Literature / Hell Is A World Without You

"Sublime. Hilarious. Endearing." — Kirkus Reviews

"Nobody chooses to be indoctrinated, huh?"

—Bobbi

Hell Is a World Without You is a 2024 Coming of Age Story by Jason Kirk, a sports journalist and co-host of the Shutdown Fullcast.

Isaac, a Hormone-Addled Teenager and lifelong member of conservative American Evangelical churches, experiences a four-year Crisis of Faith, bit by bit. While dealing with questions of whether his deceased father is presently boiling in a very literal Hell, Isaac also contends with his far more zealous older brother, regular adolescent anxieties, a full suite of constant temptations, and an interior voice cruelly upholding The Church's indoctrination. (Also, there are lots of church youth group jokes, sex jokes, and jokes that are about both of those things at once.)

Slowly, Isaac assembles a Family of Choice composed of fellow church misfits, plus a few classmates from public school. They begin to fight back against their own programming, seeking many varieties of Forbidden Love. This includes rebellions as serious as learning to reinterpret The Bible in defense of people marginalized by the church, but of course it also includes romance between members of differing religious classes and getting away with hookups while at church events.

Set shortly after the Turn of the Millennium amid The Internet's rapid evolution, Emo Music, and The War on Terror, the novel is filled with period-specific pop culture ranging from nearly forgotten Christian Metal bands to omnipresent fixtures like The Lord of the Rings movies (and their effects on youth pastors who'd already never met a story they couldn't turn into a strained and cringe-worthy Christ allegory).

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The book contains examples of:

