This year, “He Gets Us” spent an estimated $17.5 million on a pair of Super Bowl ads as part of their billion-dollar ad campaign. One commercial showed a series of images of people in various circumstances in answer to the question, “who is my neighbor,” alluding to Jesus’s command to “love thy neighbor” in Matthew 22:39. The second commercial depicts Christians washing the feet of various individuals who many might consider to be the Christians’ ideological opponents. The minute-long ad ends with a line of text that reads, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet,” referencing John 13:1-17 in which Jesus washes the feet of his disciples.
Unfortunatley, by focusing too much on “us” and not enough on Christ, the ad prioritizes outreach and cheap grace at the expense of the Gospel message. The end result of this kind of watered-down Christianity is ultimately a dying church.
The Cult of Self-Adoration
Rather than proclaiming the good news that Jesus has been “declared the Son of God in power” by his death and resurrection, redeeming creation and summoning all of his creatures to live under his lordship, these ads fixate on the sympathetic but wayward “neighbor,” suggesting that an undiscriminating love of humanity is the heart of the Gospel. In this way, the “He Gets Us” ad campaign merely perpetuates our society’s cult of self-adoration.
Jesus undoubtedly taught us to love one another. But that’s not all he taught: He also taught repentance and self-sacrifice. Jesus called for us
