Flying Leaves
We talk with young adult Christians about the real journey—following Jesus, discerning their vocational calling, and living out their faith in a restless world.
Flying Leaves
John Tonietto
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In this episode of Flying Leaves, John shares his remarkable journey from a childhood faith to years immersed in New Age spirituality, yoga philosophy, astrology, and occult practices—and ultimately back to Jesus Christ. Through an honest conversation, he reflects on the search for meaning, the subtle influence of spiritual deception, and the peace he found in God's Word. Whether you're exploring faith, wrestling with spiritual questions, or simply curious about one young adult's testimony, John's story offers a compelling reminder that true hope is found in Christ alone.
Hey, and welcome everybody again, once again to Flying Leaves. It's great to have you with us again this morning as I interview another one of our young adults, John Toynetti. Did I say that right? No. Tony Eto. Tony Eto. There we go. John, it's great to have you with us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, great to be here.
SPEAKER_02So uh as you know, uh we've been interviewing young adults in their journey in this restless world following Jesus and faith. And uh today John is willing to share a little bit of his story. And it's a big story. We won't be able to get into all of it today, John. But uh there's some things in your journey I think that are really important for our listeners to to learn, to reflect and think about. As I've gotten to know you, John, over the last few months. You have quite a journey into the faith. I mean, it was there at one point, a long, long time ago, I guess, in your in your family of origin, but you decided not to maybe connect with it or wasn't maybe meeting meeting some of your needs in life, or whatever, whatever we want you to look at it. So just take us back just a little bit to to that journey. You know, was it there at one point? Why did you kind of just leave that?
SPEAKER_01You know, why was it meaningful for you?
SPEAKER_00I would say it was there more so in grandparents than parents. Parents had it, but grandparents were more involved, like my no no, which is my father's father, he was an usher at his church. So he was heavily involved. They went every Sunday. My family, not so much. We moved around a bunch, we we found churches, like we we settled with churches, but like we were not as involved. It wasn't every week, it was like maybe once every other month, and obviously Christmas and Easter, you'd go. And then I did all the stuff that Catholic religion asks of the youth. I was baptized, first communion confirmed, and just with everything that you hear from society, from media, from other people, I really felt out of favor with the Catholic Church and at the time my connection with Jesus, I would say.
SPEAKER_02So you said you you had a connection. And I I think you know, a lot of young people as they go through the high school years and into perhaps post-secondary education, there's lots of kind of maybe influences that take us away from the church, too. Did that happen to you a little bit?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think everyone has a connection, especially as a child. You're you're a lot more you you can see God through the eyes of a child, right? Just their wonder and the splendor that is all around you. And I think that you you lose that. And it reminds me, there's a there's a poem by Christian Anderson. He did, I think he's Danish poet who who did a lot of like what have turned some have turned into Disney, but there's one called the tallow candle, and it's just the idea of like you're when you're created, you're this pure white candle, and over time, like as if you don't get burned, like you don't get lit with people touching you, with you moving around, like the grime of people's hands get on you to the point that you can get to the this point that everything is black, you can't even see the white purity of the tallow unless something is lit, and then that wax will allow that to come down to the point that you can't even see the black anymore, and it's back to being that white purity. So I think with the way that media and the news forces you to hear how scary the world is, all the negative things of of what's happening. I think you get into the age where you're getting bullied and God doesn't help you there, so you find your way to fit in. I think like there's a whole other side of you there's indoctrination through post-secondary education towards a primarily more socialist view of the world, and I think that pulls people away from the faith as well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So kind of the influences, the outside influences that come into your life as you grow in age. It's really interesting because I hear that a lot from people, you know, there's it's very powerful to think about who influences us and how to protect some of those influences because it's easily to be kind of not saying maybe not manipulated is this is the correct word, but influenced in directions that others are going. You know, kind of join up with with others who are on that same path who maybe are resonating with you. And I'm wondering if you had that experience of all like what pulled you away, and then perhaps talk about what uh made you curious about faith again.
