Live from Salt Lake City

Live from the Mecca of Mormonism, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH. This is Heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology., where we try and get all people to walk toward the love of Jesus Christ.

And I am Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion., your host.

We are going right into the show without an INTRO!!

HOTM Redux Show 1

Hear me out – Please – Part I
August 6th 2019

Title: Hear Me Out – Part I

Description of Show:
What’s so funny bout peace, love and understanding?

Key Words:
Elvis Costello, Peace, Love, Understanding, Jesus, the Best approach to Christianity on the face of the earth, Christianity, Mormonism, Solution, Unity, Subjective ChristianityA direct, personal relationship with God—free from institutional authority, guided by personal relationship, faith and agape love., Disingenuous, Authentic, Authenticity Spirit.

Graphics for Tonight’s Show

Let’s begin with a prayer.

PRAYER

Searching for Truth

I’ve been searching for truth since I was a youngster. I had thoughts and inklings and premonitions about things like love, and God and kindness, but they were typically corrected or overrun by the group-think powers surrounding me. I grew up in an era where black people were not only laughingly referred to by other names, but so were Hispanics, and Asians, and anyone else that was not white. Mine was a time when it was completely natural to refer to a homosexual as a fag, a lesbian as a dyke, and a disabled person as a gimp or retard.

What amazes me most is that while I, the individual, was secretly entertaining other thoughts toward these people groups who were different than me – thoughts of kindness and acceptance – the religion my parents had embraced, which promoted itself as “the only true church on the face of the earth” and its male leaders who were in charge of me, encouraged the rhetoric that I was secretly concerned about. In time their promotion of hate took root in my soul and I fully embraced all the elements of being a misogynistic, narcissistic, racist, homophobic fascist jerk – ironically known also as a returned Missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Looking back, however, I can see the winds and waves of change at work on my soul. Sometimes they would arrive in one giant swell and never leave – like when Jesus came to my heart in 1997. But at other times truth and my ability to receive it came in waves stretched out over spans of time . . . without my realizing that each wave was part of the same storm.

Having three older siblings I cut my teeth on music – on a wide arraignment of types and styles. But sometime in the midst of my teens – around 1977 – I had become a fan of a form of music that I could really resonate with – punk. Along with my best friend and next door neighbor Steve (who is now an LDS Stake President in Los Angeles), we discovered the Sex Pistols and dove headlong into what I felt was a “raw garage-like honesty” as compared to the fabricated sounds of corporate rock, studio bands, disco and of course, the prefabricated ideals and ideas of the only true Church on the face of the earth.

Authenticity in Music

What I mean to say is that in very short order I learned to trust the authentic expressions of punk over the ersatz group think messages of all of the former. One week around that time Steve and I learned that the Sex Pistols (our first exposure to punk and the first punk album I ever owned) were going to be on Saturday Night life and, like many of you, we anxiously passed the hours of that week waiting to hear, “Live from New York, It's Saturday Night.” We could hardly wait to see them live.

We were disappointed however when the Pistols were replaced (for some unknown reason) by a guy named Elvis Costello (of whom we knew nothing about). Nevertheless, because we were seeking for more authentic expressions in music we watched on – from our respective family dens. Evil Costello took to the stage that night looking cool enough, and he and his band launched into a song that seemed original and honest enough but then all of a sudden I watched with both shock and delight as Elvis manically jerked himself from the microphone, spastically stopped the music, apologized to the audience, and turning to his band, told them to play something different – a song called, “Radio Radio.” I suppose it was what I was longing to see someone do in my life all along – to step forward in teachers quorum and spastically stop a homophobic joke, or to tell us kids that it was okay to love people who were of the world.

Authenticity in the Pursuit of Truth

With all of our heart – and I was mesmerized by the courage of this wiry little bespeckled Brit for doing whatever he was doing. What was this? I said to myself, fascinated by the spectacle. What is this guy actually doing? Why did he stop the first song? Why sing this second song instead? I was tempted to call Steve next door on the telephone but remained transfixed as Elvis Costello sang, "Radio, Radio" angrily. Passionately, as if in defiance of some Totalitarian power of which I was totally unaware.

