This morning I got stuck on the H1 for more than an hour in parking-lot traffic. As I started to get more and more frustrated (I was half an hour late for a meeting), I decided to flip through some podcasts on my iPod. I settled on NPR’s “This American Life” … and ended up even more frustrated.
This week’s story was about a pastor in Tulsa named Carlton Pearson. He was a rising star with a church of 5,000 until he suddenly decided that he didn’t believe in hell anymore. Literally overnight, he came to the conclusion that Jesus died for everyone in the world, so everyone (from Hitler to Bin Ladin to the Queer Eye For The Straight Guy guys) must be going to heaven. His church quickly shrank down to less than 200, which shouldn’t have surprised him, because churches that preach an inclusive gospel in denial of Scripture are pretty much all shrinking these days.
What frustrated me most was the way that Pearson and the interviewer made it seem like this belief was something revolutionary. The PR for his new book, God is Not a Christian, calls his views “courageous … stunning … astonishing.” In the interview, Pearson even went so far as to say that if only Christians had understood this inclusive gospel five years ago, then Christians and Muslims would be getting along and 9/11 never would have happened.
In truth, what he’s selling is the same old universalist heresy that’s been tossed around since the third century, when Origen argued that since God is love, everyone (Satan included) will be saved in the end when God gives us all endless opportunities to believe. Sounds nice, and even vaguely biblical. After all, 1 Peter 3:9 says that God is “patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” Unfortunately for the universalists, Jesus also said, “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Matt 7:13-14).