Book Description
Think Hell is hot? Think again, it’s as frigid as Hillary Clinton. John Milton wrote the literary classic Paradise Lost to give us Satan’s perspective of his predicament and The Fall of humankind. Dante Aligheri wrote The Inferno, part one of his Divine Comedies, to give us a look at life in Hell. When you combine the two and set Hell on the North Pole, you get Paradise Frost: Satan as Santa. Read it to learn how much of a sinner you are. Read it to be surprised by who is stuck in Hell. Read it to find out how the deviant Mrs. Clause uses her elves as dildos. Read it to discover how Santa satisfies his carnal urges with human whores. Read it to decide if this is a work of blasphemy.
Introduction
I’d been writing this book with no intention of publishing it. It was a private project, one of self-reflection. I wrote this to think about the seven deadly sins — lust, sloth, wrath, gluttony, greed, envy, and the deadliest of them all, vanity — and how I commit them.
As a published work, this is a story about our Total Depravity and our Original Sin. The underlying theme is that we are born corrupt and sinful, and we sin in ways we don’t realize. Our suffering has little to do with external events, it’s the result of the dissonance between how we think of ourselves and who we really are.
I struggle to understand what is and isn’t a sin. And my intuition tells me that the most dangerous sins are those we don’t recognize as such. To some, the Christian notion of sin is outdated, it’s an atavistic concept. In other words, morality is relative and “sin” is contingent on cultural standards. Fine, but keep in mind that I’m not interested in debating about cultural expressions of sin — Mormon prohibition against alcohol, for instance. I just want a better understanding about human nature. Whether or not stoning an adulteress is a sin is irrelevant to me. I’m only interested in why an adulteress is stoned — was someone envious of her? Another example: I put Hitler in Hell for being sentimental (emotional gluttony), and not for mass murder. Because this is a story about human nature, about how everyone, across all cultures, are tempted by lust, sloth, wrath, gluttony, greed, envy, and vanity. How someone expresses vanity may vary from culture to culture, and I don’t care about that. I’m only interested in what vanity — and the other six deadly sins — does to people.
This book is Part I of an ongoing series which may never end because there’s so much moral ground to cover and so many people to send to Hell. The main theme of Part I is that what seem like harmless, benevolent acts, are actually manifestations of our sinful nature. Is sentimentality a sin? James Baldwin thought so. How about self-love, is that a sin, is that narcissism re-branded as a virtue? What about self-care, is that a euphemism for selfishness? What’s the hidden meaning behind popular cultural tropes? My aim here is to desecrate the sacred, also known in the Bible as false idols. False idols are everywhere and the worship of them is a sign of depravity.
The title, Paradise Frost, is a play off of John Milton’s literary classic, Paradise Lost, which gives us Satan’s perspective on his predicament and The Fall of humankind. This book combines the thematic content in Paradise Lost with that of Dante Aligheri’s The Inferno, part I of his Divine Comedies. Paradise Frost is a story about Satan and those who’ve unexpectedly joined him in Hell. Biblical stories also figure prominently in Paradise Frost.
To make reading more fun, I wrote in gratuitous and lascivious sex scenes inspired by some of the more grotesque sex scenes in the Bible. No need to read deeply into these scenes for hidden meaning. It’s pornography and it’s in here because sex sells.
And yes, I’m a Christian and I consider this book an exploration of Christian theology.
Enjoy!