Fucking Day: When God Writes Your Love Story

Couples of average sanity don’t write books together. They’re either unnaturally grounded, or in this article. I’ll tip my hand here. I wouldn’t mock 200 pages of “trade off on chores” and “don’t cheat on birthdays.” We’re on an all-lunatic diet. When God Writes Your Love Story is all you need to ruin your love life.

Not just your marriage. Life. You can fuck up love before, during, and after your first marriage with one book. That’s value.

Democracy has spoken. Those aren’t Coulter landfill numbers. This was a genuine hit in America’s worst book clubs. Before ChristianMingle, there was hell. Or the Ludys.

I’ll do my next six-month marriage right. I’ll walk arm-in-arm with Christ, until he gives me away to my bride, who also entered with Christ. Then I’ll draw my highlighted copy of When God Writes Your Love Story and read the passages that helped me trap her. If she flees, she’s the one.

That might sound harsh. After thirty years of hearing about people’s black friends, I’m overjoyed to type out this sentence: my best friend is a bible scholar. I’m not even fucking with you, we’ve broken laws and commandments for twelve years. I’m now cleared of my obvious, deep-seated, apostate bias.

The cover above’s the current edition. Mine looks like this:

If you’re like me, your first thought was “Thank fuck. That Beetleborgs article was going nowhere.” After that, you thought “I should leave New York before World War 3 kicks off.” Two weeks later, after finishing this article, you thought “Did these maniacs put themselves spooning on the front cover?”

Absolutely. They also grace the back with a more “junior prom” vibe. Alongside their anti-fucking credentials:

Most jacket copy is nonsense, but there’s a bit of truth here. The Ludys speak to youth with pop culture. Specifically, a point-by-point guide to joining the Borg. You can be just. like. them.

To stay pure, I’ll abstain from the easy joke: these two probably fuck. They think they invented it. After they play Twenty Seconds in Heaven, Eric regales other ministers with tales of sex with a willing adult. Sometimes they roleplay as monthly churchgoers, or even Catholics. They hired an exorcist after Leslie did a weird shaking thing, but that problem cleared up.

Either way, When God Writes Your Love Story built a codependent fortress. Today the Ludys overshare in every medium. Take their albums:

While Heavenly Perspective unloads aggressive breakdowns, Faithfully’s post-rock influence shows a mature–nevermind, it's more acoustic warbling about promise rings. There are three gospel rock songs on Earth, and two of them are covers. We mocked Creed for decades of crushing the competition.

Their ministry has gender-specific websites, written in manly grunting and ladylike also-grunting. They’re not great writers. But the presentation’s amazing. I fell in love with Eric’s wordmark:

He’s really proud of it. Variants pop up more often than working javascript.

You see, Godly, Gritty Men repeat themselves. Meanwhile, domestic angels (goddesses are idolatry) live in permanent Hallmark vision:

“Returning” is a great word. It implies the Revelations fandom already got raptured, and we’re rebuilding megachurches from scratch. I assure you that godly women are still plentiful, and bothering tired subway riders. They’re God’s pick-up artists. Leslie writes their lines:

Note that while Eric half-asses a manosphere blog, Leslie has a fucking quarterly magazine. That she charges for monthly. Get it together, man. Hyping up our unstoppable, thrusting manpower is worthless if we get blown out like this. Leslie’s moving half the promise rings in Colorado, could you rev the content engine a little?

Now we’re cooking with Ivermectin. This gem’s from 2021, when saying “vaccine” turned Christmas into December to Dismember.

You might expect a lunatic antivax rant. Nope. Eric doesn’t give a shit about the vaccine or plague. He just thinks arguing’s mean, and we should sit in silent, godly resentment. Which is way weirder. Most anti-vaxxers, if nothing else, want to live. Eric wants less division over the corpse pits. A united house matters more than the roof collapsing.

That’d be a wild attitude to bring into a dating guide, wouldn’t it?

The Ludys take turns writing chapters. Leslie sets the stakes:

Ballsy. I like it. Most non-incel dating books, fundie or otherwise, open with “this advice kinda might work sometimes maybe if the moon is full and you believe in yourself but not too much and you haven’t cried today. Actually, buy another book, this is a lot of pressure.” Leaving an opening for Romanian prison snitches. Instead, Leslie bets on herself. That’s why she has a magazine, and Eric has a slogan.

God damn it.

