American author (1972- )
Now for the bad news. Heaven is wonderful, but it has its less idyllic counterpart: hell. If you're like most members of Western culture, you probably have a pretty good mental picture of hell. After all, hell finds its way into all kinds of daily conversations. Most people are so familiar with it they use it as a common standard of comparison. English-speakers have decided that quite a few things--like summer temperatures, or jalapeno peppers, or certain celebrities--are hotter than hell. Many tasks are hard as hell. Chaotic events and/or insane ex-spouses may be crazy as hell. Inexplicably, some winter days are as cold as hell.
JASON BOYETT
Pocket Guide to the Afterlife
But even though the culture has changed, the problems you're going through aren't so different. School stuff. Girl stuff. Locker room stuff. Feeling like a dork. Feeling lost. Not fitting in. The parentals have dealt with it all before, and they somehow got through it. Don't you think they want to help you get through it too?
JASON BOYETT
A Guy's Guide to Life
February 4, 1962: Take one quintuplified planetary alignment. Sprinkle in an always-mystifying solar eclipse. Stir in a potload of craziness--prayer vigils in Bombay, shelter-stocking in the United States, jittery sky-gazing everywhere--and you've got yourself an all-out Apocalypse Watch. Nothing happens, of course. But the Antichrist was born the next day, at least according to noted psychic Jeane Dixon.
JASON BOYETT
Pocket Guide to Apocalypse
Heaven is shaped like a cube, somewhere in the vicinity of 1,400 miles wide, long, and high. That's a really big cube.
JASON BOYETT
Pocket Guide to the Afterlife
The eternal physical torture is bad and everything, but the worst thing about hell--according to Christian tradition--is that God is not there.
JASON BOYETT
Pocket Guide to the Afterlife
I keep living as a committed Christian, even on the days when I don't feel like one. Even on the days when the agnostic side of the faith spectrum looks pretty inviting, even on the days when doubt takes hold and shakes me to the core, I keep moving. I keep living as if the sun will rise, as if I'll survive the waters of baptism, as if Jesus will indeed carry me safely across the falls.
JASON BOYETT
O Me of Little Faith: True Confessions of a Spiritual Weakling
Hard as it is to believe, your dad was once your age. Don't think too long about it--like staring at the sun, it could make you go blind--but your dad used to deal with acne and teasing and girls and wet dreams. Maybe your mom wrecked the car a time or two, or struggled with homework, or dealt with relationship problems. Your parents are real people, and they've been through the same problems you've been through. Of course, things were a little different back then. The world was dot-com-free. No texting. No iPhones or Wii. People watched music videos on MTV instead of YouTube. (This was when MTV played mostly music videos. Seriously.)
JASON BOYETT
A Guy's Guide to Life
Being a man in the twenty-first century can be confusing, because our society's concept of how men are supposed to act keeps changing. Should we be the manly, aggressive Fight Club king of guys? Should we be sensitive, hair-gelled, moisturizer-slathering metrosexuals? Are we expected to pick up the tab on a date? Should we open the doors for women or not? The rules and expectations, it seems, are constantly shifting. It wasn't always this hard.
JASON BOYETT
A Guy's Guide to Life
It's hard to impress the girls if you're hanging out in a purple, plastic kiddie pool.
JASON BOYETT
A Guy's Guide to Life