jon Paul Sydnor: Sure. I'm a fifty seven year old white guy. I love rock and roll, but it'd be really silly for me to demand that everybody like rock and roll or that rock and roll never change. And it also would be really silly for me not to realize that rock and roll is the product of a whole lot of different cultures, mixing particularly West African, West African cultures, Scotch-Irish cultures, and including classical European cultures. So it's and that that synthesis, that mixing and all that creativity created something very powerful and new. And once it creates something powerful new, why would somebody say, well, stop now and don't change anything again, because I like it the way it is. Yeah. But that's fundamentally what some people say that's like, this is what I'm familiar with. This is what I like, so don't change it. But what they inherited was something that had changed. So why are they telling later generations that they can't take what they got and changed that as well.
00:26:37 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. And we're not saying there's nothing wrong with telling them like, hey, enjoy rock and roll. Listen to it till you die and be grateful and enjoy it. And it touches your spirit. Um, but I think, yeah, it's when you start saying everyone else needs to do this, everyone else needs to have the same thing, especially those young people need to stop listening to that sea of stuff, you know? Yeah. Because I really do think like there are people, they really enjoy their expression of church. Mhm. And they're fine with it. And they don't have any reason to leave it. And, and I think that's I think that's great. I think that's beautiful. I think there's pastors who really found their, their groove. And if it's still feeding their spirit, if they're not feeling conflicted, if they're not feeling that what they're putting, uh, outward is so much different than who they are inward, then keep doing it. But if you are, I think you need to really start asking yourself something.
00:27:29 Jon Paul Sydnor: Mhm. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I mean, the Dalai Lama said the best thing for somebody to do is to stay in the religious tradition they were raised in. You know, if you have to convert, go ahead and convert. There's a lot to be said for going to church as a child and sitting next to your grandmother in church and all those memories. I mean, there's something really primordial going on there that's deeply moving as a human being. So I'm all for like, I endorse change, but I endorse continuity at the same time. Right. It might sound like I'm conflicted, but, you know, you're not revolutionarily changing everything. You're just continually growing and evolving spiritually in the hopes that that change and evolution brings us closer to God.
00:28:17 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. John. Paul, I hear these terms duality and non-duality thrown around a lot. Can you explain that? Non-Duality. Can you explain that in a way that, I don't know, maybe someone who's deconstructing their faith can actually feel and understand? Like what? What that means.
00:28:35 Jon Paul Sydnor: So nondualism is a word. It's really borrowed from Hinduism and Buddhism, and it's a translation of a term advaita. Some people translate it as monism. That means everything is God, and everything that's not God is an illusion. But what I'm really talking about is nondualism in the sense that everything is fundamentally related to and unified with everything else. So Nondualism acknowledges difference differences, real. Our world is real. You're real and I'm real. What would be an illusion is the belief that I'm separate from you. Or that I'm separate from the universe. That particular thought world, this kind of separation. I think that that is the misinterpretation of reality that causes us so much of our suffering. So I think I'm separate from you, and I think so. I can profit from you. And even if I harm you by profiting from you, I can do that to my own benefit. Right? Yeah. That is a belief in separation. It's it's an illusion. Because actually, when I harm you to profit myself, I'm inherently harming myself. All right. And I'm creating a world in which I really do not want to live in, because I'm creating worlds of suspicion and danger and distrust. And the same way with regard to the environment. And we think we're separate from the environment. We think we can pollute the environment. We think that we can exploit forests and water and fields and, and trees and whatnot, and we think it won't harm us. But then, you know, what do we get? We get, um, bronchitis, we get lung disease and we get cancer and whatnot. So we are inseparable from our environment. We're inseparable from one another and our destinies, the destiny of the entire cosmos, is entwined. All of our destinies are entwined. So that's fundamentally what I mean when I say non-dualism. People have told me like I'm a horrible marketer. Like, like they said, come up with a better term than non-dualism instead of using this, you know, foreign word, I'm just like, I probably could, but I just like it so much. And that was one thing I like about the term is it does point us to the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of thinking about this. And there's just a huge resource there for Christian theology to think about our fundamental relatedness. And it's also can prove extremely informative to our own doctrine of the Trinity. Yeah. Which we've always been saying God is three and one at the same time, which is that's like a form of non-dualism, right? Both three and one Non-dualism means both you and I right now are. We're both two and one, so we're two people. One conversations. There were two and one. The Trinity is three and one three people, one divinity. So it's there's a lot there. And I'm just trying to bring it into, um, Christianity and as accessible and helpful a way as possible.