I didn’t know how to react, where to put my hands, and I remember looking around the room to say something to somebody about this . . . but nobody was there. By the time song ended, which I later learned was an indictment against the powers that run the radio waves, I knew a couple of things as much as I knew that the Book of Mormon was true – I knew I wanted what Elvis Costello had – that devotion, and passion – THAT willingness to do what he did NOT appear to have the permission to do – and I knew that Elvis Costello, more than my young men's advisor, more than my Bishop, more than my own parents, could be trusted.

This was my Montgomery Pop festival. My Woodstock. My Tiananmen Square. And it all took place in my heart and head in the glow of an agitated man named Elvis Costello and his band the Attractions.

Defiance at Saturday Night Live

As the next week rolled around, two female friends at school (who were artists and real music aficionados) told me the inside scoop to the SNL event: Elvis had not only been told to sing the song they opened with by NBC and Lorne Michaels, but he was expressly prohibited to sing "Radio Radio" – which he did anyway – which resulted in a great debacle at the time. Elvis Costello would pay the price for his disobedience and would not be invited back to SNL for over a decade thereafter but in the least, he gained the trust of one idiot southern California teenager through his act of defiance in the face of artistic authenticity.

Several weeks later I heard a knock at my door and found a new silkscreened tee-shirt of Elvis Costello and the Attractions laying on my parents' front porch – an unsolicited gift of love from my two female friends at school. That sort of amazed me – that two girls who were not members of the only true Church on the face of the earth had enough love and care for me to gift me with something that they knew I would love. I wore that shirt out as I continued forward in search of unvarnished, authentic truth in art, life, music and ultimately, even spiritual matters.

A Journey to Sri Lanka

Nearly twenty years later, after a full-time mission and marriage in the LA temple and while still outwardly an active Latter-day Saint but one totally immersed in years of seeking for unvarnished spiritual authenticity, I was invited to go to Sri Lanka (for a month or so) and to develop a line of clothing from warehouses of fabric owned by the largest cutter and sewer of clothing in South East Asia, Kumar Deapura. I was not a traveler then (or now) and had never been outside the United States with the exception of Tijuana a couple of times and Canada in college so I knew that this was going to be a new experience for me.

After all the shots and paperwork I embarked on the 21-hour flight to Sri Lanka where I would actually live with Kumar in his home and work out of his offices to create this line of clothes. Remember now, I had – since returning home from my LDS mission – been seeking “authenticity” in my life. Ever since the SNL event I had been seeking to be authentic – though I usually failed.

For years prior to this long journey to a completely foreign land, I had spent years seeking truth in music and in film, which branched out into literature, then Philosophy, then Marxism, and devolved into thrill, pain and pleasure seeking and wound up in using substances and extramarital relations to ease my troubled mind and heart. Nothing was breaking through. Nothing lasted. Nothing could withstand scrutiny and remain standing in the end – including the proclamations from my leaders in the only true Church.

A Clash of Realities

Sometime around 1AM Sri Lanka time I literally stumbled out of the plane at the Bandaran-EYE-eeka airport (as I had taken a sleeping pill with a shot of champagne on the plane to sleep) and I dreamily ambled toward the exit by just following the crowd.

Though early morning, the air was hot and wet and the smell was not pleasant. I found my way to the terminal exit and walked outside and was met with a sight that absolutely stunned me back to my full senses as I found myself face to face with several THOUSANDS of people—of all ages—there at 1 in the morning—crying and reaching out through the bars of this tall wide iron gate for help. Their hands twisted in the air for money, for food, for some kind of help or attention causing the long high fence itself to almost seem alive.

It was something Marx never described in his books, nor Victor Hugo, nor was it something I was ever told about in priesthood meeting or Sunday School. We had no such walls in Huntington Beach, California. Mom and Dad never talked about such a situation, and all of the rancor and hate and animus toward individuals' race, and gender, and lifestyle immediately disappeared in the face of it. The scene was so raw as it presented itself to me as something I had never even CONSIDERED before.

