70's Spiritual Weight Loss

I couldn't resist posting this article from Tim Challie's blog that reviews a classic 70's spoof of a book. It made me laugh many times.

Help Lord--The Devil Wants Me Fat!

Last year I posted a few pictures from the old 70’s classic Soul Winning Made Easy by C.S. Lovett. Recently I came across another of his books, one titled Help Lord—The Devil Wants Me Fat! The book teaches how the devil is able to influence your eating, how to deal with your appetite and how to deprogram yourself from bad eating habits. It is an odd mixture of good and bad, useful information and outright legalism (not to mention poor medical advice).

I enjoy these books as a bit of a guilty pleasure, I’m sure. They’re old, they’re retro and somehow quite amusing.

Here’s how this one starts:

Lovett largely blames overeating and obesity on Satanic activity.

Here’s a great picture of a very Caucasian Adam and Eve. Adam is totally ripped.

One of the best parts of Lovett’s books is that he always has lots of photographs of himself performing the programs he’s come up with (again, see Soul Winning Made Easy). Here he is meditating upon Jesus to see if it’s God’s will for him to undertake a fast.

The heart of the book is a fast. And this isn’t a fast for wimps—it’s 10 days of nothing but water (and heespecially recommends it for pregnant women and says it will cure morning sickness). The purpose of this fast is to take complete control of the flesh. Lovett suggests that for two days you will be hungry but after that your hunger will fade and you’ll be just fine. In fact, you’ll have an increase in energy and certainly an increase in relationship with the Lord.

One strange thing about this fast is that he tells you to spend meal times away from your family. While your family is eating dinner, you are to spend time in prayer and Bible reading.

Here he is enjoying breakfast (or dinner or lunch).

And here he is demonstrating how to tell Satan to go away:

After the conclusion of the fast he introduces a whole section about New Age-style visualization. He says that in order to become thin you have to project an image of yourself at your desired weight into order to develop the faith to actually make it happen.

And then he closes out the diet portion of the book with a section about nutrition, stating that you’ll have to learn to always say “no” to fats and oils, sugars and refined carbohydrates.

The final section of the book talks about evangelism because your fabulous new body, he says, can be a fabulous provoker of conversation. As people declare how good you look, you are to take the opportunity of that conversation to share the gospel. And I guess that takes us full-circle, back to Soul Winning Made Easy.