Defending Mercy, Part 2

Live from Salt Lake City, Utah, this is Heart of the Matter Full Circle and I’m your host, Shawn McCraney

Let’s pray if you are so inclined

YAHAVAH – God of gods, Lord of Lords,
We thank and seek you and your will in our lives.

Magg and Del
The Nation which is in your hands to do what you will,
Our up and coming Peace Initiative conference
And Seekers of You in Spirit and Truth.

In Yeshua’s given name, Amen

Show 27 Defending Mercy Part II
November 5th 2024
By way of some short reminders . . .

Today is election day in North America and the reminder from our side of the Aisle is to look to YAHAVAH in faith, walk humbly in peace, and love all souls with as much understanding as you can muster.

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Also, as you are well aware, Friday night, starting at 7PM, we are opening our first annual Christian Peace Initiative Conference right here through Live Stream and a limited Live Audience. The studio opens at 6 with lite refreshments for those in physical attendance.

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Our esteemed Keynote speaker will begin at 7, Dr. Larry Norris and his remarks are titled,
Peace and Unity: Mending the Broken Hoop.

We look so forward to hearing from his vast experience in the faith. We will wrap it up by say 8:15.

Then Saturday morning, the line-up looks like this:

Doors open at 7:30 am for lite refreshments. Then . . .

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Our first speaker will be Sarah Young from Check my Church who will present her paper titled, Christian Peace through Doctrinal Humility.

Love that. Sarah will be followed by,

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Danny Larson, from Talking to Mormons and his paper titled, Born-Again Latter-Day Saint.

After Danny shares his keen insights, the next speaker will be Brother Todd Lanigan, a devout follower of the King and whose paper is titled, “Fulfillment is Biblical. Fulfillment is better.”

I agree already, Brother Todd.
Then following Todd we will hear from brother Grady Risely, who with his dear wife Cheryl runs a long term care ministry to the unfortunate souls in Sonora Mexico and he will present a paper called, “What’s Love Got to Do with it?”

I will make some short comments at 10:45 about God’s heart toward all of His Creations and we will then have a lunch delivered to our live guests at 11 but stay with us on zoom as once that is firmly underway we will have the opportunity to hear from a very talented musical artist, Kimberly Maycock, who will deliver a musical message she has created called, His Law is Love.

After that we will wrap up the delivery of papers by hearing from Delaney McCraney who’s message is titled, Unabstract – which I am especially interested in hearing – all along with all the others.

Following that we will have an hour long panel discussion with everyone involved that I will facilitate with questions and we hope to wrap everything up by no later than 2PM.

We hope you will tune in for an in-person view of it all if you can or stop in our our live feed and in the end we hope you will then be moved to add your name to the CPI at the Great News Network or through the APP which comes without price or obligation.

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Also, as a reminder, every Saturday Evening at 6PM
Local believer Richard Dutcher is at the
Adventure church in Draper Utah holding a gathering for people seeking community which includes a place to eat and talk and speak of spiritual things – if one is so inclined.

Richard is a lover of community and a lover of conversation. All are welcome but the gathering might really encourage people who have left the LDS church and are looking to continue in faith and love through an established low-key community.

Check that out if you are so inclined, bring food to share and you can get more information at

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the waystationcommunity.com

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Okay, well, we are calling tonight’s show, Defending Mercy Part II because more people got what I was saying last week wrong than right.

The fault for this certainly lies with me and my inability to effectively communicate, but that said, there are some things I had hoped our regulars fully understood about me before jumping to some incorrect conclusions.

The first of which being that I am NOT political or politically inclined in any way.

Because society has taken issues and made them political, that is their doing, but when I speak about issues like gays, marriage, divorce, abortion, euthanasia and the like, it is always from a place of the Spirit and from scriptural principles and never with reference to politics red or blue.

I could not personally care less about what is happening in the political realm because I follow and trust a different King implicitly and I do NOT place my faith and trust in human beings no matter how adept, well-spoken or charming they may present themselves.