Overwhelming Contrast

Out of the blue and in complete contradistinction to the scene before me, my stare was broken by the sound of an oncoming car blasting its horn. I turned to my left and watched in what seemed like slow motion as a beautifully polished black Jaguar with fully tinted windows pulled toward me on the drive. It stopped where I was standing and the driver, wearing a purple turban and long flowing white robes, exited the vehicle bearing a fully automatic machine gun in his left hand.

He came around to where I was standing, opened the back door and motioned for me to get inside as he stood on high alert. I got into the most luxurious car I had ever been in in my life, and when he shut the door it almost completely silenced the screams and cries of the fence people lined up on the other side of the road. The driver got in and without a word we sped away, leaving the begging masses, then the iron fence, and finally the lighted airport in our dust as we entered into the dark night of the surrounding country.

I was met with an overwhelming feeling of shame followed by an immediate sense of entitlement. The surrounding poverty was cut in half by the silent luxury of the British automobile, the utter despair and stench of abject poverty matched by the hope of luxury surrounding me. It was truly a moment of complete opposites, both equally pulling at my heart and head. Looking back I can see that it was the culminating event as it was backed by more than a decade of my arduously searching and seeking for truth and authenticity.

A Call to Authenticity

In the midst of this scene the driver said flatly, “Music?” And he turned the stereo on allowing the voice of someone I learned to actually trust as a teenager fill the car with sounds of Truth. It was Elvis Costello and the heavy almost chaotic beats of Nick Lowe’s “What’s so funny about peace love and understanding?” began to play.

I was back in my den as a teenager as no words, even from a living prophet, rang more true to my head:

As I walk through this wicked world?Searching for light in the darkness of insanity?I ask myself is all hope lost?Is there only pain and hatred and misery?And each time I feel like this inside?theres just one thing I want to know?What's So Funny bout Peace, Love, and Understanding oh?What's So Funny bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?And as I walk on through These troubled times?My spirit gets so down hearted sometimes?So where are the strong? who are the trusted??And where is the harmony? sweet harmony?Cause each time I feel it slippin' away?Just makes me want to cry?What's So Funny bout Peace, Love, and Understanding oh?What's So Funny bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?

It was a clarion call to my heart, after all the seeking, all the sinning, all the searching, that said this world—my world—my family, and children, and friends.

Seeking Truth and Understanding

and community – the members of the “only true church on the face of the earth” – needed someone strong, someone that they could trust – who would unabashedly pursue AND deliver the unvarnished truth without a care for the repercussions.?

The song and the setting was the final surge in a long series of life-changing waves in my life, as it washed over me, created by my own tears – a wave of shame, a wave of determination. It was a wave that would ultimately serve to help me several years later, as a man then void and desperate to see and understand the absolute NEED for a true Savior in my own life. And then to receive and accept His offering into my soul, allowing me to respond Elvis’s question once and for all in my own honest authentic heart:

What’s so funny about peace love and understanding? Nothing, Elvis. Nothing at all.

(RUN THE INTRO TO HEART OF THE MATTER REDUX HERE)

Peace and Love in a New Light

It would take a couple more years before the seeds sown in my heart that night would germinate and take root but ultimately, one afternoon in 1997 they were made alive by the most authentic of ALL, and I began to understand, over the course of time, that peace and love and empathy were possible in the lives of people not so naturally inclined to possess them. From that day forward I began to try to live from a place of authenticity, and truth, and genuine expressions.

It took time for institutional religion to really reveal itself for what it is – conglomerations of like-minded people seeking to dominate and control others. But before I fully understood this (which I do now) I decided to pen a book about my experiences with this otherworldly peace gifted to me from above and called the finished product, Born-Again Mormon.

The principle point of this book, written all they way back in 2003, was to openly ask my LDS family and friends and readers if they too have been “born from above” – you know, “to ask if they have been filled with His Peace, love and understanding?”

