Upsetting Day: More Email From God For Teens

It's a bold thing to proclaim yourself a voice of God on earth, but lots of authors take a shot at it. Usually, the tone they go for is calm and pious. The authors of more e-mail from God For Teens imagine the voice of God sounding more like a shirtless drunk guy yelling at a Walgreens cashier.

It's fine to have priests talk about how great God is because that's their whole job, but when it's supposed to be God talking about Himself, it comes off as a little braggy. In the intro to more e-mail from God For Teens, the authors, a mother and son writing team, say that "There are a million wrong ideas circulating about God. But God wants you to have the right idea." Apparently, the "right idea" we should have about God is that he runs Kanye West's Twitter account.

First of all, if anyone sends a teen 247 emails, they need to calm down. No teenager is reading that shit. All you're getting in reply is lol tldr. Not that the teenager being emailed in the book ever does get to reply to the emails or ask God anything directly. That's way too accessible!

This isn't cool teen God having timely teen conversations about why they shouldn't "do full boning down" with prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto, or whatever. This isn't a sexy CW reboot of the Bible where teen Jesus and his twelve hot friends fight demons in a small town while trying to maintain a GPA that lets them also play football. This isn't a diverse rap musical about Pontius Pilate called Pilate. Those are how REAL cool people would try to communicate to teens about Jesus. This book is mainly about a middle-aged man finding the perfect outlet to yell at children.

In case you need some deciphering of the email format, the top of the email is the subject; below that is the Bible quote the email is very, very loosely based on. Then each email is signed off with a special signature, which always sounds like something DJ Khaled would yell before his name in a rap break during a pop song. "Uh-huh, That's me. The Original. DJ KHALED. Your King DJ KHALED. The Ultimate Athlete DJ KHALED. The Creator Of Everything DJ KHALED. It works every time.

What? Telling a teenager that God will help them with their homework seems like something a parent who needed them to quickly go away would say. It makes no sense. Doesn't God have better things to do than teach a high schooler Algebra? He should really fix war first, or at least put Chinese crested dogs out of their misery.

When the book isn't doing its "God as a WWF hype man for himself" bit, it's reassuring the teens reading that they are not losers in a way that strongly implies they are losers.

This starts off pretty strong and then gets lost in a metaphor about why God (creator of Van Gogh, the superhero of saints, the ace with the face from the vacuum of space) doesn't like to help people who look too cool, so they created the reader of the book to be a big weak nerd so people are more impressed when God helps them accomplish literally anything. You're not just a nerd. You're God's special pet nerd!

Look, it's very simple, teen. You suck because God wants you to suck. Thank Him for your weakness. God needed a real jabroni to stand next to so He'd look better by comparison. You know how it is? He fucking thought up the birds! You haven't even built a world!

So the first part of this scenario actually does sound like it would be a lot of fun for the bullies. You know the kid reading this book isn't one of the awesome bullies, living it up while smashing Camp Life into the dust. They've long ago been hoisted up the flagpole by their underwear.

Again, a lot of assumptions here about how much the person reading this sucks—God's like, "Sorry, kid. I know you're not popular or hot... you're bad at sports, you have no athletic talent, you’re not funny, you were born without bones, and with far too much skin... your best friend is an old kazoo you found in the woods and nicknamed Josh, and even Josh doesn't like you that much, BUT...something about God? I'm sorry I lost My train of thought. Did I mention I created Van Gogh yet? Thank Me."

It's comforting to me how the authors of this book knew no teenager had low enough self-esteem to buy it for themselves. The very first page of the book insists that it's a gift because they know their audience is people who don't know teens very well but know they are probably doing something they should apologize to Jesus for.

Also, that thing they need to apologize for is probably sexual in nature. There's so much in this book about not doing sex or thinking about sex. In the spirit of terrible metaphors, sex is compared to marshmallows on a campfire that won't be good if you light the campfire too soon. Then there's a bunch of not-so-subtle implications that God is always watching. ALWAYS, even when you're thinking about touching your ding dong.

And I have to say, as obsessed as this book is about not enjoying sex, it put these two titles together in a way that, I'm sorry, does not seem at all like a coincidence. I didn't photoshop this.

There's no way some pervert didn't catch that in the production process of this book, but no one wants to be the guy at the Christian publishing house that says, "Hey, maybe we shouldn't put DON'T IGNORE THE SPANKING and THERE'S PLENTY MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM right next to each other. Also, while we're at it, you should probably stop calling God 'Daddy' so much."

Tweeting God is a buff Zaddy, also wouldn't be a terrible way to convert people, though. The Internet loves a buff Zaddy so, if that's the direction this book wants to go in, I guess that's fine? I'm just getting a lot of mixed signals right now. Other God signatures I think should be removed from this book include; Your Constant Love Giver (too sexy) and Your Webmaster, www.God.Heaven (too nerdy!) I feel like I legally have to find a way to bully this book now.

If you're wondering where you can get your copy of more e-mail from God For Teens, don't worry! There are plenty of e-mail from God books! There's an entire series. You've got e-mail from God for Men, email from God for Women, e-mail from God for kids, e-mail from God for Grads, e-mail from God for People Who Don't Understand e-mail: The God explains e-mail edition. And so much more!

Personally, I wouldn't recommend this book because I think the most valuable lesson we could teach a teenager is that if anyone sends you 247 emails with subjects like, Trust Me, You're Not A Loser! Who's The Man? And Show Me Love! You shouldn't open those emails. There's nothing good in there for you, and making them believe otherwise sets a bad precedent.

Lydia makes cute, short, little emails on Twitter.