By Quin Hillyer at PJ Media;
(Part one of two; part two will appear next week.)
God is a jerk!
At least that’s one hypothesis.
How many times have you, or somebody you know, suffered a loss or setback so devastating, so bereaving, that the sufferer blamed God for the troubles? At least in the short run, it happens all the time. People reason that if God causes or even allows horrid suffering to occur, then the suffering must be God’s fault.
That is the starting point, psychologically, for Madison Jones, the central character in Mad Jones, Heretic, my novel released at Amazon on Friday by Liberty Island Media. In his grief after a series of horrid tragedies, the fictional Mad Jones pens a series of religious theses (a la Martin Luther; hence, next week’s column) that begins in pain and anger. By Thesis 12 (out of an eventual 59 of them), Mad has worked himself into the declaration that “God is a jerk.”
Of course, that’s the beginning, not the end, of the saga I explore in what will be a Mad Jones trilogy, one which finds ways to satirize modern media, politics and religion while exploring the nature of individual redemptions large and small.
For purposes of this column, though, let’s pause right at Mad’s starting point. The early make-or-break point for readers is if they can buy into the idea that Madison Jones can attract an instant social-media following by posting theses that include an assertion of God’s jerkiness. (My publishers call the three-novel series as a whole the Accidental Prophet trilogy because indeed Mad does attract, unintentionally, such a following.)
For nearly a century beginning in the late 1800s, the intellectual world (if not broader society) was aflame almost to the point of self-parody with what it considered to be the excitingly exotic idea promulgated by Nietzsche that “God is dead.” For people of a certain mindset, it is deliciously tempting to “stick it to polite society” by mouthing simple slogans that appear to pierce the very heart of bourgeois values.
But even for the most self-absorbed counter-culturalist now, it is beyond cliché to say that God is dead. …
[The full faith reflection is at this link.]