I knew that once they had – once they heard Him speak to their hearts directly and outside any and all religious affectations, that these people – these devout people who went about seeking to please Heavenly Father but through complicity to the directives of those in power – they would receive and become emancipated from the bondage that religious men put upon them!

They would be free to live in peace, free to love, free to understand the living God but until that time they were no different than the thousands of Sri Lankians reaching out through the bars of a long steel fence. I had the freedom . . . and I wanted them to have it too.

A Message for All to Hear

In time I entered the arena of live television here in Utah and my message was the same to any who would hear: “have you been born from above? Is Jesus your Lord, Savior and King?”

(beat)

That’s all I cared about then. That’s really all I care about now. I mean, we even went so far as to say: You wanna stay Mormon? Go ahead. But who is Jesus to you? Have you been given new life in and through Him? Born from above and given the capacity to live with peace, love and understanding for others? But we noticed that our approach, our attitude, our liberality – was not really appreciated by others also trying to reach the LDS people.

From the attackers down at temple square, to pastors of the larger churches here in town, to most people involved in ministry to the Mormons – they didn’t get the peace love and understanding approach we were so keen on sharing. They wanted “war, anger, and sharp words.” They wanted “doctrinal fences” to remain in place that would keep people begging UNTIL they accepted their all of their term – and only then would the seeking be supported and allowed to come around and feel peace, and love and acceptance.

(Beat)

The by-line of our book titled, “Born-Again Mormon” was and is aimed at capturing the overall impetus of our purpose. IT is purposeful and I want to ask you all to consider it tonight:

The book: BORN-AGAIN MORMON (with the bi-line)

Moving toward Christian Authenticity

MOVING . . .
TOWARD . . .
CHRISTIAN . . .
AUTHENTICITY

I did not write a book called Born Again Mormon: Moving Away from Christian

Christian Authenticity

It was purposely described as “moving toward it.” What does that really look like – to move toward Christian Authenticity? Think about that for a minute, will you?

As I’ve taken the time to reflect on the statement I realized something: The people I know in my life who I can honestly say have moved toward Christian Authenticity have done so despite their religious affiliations! Or at least I can say, that those who are truly authentic Christians are such INSPITE of the denomination or religious expression that they have chosen to align or associate themselves with. Can you say the same thing?

I mean, let’s first describe what “Christian authenticity,” really looks like. Think about this! What do the MOST authentically Christian people LOOK LIKE? How do they live and operate in this world! Don’t they EMBODY . . . Love, and all of its biblical descriptions? Aren’t the MOST authentic Christians the people who are Kind? Humble? Patient? Longsuffering? Selfless? Not of this world? – people who possess the fruit of the Spirit, are self-effacing, without guile, forgiving, peacemaking?

Struggle with Authenticity

Isn’t it remarkable that when we look around in our personal lives that we stumble upon such folks and isn’t it remarkable that the folks who appear to STRUGGLE MOST with manifesting authentic Christians traits are the ones who are the most demanding dogmatically regarding doctrine and denominational directives? Understand here and now, I am in no way condoning or supporting Mormonism, Mormon doctrine, Mormon practice or culture as sound, good or viable. Our remaining shows will be about these failures in the systems called Mormonism. But despite these institutional demands placed on some Mormon people, I still find some of them – like I still find some Catholics, and some Protestants, and some Calvinists, and Some Muslims – authentically Christian . . . as defined by their selfless love.

1. Authentic Christians are known as Authentic Christians BY THEIR LOVE and all of their permutations – no matter what denomination they may associate with.

IF my observation is true, then isn’t it time to step back against the former rhetoric and vitriol against individuals who practice Mormonism? Can we begin the peacemaking process that will enable reason to step in and work among us? I know the mindset of the insane religionists – and there isn’t anything we can really do to stop them. We cannot bind and gag the zealots outside temple square or the magazines and books that use hyperbolic language to assassinate every Mormon on earth. But by God, what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding when it comes to dealing with individuals composed of flesh and blood who have needs, and families, and spouses, and are trying to know and follow God?