It is frankly in this way that I am, after a lead by Leo Tolstoy, a Christian Anarchist through and through.

That said, I did make the mistake of using some politically charged words last week that were NOT intended that way. These terms included my assigning to myself the terms “bleeding heart” and “liberal.”

But taking what I just explained, and BECAUSE I am not borrowing from the political arenas of our world in my use of these words, my meaning behind “bleeding heart” was to describe the condition of my heart toward the suffering in this world and my use of the word, “liberal,” referred to a recent increase of personal liberality than did not exist in me for the first 63 years of my life.

I blamed the absence of such mercy on ugly culturalisms I embraced without really thinking outside of them until a just a couple weeks ago.

I understand the confusion and see the part I played in it by not clarifying my views as a-political.

That said, I must also suggest that some eyes and ears are so politically inclined that when specific subjects are broached they are heard with political ears rather than with a biblical mind – and misunderstandings are the natural result.

So again, homosexuality, divorce, euthanasia, abortion, stem-cell research, pedophilia, rape, murder, crime, evil are never politicized in my mind and heart, are simply unfortunate events in the human condition which I seek to understand from the purview of my God and King and not through what exists under what I call what appear to me to be “cultural cosmetics.”

So, tonight is going to be a bit different (even for me) because I am going to be very transparent on something very person but real in my world but it is something that can easily be misunderstood thus alienating even more of our audience.

I have not openly shared these things with our audience because they can easily become misrepresented targets for the religiously inclined to take endless and unfair shots against.

But in the past week I have had several requests for me to explain what exactly happened to make my heart bleed for world suffering that was absent in me before.

I promote subjective relationships in the faith in part because of how I have learned to interpret various sources of metaphysical input which might not be seen as reliable or of a heavenly origin.

In some ways, I am hesitant to actually show you how I think but I guess it is only fair that you know so all the cards are on the table.

May the Lord God of heaven and earth guide you as you seek to understand.

My brain works in ways that might be akin a file cabinet filled with note cards.
I store content from what I have read, seen, experienced or am greatly influenced by which adds up making the card heavier and calling for more attention.

When the card swells to overflowing on a given subject I feel led to sit up and start paying attention.

I realize this is nothing original and it probably describes the way most of our brains work.

My file on empathy, mercy and caring beginning way back as a kid had very little written upon it but one of my first submissions to it was after I was married with kids and I left the protective confines of my southern California home and went to live in south east Asia with the largest cutter and sower of fabric in the world.

I won’t repeat the experiences that unfolded there – I’ve done it before – but just know that I saw real abject poverty for the first time which I perceived as as very different from North America – and that includes Tijuana where I blew through with the entitlements of an indifferent spoiled kid.

Years after living in Sri Lanka I entered ministry and had my fair share of meeting face to face with a stream of needy often hurting people.

While I tried to respond mercifully in most cases, I was silently watching how manipulative and conniving many people ultimately were in this world relative to hand-outs and these experiences only secretly fortified my hard heart.

When the leader of the SLC Mission personally told me to never ever give money to those on the street and all the reasons why, I was further convinced that my world view, at least of the homeless, was on point.

A couple years back I started having conversations every morning with Grady who, again, runs a ministry for the most needy individuals in their Sonora Mexico region.

Grady would on occasion share a tale of the horrors of the medical conditions with regard to a few individuals in their care.

Immediately I would ask him to stop, saying something like, “I can’t hear these details. I try really hard not to know what is going on in places like this. It’s too disturbing.”

He’d laugh and honor my wishes. Until he’d forget then bring up another horror story.

These things were being written hard on my very empty mercy card and I began to I realized how weak and shallow of a person I was.

So, I started to tune a little more into some of the things he and his family were experiencing.

Sometimes he would cross the line and tell me a story and then add a picture.
In one case, about a year ago he told me the story about a man in tremendous suffering and what the hospital did for him to help – they actually clamped his bones together OUTSIDE his skin.

