‘He Gets Us’ Doesn’t Get Him
Screenshot from He Gets Us’s “Foot Washing” commercial. (He Gets Us / YouTube)
I’m late to the party, but after finally watching the “He Gets Us” Super Bowl commercial, here are my thoughts.
You may have seen the much-discussed “He Gets Us” commercial that aired during the Super Bowl last weekend. If not, here’s your chance.
To the sound of INXS’s song “Never Tear Us Apart,” the commercial presents a sequence of 12 images, each of which portray someone washing the feet of another person. Examples: a Latino police officer washes the feet of a young black man in an alleyway. An older woman washes the feet of a young woman outside a “Family Planning Clinic.” A woman washes the feet of an apparent immigrant who just debarked a bus, holding a baby. A woman washes the feet a young Muslim woman while both their husbands look on. And, with an emphatic break in the music, a Catholic priest washes the feet of a clearly effeminate (gay) man, with the backdrop of a beach.
Then, with the beats of the song, the words appear: “JESUS DIDN’T TEACH HATE,” followed by “HE WASHED FEET,” followed again by “He gets us. All of us.” The first “us” transforms into “Jesus” as the rest of the words evaporate.
The Problem
The problem with the commercial, as I see it, is that it essentially capitulates to worldly messaging—implying that Christians are somehow using Jesus as an excuse to hate others.
That’s not a thing. That’s a progressive perspective of Christians, not a Christian perspective of Christians.
You can presumably find someone who professes to be a Christian who twists Jesus’ words to justify hating others, but you can find someone who professes to be a Christian who says anything. Acting as if fringe crazies speak for the majority is a tired progressive strategy we should all be well acquainted with by now. They do the same when they lump mainstream conservatives in with white supremacists and call them all “far-right.”
The major problem in American Christianity right now is not that there’s not enough sensitivity to post-abortive mothers or gay people or illegal immigrants. The major problem is compromising on these issues of sin because of a misplaced, unbiblical valuing of being nice. The problem is people-pleasing at the expense of truth and justice as God defines them.
“Jesus Didn't Teach Hate”
"Jesus didn't teach hate" sounds like it's a response to something, as though someone had said, "Jesus taught hate." But no one said that. That's not a thing Christians teach—except perhaps for nuanced explanations of verses like Psalms 139:22 or Romans 9:13. But those nuanced definitions are not what the commercial is referring to.
"Hate" is a loaded word for the political and cultural Left. To them, it's a way to slander and silence anyone who disagrees with them, like the word "racist," which has been so overused it's practically lost all moral weight (not to mention having been redefined to mean its opposite).
Calling something hateful is a common propaganda strategy to mischaracterize criticism, rebuke, or dissent, in order to distract from the substance of the argument and impugn the motives of whoever's making it.
For example, if you so much as say that homosexuality is a sin, you are accused of "homophobia," by which is meant, you hate homosexuals. Again, when someone says "homosexuality is a sin," the Left hears (or rather, pretends to hear) "I hate gay people." It distracts from the issue (sin) and impugns your motives.
That's the same game He Gets Us is playing, and everyone can see it. Christians preach against sin, and that hurts sinners’ feelings, so sinners say the Christians are hateful as a way to shut up the preacher and dismiss the conviction they want to avoid feeling.
“He Washed Feet”
Then, after saying "Jesus didn't teach hate," the commercial says "He washed feet." In context, this strongly implies that we should be serving people without commenting on their sinful lifestyles. Just serve them, don't criticize them. Help their physical condition, but not their spiritual condition. Don't tell them they're in danger of hell.
The ad doesn't say that, and maybe the campaign creators would even deny they believe that, but there's no doubt that that's the implication. These leftwing professing Christian types want unity—no, the appearance of unity—at the cost of truth and our neighbors’ good. Biblical values are exactly the opposite: truth and our neighbors’ good must be upheld even at the cost of disunity.
Question: was washing feet the most essential aspect of Jesus’ ministry? Did it represent the most essential aspect? Because that’s what you would assume based on this ad. “Jesus washed feet,” as if that summarizes His mission. As if He was all about meeting people’s physical needs, and that’s pretty much it. As if His message was, “Be nice.”
