He Gets Us

KEVIN HARRIS: Bill, at this recording we just went through a great Super Bowl game, and something quite interesting happened during that Super Bowl that is still being talked about in the press right now. And that is the “He Gets Us” campaign. A Christian campaign. You said that you were moved by these commercials.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. I saw one of the two, and I thought frankly it was stunning. It was so well choreographed and put together. And the pictures – the images – were so stunning. My attention was arrested when this thing started showing. I didn’t know what it was at first. It was captivating.

KEVIN HARRIS: It was very well done – high production qualities. “He Gets Us” – a campaign touting itself as a movement to reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible and his confounding love and forgiveness. What do you think about the name: “He Gets Us” – that Jesus gets us.

DR. CRAIG: I think it is an attempt to make Jesus relevant for people today, that he understands us, he identifies with us. So this is not just a figure in a stained glass window. This is someone who empathizes with us and to whom we can relate. So I like it. I like the slogan “He Gets Us.”

KEVIN HARRIS: That verse in Hebrews that says he is not a high priest that can’t identify with us; we can approach his throne of grace boldly. On multiple occasions, according to the producers, Jesus used the term “childlike” to refer to a humble and trusting attitude. The one that I saw where the little black boy and the little white boy are running together and they just grab each other and hug one another was very moving. Jesus is not saying be ignorant like a child.

DR. CRAIG: Yes. Right. I have often distinguished between a childish faith and a childlike faith. We are not called to have a childish faith; that is to say, an ignorant, naive, blind faith. But we are called to have a childlike faith in the sense of a loving and whole-hearted trust in God as our heavenly Father. I like what Vanderground, the person who put on these ads, says. The term “childlike” is meant to refer to a humble and trusting attitude. Being humble enough to place one’s trust in a power greater than self. I think that that is a Christian message with which we can all resonate.

KEVIN HARRIS: The ad that you saw was the 60-second ad. They had a 30-second one with the children. They had a 60-second that just showed people confronting each other angrily and fighting and bickering. Then suddenly “Jesus loved the people we hate” appeared on screen.

DR. CRAIG: I’ll tell you, the images were so horrible. People shouting and screaming open-mouthed and just filled with fury at each other. It went on, as you say, for a minute showing these kinds of images. They were all in black and white. It was so ugly and repulsive. I was just captivated. I thought, what in the world is this? What could this be about? And then this slogan comes on the screen: Jesus loved the people we hate. What struck me so powerfully about this was that it did not say “Jesus loves the people who hate us” which would make us feel like the victims. Well, yes, he loves those people even though they hate us. Oh, no! This was putting the finger right on us: Jesus loves the people that we hate. It is our own ugly, crabbed, hateful hearts that are convicted by this message. We need to realize that we are hateful and that Jesus loves these people that we hate. I thought that turning of the tables was so effective, so unexpected that it was really a powerful message.

KEVIN HARRIS: It is kind of the state of the country right now.

DR. CRAIG: Yes.

KEVIN HARRIS: Incredible bickering. We are so divided, especially in politics.

DR. CRAIG: It is so relevant. During the Super Bowl when we are all aware of the terrible divisions in our society, to see these so graphically and unattractively portrayed on the screen, it really did look like a kind of snapshot of contemporary American political society. That is what made it so contemporary and relevant.

KEVIN HARRIS: Case in point, guess who didn’t like them? Guess who didn’t like these two spots?

Despite the messages of love and inclusion, Ocasio-Cortez took issue with the commercials . . . [and said] “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”^[1]

I don’t know what she is referring to there. She’s talking about the longer one – the 60-second one of people bickering and fighting. Did you see anything fascist there?

DR. CRAIG: Of course not. This is nothing but mindless name-calling. To suggest that these ads promoted some kind of neo-fascism or made fascism look benign is absurd. The message of these ads, or at least the second one (the one I saw), was that we ought not to be hateful, mean-spirited, divisive people, but we should be people who love even our enemies (as Jesus said). This was anything but fascistic. For her to label it in that way is empty rhetoric and mindless name-calling.