• Against My Religion: In addition to the obvious things forbidden by the Ten Commandments, various Christian characters are barred from secular music, Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, a football video game that features 16-bit cheerleaders, Pokémon, the Christian pop singer Amy Grant, public-school health class, etc.
• All Men Are Perverts: According to the men who instruct these adolescent characters, "God had designed men to always look" at women. Thus, in order to prevent boys from turning those unavoidable looks into actions, girls are held responsible for ensuring those looks never happen to begin with.
  Caleb: "Girls can't wear shorts, only capri pants? Capri pants are hot, dummy! Astronaut suits would be hot!"
• Answer to Prayers: After hundreds of pages' worth of desperate pleas that fail to deliver the advertised benefits, it's revealed that Sophie once prayed for Isaac at 1:39 a.m., the exact moment at which he turned away from his intents to commit self-harm.
• As the Good Book Says......: Large portions of the novel revolve around the theological grapplings between committed church elders and their wavering youths, some of whom have won prizes for their command of biblical trivia. Two climactic moments hinge on Isaac vs. Eli in an extremely heated debate about the whereabouts of their father's soul and Sophie's interpretation of Jesus' commandment: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."
• Beach Episode: Multiple stretches feature underlying excitement about upcoming retreats to the beach (along with dread about those retreats' inevitable romantic scandals).
• Big Brother Mentor: Josiah, Amir, and Timmy fill this role for Isaac, who passes his wisdom (such as it is) along to the Calebs. In the group at large, Sophie is unwittingly declared "the den mom."
• Cain and Abel: The (almost always loving, from certain points of view) disputes between Isaac and his older brother, Eli, are framed as following "the Bible's rivalries between brothers. Cain vs. Abel, Ishmael vs. Isaac, Jacob vs. Esau, and Joseph vs. everybody (and that was just Genesis)."
• Caught Up in the Rapture: Raised on a constant diet of The End of the World as We Know It "prophets" like Hal Lindsey and paranoid works like the Left Behind series, these kinds don't just believe there will come a day when Jesus snaps away all good Christians — at one point, Isaac and Josiah even believe they've already been left behind.
• Character Narrator: Isaac tells the story in past tense from the vantage of "all these years later," with occasional bits of present-tense language functioning like vivid memories flooding in. The narrator is sometimes a First-Person Smartass about his younger self.
• Chick Tracts: The over-the-top evangelism pamphlets surface when Isaac recalls a tract about all of Heaven watching as a man's life is assessed on Judgment Day. While then jerking off, Isaac laments his own belief that millions of dead saints are stuck watching him jerk off.
• Christian Fiction: In addition to books like the Left Behind series, Isaac recalls Evangelical-market characters like Gerbert, Psalty the Singing Songbook, and VeggieTales. The fiction that plagues him most: the impending spiritual doom in the novel This Present Darkness by Frank Peretti, "the Christian Stephen King," according to one character.
• Christian Rock: From heartfelt CCM playlists to jokes about which Evangelical bands are ripoffs of secular bands, this novel is loaded with alternative Christian music — usually played right alongside the secular music that these kids are sneaking past their parents. Isaac and Sophie favor Christian Metal bands like Underoath (well, Christian at the time, at least), PG praises bands like MXPX for (controversially) ascending from the Evangelical market onto a secular label, a crowd gathers in an effort to convert Alexa from secular nu metal to anything Evangelical, and one of the Calebs writes raps "about Jesus battle-rapping Satan to death, every Christian rapper's first song idea."
• Christianity is Catholic: Upon visiting a Catholic church, Isaac ponders why so many more horror movies are set in Catholic churches than in Protestant churches. He also considers the well-known concept of Catholic guilt, a term that seems to overlook his own Christian guilt.
• Converting for Love: Years after Isaac hopes to convert Bobbi and then Alexa (partly so that he could potentially date them without breaking any rules against dating non-Christians),  he loses his own faith and thus faces a breakup with Sophie, who's also been raised on those same rules. Near the end, she confesses to having hoped he'd re-convert.
