Spurred on by his viewing of pre-dawn television, 41 year-old printer salesman Andrew Smithers has found God. Smithers says that the conversion process began at 12.00am Wednesday with the Channel Ten chat show Face to Face. “At first I thought it was just an informative discussion of world events conducted by people I could relate to,” says Smithers. “But I soon realized there was more to it. They kept talking about a very special man with an important message for us all, and that man wasn’t Anthony Robbins.”
Spurred on by his viewing of pre-dawn television, 41 year-old printer salesman Andrew Smithers has found God. Smithers says that the conversion process began at 12.00pm Wednesday with the Channel Ten chat show Face to Face. “At first I thought it was just an informative discussion of world events conducted by people I could relate to,” says Smithers. “But I soon realized there was more to it. They kept talking about a very special man with an important message for us all, and that man wasn’t Anthony Robbins.”
Initially resistant to matters spiritual (his only contact with a higher power being stipulated by his local chapter of A.A.), Smithers began to ask himself some challenging questions.
“I’d been wrestling with feelings of loneliness and inadequacy for years, which I always attributed to weak abs. But this new schedule of high-quality programming let me know that God has a plan for us all. He seemed to be calling me to lie on the couch at 1 a.m., eating a jumbo-sized bag of M & Ms.” Soon, Smithers’ nights were filled with writing cheques to surgically altered American evangelists; his days with low-productivity work.
What started with insomnia and self-loathing became a journey of self-discovery, beginning at midnight each night and ending only with the final credits of Benny Hinn Ministries. “It seems like a contradiction that God occupies the same timeslot as The George Foreman Grill and reruns of Margaret Cho’s sitcom,” says Smithers, “But then combining rap, rock and soul into one hit music act seems like a contradiction too. And that doesn’t stop Christian ad sensation DC Talk.”
Pastor Jim Major, of the Christian Television Association, says the Church sees television as a valuable recruiting tool. “With dwindling congregation numbers, anything that can reach a wide audience is useful to us. Although in this case we have to settle for something that reaches an audience of semi-employed losers.”