KEVIN HARRIS: It really is. They have responded to her. Vanderground and the producers have said,

"He [Jesus] cares about our problems because he has experienced them. He gets us," said Vanderground. "We believe that investing in efforts to ensure more people consider his life and movement as inspiration for their own, will in turn, help improve the lives of those listening — and begin to create the kind of cascade of love Jesus himself sought to generate."

They said it is anything but fascism. Oh, by the way, the family behind Hobby Lobby are donors for this and producers of this. Also, some anonymous donors. They plan on spending about 2 billion dollars over the next several years. There is another Democrat (I hate to pick on the Democrats), continuing with this article,

A Democratic operative who promoted the false narrative that Border Patrol agents were whipping Haitian migrants similarly attacked He Gets Us on Twitter. "With the money the 'He Gets Us' people spent on their right-wing Jesus ads, they could permanently house 1,563 people experiencing homelessness," wrote Sawyer Hackett . . .

DR. CRAIG: When my wife, Jan, saw this she said, “Gee, that kind of reminds me of that incident in the Gospels where some of the disciples said, ‘Why wasn’t this ointment sold and given to the poor rather than honoring Jesus with that?’” It does seem to be a very similar attitude by this Democratic operative. The complaint here is that this money is wasted; that instead of being used for socially productive means, it is wasted on running these expensive ads. I think what these critics don’t understand is that these ads are an attempt to fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission to take the Gospel into all the world and to preach the Gospel to every nation. There is a viewing audience of the Super Bowl of a couple hundred million people around the world. Placing these ads there is a strategic means of world mission. I think the difficulty for these persons that you quoted is that they are not very burdened for world mission. They don’t really care about carrying the Gospel to the entire world so that people can come to know God through a relationship with Jesus Christ. I once heard a preacher say that if the task of world missions is not on your heart then your heart is not close to the heart of Jesus Christ. That statement really struck me because it is so bold. Yet, as I thought about Jesus who said, “The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost, ” the burden of world evangelization was on the heart of Jesus. And his last command to the disciples and to the church is to carry this good news to all the world. I fear that these critics like AOC and this Sawyer Hackett that their heart just isn’t close to the heart of Jesus Christ. They don’t care about the task of world evangelization. So, for them, the ointment should be sold and given to the poor rather than invested in the propagation of the Gospel.

KEVIN HARRIS: The blowback – the pushback – against AOC and Sawyer Hackett has been blistering from across the country. Some Twitter users were quick to point out to Sawyer Hackett that, “Hey, we don’t see you getting upset at all the gambling and beer ads. Those guys can help with the homeless, too!”

DR. CRAIG: And when you think about it, suppose that these commercials, though expensive, do reach millions – even hundreds of millions of people – and cause them to reflect on their own lives like Jesus loves the people we hate and they make a determination to seek God, to repent of their sins, and to try to live a different life, that can have social ramifications far beyond building a new homeless shelter. So we mustn’t think that these sorts of efforts at evangelization are not life-transforming and devoid of social impact themselves.

KEVIN HARRIS: These ads are encouraging all of us to show the love of Jesus. Then immediately we get tested in that from AOC and Sawyer Hackett. I’m seething mad, and I’ve seen some other things calling them right-wing Jesus ads. There wasn’t anything right-wing about these ads. They were saying love one another and embrace one another. “The ads were an effort to spread the message of Jesus to LGBTQ+ people and other communities that have often felt unwelcome by Christianity.” I guess we have, because of the exposure of these ads and the momentum of these ads, an opportunity to reach out to people who otherwise perhaps feel unwelcome.

DR. CRAIG: Yeah. I really encourage the foundation that is doing these ads – keep up the good work. We appreciate it.^[2]