Those Who Don’t, Complain
By George “Chip” Hammond
This past Sunday was the Super Bowl. I didn’t watch it. It’s not because I’m “too spiritual” for sports. I’ve just never cared for watching team sports, live or on television. It was days later that I heard about the ruckus over the He gets us commercials. Charges of “heresy” and “condoning sin” flew about, so I needed to see the commercials for myself, which were easy enough to find on YouTube.
The commercials were sub-fifteen second clips. One showed people washing the feet of others who were not like them. Another showed pictures of people that one might assume had lived a debauched life (although assumptions are always dangerous. Witness Natalie Cline, the Utah state school board member who assumed and censoriously suggested in a public post that a young lady, who struggles with looking boyish and who plays on a girls basketball team, was transgendered, to the horror of the girl’s parents who struggle enough with their daughter being mocked and bullied by other high school kids because of their daughter’s build and looks). There were no spoken words in the ads, only written words: “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He gets us.”
As I listened to interviews with the critics, it seemed the concern was that they thought that implying Jesus taught that we should love all people and not just those like us; that we should treat all people with compassion and respect; and that we should love and serve even those who are our enemies, is to be considered heresy and the condoning of sin. Matt Walsh in responding to the commercials made the statement that “Saying Jesus didn’t teach hate is at least redundant.” This is obviously so to anyone who has ever read the Gospels, but most people have not. Their only notion of who Jesus is comes from the people they’ve seen who claim to represent him.
Some people have gotten their impression of who Jesus is from the Westboro Baptist Church, which carries signs saying, “Thank God for 9/11” and disrupts the funerals of fallen servicemen and women. I remember watching in real time the riot on January 6, 2021 and seeing a man beating a Capital police officer with a Jesus flag, and feeling panic that the footage would get played over and over again (mercifully it did not). If this is the only impression that people have of who Jesus is (and I am afraid it often is in our post-Christian culture), it is feasible that in trying to make the gospel known, one would begin by telling people that Jesus did not teach hate.
In the wake of the bellicose criticisms, I saw a very powerful alternate video. It pictured several people who, having lived an unsatisfactory life of sin (as Augustine described it, a life incurvatus in se – turned in on itself), had turned to Christ and found true fulfillment. The video showed pictures of people who had been delivered from drug use, homo and heterosexual sin, witchcraft, cults, and other self-destructive lifestyles. At the end, it said of Jesus: “He not only gets us - he saves us, delivers us, changes us, carries us, forgives us, loves us” (or words to that effect). It was powerful and moving. But the video was posted under the heading “The commercial that should have aired on the Super Bowl.” I found myself asking questions of the creators of this video: If this is what should have been aired on the Super Bowl, why didn’t you amass the funds to do so? Video software is cheap, and anyone can upload anything to YouTube for free. It doesn’t take much commitment to do that. If this was the commercial that should have been on the Super Bowl, why didn’t you, the critics and creators of the alternate, see to it that it was?
In his commentary treating Luke 9:38 ("Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us,” ESV), J.C. Ryle excoriated those of sectarian spirit who deny and drive away anyone doing good in the Lord’s name who is not of their tribe or clique, and who doesn’t do things the way they themselves did or would. In this case it is “. . . or would.” For they didn’t. They could have as easily as the other group taken out advertising during the Super Bowl. They chose not to. I will not hazard to guess as to what motivated them not to do so, but it’s clear that the He gets us campaign thought the money ($7,000,000 for thirty seconds) was well-spent to introduce people to Jesus and correct the current misunderstandings about him, misunderstandings created probably not by most Christians and churches, but certainly by those which garner media attention.
Those who don’t, complain. In 1910, Theadore Roosevelt gave a speech in Paris. It was a political, not an ecclesiastical speech, but the principles of the speech are universal. In it, Roosevelt said, “There are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they would never attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect . . . A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, and intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities – all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority, but of weakness.” The story is told of a man who disdained D.L. Moody and was irritated by his evangelism methods. Cornering Moody on the street, the man publicly berated him for his efforts. Moody calmly responded, “Sir, I much prefer my way of doing evangelism to your way of not doing it.”Those who don’t, complain.