By contrast, Jesus summarized His mission like this: “For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). And He summarized His message like this: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).
If you serve people’s physical needs without testifying to the truth—especially their need for repentance from sin and faith in Christ—you are not representing Him.
Identifying the audience
It's important to ask: who is the commercial talking to? Who is their audience?
While it may seem on the surface that He Gets Us could be chastising Christians who are supposedly hateful, notice that the ad played at the Super Bowl. Is that a mostly Christian audience? No. Plenty of Christians watch it, but it's by no means a mostly Christian audience. So, though the ad seems to be responding to supposedly hateful Christians, its main audience is actually unbelievers.
That means He Gets Us is either talking to Christians while casting longing sideways glances at the non-Christians, or they're talking directly to non-Christians as if to say, "Those mean, judgmental Christians are wrong! Look at us, we don't like how these Christians talk to you any more than you do!" In other words, it is at its core a virtue signal to unbelievers.
But in our present cultural context, believers and unbelievers have increasingly opposite ideas of virtue. Believers know that “gay marriage” is a sinful distortion of God’s design for marriage. Unbelievers think it should be celebrated. Believers know transgenderism is an ungrateful rebellion against God’s gift of one’s sex. Unbelievers think it should be normalized. Believers know that “abortion” is the premeditated murder of God’s preborn image-bearers. Unbelievers think it’s “a woman’s right.”
So, for Christians to try to signal virtue to non-Christians is an utter betrayal of God, a despicable compromise on the principles He has taught us.
Oh, but standing on those principles is hateful.
As I said, the idea that Christians use Jesus as an excuse to hate others is a progressive perspective. And it’s also He Gets Us’s perspective, apparently. Their website’s About Us page says:
How did the story of Jesus, the world’s greatest love story, get twisted into a tool to judge, harm, and divide? How do we remind people that the story of Jesus belongs to everyone? These questions are the beating heart of He Gets Us.
Let’s break that down a bit. Two questions.
Judge, Harm, and Divide
First, is it true that the story of Jesus has gotten twisted into a tool to judge, harm, and divide? Consider a few things.
“Jesus said, ‘For judgment I came into this world…’” (John 9:39). So, His story does have something to do with judgment.
He also said: “fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matthew 10:28)—meaning, fear God because of the harm He can do to you. So, Jesus’ story does have something to do with harm.
Finally, He said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household” (Matthew 10:34-36). So, Jesus’ story does have something to do with division.
All this to say, you don’t have to twist Jesus’ story to see certain types of judgment, harm, and division. They’re there. The flat, soft-handed, nicey nice Jesus that the world (and He Gets Us) likes to try to throw in Christians’ faces is not the real Jesus. They do this because they don’t understand Jesus—or because they do understand Him and don’t like Him. They have imagined a version of Him—a coexist hippy—that suits them and makes them comfortable in their sin.
Now, are those specific biblical types of judgment, harm, and division what He Gets Us had in mind on their About Us page? No. (Well, maybe the division.) But those of us who weren’t born yesterday can surmise that what they did have in mind is also not biblical.
What they have in mind is the same squishy drivel we’ve heard a thousand times—to the point of exhaustion and boredom and great annoyance—from the cultural and political Left. It’s the same misleading propaganda to discredit and dismiss any denunciations of sin.
And He Get Us’s choices of images in the Super Bowl Commercial confirm that suspicion. They’re going after Christians who are outspoken against abortion, homosexuality, the open border immigration crisis, and the like. So, Christian conservatives.
Who Jesus Belongs To
Second question. Is it true that the story of Jesus belongs to everyone? How would the story of Jesus belong to any of the people who will be in hell at the end of time? You know, the ones to whom He will say, “I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew 7:23).
No, the story of Jesus does not belong to everyone. It does, however, belong to anyone. Jesus said that “no one knows…who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Luke 10:22, emphasis added). Anyone to whom what? Anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him. So, Jesus’ story belongs only to those He chooses.
Does He choose everyone? No again. Jesus says, “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matthew 7:14, emphasis added).
