Before I wade into the controversy over the #HeGetsUs ad campaign, which ran for its second year during Sunday’s Super Bowl between the Chiefs and the 49ers, let me caveat this critique by saying I am not questioning the heart behind the project. I believe the producers and funders of #HeGetsUs, one of whom I have met in person, are genuinely interested in Christian evangelism, and in seeing people come to know Jesus Christ. Or, at least, I will believe this until I see evidence suggesting otherwise.
That said, my criticism here, while aimed at the advertisement itself, is still a fairly strong one. In brief, I think that not only was the message itself deeply flawed, for reasons I will lay out below, but that Christians also need to reconsider the medium of our messaging of the Gospel. This, of course, is a much more general question of evangelism in our day-and-age. But first, to the content of the Ad itself.
The #HeGetsUs Foot Washing Ad
The Ad I am addressing can be viewed here. In it, a series of what seem to be AI-generated images of various people in contemporary, American contexts are seen. In each scene, one individual is washing the feet of another individual. Some, but not all, of the scenes are overtly political, imaging contemporary hot-button issues: the priest and the transgender person, the white oil-field worker and the native-American environmentalist, the woman and the girl looking to get an abortion, the suburban mom and the immigrant woman coming off the bus, the police officer and the black man in a back alley. With the exception of one image, of an elderly black man with an elderly white man, there is always one person washing and one person being washed.
Thus, with a few exceptions: a teenager washing his father’s feet, a young woman helping another who seems to be a drug-addict or alcoholic, each scene has a clear political context. This itself is telling, as if the creators wanted to address political issues, but felt they had to throw in some more ambiguous images as well to make it seem not quite so political. That, to me, is itself something worth questioning. Nevertheless, in each political image, it is the person on the social and political Right, or associated with causes advocated by the Right, who is doing the foot washing, while it is the person on the social and political Left, or who is associated with a cause advocated by the Left, who is having their feet washed. In the background, a rendition of INXS’ late cold-war-era “Never Tear us Apart” plays, crescendoing at the end of the commercial. The last thing we see is text stating: “Jesus didn’t teach hate,” and then “He washed feet.”
Possible Interpretations of The Foot Washing Ad
It seems to me, given the images presented, there are roughly two possible interpretations of the Ad. One is that those on the religious, social and political Right are like Jesus, while those on the Left are like the sinners and the publicans. The idea being that those on the Right are, in effect, right about the issues, but what they are wrong about is how to approach those on the opposite side of the issues. As such, Right-wingers, as correct as they may be about the political and moral issues in view, have to break away from their tribe (the Church?) and reach out to those on the Left, not with arguments or in some confrontational manner, but with simple, human kindness and compassion.
If this is the correct interpretation, then perhaps conservative Christians and political Right-wingers should be quite happy. They are not in the wrong, they just need to be reminded to lead with kindness before sharing the Gospel, as well as their correct beliefs about these controversial moral and political issues. That said, I wonder if anyone who associates with the Left, or with causes associated with the Left, will be happy to be portrayed as sinners in need of having their feet washed by Jesus, represented here as their political and ideological opponents. However, I doubt that many will interpret the Ad in this way.
Instead, what I gather will be the most common-sense interpretation of the images is that those on the political and religious Right are wrong: not only in their approach but wrong about the issues: wrong about things like abortion, the environment, immigration policy, homosexuality, etc. Moreover, in their wrongness, they have also acted despicably. And, having acted so, must humble themselves before the “victims” of their oppressive beliefs and actions, showing them, and by implication their causes, deference. One way to do this, would be to wash their feet, a symbol of humility that goes back to Jesus’ washing of his disciples’ feet at the Last Supper.
If there is some other, third interpretation I am missing, I imagine my faithful commentators below will help me in figuring it out (and lovingly, I presume). Thus, as far as I can tell, these are two interpretive options for the Ad. Again, one makes the Right-wingers out to be basically like Jesus as far as rightness of belief is concerned, but unlike Him as far as approach to the non-believers in society is concerned.
