I don't believe in hell and neither should you

I'll just say it out loud: I don't believe in hell. I don't care what the Bible may or may not say on the matter. I don't care what the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches. The concept of hell is monstrously absurd -- and no sane person should believe it.

I don't need to argue my point of view by citing this or that scripture, or some or other famed theologian. I arrived at my conclusion that way most sane people do: By the use of reason and a dash of common sense.

The doctrine of hell -- the concept, the idea, the premise -- is that a loving God created a place of eternal torment for people (and angels) who refuse to love Him. To avoid this dreadful fate, evangelical Christians talk about taking Jesus as one's personal savior. Muslims talk about making their submission to Allah. Catholics stress the need to be baptized and die in communion with the Church in order to be saved. The basic idea is the same: Unless you jump through some hoops, you will spend eternity in a "lake of fire."

It's important to understand the idea, to dig deep into it, to genuinely comprehend it.

Firstly, it cannot be stressed enough: Hell is an utterly monstrous idea. It is a shocking creation. It's twisted. It's sick. The psychology beneath it is deeply abnormal.

Eternal punishment is ... eternal. And that's a very long time. No matter how many eons might pass in such a place, it would still be only the beginning. Millions of years could pass ... billions ... trillions ... trillions upon trillions of years ... but still , it would only be the beginning. The torment, the agony, the dreadful pains, would never end. Never. No matter how much time passed, the agony would go on and on for eternity. What could a finite human being do to deserve such an infinite punishment?

If you don't grasp the full horror of it, spend some time with it. Chew on it. Think about it. Dig into it. Immerse yourself fully into the idea of it. The more you think about it, the more you realize what an insane idea it is.  And not insane with a small case i, but INSANE. Sick. Twisted. Preposterous. Literally beyond belief.

But the really insane thing is to attribute the creation of hell to a "loving God." A great many Christians will tell you flat out that if you don't accept Jesus as your personal savior, you will go to hell. And they believe it. And they are genuinely distressed at the idea that you would prefer such a fate when all you have to do to "save yourself" is accept Jesus as your personal savior. They are quick to point out that this isn't their idea, that this is God's plan, that it's all there in the Bible.

As indeed it seems to be.

Here's the rub. A loving God created you, but if you don't love Him back, He will destroy you forever in the lake of fire.

How is this love?

You have to ask yourself. If I stood in front of you with a knife to your throat and insisted that you "love" me, how would you feel? If your safety and well being depended on loving me, would it be love? It's ridiculous, is it not? Yet we are asked to believe this is what God expects of us. This is "God's plan." Unless you agree to "love" this all-powerful entity, you will be utterly destroyed.

This is not love. It's insane to even have to point it out. This is not how love works. This is not how you treat someone you love. This is deeply unhealthy. This is perverted, sick, twisted, abnormal. And to attribute it to God is complete foolishness. It's insulting.

I'm not the first to arrive at this conclusion by any means, but it's always been a well-kept secret.

Something in us wants the idea of hell to be true. Right? We feel that people like Adolf Hitler deserve a place of eternal torment in the afterlife. We feel his crimes deserve it. We want him to be punished. The Jehovah's Witnesses have an interesting solution to this dilemma. They believe that people who have rejected God will simply wink out of existence when they die. God will remember them no more, and they will exist no more. No need for a place of eternal torment. Just a respectful acknowledge of a choice that a person made.

Different demonstrations have different ideas.

Hardliners will tell us that without the threat of the punishment of hell, people will not be good. What I've found is exactly the opposite. When you come to the realization that you are indeed loved by God, you will want to respond to that love, not from a place of fear, but out of a genuine sense of gratitude.

Our psychology does not allow us to love someone we fear. We cannot mix fear and love. It doesn't work that way.  And this attempt to try to force people to either love God or face eternal punishment, has done enormous harm.

Don't take my word for it. Look to your own experience. Can you love someone that you are afraid of? Does it work? Is it healthy? Or don't you get tired of being afraid?

• Nick Wilgus is an award-winning author based in Tupelo, Mississippi. Check out his latest novel from Dreamspinner Press, RAISE IT UP, available in paperback and ebook formats.

It's a dad thing

My latest novel is called GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAINS from Dreamspinner Press and will be hitting the shelves later this month or early February. It's the third book in the Sugar Tree series, which follows the antics of Wiley Cantrell, a mouthy gay single dad just trying to make his way in the world best he can.