00:31:52 Jeromy Johnson: So to paraphrase Non-dualism would say no separation, you're not separated. Dualism would say you are separated. And so there's some theologies that are dualistic in nature. I mean, I was tough fundamentally, I am separated from God by my very nature. There is there is separation. My mind and my spirit and my body are all separate from each other. Those are different things, right? So those are all dualistic theologies. And you're talking about with Non-dualism, we're all connected. I think that's kind of where I land with with universalism. We are not separated from God. We never were. It was a lie. It was something that we believed or something that we created. But it was never something that the father themselves gave to us.
00:32:37 Jon Paul Sydnor: And we're also not separated from our neighbors and other religions who will eventually be redeemed with us. Whatever the afterlife, whatever assumption is, it's going to be a shared experience. We share one destiny. We're not. God's not going to the fundamentally united. God is not going to separate human beings who are made in the image of God from one another for all eternity. That would not make sense based on the nature of God. And so I think the nature of God and trinitarianism and the belief that our destinies are entwined suggests and commends universalism, the belief that all are saved.
00:33:16 Jeromy Johnson: And we're probably never not saved. Right. And I think that's the crux of it is we never weren't saved. It's not even it's not even a word.
00:33:23 Jon Paul Sydnor: No matter how hard we try, we cannot get ourselves unsaved, no matter how hard.
00:33:27 Jeromy Johnson: Now you're sounding like a Calvin ensign.
00:33:30 Jon Paul Sydnor: There are a few lines that I remember.
00:33:32 Jeromy Johnson: Well, and with that lens of nondualism, it really sheds light on scripture. Love others as yourself.
00:33:40 Jon Paul Sydnor: Right? Because they are yourself and you are them. And you're fundamentally, um, united. There is unity in difference. And so let's, let's start acting like there's unity in difference and it'll reduce our suffering tremendously.
00:33:57 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Just a kinder, more gentle world. Three words love your enemy. If we can just embody that literally. I think my theory is all problems of the world. We basically resolved.
00:34:08 Jon Paul Sydnor: And that's one of the most insane. I mean, and kudos to the Buddha who said similar things regarding compassion for enemies and whatnot. But that's one of the most insane lines in religious literature. Love your enemy. I mean, kudos to Paul. He's he's said as well. Love those who persecute you. Yeah, it's a huge challenge. But if there is a an assertion of our inseparability from one another, that is it right there. And it is a command of Jesus that perpetually challenges me.
00:34:39 Jeromy Johnson: So you asked me about my podcast title. Let me ask you about your book title, The Great Open Dance. What does it mean to say that all religions are part of that dance?