SPEAKER_00I think curious about faith again is should be replaced with curious about the Christian faith again. I don't think I think with my upbringing there's always been a space for faith, and I think I filled the void that was for Jesus, the Lord, and the Holy Spirit with other teachings, other works, other ways that society said you can fill yourself. And some of those it it because my faith, my belief in faith definitely continued, because though I was no longer practicing as a Christian, I my I was still searching. Like there was there was a period of time where I was atheist and then it morphed to agnosticism, and then I started to study Buddhism, which led to practicing yoga regularly, which ended up into studying yoga philosophy and then Vedic philosophy, to the point where I ended up immersing myself in that, becoming a yoga instructor, and then alongside that it was the study of the Tao Dijing, and then furthering it into occult practices, other gods, lowercase g quotation fingers, including various Egyptian deities, and faith in there was definitely blind faith in not the real God Jesus Christ, but in even other modalities and other things that when I was young, they were around me, and you just you don't even realize that you're being like indoctrinated. Like I'm old enough, some of the people you're gonna interview didn't really have this, but like I'm old enough that like my family got paper every single morning, and my mom would go through the horoscopes, and even the horoscopes like that's getting into astrology, that's getting into things that the Bible actually says that that's divination and to stay away from divination. And I think now in society, you've got TikTok, which is like you've got people that are influencing people's minds, and it's we're we're we're getting to this point that people are so malleable with short-form video content that if there's something that can give them direction or relief from different anxieties or stuff like that, and and and that's a whole thing of like individuals. I believe it's been touched on in this podcast, but like attaching themselves to these emotions almost. And like people will become their affliction, they'll become they get anxiety a couple times and then well, I have anxiety, and that's it, or depression, I have depression, or ADHD, like I I can't focus ever. And it's like they they they they latch to these things and and hold on to them so dearly. And don't know if I answered your question, kind of did a tangent.
SPEAKER_02No, that's good. I mean, that expands on the conversation. I think a lot of uh people out there in the world, well, especially the Christian church, maybe, perhaps, myself included, don't realize how subtle some of these new age practices really are. And people go to yoga. Yeah, people read a horse horoscope. Yeah. Um, I you know, I've talked to people who've gone to it, is it tarot cards?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so there's tarot card readings, there's psychic fairs, they have them that they go around various countries to get readings from people who are talking to the other side.
SPEAKER_02So so I mean, people think it's innocent, you know, like you know, like it's just come on, it's just read a little horoscope on the paper. What could be dangerous about that? Or so I mean, I don't have any experience in this, but you do. So how dangerous is it?
SPEAKER_00It's dangerous because it can quickly engulf the mind as something you can attach to. Because if you get very adept at things like horoscopes, well, horoscopes are pattern recognition. And realistically, if you look at them, it's based on where someone is born in a calendar year.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00So if you take a step back further and you look, okay, well, if someone was born in a certain month, that means that they were in their mother's womb from a certain month. So certain various environmental conditions will affect when they're growing and how they're gonna come out. When they're born is gonna be, okay, when's your birthday in the year compared to the other kids? How are you treated? How like you what is happening around you? What is the what is the general like just what's happening environmentally is going to mold kind of that region of the year for those births, I think. That's kind of my zoom out of it. However, when you start to see the pattern recognition, it kind of like hits the nail on the head once you know these things about these types of birth months, yeah. And then you get into further into like tarot. Well, tarot are gonna tell you certain things about your past, your present, your future. A lot of times they'll be able to kind of hit the nail on the head, and it's again to use that, and something that I heard like when you talk to a lot of people who read tarot, they say that they they'll say things like, Well, I'm guided, right? I'm guided by source, I'm guided by some, but they can't say what. And if it's not guided by Jesus, then it's guided by demonic entities or the devil. It's kind of black and white with that. It says it in the Bible, and it's it's the old testament, and then also like what Jesus says, like, I am the truth, I am the way. Like, if you're not following the way, like yeah, you're following something else that's deceiving you.
SPEAKER_02I mean, so you were very involved in many of those practices. Oh, yeah. And so what was it then that made you look or discover or think or reflect?