I've been asked if the books are autobiographical and whether the character of Wiley is based on me. The short answer to both questions is no. I'm not a Southerner though I do live in Tupelo, Mississippi now. I've never been mistaken for someone who was sexy, or opinionated, or who had a sarcastic remark for any occasion. While I'm a father, I'm not the father of a special needs child.

But the long answer? Perhaps.

As I worked on the edits for GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAINS, I realized I was writing about myself.

MOUNTAINS is about Wiley and his partner Jackson adopting two children. This happens six years down the road after they lose Wiley's son Noah, who was never expected to live but held on for thirteen years. His loss, while not completely unexpected, was a painful chapter in their lives. Wiley eventually decides he wants to adopt. This is a way to move on, to start living again, to jump back into the business of living and loving and keeping the faith. But it's not easy.

I'll let readers decide whether Wiley and Jackson are making the right decision or biting off more than they can chew.

When I began the Sugar Tree series a few years ago, adopting a child was very much on my mind. In fact, I've flirted with the idea of adoption for many years but there never seemed to be a right time. Last year, however, I began to attend the necessary parenting classes and begin the application process, which I'm currently in the middle of.

As an openly gay single man living in Tupelo, Mississippi, the most religious state in the Union, my chances are not good. Still, the heart wants what it wants. And irony of sitting around and writing about an imaginary gay single dad raising a child has not escaped me. I've been writing about what I wanted to do myself.

At one point during GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAINS, Jackson says, "When you said you wanted a dozen children, I thought you were exaggerating." Wiley, in typical fashion, replies, "I was. I'll settle for six or seven." Wiley then reminds Jackson that he's the sort of guy who "just needs to love my babies," a fact of life he made perfectly clear when they first met.

Wiley is a family man. He loves kids. He loves his family. He's not much for drinking or carousing or hanging out at gay bars (which is good, since there aren't any in Tupelo). He'd much rather play Frisbee in the park with his son than hit up the latest drag show. When loneliness and horniness get the better of him, he will jump in the sack with the first thing that comes along (something for which he has been roundly chastised by many readers). At the end of the day, though, Wiley is not about casual sex or a promiscuous lifestyle. He wants family. Commitment. Permanency. He wants kids and a husband to dote over. He wants to build a future and live a normal, happy life. What he needs are other people to get out of the way and let him do it.

He finds himself deeply in love with a flawed man, but it's okay because Wiley is flawed too, and he knows it.

While I am nothing like Wiley in appearance or manner or station in life, I am very much like him in many other ways.  In what he values, what he wants, what he copes with, what he tries to overcome, even the mistakes he makes.

Like Wiley, there has been trauma in my past that I needed to deal with ... and almost couldn't. Wiley learned to forgive and move on. I have too. Wiley's latest trauma, the loss of his son, has him desperately trying to find the meaning behind it. He wonders why God would take his only child. He's mad. He's angry. He's hurting. He's a little self-destructive.

He eventually concludes that God sent Noah into his life to teach him how to deal with messed up kids. Let's face it: Adorable as he was, Noah was a hot mess, a child born addicted to meth, a child haunted by demons and disabilities and birth defects, a child who was never expected to live.

But Wiley found a way to deal with it, a way to reach him, a way to give him at least a few years of happiness.

Wiley believes adopting a messed up child that no one else wants will somehow give meaning to Noah's life. These is a purely arbitrary decision Wiley has made, based on his own internal beliefs and ideas. We could argue whether it makes sense or whether he's just fooling himself, but that's not the point. Wiley looks at the situation and assigns his own meaning to it, and that's all that matters. Wiley says, "I need to know Noah's life wasn't just some cosmic joke." He needs to know there was some point to it, some higher purpose, some deeper meaning.

We all do the same. We look at terrible things that happen and try to find the reason, try to assign some meaning that will let us sleep at night.

Myself, I look at my childhood, at what people did to me, at what my parents did, and sometimes I am gripped by the feeling that it was all pointless and stupid and cruel. "A cosmic joke." I ask myself: Why do we allow children to grow up in such homes, with such people? Why doesn't someone do something? If God really does love us so much, why does he allow our most vulnerable to endure such agony? Why is he silent? Why doesn't he intervene when children are being hurt?

This business of assigning meaning is something I've struggled with my whole life.

Which takes us back to adoption.