00:34:47 Jon Paul Sydnor: So I'm really combining two metaphors for the sacred in the title. One is from Buddhism, and there's a story in Buddhism called Indra's Web. And in Ender's Web there's a Hindu god named Indra, and he's got this, um, court artisan, and the artisan is decides to spin for Indra a beautiful web of, um, shining jewels. And all the jewels are suspended in a net. And each jewel catches the light of every other jewel in this infinite net. And each jewel is also reflected in every other jewel in this. In this net. So it's just a glittering, artistic, spectacular masterpiece. And that is an illustration of shunyata or emptiness, which it's shunyata literally translates as emptiness. What it really means is openness or relationality that we're fundamentally related to each other. We are inside the universe, and the universe is within us at the same time. So that's where the word open comes from. And then the dance comes from. It's a metaphorical interpretation of the term perichoresis, which describes the relationships initially between the two natures of Jesus divine and human nature of Jesus, but then later between the persons in the Trinity. It means, um processing in and through and with, and it can be metaphorically translated as as dancing with or dancing around. Um, that's more of a poetic translation. So an open dance is, is combining Indra's net with the Trinitarian relations and asserting that the universe is a great open dance. Recognizing that kind of opens up the potential for life and for an ethical understanding of how we can best conduct ourselves and for how we can interact with other religions and other persons. And I think really expands the spiritual potential that we find within the cosmos.
00:37:04 Jeromy Johnson: That is beautiful and poetic. I love, I love that picture of those diamonds and those jewels, just all living amongst themselves and reflecting and being absorbed and mirroring each other.
00:37:16 Jon Paul Sydnor: It's a stunningly beautiful image. And, you know, if I can, It's it's been popularized by Alan Watts, worked with it, the beatnik poet. And so it's been popularized in the West. But I think people need to keep on putting it out there because it's it's not just beautiful. I also think it's true. I think it describes how the universe works. Yeah. Quantum physics right now, quantum mechanics is kind.
00:37:38 Jeromy Johnson: Of, oh my God.
00:37:39 Jon Paul Sydnor: Saying a lot of the same stuff.
00:37:41 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. I mean, since when has science like so collaborated with, with religious thought, right? Like it's crazy. It's insane.
00:37:49 Jon Paul Sydnor: You know.
00:37:50 Jeromy Johnson: Have you looked at or, or exposed yourself to, um, near-death experiences?
00:37:54 Jon Paul Sydnor: I have, um, one course that I teach is on science and religion. And so one section that we do is on neuroscience and religion. And then we also as a subset of that, we do a section on near-death experiences. So I find them absolutely fascinating, absolutely intriguing. I don't know what to make of them, you know, and I wonder to what extent are they theologically informative? I can talk about them forever. I find them intriguing. I'm not sure what to think about.
00:38:24 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, well, I'm curious, any thoughts? Because some of what you were saying about this, this connectedness and this oneness is, you know, a common theme of these is just in that experience. They don't feel separated from anything. Correct. And they don't feel judged. A lot of them like some, some might go through a more harsher experience, but most of them feel the weight of their choices. Mhm. Feel the of both good and positive choices. But there isn't like this heavy, this heavy judgment. So yeah, I was just intrigued just about your thoughts about those. Yeah. Could you share a little?
00:38:59 Jon Paul Sydnor: My thoughts are, first of all, they're very intriguing scientifically because sometimes they don't really have a scientific explanation. It just doesn't make sense. The person should be unconscious. The person should not be able to tell the operating room staff the things that they could tell them about the operating theatre. So it's there's some bizarre stuff going on with near death experiences. First of all. Second of all, I would say I hope they're true because.
00:39:24 Jeromy Johnson: I do too.
00:39:25 Jon Paul Sydnor: They. They are so stunningly beautiful and transformative. And these people come back from them and they just go through life with an absolute trust. It's it's astounding.
00:39:37 Jeromy Johnson: It's like they're transformed.
00:39:38 Jon Paul Sydnor: They are transformed.
00:39:39 Jeromy Johnson: Which gives some validity to it. Right?
00:39:41 Jon Paul Sydnor: And sometimes it's problematic. I mean, they come back and they're so transformed, they can't get along with their spouse. Somebody. Bruce Greyson, he's at the University of Virginia and he's the psychiatrist and he's kind of the leading expert on near-death experiences in America. And he had one early person that he studied. The guy had been a hitman for organized crime. Oh, wow. And he had a heart attack and he almost died. The experience he had, a near-death experience was so powerful that when he came back, he obviously could not kill again. Right. So he comes back, But he's. He's married, but he can't kill anymore. He's got no income.