Moving Forward

Can’t we at least begin to openly admit that there are authentic Christians who happen to also be Catholics, and Mormons, and Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Calvinists, Arminianists, Modalists, Binitarians, Trinitarians and all the rest? I want to make this perspective clear to you tonight – because it is important to me. Show me a man or a woman who authentically “bears the fruit of the Spirit” in their lives and I will show you a man or a woman who is my brother or sister in the Lord. This is my message – without any lines drawn in my book about which Jesus, which God, which book of scripture, which temple, which priesthood.

This is JUST the starting point in the dialogue – and we need one. I am NOT suggesting I agree with any of the LDS views on these things, and I openly admit that their stance ON such things only serve to INHIBIT the freedom and liberty of those who are under their influence, but can we all at least begin with the acknowledgement that no matter what, if a person evidences the fruit of the Spirit in their lives that we receive them as brothers and sisters – after all, didn’t Jesus say that “by their LOVE we would know His disciples?” So can’t we START here?

Can’t we admit that just as Joseph Smith was a faulty con that Erasmus had problems too? And that just as Brigham Young said some really wonky things about women and blacks that Martin Luther was guilt of anti-Semetic rhetoric? Can’t we admit that the way Jean Calvin describes the plan of Salvation for man is as jacked up as the Mormon view? And can’t we admit that…

Discussion on Religious Conformity

Where the Mormon machine certainly manipulates its members into conformity and compliance that most religious organizations do the same? Do we HAVE to so biasedly pick on them, reaching for the splinter in their eyes when our own approach is overloaded with fails too? I am not trying to suggest that Mormonism and its doctrines are equal to or superior to the pure doctrines that are derived from sound exegetical reasoning from the scripture. This whole program is based on proving how manipulative Mormonism is toward its own people. But to me, those of us who are on the outside and are trying to reach in and help emancipate LDS people from such manipulation have to be fair, and reasonable, and willing to give LDS people every benefit of the doubt IF we are going to have any real success in getting them, or their institution to change.

Worldview and Audience

This brings me to two final points before we either take your calls or wrap it up for tonight. In my worldview, there are two types of people – and both are deserving of my utmost love and respect. The first type are those who do NOT operate by the fruit of the Spirit or selfless love for others. Again, my response mandated by my King, is to love them with the kind of love the Word describes. We have had many of them on our show – they are humanists, LGBTQ people, attackers of others, self-promoters, cause-driven souls, people of this world, atheists – whatever. Most of them either feign some sort of attraction to “a god of some sort” or they flat out admit that they don’t really care. This is the first group. And again, as a believer, I am convinced that our job is to love them as we love ourselves, that we receive them, and accept them, and hear what they have to say. That is the first group.

The second group are those who embody the fruit of the Spirit, who have a longing and love for God, and whose words and deeds for others reflect the words and ways of the King of Christianity – Christ Himself. What I want to make clear to any and all who hear me tonight is my primary audience are the second group. And while I actually, literally do love all who are in the first group, I speak to, reach to and try to teach and encourage those who are in group two. You are my friends. You are my brothers and sisters. You are His children, Sons and Daughters of God – and EVERYTHING I SAY AND DO, EVERYTHING I TRY TO TEACH AND SUGGEST – is to you.

Heart of the Matter's Purpose

Heart of the Matter is a show for those who seek God in Spirit and Truth and put agape, selfless love for all first in their lives. Finally, the people who make up this second group I maintain come from all walks of religious life. All of them.

CALLS OR NO?

Onward – I need three more weeks and then we will get to the Heart of the Matter – How Mormonism serves to take people and place them in bondage rather than liberty . . . here on HEART OF THE MATTER REDUX!

Goodbye Reminders:

Hear me out – and test all things. And know that come September we have the following guests scheduled:

Tuesday September 3rd Angela Kelly
And then on Tuesday September 17th –
Denver Snuffer!

Right here on Heart of the Matter!