Growing Pains Star Wants you to Meet a Special Man

As a child of the late 80s, I watched most every episode of Growing Pains. Not because it was good, but because it was on. Even back then, we kids knew it was a cheap knockoff of Family Ties. Which truth be told, was not exactly a TV masterpiece.

But where has the show’s star been since then?

I vaguely knew that Kirk Cameron had found Jesus. And had become not just a Christian, but a pretty fringe Evangelical Christian.

He’s no longer famous, but is “famous” in the Evangelical world. He’s the star of the “Left Behind” movies. You never heard of them?

Long story short: In one moment all the world’s Christians get sucked back up to heaven leaving piles of clothes all over the place and causing car-wrecks, now pilot-less planes to crash, etc. After that, the people “left behind” have to battle the anti-Christ who appears as a powerful and charismatic leader from the UN (that’s how you know it’s fiction) bent on destroying the world. Most of the world beginning with Israel gets destroyed anyway and we all learn an important lesson about salvation. Or something.

Does that make sense? I guess you just had to be there.

Anyhow Kirk Cameron is not just battling the Devil in the movies, but he’s doing it in real life. With his new show The Way of the Master (tagline: “Seek and Save the Lost the Way Jesus Did”*)

Way of the Master has nothing to do about martial arts and everything to do with taking a camera crew out and cornering “unsaved” people in malls, on sidewalks, at music festivals and “having a rap session about Jesus”. It must be seen to be believed.

Kirk Cameron basically gets people to admit to ever lying, to ever stealing and to ever looking at pretty women with “lust”. Then he turns around and calls them Liars and Thieves and Adulterers (in their minds). And as you can imagine, that pretty seamlessly segues into a sales pitch about Jesus.

These are real people and their reactions range anything from polite indifference to argumentative annoyance. But never, never, never in watching the show have I seen them actually “save” anyone. No one ever goes, "gee where can I find out more about this, what was his name, Jesus something?" It is unintentionally hilarious.

Wow, someone else did a comic based on stumbling upon this same show:

Apparently there’s a bit they do on the show where they hold up a banana and call it “the atheists worst enemy”. The reasoning goes something like this:

#1 The banana is both nutritious and delicious to people.

#2 The banana fits easily in a person’s hand and even curves into their mouth

#3 The banana is so perfect for us and could not have evolved, but was rather created by God specifically for his children.

I’m with them in step #1; and step #2 could refer to a penis, but I suppose it’s true for bananas too. But step #3, that is one crazy leap. I suppose you have banana-lovers who are following them up to this point nodding their heads and some % of them are going to let that good feeling about bananas carry them all the way through step #3.

Take that, you dirty ape atheists!

*Jesus apparently did his work with a full camera crew and ex-child-actors