• Corrupt Church: After 9/11, one fairly benign church goes all in on conservative culture-war stuff, seeing its attendance boom as it adds morning services, builds a larger sanctuary, gifts its pastor a $50,000 car, and plans to launch satellite churches in nearby towns, all while barely keeping up with a previously established nearby megachurch's exorbitance.
• Cue the Sun: Years prior, Isaac's father died while driving toward a blinding sunrise. Isaac, who's called "a night owl" by his mother, then experiences a cathartic epiphany while releasing his fears of all-consuming fire and gazing at a beautiful beach sunrise.
• Cure Your Gays:  After Josiah is outed, he's sent to "conversion therapy" for a few months, until he's able to check himself out upon turning 18. Along the way, he comes to consider himself "ex-gay," planning to commit to "monk-mode" celibacy. Isaac, Sophie, and Alexa, who've concluded the Bible actually doesn't forbid homosexuality, nevertheless encourage him to seek romantic relationships — and thus actually cure the gay.
• Cute Bookworm: Isaac's conception of Sophie, a Tolkien nerd who learns semi-heretical beliefs from not only the public library, but also her uncle's collection of Christian books.
• Darkest Hour: Five candidates, all of which are resolved by You Are Not Alone:
  • When freshman Isaac, plagued by guilt about whether his evangelism efforts are backfiring and leading people away from salvation, feels drawn toward the kind of self-harm that might've killed his father.
  • When sophomore Isaac finds himself torn from his best friends because the gang had come to Josiah's defense after the pastor's son had been caught hooking up.
  • When junior Isaac ends his mini-crusade against alcohol by stealing a case of beer and binging until he passes out, driven by the notion that he'll somehow drink his way into Hell alongside his father.
  • When senior Isaac recovers from suffering a gunshot during a theological dispute only to have a weeks-long meltdown, lashing out against everything that'd ever configured him into the kind of kid who suffers gunshots during theological disputes.
  • When technical-adult Isaac finds his seemingly inevitable breakup with Sophie at least as painful as all that eternal-damnation and existential-panic stuff.
• Defiled Forever: Not only does one youth pastor (and all the rest of pervasive True Love Waits/I Kissed Dating Goodbye/Silver Ring Thing purity culture) teach these adolescents that premarital sex is functionally "the only truly permanent sin," most of these characters believe it, punishing themselves for "squandering their hearts" and ruining their future marriages. (As multiple characters realize, this worldview is always harshest on the young women.)
• Diablo II: Of the many video games discussed by these characters, this one proves the most important. Isaac determines the game's ending, when Diablo's defeat releases a soul that'd been held captive within the fiend's body, to be a compelling metaphor for a theological system in which no one is ever truly damned forever.
• Disappeared Dad: Isaac's opening line: "I didn't know whether my dad had spent the past 2,360 days in eternal conscious torment, but I knew I wanted to play pickup football." Later, we learn the beloved Isaac Sr. died in a car wreck, possibly while drunk and/or possibly due to depression.
• The Dragon: Eli is the story's primary antagonist, though he's also just "the attack dog" for someone much more powerful.
• Easy Road to Hell: This trope's explanation page ("Swear once... HELL! Steal food to feed your family... HELL! Think lustful thoughts... HELL!") sounds almost exactly like the inside of Isaac's head.
• Emoticon: Characters stay in frequent touch via AOL Instant Messenger, a turn-of-the-century chat service. They type in roughly the same ways as current teenagers do, with lots of :)'s and LMAO's and passive-aggressive song lyrics.
• Everytown, America: Though the setting is technically suburban Pennsyltucky, with a handful of references to hockey and maples and Penn State, it's only a couple word changes away from being set somewhere in just about any other state.
• Evil Stole My Faith:  Isaac's long-simmering religious conflicts erupt all at once, following his final Innocence Lost showdown with Eli. "My prefabricated mind had never been mine. Whenever pieces like the Rapture stopped fitting, my skull had reverberated with regret. Having to believe Christians are morally superior, being gay is bad, science is fake, murder by Republicans is cool, and on and on? Those pieces slipped away, too. The day Hell became bullshit, I felt an earthquake, and then came Eli's Wormwood meltdown. As smoke spewed through clouds of ash, I wondered what remained."
