Through My Eyes

There I was sitting in my favorite comfy chair with my feet up eating a piece of lemon-glazed pound cake still slightly warm when I came across BET’s ” preacher series Exalted. As a general rule, I never watch this show because I honestly believe that the Pastors featured are being self-serving by exalting their name, ministry and good works over the true message of love and salvation. That said something about the featured pastor struck me. He is the currently defamed and most hated pastor in the history of the Black church.

Raised COGIC (Church of God in Christ), Carlton Pearson had a very typical black church going youth. It is not surprising that he grew into one of the biggest and most well known pastors in the country. Founder of the New Dimensions Church, Pastor Pearson became one of the first mega churches in the country boasting of standing room only seating some Sundays. There are even some who credit him with the start of the Conferences that many flock to yearly with his creation of the Azusa Conference (now defunct).

Pearson fell from grace when he began preaching Inclusion. This doctrine states that Jesus’ work is truly finished with the Cross and Resurrection. This means that he did what he came to do, save the world. In other words, Salvation is not just for those who believe as Christians do, but for everyone regardless of race, sexual preference, religious affiliation, social status, etc…

Where am I on this issue? I want to believe Pearson is correct, but I struggle with his concept that because Jesus’ died on the cross he not only conquered hell but also did away with it entirely. During this episode of Exalted Pearson caught my attention by explaining that at the height of his popularity he was watching a special about the plight and famine of the Ethiopians. He said what he saw broke his heart and he at once began pleading and praying to God. Pearson stated that in his prayer he cried to God begging him for help saying that he was doing all he could to bring people to Christ and “get them saved”. He said in the midst of his prayer God answered him and said that saving everyone was his job and he had already done it.

I understand that there are those who question the Doctrine of Inclusion, but I believe there may be some merit to it. I have been in this place for quite sometime. How is it that the most crooked, most dishonest, money grubbing and whorish Christians have a claim to the paradise of heaven when there is a world full of moral and upright people who according to Christian doctrine will never see the gates of heaven because their religious belief system differs from ours. How is that possible? I feel that Christians commit the sin of arrogance each and every time they claim to know the whole mind of God by preaching everyone else into hell.

I believe in hell. I believe that there is a special place in hell for people who do the most heinous of crimes against humanity. I am not at all one to jump on board with those who teach that hell does not exist. I think that is against God’s divine order of things. If there is no hell then there is no punishment for those who choose to go against God’s natural law.

I question hell being filled to the brim with everyone who does not believe as I do. I’m not sure they are all in Hell over doctrinal and religious differences. I cannot grasp works counting for absolutely nothing. If that’s the case we put God in the same boat as an exclusive club in which you can’t enter without the right password. Nothing anyone has said, nothing I have read, and no opinion I have heard fully cements that the Just and Loving God I know and love could be so randomly callous as to send those who do what is right and just according to his natural laws but because they have failed to say the key phrase none of the good they have done counts. Who wants to serve that kind of god? Let’s face it, we won’t know with any certainty who was right or wrong until we leave here. I can have all the convictions I want about my faith but in the end only God knows if I was doing it “right” or if there is even a right or wrong way.

What about those tribes in the middle of the jungle who the missionaries have not reached? Do they burn too? What if the Jehovah’s Witness have it right and the rest of us are wrong did I miss the boat when I told that lady I didn’t have time for her proselytizing on Saturday morning? I hope not, because I was pulling up carpet and it just wasn’t a good time to be told I was going to hell because I celebrated my birthday with a huge bottle and if I got in an accident I want a transfusion.

As I grow in Christ I know there is so many things I just don’t understand, but I also know that the further I move from church and religion as my basis for belief I also become open to the possibility that God is multi-faceted and beyond my comprehension in his mercy and grace. When you recognize that simple fact his ability to save any and everyone doesn’t seem so much like heresy, but the thought there is no Hell doesn’t seem like the God I know either.

Just a thought

Filed under: Random Free Association at Work, Spirituality