00:40:22 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, that's his income.
00:40:24 Jon Paul Sydnor: That's his income. He's got no real other marketable skills. So now he's poor. So his wife divorces him. These things are just they're just amazing. Another story I read, um, I was listening to a BBC podcast and there was this, this woman, she had horrible childhood, horrible childhood, physical, emotional, sexual abuse, just just terrible. And then, I don't know, she maybe thirty, mid thirties or something, and she had a near-death experience and she met God. She wanted to tell God off. Like, why did you let this happen to me? Why would you create a world like this? Why would you let me suffer in this way? That's all she wanted to do.
00:41:05 Jeromy Johnson: Explain my.
00:41:05 Jon Paul Sydnor: Suffering. She dies and she meets God. And she said, all I wanted to do was I fell at his feet and I said, I'm so sorry I didn't do more for you when I was on earth, because she felt so perfectly loved and so perfectly healed by that perfect love that all she wanted to do was go back to earth and share that perfect love with everybody she met. Yeah, it's just extraordinary.
00:41:30 Jeromy Johnson: And again, that lens of every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess. Like there's just this. I feel like this transformation that that takes place in that presence. And what you see is like, these aren't all Christians that are having these experiences. No, not all Buddhists that are having these experiences. These aren't all.
00:41:47 Jon Paul Sydnor: An atheist.
00:41:48 Jeromy Johnson: Murderers that are having these experiences where they need to be converted. These are just human beings across the board. And I don't know, like, you know, the cynic in me goes, well, do they just hear one? And then they just kind of keep repeating like, oh yeah, I came out of my body, I went up, I saw a light, I came through and there was this being who was unrecognizable. And then my life story came through me. And then I came back and I'm changed, right? But I feel like there's, there's just so many that, it's hard to to disprove.
00:42:17 Jon Paul Sydnor: It's hard to dismiss. You can't verify them. You can't falsify them. They bear a lot of similar qualities. And there's just so many of them that they're really hard to dismiss.
00:42:28 Jeromy Johnson: Well, good. That was a fun tangent. John Ball, thanks for thanks for chasing down that road with me. I thought that you might have some some stuff to say about that. It is very intriguing and it's very mysterious. And I think I think that's the cool thing is, and maybe you are too. I think you hinted at it like I'm way more okay with mystery now. In fact, I would I almost prefer mystery over certainty. Yeah. Now you know.
00:42:49 Jon Paul Sydnor: Well, certainly you don't want to think something and lock it down and then cling to it, get attached to it. That's I like entertaining thoughts, I like ideas, but I also I'm always willing to be proven wrong. Um, I'm always willing. I hope I grow beyond my current thoughts and ideas about God. So it's a process, not an event, if you will.
00:43:16 Jeromy Johnson: Why do you think people are afraid? And I'm going to use that word very intentionally, because I think fear drives so much in our world. Why do you think people are so afraid of the idea that God just might be bigger than their faith and their religion?
00:43:31 Jon Paul Sydnor: I think it's so scary. Um, I'm sympathetic to them because I, I think everybody kind of goes through this process. I mean, you grow up as a child and there's a world and it's small. It's a small world. It's manageable. You know, your thought world kind of works for you and it works in the place you grew up. And then you grow up and you get exposed to all these new ideas and different ways of living, and it can be disorienting. And it's kind of like somebody moves from the country into the city all of a sudden. I mean, it's just super disorienting. You're surrounded by difference and different ideas and different people. And it can it can be scary. And I think people are they're just so afraid of having the freedom to choose. They're free to embrace ambiguity, to give up the certainty and to embrace the ambiguity. And I think that particularly if you've been raised in a black and white world where everything's right or wrong, you've got God, Satan, angels, demons, saints, sinners, heaven and hell, and you've been negotiating your life with these binaries, right? Yeah. And then somebody comes along and starts talking about shades of gray and like, well, that person is, um, not particularly good, not particularly bad. So are they going to heaven or hell? Are they, are they a saint or sinner? And then you're like, well, then it starts to not work. And then, well, this person actually did something horrible. But you know, this person, now we know this person had something horrible happen to them as a child, and that's why they did this horrible thing later. So are they, um, responsible for it? If this horrible thing happened to them when they were a very young child? Yeah. And all of this stuff gets really complicated really fast.