Or, alternatively, it is the Right-wingers who need to be more like Jesus in both approach and belief, because what they believe is not actually what Jesus taught. It is the Left-wingers who are righteous, and, as such, need not make any conciliatory approach to those on the Right. Moreover, what we don’t see is also telling to this interpretation: we don’t see, for example, a woman washing her husband’s feet, or a black convict washing the feet of a white prison guard, or an environmentalist washing the feet of a curator of an art museum.
[At this point, many of my commentators will accuse me of overanalyzing the issue, and admonish me to “chill out!” But, this kind of response to critique is, in my view, itself one aspect of what propaganda does to people: it makes them want to live in perpetual ambiguity rather than push for clarity. All the while, however, we know which direction the powers that be are pushing the culture.]
Three Serious Problems with #HeGetUs
Stepping back from how one might interpret the content of the Ad, let’s consider some additional “Higher Critical” aspects. First, the Ad seems to be aimed at addressing the growing, and legitimate, concern over political strife in the nation. And, given it is an election year, and given the foreseeable candidates, we expect that this year will be no better than 2020, and potentially worse. Moreover, where better to run an Ad aimed at reconciliation and mutual understanding except the Super Bowl, where it will be guaranteed to be seen by millions, if not billions. So this seems to be the main intent of the produces and funders of the Ad: how can we leverage Jesus to alleviate political turmoil in our country?
Problem #1: Trying To Alleviate Political Division Using Politics
But herein lies what I think is the first, serious flaw of the whole idea: why use explicitly political images at all if you want to show how Jesus transcends politics? Wouldn’t avoiding hot-button political issues and focusing more on our common, human nature have been more effective? Casting the foot-washing images in explicitly political contexts immediately disenfranchises one or the other political group, especially if the Ad is aimed at people who, as it is often hypothesized, have no clue about Jesus.
If this Ad is aimed mainly at non-Christians, then one wonders if the producers and funders considered how the non-believing police officer might feel about being portrayed as having to wash the feet of the supposedly innocent black man? Or how the non-believing oil-field worker might react to being portrayed as having to wash the feet of the native-American environmentalist? After all, do these nonbelievers, the ones on the political Right, even know the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet? Might this not be confusing, even aggravating to them given their social and political perspectives? One wonders how hard the #HeGetsUs folks thought this through before spending all the money.
To quote loosely a relative of mine: “I thought the whole thing was just another push for DEI, before I saw them flash “Jesus” on the screen at the end.” If that is the average Super Bowl viewers’ response to the Ad, then chances are most people did see it as explicitly political. But I thought Jesus was anti-political? So why use the medium of politics to introduce a vague reference to Jesus? This flaw was not the worst of the three, but I think it shows a fundamental misreading of the culture, as well as a lack of aesthetic understanding. I think it is clearly the case that we all desire to transcend our politics, both those on the Left and the Right (well, more those on the Right); so why make an ad that everyone thinks is just more politics!? This was poor judgment, in my view.
Finally, as one online friend pointed out, you will never see an Ad of a similar nature with the tagline: “Jesus was a fetus too: #HeGetsUs!”, which would be a great way to message the Incarnation of God. But, it is obvious why you won’t see that commercial. In sum, in using political imagery, you have already isolated a large number of people, and, as such, only caused even more division (which is clearly one result the Ad has had).
Problem #2: No One Cares about “Humanitarian Jesus”
The next flaw in the Ad follows from the first and relates to the third: it is not an aesthetic flaw but a conceptual one: it is the Jesus as “Humanitarian” shtick. The idea of Jesus as nothing more than an ethical reformer is not new, Marxists have played off of this aspect of Jesus for centuries now. Liberation theologians in the global South leveraged Jesus’ social teachings with great effectiveness (sort of) for decades. However, in a culture where many, but not all, of Jesus’ ethics are firmly embedded in our institutions and systems: kindness, love, charity, justice, etc., who needs to add the person of Jesus to that dynamic? After all, if we already do everything, or think we do everything that Jesus told us to, then why do we want to muddy the waters of our own moral righteousness with the possibility of a transcendent Lord who, after all, demands we worship Him? As such, there are two problems with the Jesus as Humanitarian concept.
