Shawn McCraney urges us to confront religious abuses and manipulations committed in the name of God, emphasizing that this subject deserves the greatest outrage, as it undermines the core teachings of faith, liberty, and the original message of unity and love. Despite widespread civil unrest against injustice and inequality, he questions the lack of collective outrage against historical and present-day religious manipulation, which has continued to exploit and bind people instead of promoting the liberating message of Jesus Christ.
Refuse to support religious practices driven by human agendas and instead focus on deconstructing such institutions through patience, kindness, and love. Commit to investing in efforts that consistently promote faith and love for all, inspired by Jesus.
Addressing Religious Abuses
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. short, and I am your host Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion. Show 34s Where’s the Outrage? June 6th 2021
Like most ages of human history, ours is presently an age of civil unrest. People are outraged with injustice, abuse of power, apparent inequality and manipulations. We are violently fighting against Governments, police departments, social indifference, and for equality to be extended to all people, all races, genders, and people of various social strata. Many people see great reason for these upheavals and this social outrage. They have that right and in some cases, even the justification.
The Call for Outrage Against Religious Abuses
But from what I can tell there remains one bastion of human experience which I think ought to have the greatest outpouring or outrage but continues to experience very little – religious abuses done in the very name of God and Christ. From what I can tell, and comparatively speaking, there is no subject more important, more worthy of outrage in the universe than the subject of religious abuses and manipulations done in the NAME of God. None.
I say this because from where I sit the living God established an entire nation, gave them a history (of suffering, mind you) brought forward the Law, prophets and the Messiah from out of her, sent that Messiah to teach and suffer for the sinMissing the mark of faith and love—no punishment, just lost growth or peace. of the world and then followed up by sending His Holy Spirit into the hearts and lives and minds of all who believe. I mean, the very creator of heaven and earth took the time and trouble to set all of this up for and I, tearing down the middle partition between priests and man, inviting all people – His creations – to freely come to Him through faith in His Son, introducing them to liberty (IF THEY CHOOSE) but ever since, human beings have taken this Good and Simple News and hijacked it for their own selfish purposes, abusing millions along the way – in the VERY name of God! Where’s the outrage?
Apathy Towards Religious Injustice
I understand indifference and even ridicule believers get from non-believers and I understand people who want nothing to do with God not really caring about this injustice but I cannot, for the life of me, understand the dispassionate response to the historical and present day abuses that have gone on in the name of God by those who are apparently interested in Him and who apparently want the truth in their lives, but don’t give a rats rear-end about these manipulations. How are we not outraged by people taking the liberty Christ gives and putting other people in bondage to their religious imaginations and demands? How are we not outraged by nearly 2000 years of outright non-Christian views, attitudes and practices being poured out by religious men and women?
How have we sat by and participated in systematic religious abuse heaped upon unsuspecting souls as articulated in Hawthorne’s Scarlett Letter, Kozinski’s Painted Bird, or Miller’s Crucible? Where is the outrage against misogyny, slavery, racism, child abuse, ecclesiastical abuses, and financial fraud – in Jesus name? When will people who love Jesus Christ gently begin to unitedly express dismay at the hate Christians can sometimes justify for others who are not like them by REFUSING to play along – at all.
When will we unitedly reject out of hand all corporate appeals to pleasing God, all false authorities, all bloated material kingdoms when our king, the Son of Man, had no place to rest his head? How are we calling people sinners, and punishing people for sin while claiming with the same mouths that Jesus paid for the sins of the world? How are we failing to let the world around us know that the Good news is really, really good and has application to all of God’s creations?
I realize that individually, we all have weaknesses and fall short, but to collectively endorse, support and promote empires that put people in chains – any sort of chains – in the name of God, is beyond my comprehension. Aren’t you moved to wonder when a Pastor passes a plate around to collect tithes from people with little in their pockets what is going on? Doesn’t something bother you in your heart when you hear a message over the pulpit that excuses non-love and condemnation of others in God’s name? Doesn’t something foul rise up in your nose when a Pastor teaches that God created a world and chooses to send most of the creations on it to a literal burning?
The Call for Reflection
Where’s the outrage?
It is time, brothers and sisters, for all believers who love God through Christ, to refuse, with quiet indignity, and gentleness, kindness, patience and longsuffering, to support the game of religion any longer. Let’s begin to deconstruct the empires and minimize what has been maximized by the flesh of Man. Let’s kindly, quietly, refuse to contribute time, talent, allegiance or money to any material kingdom that does not preach faith and love for all people, everywhere, all the time.
Motivated by Faith
All because of Jesus.
