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Monday, February 22, 2010

Books Useless Books I Have Gotten in the Mail, Part 19: God Made Me Do It

Posted by Paul Constant on Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 3:52 PM

What's the book? God Made Me Do It: True Stories of the Worst Advice the Lord Has Ever Given His Followers by Marc Hartzman.

Why is it useless? I was really excited to get this one in the mail, actually. I thought it would be a funny book—the kind of thing you leave in your bathroom or on the coffee table for occasional browsing—about the stupid things that people do in the name of religion. And that's part of it, for sure. There's a new case on each page, and many of them are Evangelical ministers who get caught with prostitutes and stuff like that. But many of these cases are just clearly psychotic people who hear voices and do awful things. It gets depressing really quickly. One example (of dozens): A man named Clyde cut his brothers' testicles off with a pocketknife because God told him to. This should be bad enough, but Hartzman feels the need to toss off an America's Funniest Home Videos-style one-liner or two with every case. For the man who sexually mutilated his brother? "There were no reports on what God asked Clyde to do with Bob's balls." Um, zing?

Could anyone enjoy this book? I guess people who like to laugh at schizophrenics might enjoy this one, but I'm betting a lot of atheists in the mood for hilarity will buy this book and immediately regret it once they flip to their first self-amputation or sexual assault.

Comments (3) RSS

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I heard on NPR's "This American Life" that in 1963 God told Frank Sinatra Jr's kidnapper a fun idea to make some money.

Posted by Keister Button on February 22, 2010 at 3:59 PM

Books in bathrooms are an abomination.

Posted by Michael Wells on February 22, 2010 at 4:46 PM

I tried to find some nice schadenfreude in this, knowing that if it wasn’t for the universal positive view nearly all cultures throughout history gave to ‘spiritual phenomena’ like hearing voices, it would’ve been much more socially acceptable for these people to get themselves help, and for others to point them in that direction… but yeah, it’s just sad.

Posted by OuterCow on February 23, 2010 at 9:06 AM