OK, time for a Friday night rant. I personally find a lot of Christian advertising and marketing to be somewhat vacuous and mildly offensive — OK “offensive” may be too strong, perhaps “irritating” is more accurate. I think much of it cheapens the gospel.

In particular, this ad has bugged me for a while (I was using it as a coaster for my big gulp).

What bugs me about this ad is the (neopagan) association of ecstatic feelings with prayer and (perhaps more disturbing) the use of sex appeal to sell books about prayer. I’m not saying that prayer is never emotional (of course it is). In my mind this just one-to-one association between prayer and ecstatic emotions feeds the superficial nature of a lot of Christian spirituality where people go from one prayer/worship “fix” to another like junkies. This doesn’t engender serious discipleship, IMHO.

Oh, yeah, BTW, I “photoshopped” the picture to remove the name of the bookseller (I also changed the books in the picture; I was surprised to find “Idiot’s Guide” and “Dummies” books on prayer!).