00:45:13 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah it.
00:45:14 Jon Paul Sydnor: Does. You can retreat from it and retreat into the old certainties. Or you can move forward and embrace ambiguity and learn to negotiate that, um, world of shades of gray. And I really think the healthiest option far and away is to move forward. Um, the only way out is through and into the shades of gray. And then to realize that actually once, once you move through those shades of gray, you start getting into all the colors.
00:45:48 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, yeah.
00:45:48 Jon Paul Sydnor: The colors of the rainbow and, and the beauty of the spectrum. And then you find out that you can negotiate it. You don't need to carefully walk from one signpost to another to make sure you don't get lost. You can explore and wander and you'll be fine. You'll be safe and you're not. Just be safe. You'll be learning and growing and expanding. And I think that is what people want to do, but they're afraid to do. And also, I'll also say there are people that don't want people to do that, right? They want them to stay in the the black and white box that they have put them in. And they'll tell them if you if you leave, that's a dangerous place. So just stay here with us. Yeah. I really would like to see a humanity confident enough to broadly embrace ambiguity.
00:46:37 Jeromy Johnson: That's so true. But I love that that picture that you just painted, just go out and explore. And it's the safe world. It's the safe wilderness. It's the safe forest. And you're going to be fine. You're not going to be hurt. Mhm. It might be uncomfortable. You might get cold, it might rain on you. But then you're like, wow, that was a crazy storm. I just survived last night. And it was pretty amazing. And it was pretty remarkable. That's just such a beautiful picture. And again, some people like, like they're gonna just be okay with that. They're gonna be okay being in the same place. But I think they're missing out now on the here and the now. They're missing out on on seeing and living in God's kingdom here, which is what Jesus said.
00:47:22 Jon Paul Sydnor: It's a little I mean, it's just a little sad to me. I don't want to sound judgmental. I just think there's so much to life. And you can you can be really safe sitting at home on your couch watching your TV. Um, but there's, there's a whole world out there and it's, it's, it's a good world. God, God made the world all right. And it's a good world to go out there and explore and have adventures in. So I know a couple and they're fairly elderly and they almost never they, they're, you know, middle class to upper middle class. They've almost never left, um, New York State. They just stay in one place. I think, um, they both have some anxiety and they've controlled their anxiety by not really doing much, but, um, you know, they didn't have children, didn't travel. Just kind of got their jobs, live their lives, stayed in one place. It's fine. It worked for them.
00:48:20 Jeromy Johnson: They existed.
00:48:21 Jon Paul Sydnor: They existed. But I just feel like there's a certain, um, opportunity lost. And it does sadden me when those opportunities pass us by.
00:48:30 Jeromy Johnson: There are people that really feel like exploring, like they want to explore maybe different perspectives, different religions, but they really feel like it's going to cost them their faith. What do you say to them?
00:48:43 Jon Paul Sydnor: Oh my goodness. Um, trust God. You don't have to trust your inherited religion. Trust God. God. God is omnipresent. God is everywhere. So if you explore, you will find God in those places that you explore. Okay, now. Yeah. you can't see this unconditionally. I mean, there are bad places you can go and bad things you can do. And there are, um, bad religious leaders who can harm you and stuff like that. So, but trust God, trust, love, trust the love of God and don't be motivated by fear. Be motivated by love. And I really think one of the most powerful passages in the entire Bible, which is not quoted often enough, is perfect. Love casts out all fear. And I would say the opposite that perfect fear casts out all love. Yeah, okay. I think they're both true. And if you are protecting yourself from exposure to other religions or protecting yourself from exposure to other cultures because you're afraid that they're going to dilute your faith or contaminate your faith, then you're not motivated by love. You also seem like you might be a little distrustful that God has actually been at work in the culture that you're afraid of being influenced by, or in the, um, religion that you're afraid of being influenced by. So just trust God, trust God's love, trust God's activity, and look for God everywhere. If you believe that God is everywhere, look for God everywhere. And where you see love, there you are seeing God. Okay? Where there is love, there is God. Trust that and move forward and you'll be fine.