• Face–Heel Turn: Early on, Josiah explains how pro wrestlers are able to play good guys or bad guys, depending on the storyline: "They don't care who gets cheered, just that butts are in seats." Later in that chapter, his father (Pastor Jack) expresses worries about his church's attendance: "I fear I'm pulling punches instead of getting butts in seats."  And shortly after 9/11, Jack indeed pivots from "we must radiate love, now more than ever" to "no more Mr. Nice Church!"
• Femininity Failure:
  • Isaac's single mother frequently worries about whether she can balance her career and raising a boy in a patriarchal world that insists men should lead households. Lots of Single Parents Are Undesirable going on.
  • Sophie, the girl who's been trying the hardest to obey dress codes, modesty mandates, and chastity vows, all while dolled up in curls and dresses while helping out at church, breaks down and reveals she's tormented by "whether I'm too girly or not girly enough" for a system that blames "girl bodies" for everyone else's sins.
• Fire and Brimstone Hell: Believed by most characters to be extremely literal and always raring for fresh meat, with nobody standing in the way except born-again Christians (who themselves are often worried that they'll go to Hell as well, if they can't save anyone else from it).
• Five Stages of Grief: "They say grief's a process," Isaac wonders at one point, still yet to deal in any way with his father's passing. "Have I done all of it? Any of it? Am I supposed to feel something? Anything? Ever?"
• Former Teen Rebel: While various Christians love recruiting non-believers by sharing their own "thrilling testimonies about Jesus lickety-split saving them from lives of theft, arson, and even agnosticism," Isaac's often surprisingly open-minded mother sees her younger self in his friends and strives to actually empathize with them, especially the most notorious troublemaker, Alexa.
• Generational Trauma: Isaac Jr. openly fears ending up like Isaac Sr., even while treasuring pleasant memories and good lessons.
• Give Me a Sign: Isaac regularly requests "visions or voices, anything that'd verify" God's acceptance of his devotion.
  • During an epiphany, a sleep-deprived and otherwise giddy Isaac marvels at the glories of nature: "Why plead for signs when we're surrounded by wonders?"
• God Is Flawed: Despite the belief by many Christians that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly moral (and despite the assumption by non-believers like Bobbi that all Christians believe all these things at all times), Sophie envisions "a God who's not one flawless being, but webs of goddesses so curious about humanity, they incarnated as an oppressed Jew."
• God-Is-Love Songs: "They sing about Jesus like he's their boyfriend," Alexa snickers upon hearing Christian music, making an observation that the churchier characters know all too well.
• Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Anti-abortion moments include Isaac playing a Christmas-pageant demon whose mission is to abort Baby Jesus, Isaac's memories of being told to participate in rallies at clinics, and abortion remaining a sticking point even for characters who are otherwise challenging their beliefs.
• Group Hug: This "relentlessly affectionate" group of church kids shares every type of hug, from the mid-trauma group hug through rebellious front hugs, delivered during one youth pastor's side-hugs-only era.
• He-Man Woman Hater: One youth pastor, dubbed "Dave-Tony," leads a Bible study that forbids the use of biblical translations with gender-neutral pronouns. "Coincidentally, Dave-Tony's group was almost entirely boys," Isaac notes.
• Hell Seeker: Isaac's empathy for the allegedly damned eventually extends to him trying to drink himself into Hell — and then, having failed at that, deciding to live as if we all end up in the same place anyway.
• Hermit Guru: Miss Esther, a church matriarch whose service precedes the Pastor Jack regime, lives alone in the woods near the sanctuary and is revered by the youth group as a wise, kind grandmother figure.  Near the end of her life, she teaches Isaac about a group of Appalachian Christians who deny the existence of Hell, opening his eyes to other Christian traditions that have long taught the same.
• Hijacked by Jesus: Youth pastors are capable of turning literally anything into a Christian parable. As mocked by one youth-grouper: "Teens, know who can change your … final destination?"
• Homoerotic Subtext: Boys who are taught to never touch girls routinely fall asleep in cuddle piles on the same couch, call each other "apocalypse husbands," and perform "gay like Johnny Knoxville"-style wrestling.
• Hope Is Scary: When Isaac and Sophie agree to leap together into a world in which nobody goes to Hell forever, they believe that they'd better be right, or else they're risking their own souls in the process.
