About those Prayer Lines…
On Sunday mornings across America, somewhere between the commercial for tactical flashlights and the ads for Balance of Nature Fruits and Veggies and SuperBeets, a familiar figure appears on television. He is always smiling. Not a normal human smile—no. This is the smile of a man who has discovered the world’s largest stash of pudding cups and intends to share them with everyone.
Behind him is a stage decorated like the lobby of a Marriott that recently discovered the concept of candles. Soft lighting. Ambient music that sounds like a lullaby for emotionally exhausted Labradors. A fog machine that appears to have been stolen from a middle-school production of The Phantom of the Opera.
And then he begins.
“Friend,” he says, leaning slightly toward the camera with the warm concern of a man selling timeshares in heaven, “Jesus just wants to hug you today.”
Of course He does.
Apparently the Lord of Heaven and Earth—the same Jesus Christ who overturned tables in the Temple, rebuked Pharisees, cast demons into pigs, and warned people about eternal damnation—is now essentially a celestial Mr. Rogers who spends eternity knitting sweaters and whispering affirmations into your ear as you dribble potato chip crumbs on your t-shirt at 11:48 PM on a Thursday.
“Jesus loves you just the way you are,” Pastor Cuddle continues, smiling with the serene confidence of a man who has never read the Sermon on the Mount.
Just the way you are?
Which is strange, because Jesus Himself spent an awful lot of time telling people to stop being the “just the way they are.”
But Pastor Cuddle isn’t worried about that. The modern televangelist has solved the problem of difficult theology by simply deleting it.
Repentance? No.
Transformation? No.
Moral law? Please. That’s negativity.
Instead, the Gospel has been carefully repackaged as a spiritual weighted blanket.
And the pastors who sell it always have the same tone—this breathy, consoling voice that suggests Jesus Christ floats gently through the cosmos giving everyone emotional support.
You half expect the camera to pan over and reveal Christ sitting on a couch saying, “Tell me about your feelings.”
Which would be news to the Apostles, most of whom were eventually martyred for proclaiming the faith. Apparently they died for the message: “God really believes in you.”
At some point the sermon inevitably reaches its climax.
The music swells.
The pastor leans forward.
His voice lowers to a whisper of profound importance.
“Maybe you’re watching tonight,” he says, gazing meaningfully into the lens “and you feel empty inside.”
Statistically speaking, someone somewhere probably does feel empty inside. But Pastor Huggy assures us the solution is extremely simple.
“You can surrender your life to Jesus right now.”
Now, that phrase is interesting.
“Surrender your life to Jesus.”
It sounds dramatic. Noble even. Almost heroic.
But notice that the surrender required here is remarkably painless. It involves neither discipline nor doctrine nor belonging to any visible Church established by Christ. You don’t have to confess sins. You don’t have to learn theology. You don’t have to obey a sacramental system.
All you have to do is call the prayer line.
Yes.
There it is.
The toll-free number appears at the bottom of the screen, glowing with the promise of spiritual customer service.
“Call the number on your screen,” Pastor Huggy says. “Someone is waiting to pray with you.”
Which raises an obvious question.
Why does the infinite God who created the universe apparently require the assistance of a call center in Tulsa?
Somewhere there is a headset-wearing volunteer saying, “Thank you for calling Eternal Salvation Incorporated, how may I assist you today?”
Press 1 if you feel spiritually lost.
Press 2 if you would like encouragement.
Press 3 if you would like to surrender your life to Jesus and also hear about our exciting new devotional mug collection.
And the pastors always assure you that once you say the magic prayer—once you repeat a few sentences after a stranger on the phone—you are officially saved.
Just like that.
Two thousand years of Christian history apparently culminated in the invention of the 1-800 Salvation Hotline.
It’s remarkable the early Church Fathers never thought of this.
Tragic oversight.
The problem here isn’t merely that televangelists are cheesy. America produces many varieties of cheese, and not all of them are dangerous.
The problem is theological.
Christ did not wander the earth hosting spiritual talk shows.
He founded a Church.
Visible. Structured. Authoritative.
-With apostles.
-With doctrine.
-With sacraments.
-With bishops who could trace their authority back to those apostles.
And that Church did not appear in 1987 inside a studio with a fog machine and a praise band named Heaven’s Thunder.
It is the Catholic Church.
In this Church, surrendering your life to Jesus actually means something.
It means conversion.
It means repentance.
It means baptism.
It means confession when you sin.
It means receiving the Eucharist—the Body and Blood of Christ
And it means worshiping a Christ who is infinitely loving but also infinitely serious.
The real Jesus Christ does not float through the sky distributing cosmic hugs and lollipops.
He is the King of Heaven and Earth.
He is the Judge of the living and the dead.
He is the Lamb who was slain.
He is the one before whom every knee shall bow.
Which is, admittedly, a little harder to fit into a 30-second segment between commercials for miracle vitamins and testosterone boosters.
But it has one advantage.
