"Heaven sounds like such a boring place, with all that mushy love all around you, and having to say 'thank you, God' for all eternity. I'd rather be in Hell, with all my friends."

At first, he meant it as a joke. But after much repetition, he simply meant it. He really didnât want to go to Heaven when he died.

So, when he died, God didnât want to force him into heaven. We took Jack where he chose.

However, after we checked him in, he found the accommodations worse than he had bargained for. They were as bad as heâd been told! He started demanding his rights. We shrugged, showed him the telephone, and left.

As the fumes and fire engulfed him, he was at first furious. Angry with the preacher whose hypocrisy turned him off to God. Angry with his mother for using such foolish, unpersuasive reasons to coax him into church. Angry with his first girlfriend for dumping him just because he wasnât ãgood enough for herä, which would have driven any man to drink.

But as Jack's flesh began blackening, swelling, and melting off, the pain made him cry like a little brat, as Jack complained to himself. It was in that state, the fires from without competing with the raging inferno within for Jackâs attention, that he picked up the phone.

"Bad night. Thank you for calling Telephone Service from Hell. Please listen to the following options. If you would like to speak to a custodian about turning up the heat, please press '1'. If you would like to speak to a demon about the status of your records, press '2'. If you would like to speak to an operator, press '3'."

Jack instantly pressed "3".

"Wa-ha-ha-ha-ha...!"

Jack slammed down the phone. He redialed. "Bad night. Thank you for calling Telephone Service from Hell. Please listen to..."

Eternity seemed half over by the time the mechanical voice finally reached "If you would like to speak to someone in charge, please press 6,666,666." Jack pressed 6,666,666.

"Hello. Father Abraham speaking."

"Look, you better not hang up on me or switch me to another department. I've got something to say to YOU, and I've been sitting on this phone long enough for a star to cool."

"That would explain why you sound so far away. Please stop sitting on it and hold it up to your mouth."

"Oh, a wise guy, huh? Listen, what kind of a Loving God would make anyone come to this place?"

"Excuse me, would you like to wait a minute for me to play back the choice you made, to see if we made a mistake?"

"No, never mind."

"By the way, Frank says 'hell-oh'."

"Frank? What's that little fanatic twerp doing there?"

"Oh, the usual. Having a party. You know, one of the parties to which he invited you. Say, we never could figure out why you turned him down. Why did you, Jack?"

"He offended me, that's why."

"Well, sure, we know that's what you said. But what did he do that offended you? Did he wear the wrong kind of clothes while he was inviting you? Did he speak with the wrong accent? Should he have shaved closer? We're trying to put together a training video to show Saints how to deal with people who get as easily offended as you, but we don't know what to put in it. If you have some answers, it would be worth a lot to us."

"It's not how he invited me. It's that he invited me. He imposed his morality on me. What a jerk!"

Just then the flames penetrated deeper and sent stabs of pain through Jack's weary brain, breaking his intense concentration on his raging anger. He moaned. He whimpered. He pleaded into the phone, "I remember reading that God is merciful. Could you send Frank to just give me one cold beer? This place is terrible! Just one beer on my dry parched tongue would be so wonderful! But please, if all I get is one, make it a Bud."

"I'm sorry, but don't you remember, when you were on Earth, singing 'In Heaven there is no beer, that's why we will drink it here'? Can't help you, Bud. I'm afraid calling you 'Bud' is the closest we can get." Abraham laughed.

"You ain't no Bud of mine!" Jack screamed into the phone. But the only sound the phone returned to him was the sound of an overstuffed chair shifting, the sound of a person leaning forward to return a phone to its cradle. "No, wait! Don't hang up! Abraham?"

"Yes?"

Jack began to catch on that he was in a weak bargaining position. He was NOT going to get a beer, or an air conditioner, or a pardon -- but even if he could get one, he was even madder at God now than before! Heaven? No way! He just wanted to go back home, to Jack's Bar and Grill.

But he thought of his family! Would he want his family here? Well, not that he cared so deeply about them, or about admitting he was wrong, but here was perhaps an opportunity to get Abraham to do SOMETHING for him. The opportunity to manipulate somebody can be as gratifying as a beer, and those heavenly do-gooders are usually crying to be manipulated.

"My poor family! They will come to this awful place! Unless someone warns them! Send the twerp to my family to tell them what I am suffering here!"

Jack thought, yes, let the world know how I am suffering! That always makes suffering sweeter, when others can be told about it! It is so sweet to hear their moans of sympathy, that I used to tell them about it when I wasn't suffering. But now I really am, so they would be even more impressed! They wouldn't believe me if I came back to them from the dead, but if The Twerp were to come back and testify of how much I am suffering, they would really be sad for me!

But Abraham wasnÎt buying. "They have their Bibles to tell them. And even though they won't read them, they know their Bibles tell of your accommodations."

Jack laughed. "No, you don't get it, Abe. That's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Of COURSE they won't believe their Bibles; they don't even believe in God. But evidence! Ah, evidence is what they will believe. Scientific evidence. Absolute proof. They will definitely believe, if someone should rise from the dead and come to warn them."

