Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.
Help, Lord - The Devil Wants Me Fat!
Author: C. S. Lovett
Date: 1977
Discovered at: Goodwill, Springfield, MO
Publisher: El Camino Press, La Verne, CA
The Cover Promises: The devil tends the dessert tray at Denny's.
Representative Quote:
"The idea of being starved didn't originate with your stomach. It came from your MIND. It was SATAN'S IDEA. How do we know? A healthy body doesn't begin to starve until it has gone 40 days without food." (page 37)
"Everywhere you look you see fat Christians," C.S. Lovett complains in Help Lord -- The Devil Wants Me Fat!, the rare diet book to deploy prayers, visualization exercises, and reckless use of the caps lock in a war against Satan. "We have Christians who wouldn't think of lying or stealing or committing adultery unabashedly going around with bulging bellies," he writes, somewhat insensitively.
He opens the book with this illustration of the problem.
This is what sets Lovett apart from the diet-book pack: his belief that there's nothing funnier than a woman embarrassed about her body (try getting on Oprah with that attitude). This might have seemed less cruel to him than it does to us. After all, he argues that obesity among believers is in no way their own fault. 
Instead, it's the result of something much simpler: your helplessness as Satan, the very embodiment of evil, personally reaches out to take command of your appetites.
That should make you feel better, scale lady!
As Lovett puts it, the devil has "unleashed an army of glutton demons on American Christians." Lovett calls food "the most subtle way the devil gets us to defile our bodies" and writes "We head for the cupboard or refrigerator without realizing that we're OBEYING THE DEVIL. From his stronghold he sits back and beams."
Crazy as this sounds, if you swapped every "devil" here with "Archer-Daniels Midland," this would be a best seller at Whole Foods.
So, what can we do about all these fat people we can't help but chuckle at? For Lovett, the first step in any diet plan is to learn to stand up to the devil and his lies.
Here's how it works. Sit around your house until the devil throws a "fiery dart" from the "food stronghold" he has established inside of you. This might have the whiff of the gastrointestinal, but for Lovett these terms are psychological. The devil's "fiery dart" inspires a "food thought" that sends you scrambling to the refrigerator. Lovett points out that this happens most often during commercials.
Once you're darted, give that old devil a piece of your mind!
"You're still seated on the sofa. Don't get up. Close your eyes if you wish. That usually helps when addressing someone in your imagination. Very quickly now ...
'Satan, in the name of Jesus go away. I know what you're up to, but I don't need any food. Take your suggestion and get away from me, for it is written My body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.'
Wow! Does that catch him by surprise! He's stunned!"
Hollering at the air is just the first step in Lovett's plan. The rest of the book lays out a complicated system involving prayer, subliminal weight-loss cassettes, and projection techniques:
One thing to visualize: giantesses chatting at the Arch in St. Louis.
Lovett explains his projection technique with this helpful diagram.
See, there is a computer inside a tiny penis inside your brain. It's job? To spot the flying snakes that attempt to eat your eyes.
Also, you are Conway Twitty for some reason.
Shocking Detail:
But the cornerstone of Lovett's technique is simpler than his charts suggest. In fact, it comes down to two words and a period: stop eating.
He writes, "Fasting is the most powerful attack we can make against the FOOD JERICHO Satan has built in our minds."
Also:
"A ten-day fast can be FUN -- if you do it with Lord Jesus."
Then, for 65 pages he lays out the whys and wherefores of fasting. He points out that Moses twice journeyed to Sinai with no food or water. He suggests that a good fast will destroy Satan's food stronghold and insists "Satan doesn't want Christians discovering the awesome power of a spiritual fast." He explains that "well meaning friends and doctors ... will not only try to KEEP YOU FROM FASTING, but invariably they will try to get you to break it." He reminds us, "Since God designed the body for fasting, it is far wiser for the believer to take God's Word on it over the theories of doctors. ... Besides, the body is SMARTER THAN THE DOCTORS."
To get started, first consult with a Ringwraith.
Don't think you have to deny yourself all pleasures!
