Carlton Pearson and the Matter of Hell

a mini review of the movie Come Sunday

I find myself thinking about g-d and religion and evangelism and the Church, of late, since the recent death of Pope Francis. I watched Conclave, and I watched The Two Popes, and I watched Miracle Club, and then I watched Come Sunday.

It’s no secret I favour the Judaic vision of g-d. So, Hell and a universal oppositional figure to g-d doesn’t exist in that religious doctrine. If you study the Hebrew text of the story of the temptation in Garden of Eden, and if you measure the meaning of words in the Torah against the Torah itself, you can only conclude that there’s no Devil, no Satan as the Christian world depicts. I’ve written about that previously.

In the Hebrew Bible shaitan refers to an adversary, similar to a cross examiner in a court of law. So, an agent of g-d, not an enemy. The whole discourse of the Devil brings into question the universal power of g-d. How can the Divine be all powerful when a mutiny can upend his universal might? It’s illogical. G-d is logical and if your dogma about g-d doesn’t make sense then it’s not from g-d. S/He made us in Her/His image. So, despite the fact I was raised devoutly Catholic, I don’t buy the doctrine of Satan or the Devil, whatever you call that mythical figure. It’s Manichaean.

The movie Come Sunday is about Carlton Pearson, an American preacher who had his own church, called Higher Dimensions. Pearson had an On the Road to Damascus experience after a personal tragedy shook his world and challenged his faith. To apply that metaphor to and story of Come Sunday, Carlton fell from his high horse and was blinded by the Divine, so that he could see g-d, and as a result humanity, more clearly.

Note, in The Two Popes, Benedict experienced a similar fall from his high horse and blinding that enabled him to see what Francis saw. Reader, what if to get closer to g-d means stripping away our own worldly carnival of self glorification? “The carnival is over”, said Francis at the end of The Two Popes, when he rejected the papal bling offered him by the papal assistants.

Anyway, moving on.

Carlton’s uncle was about to receive his parole from prison and it was going to be revoked because the guards found drugs in his cell. He denied that it was his, and he had called Carlton after the incident. Six years would be added to his sentence. At the age of 70, this man wanted his freedom. He asked his nephew to write a letter on his behalf, saying he was saved, putting a good word for him to secure his release on parole. Carlton refused and the uncle killed himself. One night, shortly after the death of his uncle, Carlton saw a news report about the genocide in Rwanda. Would those innocent people really be condemned to Hell, simply because they weren’t “saved” in the fundamentalist way … that seemed cruel to Carlton and he thought about it and it plagued him a lot.

Carlton experienced the Divine telling him that Jesus died for everyone, not only those who professed their belief in the Passion of Christ. Needless to say, this caused quite a stir amongst his congregation, and his preacher colleagues and supporters. He was deemed not welcome by the leadership and his supposed preacher friends abandoned him, claiming he had been visited by the Devil pretending to be g-d. They simply couldn’t entertain the possibility that Hell and the Devil didn’t exist except as a creation of humans to exclude anyone they deemed unworthy, to instil fear etc.

Carlton Pearson lost everything, his supporters, his prestige, his church, and his congregation dwindled. In the wake of his profound spiritual transformation, Carlton found himself stripped away of his worldly trappings, leaving him with g-d and his close family and few steadfast friends. He found himself facing uncomfortable realisations about his faith, such as the question of gayness, which he previously preached as evil etc.

When one of his faithful followers became sick with AIDS, again Carlton faced a challenge. The belief of his colleagues was that this disease was a punishment from g-d for being gay. Years earlier, Carlton’s mentor rejected his own gay son for being gay. How could a loving merciful g-d endorse and require such cruelty? Didn’t Jesus himself hang out with the sinners and the outcast?

G-d does not turn Her back on us, we turn away from g-d — that’s what I believe, reader. None of us can judge the relationship another has with the Divine. That’s not our role.

In addition, Jesus says in the NT that a doctor tends to the sick, that the well have no need for a doctor. As an aside, in The Two Popes, Pope Francis told Pope Benedict that he saw sin as a wound that needed healing, i.e., not a diseased limb to be amputated.

The interesting thing I observed when watching this movie Come Sunday was the arrogance of Carlton’s fundamentalist colleagues insisting that it wasn’t the voice of g-d he heard. Everything I disagree with is evil seems quite weak as a faith foundation, reader. Narcissistic accusations are often confessions, and I couldn’t help see that those accusing Carlton of arrogance revealed their own arrogance in their condemnation and rejection of him.

Reader, how many people worship their own conception of the Divine more than they ever love and worship the Divine?

In the end, I’m left with the conclusion that the fundamentalists worshipped themselves more than any Divine entity. Who can say what Carlton heard and experienced? No one can, reader. And to make such a pronouncement means to judge. Only g-d can truly judge good versus evil, only She can condemn a soul.

Rabbi Fohrman teaches this concept in his interpretation of the temptation in the Garden of Eden. To presume we can condemn our fellow humans as evil and outcast as the characters in Come Sunday have done to Carlton Pearson, seems to me to assume the place of the Divine Judge, g-d. What a terrible burden, to carry the throne of Divine judgment within our humble human being. What an unnecessary exercise in futility. What a waste of precious life.

Reader, why do we cling to things that erect walls between us and our fellow humans? Why do we want g-d to be this cruel and horrifying figure who condemns the innocent Rwandans to the hellfires? Why would we want to spend any time or mental energy on such a thing?

Ours is not to judge. Ours is only to remove the barriers to love that exist within us.

May we be wiser, reader. May we remember that when we condemn another, we condemn ourselves.

Happy 1st of May.

Note: I don’t believe g-d is a man, I don’t believe we can confine the Divine in our humble human form or conception thereof, so I choose to use female pronouns interchangeably with male pronouns when I refer to the creative force of the universe.