He Gets Us campaign

... and so the post remains... how about WE ALL sprinkle a bit kindness with our words.

Mark Quayle said:

No, it is obvious there isn't enough room in a post to mention everything relevant to a subject. But that's not their point. I don't think they said what they did just to be contentious, either.

Take a look at the title under your avatar. Loose cannon for Christ is pretty accurate (yes, I saw the pun). "Like a rosebush in the hand of a drunkard", using God's word carelessly is damaging to those around —but, I will be measured by my own standard, so, I'll shut up now.

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And what do you think their point is? Can you cite all of their posts above as well as mine and clarify the contexts and substantiate your claim?

What's interesting to me is that rather than referring back to the actual issue we were discussing, NOW I see you're trailing off on a tangent about what it is you think I mean by my avatar. That's called a Red Herring. And, rather than doing the heavy lifting of exegesis and hermeneutical application of it, even there you add a hasty generalizationan---POOF!!!---out comes a summary judgment upon me.

Yes, you're definitely correct: We will each be measured by our own standard. The problem here is that so many never never ask me what my standard is. Instead, they just hand-waive away the possibility that I may have solid reasons supporting my view, and then, to add insult to injury, resort to their own interpretive micro-agressions by which to offer not bona-fide and solid exegesis, but eisegesis.

To your credit, though, I'm glad you saw the pun ...

2PhiloVoid said:

he problem here is that so many never never ask me what my standard is. Instead, they just hand-waive away the possibility that I may have solid reasons supporting my view, and then, to add insult to injury, resort to their own interpretive micro-agressions by which to offer not bona-fide and solid exegesis, but eisegesis.

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It is a world view.
The Bible is an operator manual for the body and soul. There are instructions and maps, East of Eden (not the best of all possible worlds) and the Kingdom of Heaven (the greener pastures). And navigation amongst and betwixt the two.

Yes, it is a monumental work of world literature, it is in a class of it's own as philosophy and religion. It can be studied through exegesis and eisegesis by them what has bona fides.

Meanwhile, it is an operators manual and therefore applied. I prefer the Bible as applied rather than theoretical.

There is an argument about succession of Christ, the authority of the Father of the Church. There are Christians who claim that Christ appointed Peter as Father of the Church (pope means father) so the authority was vested in Peter's successors. However, the successor of Christ is the Holy Ghost which means the successor of Christ (Father of the Church) is the Holy Ghost.

Does it matter? Is it merely a matter of exegesis and theoretical speculation?
It matters because the Bible is the Operators Manual. I once installed a distributor backwards. The vehicle would not run.

QvQ said:

It is a world view.
The Bible is an operator manual for the body and soul. There are instructions and maps, East of Eden (not the best of all possible worlds) and the Kingdom of Heaven (the greener pastures). And navigation amongst and betwixt the two.

Yes, it is a monumental work of world literature, it is in a class of it's own as philosophy and religion. It can be studied through exegesis and eisegesis by them what has bona fides.

Meanwhile, it is an operators manual and therefore applied. I prefer the Bible as applied rather than theoretical.

There is an argument about succession of Christ, the authority of the Father of the Church. There are Christians who claim that Christ appointed Peter as Father of the Church (pope means father) so the authority was vested in Peter's successors. However, the successor of Christ is the Holy Ghost which means the successor of Christ (Father of the Church) is the Holy Ghost.

Does it matter? Is it merely a matter of exegesis and theoretical speculation?
It matters because if the Bible is the Operators Manual. I once installed a carburetor upside down. The vehicle would not run.

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I already know all of that. And what's more, since this thread is about the "He Gets US" commercial, I'm going to have to decline from furthering your red herring here.

I also don't see the Bible as "the Operator's Manual." However, even so, I do see it as a record of the Revelation of the Lord to His People in the world. So, on that level, we can agree that the Bible is The Word of God.

WolfGate said:

The campaign in open that their ads are targeting people who either have developed a negative view of Jesus or who don't know him and get them to investigate who he really is. I find this assumption that since they present the love of Jesus to these people they somehow don't share the truth about repentance of sin to be odd but not surprising. It's also ungracious to the group to assume such negative intentions without anything pointing to it other than an outreach to those who don't know Jesus.

They aren't trying to get greater numbers for any specific church because they aren't one. Did Jesus start off when he met people talking about repentance of sin? Throughout what He modeled in scripture, from the woman at the well, to the about to be stoned adulteress, He first showed He cared about even the most outcast of society despite their sin. He was with the disciples a long time before He fully revealed what the Messiah they sought really was. Except for the religious leaders he confronted, He repeatedly showed people He cared as a first step in getting them to repentance. Why would we claim following that model is psuedo-Chrisitianity. It is if you stop there, but it's a faithful step in the process. They can't walk the people they are trying to reach through the entire message of the Bible in 60 second ads. They can use those to get some people interested in learning about the love of Jesus, and with true investigation the rest can follow.