When I first began attending parenting classes and filling out all the endless forms, I was asked over and over: Why do you want to adopt? I thought I had to have some compelling and fantastically altruistic reason. So I gave long answers on how I had an unhappy childhood, how I could help these kids, how I understood what it was like to know you were not wanted by your own parents, how I knew the pain of having parents who let you down and let you fall through the cracks because they were too busy with their own drama to notice. I talked about how being a dad was the best thing I ever did in my colorful life, how I loved being a dad and wanted to do it again. I repeated the story about the man who complained to God about all the horrible things that go on in the world. The man asked, "God, why don't you do something?" And God replied, "Why don't you do something?"

Those are all perfectly good reasons, of course.

The real reason is much simpler: I want to love and be loved. Part of it is altruistic. Another part is perfectly selfish. I don't want to be eighty years old and dripping into my adult diapers and not have at least one person visit me in the nursing home. I'm sorry if that's selfish, but it's the truth. I want to love and be loved. Like everyone else, I want family, people I can count on, people who can count on me. I want to go home and cook dinner and help with homework and kiss the boos boos and attend the football games and help a child grow up.

It's not complicated.

Wiley has a similar thing going on. He struggles to assign meaning, but at the end of the day, it's plain to see: He just wants to love and be loved. He wants to fuss over and love on his babies. That's just how he is. It satisfies some need he has deep down inside. To be useful. To be included. To be part of life. To live and love, to give and receive, to find joy and bliss in others. To be part of the human family.

The child I'm hoping to adopt is a special needs boy who is now ten years old and who has been with his current foster family for two years. They don't have enough money to adopt him. I may never have a chance to be his father. I've resigned myself to that. Still. I needed to be able to look at myself in the mirror and say I tried.

I hope readers enjoy GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAINS. I put a lot of heart and soul into that book and I hope it shows. And while some are going to be mad at me over the loss of Noah, I think, when you reach the end of the book, you'll see that life does indeed go on. And it goes on because it has to.

As always, thanks for reading.

Win a free audio book version of SHAKING THE SUGAR TREE

SHAKING THE SUGAR TREE, about a gay single father in the South whose deaf son helps him find a boyfriend, recently became a best-seller, and to celebrate I'm giving away two copies of the AUDIO BOOK.

But first, some news:

The press in Mississippi, where I live, has finally noticed.

Writing for the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, Leslie Criss says:

 "Clearly, the author has a flair for storytelling. He also possesses an ability to weave words together in a way that makes his work not only readable and interesting, but also powerful. I can’t say this about all authors whom I’ve read, but Wilgus has an amazing ability to write life into his characters. I immediately felt a connection with most, if not all of them. I cared about them, and I thought about them long after I’d finished the book."

R.H. Coupe, writing for the Jackson Free Press, says: 

"I read his most recent book ... on a flight to and from New Jersey. At times it had me laughing so hard I woke up the drooling drunk who had fallen asleep on my shoulder. Later, the flight attendant brought me some tissues to wipe my eyes and asked me if I was all right. The book is terribly painful at times—the kind of pain that comes from the helplessness of seeing a parent rejecting a child."

SHAKING THE SUGAR TREE has picked up numerous five-star reviews on book review blogs like The Tipsy Bibliophile, who says:

"There were many things I loved about this book. I loved the writing and I loved the setting. I completely enjoyed the raw and fierce love Wiley had for his son. All good, GOOD things. But Wiley himself, man, that guy went straight for my soul. I could relate to him in such a deep, and basic level it was staggering at times." 

See also reviews on:

Prism Book Alliance - "I have never read a book like this!" 

Gay List Book Review - "Absolutely loved it!"

Mrs. Condit Reads Books - "One of the most amazing books I've read in a while."

The Novel Approach - "My introduction to Mr. Wilgus's work was nothing short of extraordinary."

In other news, the AUDIO BOOK format of SHAKING THE SUGAR TREE was recently released. Narrated by Wayne Messmer, you can find it on Audible.com.

Fans of SUGAR TREE will be happy to know a sequel is on the way. It's called STONES IN THE ROAD and it's all about what happens when Jackson Ledbetter's parents from Boston pay a visit. Here's a little taste:

FREE AUDIO BOOK GIVEAWAY

To win one of the two audio book versions of SHAKING THE SUGAR TREE up for grabs, find your way to my Facebook page and leave me a message or a comment stating that you want to win. (If the link doesn't work for you, search Facebook for "Nick Wilgus" or "Wilgus World".) 

I'll put your name in the pot. The two winners will be selected by a random drawing this Friday evening (August 1, 2014) at 8pm (my time!). I'll post a status update with the names of the winners so be sure to check back to see if you've won. If you have, you'll have to provide your email address so I can email you a code and instructions for Audible.com. 

Good luck!

And thanks for reading!