• Hopeless Suitor: For a while, Isaac is simultaneously in love with nearly every feminine person he perceives, including his impossible crushes on an older camp counselor and the actress Halle Berry.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: From the first chapter onward, blatantly the reason most of these people are putting up with this treatment, no matter how many times they try to tell themselves otherwise.
  Isaac: "Why was I listening to somebody I could no longer stomach, if I was allowed to leave for another church? Wait, you're really asking? All my friends were there. Duh."
• Important Haircut: One girl shaves her head as a display of solidarity with a cancer-stricken elder, though we also learn this haircut might've been a frantic attempt to become less attractive and thus less likely to lead anyone toward lust. And, since it's Sophie, we also realize her short hair relates in some way to what the adults describe as her "tomboy phase."
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: A chorus of six youth group knuckleheads named Caleb, all shaped like rectangles and usually only distinguishable by their varied skin tones, is often identified as "the Calebs." Collectively, they are The Baby of the Bunch.
  • The church girls are usually more distinct, but still share the middle name Grace, making "the Graces" a shorthand for their cohort.
• In Mysterious Ways: The hand-wavey answer to any Sunday schoolers' questions that are too difficult for an adult to answer.
• Inner Monologue: Isaac is hounded by a voice in his head, one he believes to be the Holy Spirit's, that scolds him with warnings of "REGRET!" for every unorthodox thought.
• Inspiring Sermon: Sermons inspire various characters to seek salvation, to pledge rededication to the cause, and to sign virginity pacts.
• Kung-Fu Jesus: Obviously, the Calebs create Jesus in a pro wrestling video game and have him beat up Satan. And while pondering the story of the Harrowing of Hell, an apocryphal tale about Jesus descending in order to conquer Satan, Isaac wonders, "Jesus said to love enemies! Isn't that love more powerful, the more hateable the enemy?"
• Like Brother and Sister: Isaac and Alexa declare this relationship status to each other, party Bonding over Missing Parents.
• Local Hangout: Whenever these kids aren't at church (which includes mischievous loitering after-hours), they're probably at the Pizza Hut buffet or on Isaac's basement couch.
• The Lord of the Rings: Set during the releases of all three movies, this novel includes a character who's read even The Silmarillion, annual debates about whether Gandalf or someone else is the more Christ-like figure (don't forget about Arwen), and a thread of "I am glad you are here with me, here at the end of all things" throughout.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Alexa, the cigerette-smoking queen bee of Isaac's high school, ruthlessly criticizes nearly every adult in her vicinity, delivers about half of the novel's F-words, and encourages church kids to get in much more trouble. At the same time, she adores her dorky-ass found family and is a Mama Bear in defense of younger kids, her friends, and her father, a military veteran battling addiction and PTSD.
  Alexa: "All that Hell shit isn't just afterlife panic. It's excuses to abuse people now, like addicts and victims need more bad shit. Let's create middle-school self-haters! Then call them sluts who'll get boys damned! Because we're the only way outta Hell, everyone better agree with us on everything. Hell is a world without God? Hell is a Christian president bombing Iraqi babies!"
• Lovable Nerd: Not just Sophie. Bobbi — Isaac's classmate who loves anime, role-playing games, and astronomy — is the first girl he ever attempts to flirt with for real (by inviting her to church so that she can convert to his religion and eventually marry him, of course). He then learns she's an atheist and a lesbian.
• Love Epiphany: Isaac spends months plainly in denial about his feelings for Sophie, the girl he believes to be too morally pure for him. After he realizes it in a thunderstruck moment, he condemns himself for risking her defilement.
• Make-Out Kids: At every opportunity. Almost always followed by spiritual guilt for one or both participants.
• Male Band, Female Singer: PG is the frontwoman of a series of rock bands that have varying names, genres, and levels of spirituality, but always seem to be staffed by various Calebs.
• Martyrdom Culture: Before and after Columbine, Christian youths in Protestant and Catholic subcultures were encouraged to become as brazenly outspoken as the ancient Christian martyrs whose violent deaths had been celebrated for millennia. Isaac encounters this in Christian books, music videos, and sermons.
  Isaac: "So millions of children understood this with all our hearts: You're nobody 'til somebody kills you."