Here’s what he sent.

PICTURE of SUFFERING MAN.

Another note in the file – this time an actual photograph.

Several months ago, I started in on a piece of art that was super important to me personally and I spent a lot of time creating it.

My art is not the type that makes people oooo and aww – it does not please the eye nor does it belong in most peoples living rooms.

I make art to cause a conversation, to teach a principle and to challenge the viewer to rethink established positions.

For instance, this is my piece on abortion. Not my political stance, my art-stance –

(SHOW VULNERABLE)

Instead of illustrating just part of the argument, I sought to represent all parts – from the miracle of inception, to gestation in the four corners, to an actual child in the first four quarters of its life.

I blanked out the parts of her senses not to make her look like Hitler but to demonstrate that children continue to be vulnerable after birth.

So all of that is back story to two weeks ago. All of that was on my file card on mercy.

I happen to have been working on a very large piece of art to illustrate the power of cultures without the hand of the Loving God involved.

Here are some snapshots of it.

(GO TO ART AND EXPLAIN)

So, while making the art and staring at its contents for weeks and weeks Grady told me another story.

There was a man who was brought to them some 8 years back who was on his deathbed.

Moving into their home actually helped turn his health around and he started walking which he could not do before and he lived a happy life with them for a solid 8 years – healthy, mobile and happy.

But the man (who I am going to call, Leo) took a turn recently and Grady took him to the local hospital just to be sure.

They called Him soon after saying that there was nothing that they could do for him and asked Grady to go back and pick him up. Which he did.

Upon his return they discovered changing his diaper that a rectal thermometer was left inside him.

I demanded that Grady stop the story as I was overwhelmed internally with this single event. Which was real.

I continued to work on the art and I was also outlining a whole HOTM show on the power of bad Culture when a week passed and Grady texted me how furious he was over some weekend events.

On Monday we spoke and he told me what happened to his friend of 8 years, Leo.

Apparently, the man was literally in the last stages of life at their home, showing all the signs which the Grisley’s are very familiar with, and they were faced with a decision – keep the man mercifully comfortable and let the Lord take Him naturally OR contact the mans very Catholic family who they knew would freak out at the man being allowed to pass without medical intervention.

They chose to do the honorable thing and let the family know of his condition. This kick-started the Catholic culture on the Sanctity of Life business in their heads and before the Riseley’s new it the family was pounding on their door.

What did they do when they saw that Leo O2 levels were down to 62% and his breathing had become mechanical?

They dragged him out of the house, took him back to the hospital and demanded that he be intubated to prolong his miserable existence by applying modern medicine to keep him oxygenated.

The Grisleys were informed that he died that night. But the fact of the matter was he did not die, but lived THREE MORE DAYS suffering incomprehensively in an indifferent environment and surrounded by people who for eight years before were indifferent to his existence.

That story, along with all the information already on the file card landed HARD on my souls as I realized, for the first time in my life, how much actual, literal suffering is going on ALL OVER THE WORLD – especially in under-developed nations, and in countless ways.

And suddenly my whole heart was filled with a mercy I had never understood or really possessed prior.

It was not the mercy that I could conjure up, but it was the very mercy of Christ, of His Father, of God, abiding in me.

And I allowed myself to contemplate the suffering from starvation, from disentar and a lack of potable water, or both incurable and curable diseases, of poverty, malnutrition, poor dental hygiene, crime, rape, genocide, addiction, battery, genital mutilation, molestation, rape, murder, homelessness, incest, illiteracy, and ten billion other forms I was alienated from by apathetic, even entitled indifference to it all so long as it did not affect me or my loved ones.

And I knew that there are no people on earth who SHOULD be more inclined, more devout and more dedicated to alleviating personal, familial, community, national and world-wide suffering and pain than followers of the King.

And I won’t even MENTION what we busy ourselves with in the name of the King – we are all familiar.

