Emails from Hell, part two

Here is the second email that I received from a soul recently arrived in Hell. The first is in the immediately previous posting.

{Beginning of email}

            In Hell, you never have to eat, since you do not have a physical body. This would also go a long ways in explaining why there is no torture in Hell: with no physical body, you have no pain receptors. I suppose that is the price to pay for not having torture: without a physical body, you can never again enjoy gustatory pleasures, like eggnog, or Guinness stout, or steak, or mushrooms, or fresh baked bread, or…don’t get me started. It also means you cannot have any sexual pleasures. I’ll try not to think about this.

            All I have left is my mind, so I have to find some way to stimulate that, I guess. Back when I was alive I was a scientist and I spent countless hours investigating the natural world and learning the mysteries of the universe. I suspect that this might be one of the reasons I ended up here. Those evangelists always told me that believing in evolution would get me sent here. I guess they were right.

            I saw another man sitting by himself, so I decided to talk with him. He looked like he was as eager for mental stimulation as I was.

            “Howdy,” I said.

            He just looked at me balefully.

            I tried again. “What’s yer name, partner?”

            “They call me John,” he mumbled.

            “That’s a new one,” I said. “Nobody else with that name, I’ll bet. John who?”

            “Just John,” he said. “We didn’t have last names back when I was on Earth. There were plenty of Johns then, too.”

            “So, which John were you?”

            “John the Apostle.”

            “You mean, the Apostle of Jesus Christ?”

            “Yes, the same.”

            “What the hell, I mean, how did you end up here?”

            “You ever read any of my stuff?” John asked me.

            “Yes, but I don’t exactly have it memorized. But, it was pretty important, wasn’t it?”

            “Yes. I wrote one of the gospels. I wrote that God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son.”

            “You wrote that! Dang! I had fifty-three scientific papers and I edited a collection of symposium talks on the aflambulation of billiards, but I can’t hold a candle to you! You must have a citation index of about 300 trillion. I averaged about 2.58 on my works. So, God is love.”

            “Yes, I…”

            “Yeah, you wrote that too. But look around us. Doesn’t look much like God is love, you know, when you see what’s on the other side of the gulf, so to speak. And I still want to know how you ended up here.”

            “I also wrote, For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved.”

            He paused, as if this was supposed to answer my question.

            “You don’t get it? You see, I said that God’s purpose—and remember, I thought that God was all-powerful—was to save the world. That was sort of the point, you see.”

            “But, John—not like I’m an expert or anything—but don’t you have to be good in order to be saved?”

            “I didn’t add that clause, did I? Think back over what I wrote. It’s all about God, His Son, and the saving the world. The world, as I understood it, didn’t have to do anything to earn that salvation. But, in another passage, I did say something about what was necessary. I wrote, Love one another, for love is of God; He who loves is born of God and knows God; He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.”

            “Yeah, that’s nice, John.”

            “Oh, it’s more than nice,” said John, finally becoming animated. “What it means is that everyone who loves is saved just for being someone who loves. Love entails many different things, many behavioral components. There is no way to remember all the rules, so you just remember the basic principle: love.”

            “Okay, I am no closer to understanding what you are doing down here.”

            Right then a slight-looking young man came over and sat down beside us.”

            “Hi, John,” said the young man.

            “Hi, Mickey,” said John. Then he explained to me, “Mickey died of AIDS back in 1989. He was gay. He couldn’t help it. He spent his whole life showing love to people. Not by being gay, but just by being a really nice guy. Now, according to my rule, he should have been admitted into Heaven. But the forces that be were not about to allow the spirits of dead gay men or lesbians enter Heaven! So, of course, Mickey didn’t make it. Now, do you understand? That means I didn’t make it either, since I was the one who published the rule that would have allowed people like Mickey to get in. So that means that I had to go to Hell, too.”

            “But, you were an Apostle!” I nearly screamed. “Surely Jesus…”

            “Jesus doesn’t have much of a say in it,” muttered John. “No, it’s the Republican Party who gets to decide who goes to Heaven and who does not. Them, and the Jihadists. Now, if Jesus had anything to say about it…” He sighed. “But that’s expecting too much.”

            “And so we miss out on the pleasures of Heaven?” I asked.

            John gave me a wry smile. “I want to show you something.”

            He stood up and led me up a stairway. Mickey followed last. Up at the top was a telescope. Not one of those big suckers like on Palomar, but, well, it looked like the one Galileo used.

            John said, “With this telescope, we can see into Heaven. Please, take a look.”

            I saw Heaven opened, just like John wrote in the Book of Revelation. But that is the next email.

{End of email}