A Christianity that emphasizes Jesus love without the repentance of sin is not the full truth.

A Christianity that emphasizes the repentance of sin without Jesus love is not the full truth.

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Caring about outcasts doesn't fit with certain peoples' political idols... I mean, agendas. The opposite has pretty much been the norm in fact, for a certain segment of the US population that's idolized wealth (and sometimes even names their kids or businesses off some Ayn Rand reference).

Yeah, some people are making this political when it doesn't have to be.

2PhiloVoid said:

Not EVERYTHING in Liberation Theology is dead wrong. Assuming that it is always heretical is where we go wrong in an attempt to maintain an Evangelical front. We get so gung-ho and politically militaristic that we douse the fact that along with Holiness is supposed to come not only the lip-service to "Loving even our enemies," but the activation of a social mission for feeding, clothing, directing, encouraging, educating and aiding, even them.

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Exactly right. The Gospel without social justice is just akin to religion as drag. Social justice is just biblical justice in a contemporary context.

2PhiloVoid said:

But what do typical American Right-Leaning Evangelicals all too often do? Out of their political fear(S), they over-emphasize the former and leave undone the latter. Sometimes, they do neither of these; they just hoot and holler about how we need the 'right' governmental leader to somehow make it all better.

It's time for U.S. evangelicals to get over that, while at the same time scrutinizing those aspects of Liberation Theology that may be cogent on the one hand and less than theologically correct, on the other hand. I should be able to take a book like James H. Cone's, God of the Oppressed, and at least see the valid points he makes within it all the while still not necessarily agreeing with the entire theology.

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Jesus and the Disinherited is also worth a read. Not exactly liberation theology (which actually came out of post-WWII European theological trends, specifically Bonhoeffer), but it's from an African American perspective. In the Rev. Howard Thurman showed in his life and work that a person can be a person of deep spirituality and still be motivated to enact social change.

That Bonhoeffer was the grandfather of liberation theology is widely agreed by many. Bonhoeffer wrote "It is not enough for the pastor to console the widow killed by the maniac in a car, but a pastor must also be willing to take the steering wheel from the maniac". If a Christian is not willing to try to help their neighbor, then again, it's just religion as drag performance.

What was it that the famous Brazilian Catholic bishop said back in the day (Camara, was it?) -- "When I feed the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist"? There has always been a pretty direct tie between what has been labeled recently in the western world as 'social justice' and the actions of those within the Church (whichever church you happen to belong to; well, okay...mayyyybe not if you're in Fred Phelps' weirdo Independent Baptist cult ) to establish a society such that we can truly attempt to live out what we say when we pray that His will be done "on Earth as it is in heaven". Whether it's examples within the scriptures themselves (e.g., Christ saving the adulterous woman from being stoned) or outside of them (e.g., St. Didymus the Blind inventing a precursor to Braille in 4th century, thereby providing a key milestone in what would now be called "disability rights"), this is not a new thing, and it's certainly not part of some liberal conspiracy to liberalize/demasculinze/LGBT-ize (etc., etc.) Christianity. To be frank, that has already happened (and is not new either), and so that applies to whichever churches to which it applies, all of which were formed before the Superbowl ad was aired.

The only thing I'm seeing in all this hubbub is the further corporatizing of Christianity in America, which also did not start with this ad, and which politically conservative Christians seem to be largely fine with, since big-time donors like the Hobby Lobby people are who pay for the platform to the tune of millions, no doubt aided by your granny's smaller donation from a portion of her social security check. As I said back when I first encountered this ad campaign here on CF (in October of 2022), it's pretty ridiculous to think that what western society needs is more ad men to sell everyone on Jesus. I find that much more offensive than the idea that someone might wash the feet of an LGBT person. My Church, like all the traditional churches, also carries on the ritual foot washing on the appropriate day of our liturgical calendar, and I have never seen it happen that someone was vetted as to their sexuality beforehand. You might say that's because Egyptians are quite conservative in comparison to most westerners (which is true), so it probably wouldn't assumed that anyone there is gay in the first place, but my point is rather that the washing is to emphasize humility and service to everyone who comes together in His name, which seems to be inherently offensive to some people. I find that weird, if we are truly to count ourselves as the worst of sinners (as is the case with regard to the public confessions of the priest made before the congregation in the Coptic Orthodox liturgy). None of this is to say that we ought to all convert our various churches into "LGBT-affirming" ones (again, that's happened already in other churches, so maybe criticism applies to them on the account, but that's a different discussion), but that humility and service don't go out the window according to the sins of whomever comes to us for help (again recall the Lord stopping the stoning of the adulterous woman). Believe it or not, it is entirely possible to maintain traditional Christian morality when it comes to LGBT-identifying people without treating anything that mentions or even hints at their existence like it must mean that those people don't know the "real Jesus". You don't know what anyone does or doesn't hold in their hearts as they struggle through this life the same as the rest of are doing (regardless of how we 'identify'), and while we must never use that fact as an excuse to be 'soft' in terms of theology or praxis in favor of embracing how the TV tells us to be (people coming to church presumably want a real encounter with God, not The Jesus Experience, Sponsored by Tostitos™), we should also never forget it, because we are all going to be relying on the same mercy from the Just Judge when that day comes.