First is that this is not really what the culture is looking for. No one really cares about a Jesus who is merely a solution to our social and political crises. The point was made by Tom Holland, the author not the actor, during the COVID-19 crisis, when he decried the fact that the Church of England was acting more like the ministry of health than the representative of Christ on earth in giving out useful information about how to manage our physical wellness in a time of trouble, but saying nothing about the transcendent hope that lies beyond the demise of our bodies, or even of history itself.
In this very thin, watery theological perspective, the Church is really nothing more than an arm of the government, and Jesus little more than a historic symbol for “the better angels of our nature” or “the spirit of man.” Here again, I think the funders and producers of #HeGetsUs are not doing a good job of reading “the sign of the times.” For it is precisely in these things that our doubts and fears reside. We simply need more hope than this.
Further, while this message may have been effective in 1988, when INSX released their cold-war classic, is it still the case today? Hardly, I think. Preaching a Gospel that Richard Rorty, the postmodernist, or even Tolstoy, the modernist, would have been pleased with is not addressing the concerns of a culture set adrift from any metaphysical or historical moorings, and, as such, one desperately longing for mystery and transcendence.
Second, the humanitarian Jesus model fails to address what is a fundamental presupposition of the therapeutic society in which we live, namely, that we are already humane, already good, already moral. Presenting Jesus as just someone who told us to be nice, allows the contemporary mind to fill in the blanks with regard to what “niceness” means. This plays into the hands of the moral subjectivists and relativists in the culture, and, as such, really calls no one to the Jesus of the Bible, but only to a Jesus of their own making. In this sense, Depeche Mode’s 1989 “Personal Jesus” would have been the better choice of soundtracks for #HeGetsUs. The Jesus of the Scriptures, as we will see, simply doesn’t jive with our notions of love or of justice.
Problem #3: What Happens When We Encounter the “Real Jesus?”
Now comes the most significant problem with the Ad, one that flows from the first two flaws, namely, that the Ad really says nothing about the real Jesus, or, at least, the Jesus of the Bible. This is not an aesthetic or conceptual problem, this is a directly theological and historical one.
First, there is a technical issues that demands clarity. In the Gospels, Jesus only washes feet once (John 13:1-17). In context, Jesus, before going to His death on the cross, washes the feet of his followers, the disciples. This act of humility sets an example for how Jesus’ followers should behave to one another. We don’t have any examples of Jesus washing the feet of non-believers or, in His time, non-followers. That is not to say Jesus wouldn’t do this, but one cannot simply extrapolate from the actual text to fit one’s agenda. Or, at least, one needs to be careful about doing so. As I pointed out above, what are non-believing police officers or oil-field workers or suburban moms going to think when they are being related to the characters doing the foot washing?
Second, the only other foot-washing incident we have in the Gospels is that of Jesus having his feet washed by a female follower (or soon-to-be follower), who not only washes Jesus’ feet but does so with her tears and her hair (Lk 7:36-50)! This idea that a sinful woman would wash Jesus’ feet, instead of the other way round, may be a stark reality check for those who buy into the Jesus concept presented by #HeGetsUs. Talk about setting someone up for a hard fall; and it is not just that Jesus allows women to clean his feet, but Jesus’ character in the Gospels can be fairly abrasive in comparison to the humanitarian Jesus of #HeGetsUs. Just check out these passages to see how harsh and divisive Jesus could actually be: Matt 10:34; Matt 23:16-17; Matt 25:30; Luke 6:25; 11:39; 19:27 Mark 9:42; and John 8:44. And that’s not to mention anything of how Paul or the Book of Revelation talk of Jesus.