SPEAKER_00I mean, was it just God in his grace and mercy just jumping on you and saying, hey, or was it experience, or was there a I want to say it was a multitude of factors because it's like my wife has her own faith journey and and her conviction in Christ was what very much so tipped the favor to me accepting him as the Lord and Savior. But looking back on it, it's like even though I added in all these modalities, I was always searching for more. Right, there was no satiation, and like I think of and and a lot of these practices, if you look at what they're trying to get you to do, well, it's a little bit scary when you look at it from a biblical sense. Because you look at what Jesus says about when he casts out demons and he's talking to the apostles, he's he's also he also gives them a warning of like you need to be careful when you do this because it will find refuge in those that are empty. Right. When you're doing yoga or certain meditations, the whole point is to empty the mind, empty the body. You're becoming an open vessel. The goal of a lot of yoga that people don't understand is to have a kundalini snake rising. That is a snake coming up through your sacral, which is your your tailbone, and it winds up the energy centers known as chakras in your spine until it blasts out of your head. If you look at the symbolism of what the Bible says about snakes or dragons, like that's the deceiver, that's the devil. Right, you're literally going again, like you're becoming the empty vessel that if there are demons around, they're ready to enter you. And those that do yoga, a lot of them don't understand, like yoga and Vedic philosophy will openly talk about demons, that there are demons. There are tantric philosophies that that profess people to address their demons to welcome their demons into their life. And every single posture or asana that you're doing in yoga is a dove devotional to a lowercase g. Every single one in Sanskrit has a name related to an entity, and by putting yourself in that pose, you are opening yourself to that entity.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's powerful. Because you know, uh Martin Luther talks about this as far as emptying yourself and the challenges to do that. So even when he says, you know, this whole thing of meditation, right? He says, even if you go into meditation, so to speak, the first thing you do prior to that is read God's word. Like don't go into any type of emptying yourself. You need to be filled with God's word, allow the word to then become your prayer, and then you are guided by his holy word, not by freeing yourself and allowing something else to come into your mind. And you know, so I I've always found that really helpful. So I know that like God's word has become pretty special to you for sure. And so, I mean, is that was that the replacement, I suppose, for all these other modalities that you talked about?
SPEAKER_00I wouldn't say replacement, I would say it was the the necessary it was the square peg for the square hole when I was trying to put circle pegs in the square hole, right? There was always corners missing, if I can, if that makes sense. There was always something missing, yeah. And there was always something missing, and as soon as I accepted Jesus and said yes or hamini, or the right, is that the right word? Yeah, yeah. Hinani. Hinani, Hinaini. Yeah, and as soon as that acceptance was there, the reading of the word felt better than any posture or meditative session that I'd done for the previous 10 years of my life.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. How long ago was that then that you made that?
SPEAKER_002023.
SPEAKER_02And it's just evolved since then. So, John, I'm knowing I'm gonna have you back on the on the show again sometime, but are there any recent scriptures that you've been thinking or reflecting on that have kind of encouraged you at all?
SPEAKER_00Or I mean, how many do you want? Because there's two that like two that are like really prevalent, but there's one more so. Well, share whatever you'd like. Okay, so this would be 1 Peter 5. Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of the of God, so that he may exalt you at the proper time, having cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares about you. Be sober of spirit, be on alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Let's see if I can pull it up. And this is in Ephesians 6, verse 10. Finally, be strong in the Lord and put your strength of his might. Put and in restart. That's a rewind for those that know, for young kids, you don't know. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_00I think that one with what you were saying of meditation, though, is like that's that I think Martin Luther was really on to something with that. Because when you sit with meditation and you're just with yourself and you're emptying yourself, you can leave and you're you're subject to the will of everyone else who's willing to fill the cup.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And even like Psalm 23, my cup of overfloweth. Like you're you're attempting to like you want so much of God with you that you're overflowing to the point that the devil can't enter your vessel.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's people out there today listening to this podcast. Maybe there's people involved in some of the stuff that you've mentioned. Maybe there's like young adults who are toying with this, you know, thinking that this is an all right thing. What would you say to them? And yeah, what would you say to them as as they listen on today?
SPEAKER_00I'll go with just three for now of like one for each. So if you're looking at astrology, it's guiding you, but it's not from God. It's going to show you things, but it's not from God. Keep that in mind. Tarot. Who's telling you where these messages are? It's not Jesus. So just be be weary. And for yoga, I mean, there's gonna be people, and and everyone that I kind of bring up the negative sides of yoga, they get very defensive with it. Read the scripture that I just said right before you go, so you can have the armor of God with you before you practice, but like eventually maybe don't practice it. But that's each individual has to come to that on their own terms.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Very good, very good wisdom, John. And I just want to thank you. I know we're gonna have you back and uh want to hear more of your story, where God is in your life and where he's leading you. And and so I just uh again, thanks for being on the podcast today. Great to have you here. And for those who are our listeners today, we just thank you for being here. And again, we're just interviewing another young adult who's living their faith out in this restless world and look forward to chatting with you in the future. This is Rick Berg, your host, saying goodbye and God bless.