About those Jesus ads
You probably saw him while watching the recent Grammy broadcast or the Super Bowl. Ben Affleck? Jay-Z? No, I mean Jesus Christ. The Jewish-Hellene wisdom teacher, who would be roughly 2023 years old were he alive today, has been pounding the airwaves in a much-discussed ad campaign, “He Gets Us.” According to a spokesperson, “Funding for the campaign comes from the Green Family” — the evangelical Christians who founded the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts stores — “and a diverse group of individuals and entities with a common goal of sharing Jesus’ story authentically.”
Advertising Age magazine calls the commercials a “rebranding” effort, which must mean that Jesus’ name recognition remains strong, but his message is occasionally misunderstood.
The ads themselves couldn’t be more innocuous. “Be Childlike,” a 30-second ad that aired during the Super Bowl, showed a montage of children posing with their pets, hugging each other, sharing music on their iPhones, and so on. The musical backdrop was Patsy Cline’s sweet ballad, “If I Could
See the World (Through the Eyes of a Child).”
The takeaway message, served up on a black screen: “Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults” and “He gets us. All of us.” This refers to Matthew 18:3, when Jesus says: “Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
The other Super Bowl ad also riffed on a famous passage from Matthew where Jesus urged his audience to “love your enemies.” He elaborated, saying, if you only love your friends, “what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same?” That probably got a laugh at the time, as Matthew himself had worked as a reviled tax collector.
If the goal of advertising is to get talked about, then “He Gets Us” has hit home. The zealously secular central press smells a rat. After allowing that the foundation supporting the campaign “seems to be apolitical and nondenominational,” Slate magazine exposed the “real political underpinnings of the campaign: the belief that America will become a much more peaceful, successful, and wholesome place once it has become a more fully Christian nation.”
As if on cue, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez cryptically tweeted that “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign,” whatever that means.
But religious conservatives are grousing, too. Writing in America: The Jesuit Review, Jim McDermott complained that “Jesus did not do PR and told his disciples to stop whenever they tried to do some for him.”
Charlie Kirk, Patient Zero of the Donald Trump fever dream, opined that the creators of “He Gets Us” have “done one of the worst services to Christianity in the modern era,” and “have been taken for a ride” by “woke tricksters. So sad!”
Whatever that means.
With one voice, Super Bowl ad critics proclaim: Ersatz sugar water, booze, “free” gambling — yes! Love your neighbor? No thanks, not since they installed that ugly fence, but pass the Doritos and hey — Steve Martin’s such a funny guy!
Everyone hates these ads. They must be doing something right.
I haven’t embraced Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, but, like many writers, I’m fascinated by the enduring resonance of his generally simple teachings. When it comes to uplifting spiritual messages, color me agnostic. I’d much rather sit through an infomercial for Confucianism (Sample teaching: “If the emperor has moral perfection, his rule will be peaceful and benevolent”) than listen to platitudes about Ford trucks.
Pitch Plato during the playoffs? Absolutely! And serve up a helping of Zoroaster, while we’re at it. “A gentle hand can lead even an elephant by a hair,” the pre-Christian prophet who was believed to have lived in present-day Iran once observed, “Reply to thine enemy with gentleness.”
That sounds a lot like you-know-who. Funny how his name keeps coming up.
Everyone hates these ads. They must be doing something right.