Can a Carrot Work Without a Stick? You Tell Me......

I honestly used to think that people who are raised in, enveloped by, and joyously practicing a belief such as charismatic Christianity, become mentally incapable of altering their mindset on their own. I'm not speaking of preachers' daughters, sons of ministers, and other such that reject these indoctrination's simply as acts of rebellion, but people who have spent the majority of their lives insuring that they and the people they love do not suffer the eternal damnation that comes from not being born again in Jesus Christ. So, I have had to adapt a sort of "forgive them, Bob, for they know not what they do" attitude towards them. I mean, like, give 'em a break, they are already hardwired to never question this shit, and there's nothing you can do to change their mind. It's like trying to get an Intel PC to accept and run the Mac OSX operating system. It just can't do it. Now, Mac's can, with a little software magic, run Windows, but Apple has never being hardwired for mediocrity.

Well, this weekend, it seems that this old dog, THE Michael, actually HAS learned a new trick. This American Life, a weekend show in NPR, devoted the whole show to examining what happened to Carlton Pearson, once one of the most celebrated Charismatic Christian Pastors ever to preach the gospel, reaching the same level of fame as Oral Roberts (who mentored him) and Pat Robertson, amongst a few. This story is as inspiring as it is tragic.

Pearson, a black man, was the son of a preacher, and in those days the brand of religion they practiced was 85% hellfire and brimstone, maybe 15% Jesus' love. It was not a very uplifting way to love God, under such a threat, and when Oral Roberts began to put a kinder, gentler spin on the gospels, suggesting that you could actually experience some happiness in this life and still get to heaven, Pearson came running. Pearson had a natural talent for preaching, and was a talented singer, joining Robertson's salvation singing ensemble, helping to attract thousands of more converts. Before to long, Oral himself had all but adopted Pearson, calling him his "black son", as well as a person indispensable to the movement. Life was good spreading the gospel of the Lord, all that good news of salvation, and soon Peirson had his own church, his own enormous congregation, and the respect of Evangelical Christians of all walks of life and color of skin.

But one day, while watching news reports of yet another starvation crisis in Africa on his big screen TV in the warm comfort of his big house, his well fed daughter on his lap, something beyond rote faith caused this man to ask his God, "How could you allow all these innocent children who can't be born again to die this way and then be sucked right into hell?"

I always wondered about this something you all have heard me refer to as "Bob". Is he simply a fictional product of my imagination, something I have cooked up to answer these pressing questions roiling around in my heart, or has something greater than all of us actually spoken to me, a voice in my head that refuses to admit to it's existence one way or another? Well, I don't know who spoke to Carlton that day but it very well could have been Bob, for all I know. Carlton was convinced it was the God he had always worshipped. And it asked HIM the question, "Is THAT what you really think we are all about? That we suck into hell these innocent souls and burn them for all eternity? The same ones who say we LOVE you? Look around you, look at your TV there, is that NOT hell they are living in ALREADY? No, Carlton, I take them into my presence."

This was a voice that a person like Carlton could not dismiss as imagination or even the devil. Carlton had somehow retained his ability to question, to study, to unearth the truths behind all he and all these other preachers were preaching to the masses. And so faced with the harsh reality that according to scripture, a scripture written by MEN, by the way, even Jesus himself gave credence to the concept of hell and that man could end up there without Christ's intervention, Carlton had to find out how this threat of hell came about in the first place, for how could he preach the thoughts that were spinning in his head if he himself could not find proof for it in the scriptures? So he dug, and he studied, and he sought out translations of the original greek writings upon which scripture was based, and it was only then that Carlton discovered that just like Man has managed to screw up just about everything else he involves himself with, so did the authors of the Bible that we now preach. He even came to understand how men in back rooms would argue and cuss and fight over what was to be deemed as official scripture, spoken by God himself, and what was not. One cannot imagine the stuff that was weeded out or re-interpreted in order to make it fit into the sensibilities of the day, or to what political end these men needed this Bible to help them achieve.

So here we have the heretic, the man who dared to suggest that there IS no hell, that when Jesus died on the cross, he died for our sins, for the sins of ALL people, believers, non-believers, young, old, black, white, brown, of any or all religions or none at all. That this son of God negotiated for the sins of Man so that God could take them all into his presence and love them, his children that HE created so imperfect that they were capable of sin.

Carlton lost everything, falling from grace within his own church and even the eyes of his father in the faith, Oral Roberts. Now he is the pariah, with a flock now a mere fraction of the thousands that used to flock to his services. He has been denounced and assured by people who used to love and respect him that he is certainly headed straight to hell for daring to suggest there IS no hell. When people, good Christians all, encounter someone in his congregation on the streets, they evangelize them, and these people for the first time in their religious life now know what it's like to be on the receiving end of Christian proselytization. And it shames them that they used to behave like that.

I feel for this man. And despite the fact that I might not exactly agree with even HIS version of God and faith and a savior born of a virgin, I have very much come to respect him. He did not just accept indoctrination as the truth but actually DARED to seek it out in his heart of hearts. Knowing mankind's' need to hold onto something in the face of mortality, I have no doubt that with his fervor, he might very well establish another sect of Christianity that might very well rival that which he was born into. Yet, sadly, this will only be one more division, one more excuse for people to scream at each other, yelling their 'truth" over each other's heads, one more excuse to accuse each other of heresy, of daring to be different. I suggest that you go and google this man's name and learn about him. He is the closest example I have yet to find of the idea that even the most rabid Christian can find salvation, despite Christianity.