Let’s Talk About Those “He Gets Us” SuperBowl Ads
Christians, politicians, and news outlets erupted into a free-for-all that teaches us more about ourselves than the commercials
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Social media erupted into a firestorm shortly after the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl over two commercials made by the agency, He Gets Us. Christians of opposing viewpoints launched into a fisticuffs foray claiming the ads were “too woke” or that they ideologically opposed Jesus’s teachings by spending millions of dollars on the ads. But Christians weren’t the only one throwing jabs. CNN and other outlets piled on by looking into the history of the funding sources and where their moral and political ideologies appeared to align. Politicians even got into the mix when Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Something tells me Jesus would not spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.” In short, the ads pissed off various people of differing ideologies and political opinions.
But that’s getting ahead. Especially if you don’t even know what the ads were about.
To recap, one commercial flashed images of children reuniting post-pandemic or sharing headphones and laughing. The catchphrase was “be childlike,” a direct teaching from Jesus in which he challenges his disciples to be childlike and not childish. The second commercial interspersed images of anger, hatred, vitriol, and division given our political climate while Rag’n’Bone Man’s Human played in the background. At the end, a black screen flashed the words, “Jesus loved the people we hate. He gets us.” This too, is a direct reflection of the life of Christ, who invited tax collectors, prostitutes, and outcasts to be among his followers. Jesus showed them mercy during a time when it was unthinkable for a Jewish Rabbi to befriend the scum of the earth.
Since the ads have played, there’s been no shortage of men and women espousing viewpoints and whether they loved or hated the ads. He Gets Us claims to have no political affiliation nor represent left or right ideologies, but to “reintroduce people to the Jesus of the Bible and his confounding love and forgiveness.” They ask in their agenda section, “How did the story of a man who taught and practiced…