Abraham answered, "No, Jack, you don't get it. Was lack of evidence what kept you from listening to your mother when she told you nice girls were dumping you because you smelled so bad from taking a bath only once a month? Wasn't the fact that girls would smile at you from a distance, but turn up their noses and frown when they got close, enough evidence?"

"That was different. My mom was just being rude. You're not supposed to tell people they smell. That's insulting. It wasn't her life, anyway. But what does that have to do with evidence of God?"

"Was lack of evidence what kept you from listening to your doctor when he warned you that it was drinking that had caused your bleeding ulcers, and was fast destroying your liver? Wasn't the searing pain in your stomach persuasive enough? Weren't the results of his tests evidence enough for you?"

"That was different. He was telling me how to live my life. If you can't live free to choose what you want to do, life isn't worth living anyway. Besides, all that liver failure stuff is for other people. I didnÎt expect it to happen to me. But what does that have to do with evidence of God?"

"Was lack of evidence what made you throw out the social worker who was concerned about your children growing up in a house littered with animal waste, piles of moldy dirty clothes, leftovers turning green, and rats? Didn't her brochure about the relationship of disease to filth have enough footnotes to satisfy your love of scientific proof?"

"That was different. I had a constitutional right to live however I liked on my own property. She had no business even coming into my house, much less criticizing it. But what does that have to do with evidence of God?"

"Evidence of God? You didn't need any evidence of God! Why did you own a Bible in the first place which you rarely read? Because you wanted your visitors to see a virtuous book on your shelves? Because you thought having a virtuous book might bring you good luck? Because you thought God might see it there and give you some points for at least owning it? You knew it was a 'good book', as the idiom calls it! The fact that you were mad at God proves you understood there was a God to be mad at! The fact you got angry at anybody who ever tried to tell you about God proves there was information you were determined not to hear! You donât have an evidence problem, Jack. You have an attitude problem."

"I did too let people talk to me about God."

"Only if they agreed with you, and only as long as they never suggested God had commandments for you to obey! As long as they never suggested that God wanted for you a better life than you lived! As long as they never suggested that the Bible was the Word of God, by which standard you were living in sin, and you were as wrong as you could be!ä

"You mean like The Twerp? Don't I have a right to believe anything I like?"

"You most assuredly do. You have a right protected by the U.S. Constitution, and by God Almighty Himself. Yes indeed, you have the right to believe what is wrong. You have the right to be wrong."

"So what's the problem? Why am I here?"

"You have the right to believe you can jump off a cliff and not fall. But do you have the power to not fall?"

"What a dumb question. What's your point?"

"Is the legal right to do something, the same as freedom from the natural consequences of doing it?"

Jack was too exhausted for deep questions. He considered slamming down the phone in protest. "Don't start getting weird on me, Abe", Jack warned.

"To stand on your legal right to be wrong, and, on the strength of that legal right, to insist on deliberately remaining wrong, is not the position of a strong intellect. Can you grasp that concept, Jack?"

Jack didn't answer, but he didnât appreciate being insulted. Actually he wasn't positive he was being insulted, but the existence of deeper thinking than his own, which implied the need to think more deeply in order to follow it, was insulting enough.

"To base your pride on your beliefs, and then to regard any attempt by anyone, to correct any errors in them, an Îinsultâ, is not the habit of a strong intellect. Can you grasp that concept, Jack?"

"Are you calling me stupid? Doesnât the Bible say not to call anyone stupid?"

"You are far from stupid. If you were stupid, you would be innocent. You said it yourself. You hold ideas about God which are not intelligent because that is your choice. 'I have the right to believe whatever religion I choose', you said. You deliberately chose your religion, not on the basis of its intelligence, but on the basis of how well it demonstrated your legal right to believe anything.

"Intelligence requires not only capacity, but being in the mood. It isn't the lack of evidence or intelligent arguments that keeps you away from God.

"You have never indicated your desire for better, stronger evidence! The only time you demanded scientific evidence, of the Christians challenging you, was when you sensed they didnât know of any. When it was offered, you said you didnât have time for any more; you have seen all of it you want! You never sought books, or searched the internet, for another side to the lies with which you were comfortable. You did more research to determine which career to take, to fill your next 20 or 30 years, than to determine which religion was true, which determined your residence for eternity! You claimed your right to continue in your beliefs, irrespective of their intelligence!

"No, Jack, if your family wonât even read their family Bibles, after knowing it is the most widely read Book of all human history -- after knowing it tells of God's Love for them, so great as to be willing to die in their place, the evidence you propose won't move them. It's been tried! God didn't just send some nobody back from the grave; He sent His own Son, to prove not only that God has the means to satisfy your every need, but that God wants to! He loves you as much as it is possible to love! And anyone who doubts that needs only to examine the historical evidence, of which as much exists as for any other historical event.

"It is an obedience problem which moves most to ignore evidence. Those who first determine that if there is a God, that they will joyfully obey whatever guidance He offers, are in the mood to admit the evidence before them.

"But if you are right, that your family won't even read their own Bibles, then they wouldn't believe if Albert Einstein himself came out of the grave to personally present to them all the supporting math for God and Heaven and Hell, along with his notebook of personal observations."

Co-authored by Dave Leach and God. See Luke 16:14-31, John 9:41

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