Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell: A Novel by Stan Rice, part five. Eternally Suffering Jesus

Stan Rice as just published another novel, Billy Stormfield’s Visit to Hell. It is based on Mark Twain’s classic book about Captain Stormfield’s visit to Heaven. Here is the author’s description from Amazon:

Billy Stormfield, descendant of Captain Stormfield in Mark Twain’s book, wakes up in Hell. He meets Mark Twain, who takes him on a tour. All the interesting people are in Hell: Moses, Karl Marx (who is funny only when he quotes Groucho), Joe the Cherokee, the Apostle Andrew, and Pope Francis, because they were all what the fundamentalists called communists; Noah, because he was an environmentalist; General Douglas McArthur, because he forgave the Japanese rather than slaughtering them as the Old Testament commanded; and of course Charles Darwin. Thomas Jefferson, united at last with Sally Hemings, tells them how biologically stupid racism and oppression are. The only people in Heaven are the white supremacists and the jihadists, who spend all their time killing each other over and over forever. The young white supremacist Stonewall escapes to Hell, where he meets and loves the Black history teacher Philomena.

Between Heaven and Hell, Jesus eternally suffers the way Job did, dogs licking his wounds. With His friend the Prophet Mo, He watched His mother Mary helping people sneak into Heaven. Together with the crew from Hell, and led by the school girl Malala, Jesus and Mo storm the assembly in Heaven, kicking Henry VIII and Donald Trump (who look almost alike) down to Earth. Stonewall and Philomena celebrate their wedding feast.

Many fundamentalist Christians like to imagine that Jesus will return as a great Conqueror. Indeed, large portions of the New Testament present exactly this image.

Which brings up the question, what is Jesus doing now? Whatever it is, it is not going around and conquering people. The usual theological answer is that Jesus is at the Throne of His Father interceding on behalf of sinners. That is, He is a defense attorney. Dad, please forgive so-and-so. He was a big so-and-so but my blood paid for his sins and by the end of his life he wasn’t such a bad so-and-so. Perry Mason would have had it a lot easier if the judge was his father.

But Christians also like to fantasize that Jesus is infinitely loving. He feels every pain in everyone’s heart. One song said, “I felt every tear drop when in darkness you cried, …and for those tears I died.” Imagine that Jesus, as Christians insist, felt the full weight of human sin upon Himself as He died on the cross.

But fundamentalist Christians believe this will all suddenly change when, at the second coming, Jesus becomes a warrior with a sword coming out of his mouth and he makes the earth run red with literally millions of gallons of human blood. (Rice calculated how much blood it would be in another article in Skeptical Inquirer. It would take blood from 580 million freshly squeezed adult humans.

But in Rice’s novel, Jesus sits and suffers like Job, with dogs coming to lick his wounds. Which Jesus do you prefer?