But hand to the living God, I then realized the utter importance of mercy – which is actionable compassion – flowing from those who claim His name.

It was here where I saw that mercy (actionable compassion) just might be the clearest, even the truest, emotional expression a human being can share with our God.

I’ve resisted emotional appeals in the faith and have leaned hard into the rational and reasonable because the emotional was always maniputlated in my book.

Now I am more than convinced that right Christian emotions are entirely felt and experienced in acts of mercy are are far far far superior to emotionally charged worship services, sermons, or debates over doctrine.

When God works on me, it usually takes time and once the flood-gates open, He often pummels me with more content to add to the file card now laying out in the open in my heart.

I immediately started in on a biblical journey on the subject of mercy and compiled pages of references which I thought would make for a nice short book called, The Merciful God.

The passages opened my understanding of Mercy in a deeper and most significant way, and at that point I was allowed to have my most sensitive side, which is rarely present, “touched” and accessd through what I love most in my material existence outside my family – artistic expressions.

The first amplification on the topic of mercy through art was when I was absently (truly and without intention) rambling through my internet feed and I came upon a short explanation of a film I had never heard of – called the Zone of Interest.

I chose to then do something I do not like doing and that was I watched how they made the film before I watched the film itself as I have never heard of in the past.

In this short documentary the creators were interviewed by the documentarians and they explained the process they went through to tell a super simple story.

They said they almost created two separate movies to accomplish their aims.

The first movie, so to speak, visually and audibly showed the life of a family living in a well-appointed home. They spoke German with each other, and set the table, and walked down the hall, folded laundry and had picnics in the yard.

Life was grand through that lens.

The approach was very much like one of my favorite movies, called, The White Ribbon directed by Michael Haneke.

But then the creators explained another side they wanted to present and they did this through creating a new second audio track that would run concurrently with the first audio/visual track.

And they showed a clip of the compilation from the finished product.

The one I saw was of a woman in the home setting a table (I think) or folding laundry and in the distance outside we hear two muted gunshot sounds.

But the woman was not moved or startled. She just kept on with her household chores.

Ultimately the movie reveals that this was the true-life story of a family called the Hus family who lived on the other side of the walls of Dachau Poland, where Mr. Hus was in charge of putting the people to death!

I had been staring for months at pictures of the Holocaust in my piece critical of Godless or bad-God culture, and this little art-house film opened my eyes to what helped allow it – our selfish existences lived out in our own, Zones of Interest.

I reflected on how I guarded my mind and heart from allowing the thoughts of these daily, hourly horrors that were going on in this world and how I was not one bit different than the Huss family in Dachau.

While this was all going on, I received a text from a woman I met years ago who, to say it plainly, is very difficult to understand as she has a condition that challenges you when you are faced with it.

I have always intellectually treated her with respect and dignity because she deserves such but in my heart I was not so sure that my granting her open acceptance was the correct thing to do; that perhaps I should sit with her and kind of try and dismantle her uniquely odd behaviors.

In other words, my heart was not in the same place as my mind relative to her and I was less than merciful to her in my private honest thoughts – and had been for years.

Interestingly, she is an artist and was working on a painting of me which she told me about nearly two years earlier and her text was to inform me that she was done.

And she sent me an image of it.

I was floored by what this woman captured of my essence – truly, she was able to tap into how I see my own soul which dwells within me and more walls came crashing down around the unkind thoughts I had had about her, and her condition, and even her value as a creation of God.

I was so ashamed. I was broken by her abilities obscured by some true disabilities I did not have any mercy toward from the heart. And His mercy flooded into me again – His mercy in the face of all of this.

The week ended with my looking around the television to watch a movie and again, without ever hearing of the one I randomly elected, and without any real appreciation for the director, I clicked on a film that came out in 2014 called, Unbroken.

I had no idea what it would convey other than before I clicked watch now I caught a glimpse that it was a true story.