Those aren’t the first lines of the book. Leslie opens with personal tragedy. Her partner abandoned her in the most callous way possible:

Barbaric. With that pain, you can understand our heroine and adopt her opinions. Meanwhile, Eric establishes himself as Bible camp’s Tucker Max. No, really:

Unreliable narrators are good fun, but I wouldn’t open my dating guide with how much I like lying about dating. Or my cherished childhood memories of lying about dating. Or my lack of guilt for lying about dating to sexually frustrated Christians.

Still, nothing insane yet. But I’d pay to hear conversion therapy chest-thumping. Imagine competing to get closest to sex without going over. They’re playing chicken, but instead of crashing like secular cowards, the losers burn with agnostics and Galileo. This camp rejects both kinds of drag race.

Eric hacks the game: God will pick his wife, so he’s better than all of them. As a bible dungeon camp survivor, I can confirm that this is bigger than Shaq’s first free-throw.

The cracks are forming. I’ll skip a rabbit hole of Aquinas and Jesus lions, and note many Christian thinkers call passively waiting for divine intervention “stupid, take the fucking vaccine.” For comparison, The Screwtape Letters depicted Christianity for people that can spell it.

After establishing themselves as fuck-martyrs, the Ludys crank the oversharing dial until it snaps. Eric wants you to know he’s a loveable dork, and Leslie wants you to know she hates herself. Here’s how they describe themselves in high school:

Troubling. But it does get us to some practical romantic advice:

Sorry, I meant Cold War Saw. Been there. Dating during a leap forward’s rough. My last ex was Minister of Truth, and I had to listen to her talk about catching rats all day. Talk about torture, am I right fellas?

Change-ups are a staple of evangelical madness: you’ll brace for one thread of crazy, and get jumped by another. For example, Eric’s featured video pivots from compassionate homophobia to why God hates Black Lives Matter. But let’s stick with this story.

And that’s why you shouldn’t fuck.

A trusting reader might assume that this book helps Christians meet other Christians. No. Try clubbing in Nashville. The Ludys pull a classic bait and switch: the only lover you’re meeting is God. And he clings.

Godless scum like myself—ad writers, not atheists—have an expression. “Nothing kills bad products like good advertising.”

A relationship guide for abstinence-only types? Golden marketing. They have unused juices leaking everywhere, including public policy. But when readers find “Love Jesus harder” instead of eye contact and deadlifting, they’re going to be pissed. Pissed enough to keep you on the podcast farm team instead of an A-list megachurch.

Everyone buying When God Writes Your Love Story has one thing in common: they’re already Christians. Hardcore Christians, if it wasn’t used. They know how to harmonize until cognitive dissonance taps out. And odds are they’re less prideful than Eric “I was cool” Ludy. This is the shittiest Christian gift since triangle trade.

Until the real stories begin.

Each Ludy specializes in a genre of shitty story. Eric takes the shortest route between a random topic and stating that God is his life’s sole author. You see, Godly, Gritty Men repeat themselves. Leslie’s more about the details: closing your legs, why you should close your legs, and why the anal loophole is bullshit.

Leslie starts us off with the sultry tale of Karen and Scott.

Breaking his everything. You know the story. Tesla autopilot repeats it every day.

That’s nice! Stubborn as all fuck given their established wealth, and probably against two amendments, but nice. Leslie can’t piledrive this into hating herself.

To be clear: Leslie did not fuck. Self-flagellation over some kind of over-the-pants handjob fuels her half of the book. Blackwater veterans carry less guilt than Leslie. No blindfolded birthday footjob is worth this turmoil. I hope Leslie finds the light conscience of an arms dealer.

I hate to be a Godly, Gritty Man, but Leslie left out how Karen and Scott met. Came together. Made God write their love story. What kind of animal wastes a voluntary virgin’s time? At least pick-up artists acknowledge why you bought their sexual assault manual. I’d honestly respect a chapter of bible study pickup lines more.

Let’s get a story from Eric. Preferably recounting college again. His blind wandering through the maze of self gives the book character.

Cute. But I don’t trust Eric anymore. I know we’re half a page away from 2 Passion 2 Christ. Or a press release clarifying “not born yet.”

Preemptive cuckrage. After three decades around rural Baptists, suburban academics, and downtown weeaboos, that's still a new one. I’ll give Eric this: an infidelity version of Minority Report has potential. He may have to write it from a cell.

