During a walk today I listened to a podcast and heard a new story. It’s the story of Carlton Pearson, an evangelical pastor from San Diego who was branded a heretic for preaching that hell isn’t real and that everyone would be “saved” in the next life. The podcast was compelling, interesting, and the narrators recommended a 2018 Netflix movie called Come Sunday as the more definitive story of Pearson’s life. I’m watching that ASAP, because after listening to the podcast I admire the guy.
For decades he led a huge congregation but was troubled by the thought of the millions (billions, actually) who would be doomed to eternal damnation according to the message he had been taught, the message that he preached. He began to think it didn’t make sense. His epiphany began with one of those “…send money to feed starving children in Africa” commercials, and he wondered why god would let them suffer in this life and then usher them immediately down to hell for eternal torture. Good question.
He first came to grips with the fact that the Bible was (is) a flawed record of things, written down by men who had opinions and who probably made shit up. Some might be true, some partial, and some total fiction. Once he got comfortable with that idea, he was free to try and find clues about how his chosen religion might actually work. He came away with a view that hell wasn’t real, that Jesus’ sacrifice saved all humanity with no further action required, and that all the fear-mongering about eternal damnation was just part of the system designed by men to recruit folks.
These were the same questions I asked myself as a twenty year old. I just couldn’t believe in a god and a system that would send most of the world’s population to eternal hell, year after year. Though that had been pounded into my head for my entire life up to that point. It made no sense. So I decided that either (a) Christianity had it all wrong about how/why you might escape hell in the next life, or (b) there is no hellish punishment in the afterlife, or (c) there simply is no god, no afterlife and religions are just making shit up.
Fifty years later I still don’t know which is correct. I’m pretty sure A is correct, but B and C…who knows? I still refuse to believe in a universe/system that methodically condemns a large percentage of the world population to burn eternally simply because they haven’t “accepted Jesus”. Or Buddha. Or Mohammed. That’s all BS.
But I *am* fascinated to hear more about a person who was indoctrinated at least as hard as I was and ended up deciding that all that indoctrination couldn’t be true.
He lost everything by talking about his new belief – his following, his wealth, his wife, the respect of his religious peers and “friends”. No good deed goes unpunished, I suppose. He died last year at the age of 70, still convinced that god loves everyone and had arranged to save all of humanity, independent of their belief.