I’m not a plot teller but know this – where the film was full of standard cinematic tropes and approaches, the STORY and the way the director approached the suffering therein was such an exclamation point to all of these events that I sat weeping at my sad sad indifference to others throughout most of my life.

This was more than empathy. It was His Mercy.

That is how and when I shifted.

The experience illustrates several things in my estimation.

First, it showed to me how we are all works in progress, and YAHAVAH is working on us where we are deficient.

This was made plain.

Second, it showed me that in all my years of reading and searching the scripture, teaching the scripture and seeking the Spirit, none of that was ever able to bring me personally to a place where I was merciful in my heart.

I learned empathy but it was intellectual; the experiences I just shared with you transferred the intelligence into emotion.

Which brings me to a third point already mentioned: I have discovered the emotional side of God in this. Mercy is founded in the emotions of God and I was able to actually experience real Godly emotion that was otherwise a fleeting and temporary event.

Fourth, I can see clearly that mercy – and all that comes with it to bring it about rightly in our lives, is also the operative arm of being a disciple of Christ today.

I do not believe that it should be orchestrated by groups and employed out onto the world through systems; I believe that when it comes, which is later in the maturation process of a believer, that it begins in the heart of individuals, and from that place it extends out rightly to those in need.

To try and systematize mercy, or to make it a thing to cultivate and fund will naturally and usually end in it lacking what it should possess – unconditional compassionate love extended to those (listen) who deserve it least.

I justify this last point by the order in which Yeshua brings mercy forward in the beatitudes, which in my estimation are chronological in generally expressing how we mature spiritually.

Notice the order that He presents His eight points in Matthew 5:3-12

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Blessed are the poor in spirit
Blessed are they that mourn:
Blessed are the meek:

These first traits are emblematic of loss, of personal suffering and regret, captured in humility and resulting in meekness.

That’s a step toward the things that then start to build up a believe with the fourth point being

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Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness

That’s a process of seeking and obtaining to oneself with righteousness being the goal and it is in this state of hungrily thirsting for righteousness that the Lord introduces the trait of mercy saying,

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Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

Following this we read of the heart literally changing when He says,

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Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.

This is what happened to me my hard heart became purer, and in that purity of Christ within my once indifferent heart began to break, and bleed and my liberality for Him and His ways overwhelmed my person.

With that heart in hand, He prepared me to become more of what He says as his seventh point, adding,

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Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

And you know what follows those who want to make peace in this world, who speak of becoming liberal, who say doctrines don’t matter, who try and break the walls down between all religious souls and preach the peace they believe in?

The last of His described traits, number 8, where he says,

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Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

Some of you have watched me process through all of these things over the years. Its all be recorded and really is a video archive of how God works on us generally speaking.

You may wonder about these external influences that entered my life to move me this merciful state.

You may say its not biblical, of a world spirit and even evil. You have every right to stand by this.

All I can say is I believe that in this age of fulfillment, humanity is entering more and more into a realm of great spiritual influence, good and bad, and because they must be tested, I test all things in the following ways. If they do not make the grade on any of them, I discount the influence as lesser or even evil, depending.

What is my personal litmus test to determine spiritual truths?

Can it be vetted as of YAHAVAH by the scripture?
Does it lend to humility or pride?
Does it promote faith in Him?
Does it support agape love?
And does it lend to mercy in heart and mind?

Anything that comes my way, I test and vet by these things and act and believe accordingly.

That’s our show for tonight. It is Tuesday November 5th 2024 – election night in the United States of America.

And while people are shouting and crying and pulling their hair out over how bad things are and how they are going to only get worse, here, in little old Murray Utah, we have the answers to all of these things – if we would only live them well as individuals, as families and as a Nation.

May God bless all souls.

Before we go, one last reminder – and that is tune in Friday Night 7PM to hear our keynote speaker, Dr. Larry Norris at our first annual Christian PEACE Initiative Conference.

See you there.