I guess it's like anything else: Some people read Matthew 10:16 and really focus in on the "be as wise as serpents" part (to the point of sometimes making themselves into fools), while others really focus in on the "as gentle as doves" part (to the point of sometimes making their congregations into prey). I would merely like to suggest that the reason for either of those things is that we are being sent out as sheep in the midst of wolves, so we need to be much smarter than to fall into either of the traps of celebrating what our Lord has condemned, or of condemning errant people before our Lord has gotten the chance to (cf. the sayings of St. Moses the Ethiopian).

It's like, do we want as many to be saved as will come before the Lord with a contrite heart, or do we want to be "right" on the hot-button political issues of the day as interpreted through the lens of corporate America, which does not care one whit for what anyone holds as holy or inviolable? The answer seems clear to me, but then I didn't even see the ad in question, since I don't have cable and I try to avoid CF rage-bait.

I am from Australia and I just watched the commercial. I didn't think it was controversial. The only message that I got was that though Christ was God he came to down to our level as humans so that we could know God. The feet washing represented being humble and a service to others by not only coming down to their level but a servant by washing their feet. Thus doing away with self, with lording over others.

I missed seeing it, but I sure do see that Jesus came experiencing humanity, and was showing compassion to all, the marginalized included, and such that I can't see Jesus lacking compassion to any, though there is such lack generally.

The campaign also involved data mining, which opens people up to breaches of privacy and trust, exploitation, and manipulation:


This kind of campaign doesn't seem to be ethical. It presents a message about Jesus, but is in fact religious proselytism and acquiring peoples personal information so marketers and churches can target them.

All the promotions using Jesus being portrayed in media are contrary to approaches Jesus used. Compassion still was shown to any he encountered. It is example for us.

Consider that humans were told what they should do, they were made to be in the image of God. That does not mean, despite what so many claim and so many believe, that human people are all in the image of God. They should be doing what is shown for them in Genesis 1 for that. With our failure, we need to look at Jesus, who models for us how to be, and who lived according to what has been recorded of what he said, for being the image of God, as we who believe are meant to be in the image of Jesus Christ.

Merrill said:

I assume many of you saw that "He Gets Us" Super Bowl commercial

or maybe some of you have experience with the organization

seem like it was very controversial--I am curious to hear your thoughts on it

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i don't like the implication that Jesus is OK with our sinfulness or inclinations ?

I don't know anything about the group behind the add.

The add itself was not overtly heretical or false.

It was the kind of thing that people will almost certainly read into based on our politically charged climate, and you could blame the group for deliberately taking advantage of that, I suppose.

I think the more important point, however, is that people should stop filtering everything through a false dichotomy political lens and allowing that to color how they see the world and everything in it. At that point your politics have essentially become your religion.

There isn't a great replacement to our reading what we can about Jesus, what he did and what he said, in the Bible, for understanding Jesus in ways we should. What is seen in media of him should lead us there, it is not good if it does not.

I've been seeing churches being political, and that kept me from being attracted to attending them. Those in churches can be responsive to social needs, there is call for that, but that is separate from the political positions that there will be engagement in. What is of God is separate from all that. With calling Jesus Lord, we should really hear him and do as he has been saying, without excuses that are made by some, or many.

Jermayn said:

After reading through some of their material, it seems like they are trying to promote what I like to call "Hippy Jesus". That being said, there does seem to be some sound biblical principles promoted as well. Is it a group of progressives trying to push Liberation Theology? Maybe. Is it a group of Christians trying to ease people who are unfamiliar, or even hostile, toward Jesus into a dialogue about him? Maybe. So far I've come across no articles of theirs dealing with sin and the consequences thereof. That's where you can really separate the goats from the sheep.

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At best, it is trying to ease people who are unfamiliar with him into a dialogue about Jesus.

Clare73 said:

At best, it is trying to ease people who are unfamiliar with him into a dialogue about Jesus.

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That is really a good reason for us to speak saying what we can about Jesus. Others may be interested and we can answer more about him for those to be reached.

FredVB said:

That is really a good reason for us to speak saying what we can about Jesus. Others may be interested and we can answer more about him for those to be reached.

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It is the witness of the Holy Spirit in the human heart to the word they are hearing that brings one to faith.

We presume if we expect the Holy Spirit to witness to what is not the word of God.