Poisoned at Starbucks

The cup of poison stands six inches tall, made of 10% post-consumer recycled fiber.  The cup is white and carries the caveat, "Careful, the beverage you're about to enjoy is extremely hot."  Above that warning are the encircled words, "Starbucks Coffee."  It said, "Hot," but it didn't say anything about being toxic.

What's toxic isn't on the inside; it's on the outside of the cup.  Under green letters spelling out, "The Way I See It," the coffee connoisseur reads a quotation from a bishop, one Carlton Pearson.  It says, "In reality, hell is not so much an intention of God as it is an invention of man.  God is love and people are precious.  Authentic truth is not so much taught or learned as it is remembered. Somewhere in your pre-incarnate consciousness you were loved absolutely, and in reality, you still are!  Remember who you are!"

Say what?   We've invented hell?  I thought Jesus said that hell wasn't an imaginary place, built on human fancy, but a real place.  I thought Jesus spent more time warning us about such a place than any other person in Scripture.  I thought Jesus told a story of man eternally separated from God and in torment asking for a drop of water for himself and a witness to get to his brothers quickly to tell them, "It's real!"*

I've got a choice - who do I go with, the Bishop or Jesus?  The Bishop is talking about something called "your pre-incarnate consciousness."  What in the world is that?  Where did he come up with that idea?

Where did Bishop Carlson come up with the sentence, "God is love?"  How does He know that?  We answer, "From the Bible, of course.  It's a sentence straight out of the Bible."  But the same book warns us about hell.

Wait a minute, let's get this straight: the Bible tells us "God is love" and the Bishop believes that; the Bible tells us hell exists, but the Bishop doesn't believe that.

Are we witnessing a bit of selection here; that is, the Bishop likes "God is love;" but he's not too keen on, "Hell is real."  "God is love" is therefore true and hell isn't.  Is this the way we know "authentic truth?"  Do we know it by whether we like it or not?  I may not like the Bible's teaching on hell, but that doesn't change a thing.

The Bishop is the pastor of a church which promises "The friendliest, trendiest, most radical worship experience." Sad.  The one thing it doesn't promise is the truth.  It can't.

It's the "trendiest?"  Yeah, right.  It's as trendy as the zoot suit and the rumble seat.  Trendy?  It's old hat, as old as the serpent's hissing into Eve's listening ear, "You will not surely die."  The first truth denied was that of coming judgment.

Behind the poison at Starbucks is the full-blown heresy of Bishop Carlton.  He says that everybody is going to heaven; they just don't know it yet.  In the Bishop's imagination, everybody is saved at birth.  Wait a minute; Jesus said, "You must be born again."** Who should I trust, the finite Carlton or the omniscient Christ?

In Pearson's spiritual landscape, there's no need for missionaries, unless you want to use them to carry the message that we're all OK; don't worry, be happy, we're all "in."  According to his logic, it would be just as well if all missionaries stayed home and enjoyed the creature comforts with the rest of us instead of eating monkey meat in some far-off place with no McDonald's in sight.

Point out to the Bishop all those Scriptures that say that man is estranged from God, *** and he'll happily reply, "Such estrangement is only in our minds.  We just need to realize we're all already saved."  Who's inventing what here?

But here's the barb.  We roundly and rightly condemn the ramblings of the Bishop's imagination, but then go out and act as if what he's saying is true.  We take down the crosses from our church buildings (too offensive); we eliminate the Cross from our preachments in favor of self-help and self-affirmation.  We preach on finding the ever-elusive steps building a strong family, but omit the gospel.  We don't mention "Christ and Him crucified" in favor of ME and MY exaltation to a better here and now this minute.

We flex our spiritual muscle and gnash our spiritual teeth at the Bishop, yet we live as if what he's saying is true because we never give the gospel to anyone.  We go with Jesus in our minds; we glide with the Bishop with our feet.

Dr. Mike Halsey, Pastor

*  Luke 16
**  John 3
***  John 3:18