Learning Day: If God Loves Me, Why Can’t I Open My Locker?

Lorraine Peterson has a brilliant question.

Well, if your audience can’t read. Funny strategy for a high school book. Her audience read Everything About Whales for class and Everything About Orcs: Vol I-III for kicks. Take a stock swipe at media literacy here, this title’s still patronizing to anyone reading Lorraine for free. She writes like CS Lewis isn’t two shelves away.

Again, brilliant. At least for this material:

Numbers guides you through hard times, if you’re an early-game cleric (tabletop games get wild, I doubt Jesus hit 15 before his three-day weekend) or loitering in their entourage. Lorraine recaps God torching some Negative Nancies for back-talking Moses. Or, based on my time with the Old Testament, because they were there. I’m here for her spin on the present:

Evergreen madness. When dad whines about Reagan dealing on company time, he tempts a surprise meteor. When you bitch about your school’s vitamin-rich mold, skip the bus ride home. God’s already flattened your block into New Gomorrah. Reflect on gratitude in your new tent, until the followup meteor hits.

Amidst the usual premarital suspects, Lorraine holds bonus contempt for downers. Don’t think about that too long. While whiners don’t quite earn their own layer, they get box seats. The Old Testament supports her stance, along with everything that gets you the chair.

Lorraine’s insights come with enrichment activities. Good stuff: drills help reinforce new languages and shames. I’ll join in. First, the list:

Then, the prayer:

See why the title’s art? Imagine buying plain-old Devotionals for Teens. A quality manifesto title proves you’re here to play, and a psychiatrist isn’t. After all, voracious readers judge books by their cover everyday. If you disagree, your cover’s skinnyfat.

I’m obsessed with every version. Here’s the 2019 edition, with updated references to Harambe or some shit. We’re sticking to the OG jabs at pizza and Transformers, but I you should know it exists.

If God Loves Me, Why Can’t I Get My Locker Open? lobs an imaginary idiot’s parry back at Lorraine. It’s been a while since our last Mobius Strawman. They’re rare, unless you read me often. They’re also a sign of brilliance and virility, but most associate them with stupid assholes. Most are rude. Stop doing that, most.

I’ll stop ribbing the cover. Someday. For now, enjoy a few alternates.

I’m done.

To my two readers in the megapews: do the unsaved sound like her impression? Deepest apologies. All the iron maidens and biosphere annihilation finally track. That is a bullyable cadence. There’s probably a chapter about how many heathens fit into one locker.

If you’re not familiar with Lorraine Peterson, neither was I. But your most traumatized friends are experts. The ones that won’t answer door-to-door evangelists unarmed. Lorraine’s hip tracts did numbers in the eighties, and there are over twenty of them. She doesn’t have twenty complete thoughts, but Bethany House Publishers found three fonts.

The third cover’s me. As for the last: this shot was once Penn State’s worst shame.

Mission accepted.

Lorraine’s got fifty weeks of glurge and ten pages of brain. My kind of mentor. I’ll grab a topic from the self-help fishbowl, and see where she takes us.

Homeroom breakups?

“Was not your idea.” The Lord knows you’ve got zero game and got dumped like a body. Lorraine doesn’t even entertain you leaving someone. Christ’s here to Move in After Completion.

There’s the hard sell, after two whole sentences on your pain. Fitting for the anti-complaint lobby.

I’d love to be better. I wish my phases following Christ, Jagermeister, or Edward Bernays made me kinder. But rebounding into abstinent fundamentalism makes me cackle. It’s the Sunday strip caricature of romantic failure. People do it every day, but they also slip on bananas and take cream pies facefirst. Forbidden pastimes for rebound fundamentalists.

Welp, Lorraine’s beating bald TikTok. If that doesn’t scare you straight, nothing will. Getting outflanked from the left by a teen-hunting pastor isn’t my hell, but only because I read about scaphism (“the boats”) young. Fanciful stuff, but there’s a chance it was real.