Of course, in context, all of these passages point to a loving God, and a genuinely loving Savior. But it is our entire concept of love that needs correcting, and if #HeGetsUs thinks that it is showing Jesus’ love through these commercials, the answer, at best, can be “yes, and, also no.” The idea here seems to be that we have to sneak in Jesus where we can, presenting Him not as He is, not clearly and without adulteration, but with a certain cultural gloss laid over Him, one that makes Him more palatable to non-believers. The problem is this Jesus doesn’t exist, and, being non-existent, He really doesn’t do anything.
Finally, there is an ethical question here as well. It is one the late Christopher Hitchens would often bring up in his debates, where he would remind people that if you read the Bible you will not encounter “Gentle Jesus meek and mild,” but indeed a very different Jesus than culture presents us with. I am not sure if the producers and funders of #HeGetsUs think it is appropriate to intentionally misrepresent Jesus in this way, or if they are just confused in their own view of Jesus. However, if the former, I think one must raise the question of whether or not this is a kind of propaganda, one that intentionally obscures the Truth, so as to lure people into something they otherwise would not want to be a part of. It seems that astute critics, to include AOC herself, are quite aware of this, having pointed it out during last year’s Ad campaign.
“Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,”
It seems to me the last thing Christians in a post-Christian society should be doing is trying to re-evangelize the culture by being unclear about who Jesus is. Many of us who engage in online Apologetics know this won’t work. Atheists are not dumb, they have read the Bible already and know the “difficult” passages as well, and often better, than we do. This tactic, in my mind, borders on deception and manipulation. Instead of presenting “Humanitarian” Jesus, or Jesus as a salve to our political woes, or Jesus as our therapist, we should strive to present Jesus as He is, or, minimally as the actual text of the Bible shows Him to be. We can recognize that none of us see Jesus perfectly, but that does not grant us license to present Him in a clearly unclear manner.
Conclusion: Is The Medium The Problem?
I have probably spent too much time and too many words on a short Ad. However, this was no typical Ad. It was one that not only attempted to say something about God, even the Godman, but that was also broadcast around the world. It is safe to say that more people will be confronted by the Jesus of #HeGetsUs, than by Augustine’s view of Jesus, by Aquinas’ view of Him, or even of Karl Barth’s Jesus. And, most certainly, than that understanding of Jesus that I try to present in these blog posts.
But this raises a significant worry in my mind (prompted by my current listening to Neil Postman’s classic treatment of dialogue in a TV-driven society: “Amusing Ourselves to Death”). Is the medium of advertisement, a 30-second video clip, a sufficient mechanism for messaging the Gospel of Jesus Christ? As I said above, I do not doubt the intentions of the producers and funders of the video (at least, not yet). What I doubt is whether or not their money has been well-spent, given what they have produced and what medium they used to do so. For decades now, Evangelicals especially have tried to get into the business of show business. But this does not seem to have gone well either for the Church, or the culture.
Perhaps it is time for Evangelicals to rethink this strategy of trying to entertain people with Jesus. I say this realizing that sometimes there are genuinely successful attempts at using the new media to present Christ. I have written about some of those here. But in the age of “infotainment,” one wonders if the Gospel can be packaged so easily into such formats as 30-second ad clips. Perhaps yes, perhaps no.
Finally, there is one criticism of #HeGetsUs that I find utterly contemptuous. It has been voiced mainly by Progressive Christians, and that is that the money could have been spent on the poor instead of on notoriously expensive Super Bowl air time. To these critics, I would say first that the problem is not in spending money, even large sums, on the propagation of the name of Jesus. The problem is in how we are doing that. Second, however, I would remind these critics that when the disciples raised this issue in a very similar circumstance, Jesus did not commend them, He rebuked their criticism (Matt 26:6-13; Mk 14:3-9; Jn 12:1-8)! Spending money on evangelism is not mutually exclusive to caring for the poor; however, and herein lies the problem with #HeGetsUs, ultimately the salvation of the soul is the greater concern than the welfare of the body. Watching #HeGetUs, however, will do little, if anything, to get that point across.
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