00:50:38 Jeromy Johnson: And their faith might be tainted and their faith might be disturbed, but correct. God won't. And their relationship with God if if they're seeking that will be enhanced, correct.
00:50:50 Jon Paul Sydnor: And, and unless we're perfect, we should be disturbed and changed and prodded onward. And none of us are perfect. So we should all really be moving forward in our faith and encountering other religions, other cultures, people who practice faith differently from us. That's one way that we can move forward. It doesn't mean uncritically. It doesn't mean we're going to change everything willy nilly. But it's it's a catalyst for religious growth. It can be, when done skillfully and openly and properly.
00:51:31 Jeromy Johnson: John Paul, I'd like to give my guests an opportunity to kind of just share their final words to, to this audience. So some in this audience are rethinking faith. Some might be moving away from a faith that they've had their entire life. Some might be leaders that are really questioning, um, they're calling your final words. What, what would you like to say to people?
00:51:59 Jon Paul Sydnor: I would say trust God And be hopeful. Hope is not just something you feel because you have faith. So hope is also a spiritual discipline, and hope encourages you and empowers you to take paths that you might not otherwise take. If. If you're in a rut, allow hope to help you out of that rut and allow hope to motivate you to have that adventure that maybe you've been denying yourself. But but may be very well what your, your soul, your spirit, most needs. And when I say adventure, you know, I'm, I keep on it's, it's related to the word advent, right? We're supposed to have spiritual adventures because advent is an adventure. It's a coming to us. God is coming to us in advent. And God can also come to us in adventures, right? In spiritual adventures. That won't happen unless we trust God and have hope that the adventure will be fruitful. Live and love dangerously. I don't think God put us on earth to be safe. I really think God doesn't want us to be safe and secure. I think God wants us to love dangerously. And I think that we might fear that because it is risky. Loving dangerously is risky. But I think the crucifixion and the resurrection teach us that it is risky, but it's worth it. And that the fullness of life we're going to find on the other side of loving dangerously. And if if we do that together in a community, that's where we're going to find our greatest happiness.
00:53:47 Jeromy Johnson: HMM. John Paul, I, my, my spirit is just blessed. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your, your wisdom and your heart and your experience of fifty seven years now of life on this earth. And, uh, I'm just. It's such a joy to have this conversation with you. And, uh, and I really do hope that we have a chance to, uh, to talk again, because I think there's so much more we can, we can dive into. Thank you.
00:54:12 Jon Paul Sydnor: I've enjoyed it tremendously. And I'd love to talk again. And thank you for having me. And if you know, you get any feedback from your, um, listeners or anything, I'd be happy to hear it. I hope I've been helpful to somebody who hears this podcast. That would be my, my deepest hope.
00:54:29 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Um, you, you have been, I guarantee you there's always at least one person. John Paul. How do they get in contact with you?
00:54:38 Jon Paul Sydnor: Um, I'm on Substack, so you can contact me on Substack. Uh, that's one way. I'm on Facebook. My email address is John Paul sidner at gmail dot com. So just like just on the from the name of the name of the book at, um, gmail dot com. So I'll respond to any of those.
00:54:59 Jeromy Johnson: All right. Sounds good. All right. John. Paul. Thank you.
00:55:02 Jon Paul Sydnor: Thank you. Jeremy.