Hard to imagine a worse use of his time. Other than meeting his newer fans.

That’s Lorraine on sex. On to fresher ground.

I…what? Who says…what?

We got here faster than I thought. This might be an endangered maniac species soon, as white nationalism pivots into “all internal, all the time.” But let’s enjoy a not-fucking specialist in their prime.

Does this look like a preseason game, Lorraine? This is your debut not-fucking tract. Don’t just point at the big book. Tell us our loins will melt into spiders. You don’t have to be right or coherent, but you’ve got to say something. When you stop Monday’s youth sermon at “damn, they’ve got a point,” you’ve started a black metal band. This is the sloth that Eric Ludy outperformed.

I think we can all relate:

Lorraine’s speeding into Crazytown. Let’s jump to the next batch of steamy abstinence trivia, in case her mood improves.

We’re getting philosophical. That’s where most spiritual manuals start, but Lorraine thought kids would get bored.

Christ, Jesus gets needy. Still, we should see things through.

Maybe jumping right to sex is bullying-adjacent. I’ll try Lorraine’s hand on another topic.

Bandai’s, based on the model kits in my adult home. But I’d love to hear Lorraine’s answer. My Confederate darksign hasn’t gone off in hours.

I might frame this paragraph. As a cultural garbageman, you stop noticing vanilla racism. It’s the innovators that stand out. Anyone with a Twitter account or Senate seat can say “slavery wasn’t that bad.” Innovators say “Chattel slavery sounds like a rough weekend. One almost as bad as life without Jesus.”

Alright, I spoke in bad faith earlier. Lorraine doesn’t downplay slavery. She thinks it’s dope with the right management. And like all slaves, it’s a choice we make:

Undercard sermons get trippy. You can both know exactly where they’re headed, and have no idea what the fuck they’re talking about.

If there’s one thing teens struggle with, it’s finding self-hatred. I’m glad Lorraine comforted the stable generation maintaining nuclear silos today.

In short, you’re powerless, but the choice is yours. Though if Jesus watches freeway dashcams with me, I’m sure he can handle your porn.

This has more leading than question.

For kids that genuinely believe, reading this must feel like cosplaying Job. “Another wonderful morning. Time to read what a taxpaying adult thinks about me cranking off. Unless God’s merciful, and the Youth Elevation Center’s burned down.”

Sounds like someone couldn’t hold their cocaine.

Anyway, enough fucking around. We have a Mobius Strawman to answer.

This shit—

Hold on, more fucking around. You need to see the art. Here’s someone planning unwed sweatshirt theft.

Lorraine bets some sketches of sinners will dilute the nerve-shredding dick pain of her prose, and yup. Good call, Lorraine. This owl’s above a list of reasons to hate yourself:

Insulting them would short-sell the joy they gave me. I will say that the cartoonist had the dumbest prompts possible, and thinks they’ll go to hell if they go subtle. Here’s someone hiding from Christ’s love.

“Love” might be a chainsaw.

Back to lockers. I haven’t looked forward to anything this much since Oreo Coke. Or premarital sex, maybe. I really like sugar.

This question’s growing on me. Why did God let Masterlock defeat me? To this day? Did I use my Mom’s birthday, or my sister’s? Fuck!

Not a bad start. You sway people on faith with barrages of insults, right? That’s what I’ve assumed/lived until now. There’s a long line of “Why God allows plague” literature, but Lorraine isn’t touching that shit. She’s too busy writing to read.

Not quite closing the plague gap. Is Lorraine a plant? God loves me because his rules say God loves me? Why open this door? I didn’t even question this point before, and now it’ll ruin Christmas.

Though Lorraine’s lost to her own softball question, there’s a solid lesson here. Anyone can write a Biblically accurate bestseller. But perhaps you shouldn’t.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Mort, who might not have died on the cross for our sins, but is still pretty cool. I guess.