Of course, fasting means avoiding meals altogether, which will lead to changes around the house:
"Think of all the times your family will be eating and you will be off by yourself. Spend that time with Jesus."
In short, C.S. Lovett, evangelical minister, argues that American Christians should halt consumption and avoid their families.
Highlight:
The idea of a computer in your brain is common to lunatic '70s self-help books. (Check this Studies in Crap classic!) Lovett opens one chapter by vowing to address that computer directly:
It's kind of like when a singer announces this next song is for the ladies, except with computers and without promises of sexin'. But for some reason the chapter that follows looks just like the others: chatty prose, lots of caps and sketches, lists and type-os, and not a single burst of the 1s and 0s his target demo demands."NOTICE: WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO READ NEXT IS FOR YOUR COMPUTER. THE INFORMATION MUST PASS THROUGH YOUR EYES AND INTO YOUR BRAIN TO GET INTO THE COMPUTER. THEREFORE THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION IS NOT FOR YOUR COMPLIANCE, BUT TO EDUCATE YOUR COMPUTER. SO DON'T REACT AGAINST WHAT YOU READ. YOUR COMPUTER NEEDS THIS INFORMATION IF IT IS TO ASSUME CONTROL OVER YOUR EATING HABITS."
Also, it turns out that the tiny penis with a tiny computer inside it all inside your Conway Twitty head also contains a nude man with no penis at all.
This is intelligent design!
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I found a very cool method of weight loss that actually walks you through changing your motivations about food on a heart level. We all know the truth in our heads, but getting it into our hearts made all the difference in the world for me. I�ve lost 44 pounds so far and it�s pretty easy. You can check it out at the Christian Diet dot com.
I believe any type of body movement besides sitting in one place will cause you to loss weight and always drink about a gallon of water a day
Rock n Roll = Devil's Music
Queen's Fat Bottom Girls = Devil's Advertisement
Freddy Mercury = Devil's Evangelical Representative
If i had to choose between an eternity in Heaven surrounded by pacifists and harp music or sinners listening to Rock n Roll, I'd take hell any day
Religious nuttiness of the past should and must be ridiculed because it reminds us that some of what we're told in our churches today might be crazy too. To the person calling this book an easy target, the name of the blog is Studies in Crap. Of course its easy because its crap! Just remember that much of what preachers say looks like CRAP years later the next time your preacher tells you who should and shouldn't be allowed to get married!!
The presentation is humorous, but I think what this person is getting at is true in a sense.
When young people are starving themselves while they watch a population at large eating itself to death it's clear that we have not tamed our impulses regarding hunger and eating.
I think though, that since this hit digg, the writer has mission accomplished. Made fun of relatively sound sentiments from the past and gotten a pay check.
Congrats?
Didn't you have one a while back about LL Cool J being a satanist? It's all starting to make sense now!
If Satan is the cause of "Big 'Ol Butts", does that mean Jennifer Lopez is the Anti-Christ?
"I'll give you taco-flavored kisses...from Hell!"
40 years old, 40 years backward, and hardcore Christian to boot. Don't you think this is a little too easy?
I love me some self fulfilling prophecy to make it all true. If you act weird, carry around a glass of water, and a 1960s style tape recorder; people are going to try and get you to eat.
My tiny penis/computer brain is much smaller than the man brain pictured, but it's big enough to know that Conway's desire to Lay Me Down is God's will.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
This went from his brain to the Archivsts brain into a computer and then into my brain and then into my brain's tiny computer inside a penis.
Eye of Faith (Wondrous Item)
The Eye of Faith is a rare gem set in a silver circlet. It confers the following abilities upon its wearer:
Enhancement: +6 to saving throws vs. self-awareness
Property: Wearer can cast the following 11th-level Illusionist spells at will: Falwell's Portly Righteousness; Right-Wing Fury; Tenser's Floating Collection Plate.
Property: Wearer is immune to Logic.
Property: As a Free Action, wearer can cast Aura of Hypocrisy, which protects the caster from all attacks and delivers +6d6 Frustration damage to secular humanists, sodomites, communists and mind flayers.
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