• Men Don't Cry: So internalized by Isaac that, years after his father's death, he doesn't know whether he's capable of crying.
• The Mentor: Despite the amount of cruelty projected onto Isaac and his friends by their elders, the list of kind and helpful adults includes Isaac's mother, Timmy, and Miss Esther.
• Mistaken for Terrorist: After 9/11, Isaac's former football teammate, a brown-skinned Middle Eastern boy named Amir, is harassed by classmates. When Isaac stands up for his friend, Amir reveals he isn't just mistaken for a terrorist, but also mistaken for a Muslim. He casually follows his mother's Sikh traditions, but in solidarity with Muslim classmates, he refuses to correct the assumptions of those who persecute him.
• Mixtape of Love:  After being split apart, Isaac and Sophie vow to create mix C Ds "of outrageously secular songs" for each other. He ends up giving her a disc filled with nothing but repetitions of a romantic song by Christian emo band Further Seems Forever.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Characters like Isaac, Eli, Josiah, Sophie, Gabe, Miss Esther, and the Calebs are named after biblical figures.
  • Isaac and Eli complain to each other about the characters they're named after. In the Book of Genesis, Isaac is a child nearly murdered by his father, while in the Book of Kings, the priest Eli is an incompetent father. Later, an epigraph reveals another potential namesake of Isaac's: Saint Isaac of Ninevah, who once prayed to demonstrate a "heart burning for the sake of all creation, for humans, for birds, for animals, for demons."
  • Sophie is in turn also nicknamed after somebody famous, as Alexa dubs her "Corey," as in, "the Boy Meets World nerd who adopts a popular loner." The epilogue reveals this nickname evolves into a name, as the character once called Sophie has come out as demigirl, choosing the name Kori.
• Near-Death Experience: Arguably experienced by Isaac, recovering from a concussion after being attacked by Eli. Isaac glimpses lights and sounds that briefly suggest either Hell or Heaven.
• Not Wanting Kids Is Weird: A norm thrust upon church girls in particular, contributing greatly to Sophie's angst about gender roles.
• The Pastor's Queer Kid:
  • The pastor's son, Josiah, is gay. He's outed after being caught with a couple other guys during a church retreat.
  • Characters sometimes mistakenly describe the pastor's niece as a "pastor's kid." The epilogue reveals she comes out as demigirl many years after high school.
• Peer as Teacher: Having been encouraged to administer lots of extracurricular church activities, several teenagers find themselves in charge of other teenagers — such as when Josiah oversees a "weekly Men's Accountability Group for men ages thirteen through sixteen" or Isaac and Sophie co-found "Video Games Church, a weekly Bible study (with video games)."
• Putting the Band Back Together: Though various groundings and dramas tear the friend group apart, PG never gives up on remaking the fellowship.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: At varying times, religious adults kick Isaac and Alexa out of church, kick Josiah out of his home, and ground (and possibly disown) Sophie for harmless behavior. Beyond those incidents, the gang is composed of kids who don't measure up to certain social expectations at church and/or school.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Among the youth group's adult leadership, the brodacious Timmy serves as the good cop. Later, he returns to encourage his former pupils to continue rebelling against their brainwashing.
• Religious Edutainment: Focus on the Family products like Adventures in Odyssey, Breakaway Magazine, and Brio Magazine are just a few of the supplementary materials meant to be added onto the kids' daily Bible consumption.
• Seven Deadly Sins: "Plenty more than seven, all equally damnable," Eli barks.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Strived for by several characters — though most believe it should only happen after marriage, of course, which leads to teenagers praying to get married by age 17.
• Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: This is basically every other page.
• Sinister Minister: Eli's thunderous voice, imposing frame, and pitiless preaching make him both formidable and effective, while the previously decent Jack turns toward cruel politics, open bigotry, and monetization.
• Shout-Out: Nearly every chapter title is a reference to another work from this time period and/or mishmash of subcultures, including dc Talk, Gladiator, Janet Jackson, Paramore, Street Fighter, Switchfoot, and VeggieTales.
• Smite Me, O Mighty Smiter: Isaac's pleas for divine punishment are never more intense than when he learns Sophie is dating someone else, and thus he simply wishes to be destroyed.
• Slut-Shaming: Roughly half of the things said by youth pastors throughout.
• The Stoic: Usually Josiah, the pastor's son assigned the impossible task of keeping this drama factory in line. He has a few Deadpan Snarker moments, though there's probably a little bit of Tough Leader Façade going on.
• Suspiciously Specific Sermon: Virtually every time Pastor Jack or one of the youth pastors appears on stage, Isaac takes the message personally, usually leading one way or another to him once again doubting his own salvation. Later, Sophie clocks one sermon as being Pastor Jack's way of vaguely defending the shunning of his own son, and Isaac endures Eli's sermon about how it's good, actually, that their father is in Hell.
• Sympathy for the Devil: The Rolling Stones song, whose title is taken at face value by a couple of characters, also serves as one of many paths toward Isaac and company sympathizing with not just fallen angels, but even the nearly murderous Eli.
• The Talk: Never really receiving any sex ed from his late father or his hesitant mother, Isaac pieces together his knowledge from cafeteria chatter, Amir's boastful advice, and just wingin' it.
• Technical Virgin: After a summer fling, Isaac consults a church-kid datasheet that lists "the partial virginity percentages you can retain by doing everything but punani-pounding."
• The Teetotaler: While almost all of these religious characters oppose drinking, Isaac fixates on it as if it's the worst sin of all — since his father might've died while driving drunk.
• Tender Tomboyishness, Foul Femininity: Sophie, a gentle nature-lover who dresses like a homeschooled Avril Lavigne, never uses any language harsher than "monstertrucking." Alexa, an Abercrombie-clad Britney Spears, spits six cuss words during her introductory line of dialogue alone. They are Plug 'n' Play Friends regardless.
• Title Drop: Variations on the title appear several times within the story:
  • Pastor Jack uses it as a version of the phrase "Hell is the absence of God." (A few pages prior, narrator Isaac says, "Sometimes title drops are only partly right," while explaining the movie Armageddon has nothing to do with the biblical Armageddon.)
  • Alexa reinterprets the phrase as referring to hellish things currently taking place on Earth, while Mom seems to view it as describing an afterlife destination devoid of specific loved ones.
  • Isaac finishes the epilogue by telling his unborn child: "If Hell is a world without God, and if we are all breaths of the Spirit, then do you know what I know? Then, beloved, Hell is a world without you."
• Token Religious Teammate: At times, Bobbi is the inverse of this.
• Tragic Villain: Eli is a hard-edged preacher of salvation by any means necessary, but it's mainly because he's haunted by that time he believed he'd renounced Christianity as a teenager, thereby risking his own soul.
• Uptown Girl: Isaac often compares pastor's-niece Sophie to Princess Jasmine and himself, "a fatherless wretch," to street-rat Aladdin.
• Vow of Celibacy: Frequent, but most prominently in the scene when the youths are pressured into signing pledge cards that insist upon "NO KISSING UNTIL WEDDING, NO DATING UNTIL ENGAGEMENT, NO TOUCHING SKIN, and more."
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: If Hell is real, then ruthless evangelist Eli is the only rational person in the whole world, as multiple characters admit.
• With Us or Against Us: "You were born into a system with only two options," Eli preaches, echoing a common lesson. "You can either reject this world entirely, or ride it into never-ending fire."

• Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: Isaac's crew engages in such teenage shenanigans as junkyard paintball, affixing a memento to the ceiling of the sanctuary, and making an annual rite of passage of peeing on the Target in the middle of the night.

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