Few. That’s not everyone.
The story of Jesus doesn’t belong to everyone. It belongs to whoever. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16, emphasis added). Whoever what? Whoever believes in him. Does everyone believe in Him? No. (Obviously.)
So, the two questions that are “the beating heart of He Gets Us” both start with faulty premises and faulty goals. This organization’s mission is not an expression of faithful Christianity.
Neither is their commercial. In fact, an important piece of the discussion about the commercial, with its emphasis on foot washing, is exactly this: Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, not the feet of “all of us.”
Feet Washing
Remember the story? Jesus was eating the Passover meal with His disciples on the night before His crucifixion, and He got up from the meal, wrapped a towel around His waist, and began washing and drying the disciples’ feet.
When He came to Peter, Peter objected and said, “You shall never wash my feet.”
Remember how Jesus responded? “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.
Notice that Jesus didn’t wash the feet of those who were in open, flagrant rebellion against God. He washed the feet of His disciples. As writer Samuel Sey points out, Jesus “washed their feet to symbolize their spiritual cleansing from sin. This is why he said, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part with me’ (John 13:8).”
As the conversation with Peter makes clear, the spiritual cleansing being symbolized here was a smaller, subsidiary washing to a “bath.” If we understand the “bath” to be the new birth which comes by faith in Christ—the washing away of our sins by His death on the cross—then we can understand the foot washing to be the forgiveness and restoration we experience throughout the Christian life when we slip up and sin, then repent and are restored. Think of 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Jesus is clear. “Foot washing” is for those who are already clean—for those who have already had a “bath” (been saved). And, with the exception of Judas (an exception which Jesus clearly stated, saying, “though not every one of you”), He indicates that His disciples “are clean” (13:10).
Is the unrepentant abortive mother “clean”? Is the Muslim “clean”? Is the proud homosexual “clean”?
Notice: after washing their feet, Jesus tells them this action of His was an example to them. “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”
One another’s. It’s not the feet of the world in view. It’s the feet of other believers. Think of Ephesians 4:32: “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” And James 5:16: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another…” — Following Christ’s example, we’re called to forgive and restore our fellow believers when they stumble.
So, what about Judas? Jesus did wash his feet. So what was going on there?
Judas would soon betray Jesus, and Jesus knew it—but that sin was not yet open and flagrant. He was at that moment in good standing, officially speaking. So, although Jesus knew what he was up to, He treated him no differently than anyone else. And the fact that Jesus clearly indicated that one of them was unclean means everything He was saying about spiritual cleansing didn’t apply to Judas. Judas was an anomaly, but that doesn’t discount what Jesus was clearly teaching, that “foot washing” is for believers.
So, He Gets Us’s use of the foot washing image falls flat. It misunderstands the symbolism in the passage. That misunderstanding crystallizes clearly in the article on their website explaining the inspiration for the commercial:
How would our contentious world change if we washed one another’s feet, not literally, but figuratively? Figurative foot washing can be as simple as giving a compliment to a co-worker or paying for a stranger’s lunch. It can also be as difficult as not responding to someone who’s criticizing you or reaching out to an estranged family member. Acts of kindness done out of humility and respect for another person could be considered the equivalent of foot washing.
No, that’s not what Jesus was teaching in John 13. It’s not a generic “pay it forward” kind of thing. It’s an in-house, for-believers kind of thing.
We must love unbelievers and people who are different from us, yes. Jesus taught that in other places (e.g., Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 10:25-37). He just wasn’t teaching that here.
To Conclude…
If you take a careful look at each of the images in the commercial, you’ll find not everything about them is bad. Despite the misinterpretation of foot washing, some of the things being implied, about not letting differences inhibit loving human interactions, are true. But remember: in the Garden of Eden, the serpent made three statements, only one of which was an outright lie. The best lies (the worst lies, that is) are couched in truth.
As with the serpent, the emphasis and main message of the commercial are clear, as are the statements on the website—and they’re not good. He Gets Us outs itself as an organization of professing Christians basically pushing a Christianized coexist movement.
We get it.
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