February, 2006

I keep getting this itch to rent and watch They Live, one of the less-subtle entries into the camp-filled genre of “heroes who suddenly see things as they truly are,” cf. The Matrix, Dark City, and maybe some film noir like Chinatown or L.A. Confidential. I think these movies are strongly appealing for two reasons: first, there is a part of us that suspects we are all wheels in a machine that is largely hidden from our view. Second, we all want to identify with the observant hero because we want to believe that we are the one who sees the truth clearly, no need for special sunglasses. The problem is, most of us also acknowledge that the likelihood of the first case is much higher.

Lately, I’ve begun to suspect that the curtains between us and the truth aren’t as thick as we like to believe. In fact, it almost seems like we’ve put the curtains there ourselves, like people who refuse to see a bum on the street even when they trip over him and crush the poor beggar’s tin cup. On Sunday, Maggie and I finally went to see Munich (yes, I do bring everything back to a movie eventually.) In the middle of all that shooting and bombing and stabbing, the one scene in the movie that really disturbs me most involves two characters talking while a television in the background plays a foreign newscast. On this T.V., shrewdly left in sharp focus on one corner of the movie screen, you can see an airport worker squeegeeing up pools of blood from a bomb detonated in a crowded international airport. I’m almost positive it was archival footage, the real deal. It truly shocked me to see that, because the news in this country has traditionally been much more censored. We pride ourselves on our free press, but we use it to shield ourselves from true violence in the rest of the world. We might obsess about killer bees or the dangers of lead paint, but we hardly take the time to reflect on the roots of a conflict that has reached out so brutally into our country in this century. Even if we do have to think about it, well, Will and Grace comes on right after the news. Everything will be all right.

A while back, a friend called me while This American Life was on the air. I wasn’t near a radio, but I promised to listen online. I finally got around to it tonight.

The reason I’m blogging it is something I haven’t talked with many people about, probably for good reason if you give it a listen. It’s a fascinating portrait of someone giving up the strongest beliefs he had held for many years, and some bits of the story resonate in my own life. Carlton Pearson is a Pentacostal preacher who gave up the doctrine of hell and has since been labeled a heretic by just about every evangelical organization for his “Gospel of Inclusion,” really just a rebranded universalism. Google his name, and the first link you get is to his organization, but the following four are sites dealing with heretical doctrine.

My final situation is quite a bit different, of course. Pearson took his faith a lot further than I did and had a lot more to lose, and he still believes strongly in God while I now consider myself more of an agnostic. Still, his original epiphany and resulting break from orthodoxy is eerily similar to mine. I’ve found it easier to avoid the subject and concentrate on things like evolution and so-called Christian political views, but the reality is that I can no longer deal with the notion of hell. It can’t possibly exist. I think Pearson’s comparison of the traditional view of God to Hitler might seem shocking to a true believer, but it gives things a kind of perspective, one that I began to have and could no longer accept.

Part of that was an experience I think every real evangelical Christian goes through: the guilt of not witnessing. There have been a lot of efforts to define evangelical christianity, but I think the only question you need to ask someone is, “Do you feel guilty for not sharing your faith?” If they say, “Yes,” they are evangelical through and through. Evangelicals are saved by grace, so they are not required to feel guilty about any sin, but they will feel guilty about this. Why is that? Simply because they believe that the only way to save someone from Hell is to preach to them. The salvation of the whole world depends not so much on Jesus as on Christians being good witnesses, which is really absurd when you think about it.

The problem is, there is no way around it. Another part of the program that stuck out to me was Pearson’s admission that his new doctrines run contrary to scriptures he had memorized. It’s true, I think, that the Bible does preach Hell as a real place, and it doesn’t give a lot of hope for people who haven’t heard, or have heard and just don’t get it. That might be the main reason I’ve taken such a skeptical viewpoint toward Christianity. I like a lot of what’s in there, but I prefer to take six days and a day of rest or three days and three nights or eternity with a hefty dose of salt.

Also note that A Thief in the Night gets a mention. Never underestimate the value of scaring the jeebers out of little kids.