Then Eric drops this hammer of a simile:

If this were my book, I’d peel back one layer of metaphor. “Would you eat a mango someone else fucked, reprobate? If so, for how much? Here’s my web store.”

The anti-thought equation drags on a bit, since Godly, Gritty Men are out of shit. Especially before lunch. If Eric had written this volcel parable after a sandwich, it’d be about button-mashing the game of love.

The Ludys wax on about loving each other. But maybe, just maybe, these are the worst two complexes to put together. It’s like Judge Dredd dating someone that thinks they deserve to be shot in the face.

Much of the book goes on like this. Young Leslie weeps over almost-fucking, and Young Eric says “my wife better not be fucking right now.” The already-Christian reader learns nothing. Then, a miracle: Leslie busts out a story about a Christian couple meeting. What they did. Where it happened. What they overcame.

It’s the most worthless part of the book. And familiar.

“Eric, Honey-bundle? What’s in New York? Other than Bolsheviks and premarital jazz. There’s a big clock, right? Let’s get that in there. Details help readers understand why whores burn forever.”

John’s been trading letters with a mysterious, unseen damsel. Decent gimmick. It took rom-coms decades to recover from the war. That said, this approach only works if you have kidneys to spare.

Again, just “Germany.” I could see Eric scraping his brain for World War II trivia, before flying into his nightly rage over Leslie’s hand-virginity. But I expect better from a magazine editor.

Back in New York, John finds an old poor instead of a proper brideslave. He asks her to dinner anyway, because he’s down awful. This might sound like history’s first catfish, but Helen of Troy was Cassandra’s preemptive payback for being ignored.

In short, never fuck. You should be thoroughly committed before knowing if you can touch without vomiting. Otherwise, you get opera murders.

Call me old-fashioned, but I save the mind games for date three. Rushing into emotional abuse is a rotten mango move. Save the impersonators for the altar, and focus on the Great Gaslighter of your soul: God.

Now, if your soul is intact, you may have heard John Blanchard’s story before. At mass, or a pale dinner party, or from talking vegetables. It’s pretty thoroughly plagiarized. But not from the Ludys, nonfiction, or even general legend. It was published, sold, and marketed as fiction in “Appointment With Love” in 1943 with sane adult prose. Pastor Joe McKeever, a smarter Bible nerd, dug it up.

The Ludys aren’t content to kill love with stock material. Lies that reduce fucking are on the table. The 2004 reprint probably says condoms fund yellow cake uranium. And again, it worked. This book sold like unfucked mangos. When God Writes Your Love Story is solely responsible for white population decline.

Now, knowing all the above, here’s a fun game. Guess how old the Ludy’s were when they met. You know, the couple that told you to accept a lifetime of dry dick, if necessary, in the name of the “sweeter song” (“She Bop”/“Longview”/“Masturbatin’ Time”). The couple where the wife still whips herself for unwed phone sex. The couple that stole this whole purity schtick from Joshua Harris, the Velvet Underground of proud nonfuckers. Pick two numbers.

Sixteen and twenty-one. You know who was sixteen.

My lawyer’s gone missing since the CCP article, so I’ll duck grooming jokes. But the Ludys started their normal, healthy, non-libelous relationship before Leslie could hate herself in a voting booth. They paired off before I learned to crash a car. We waited longer for a good Batman game than the Ludy’s did to fuck. And they want you to wait.

Anyway, that’s Eric and Leslie’s tandem plagiarism exercise. The first abortion by evangelical ministers, aside from countless others. But in print, it stands alone.

Alright, there’s one sequel.

Oh no. Oh no no no how

Leslie. Eric. I’m not really “in the market” for a nemesis. The mayor and I have a thing. But you’re really sweet, and you’ll make a SomethingAwful alumnus really happy one day.

I’ll text you later.

I’ve avoided one angle: “they must be cheating.” There’s too much money at risk. Eric and Leslie don’t need each other like Thelma and Louise. Eric and Leslie need each other like t.A.T.u. The relationship is the product. Any alimony would be half of nothing. When Erik dies first of arm-wrestling and bacon grease (as written in Deuteronomy), Leslie has to pivot this entire empire into Chastity 4 Widows or starve.

In short, this book’s essential. Every couple should read it. If you both laugh, enjoy heathen rutting. If you both nod, congratulations on your fourth child. If you have different reactions, flee. Life’s too short to grieve one handstand twerk* forever.

*If you can handstand twerk, call me.

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