The Super Bowl has come to end, but two specific ads continue to be debated among audiences due to their topic and motives.
Super Bowl commercials are well-known to many as one of the main highlights of the event. Throughout the game between the Chiefs and Eagles, audiences saw which ads were the best, most cringe, most outlandish and the worst.
However, two advertisements that were run caught the attention of many people watching the game.
The two commercials, according to National Catholic Reporter, were a 30-second video called Be Childlike and a minute-long video called Love Your Enemies.
In both ads they showed images, with the shorter ad having a short video clip, connected to their topics. Each ad had the same ending with a single quote relating to what was shown, “Jesus loved the people we hate” for the minute-long video and “Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults” for the 30-second ad. Both follow up with the same concluding words, “He Gets Us. All of us.”
These two commercials were created by an organization named He Gets Us, a Christian group to promote the teachings of Jesus and the Bible to newer generations.
On the group’s website, it shares their agenda: “Our work represents the input from Christians who believe that Jesus is the son of God as well as many others who, though not Christians, share a deep admiration for the man that Jesus was, and we are deeply inspired and curious to explore his story. We look at the biography of Jesus through a modern lens to find new relevance in often overlooked moments and themes from his life.”
However, the controversy surrounding the ads has not been about the content of the commercials themselves, but rather it was the fact that a Christian organization paid for two commercial slots during the Super Bowl and that one of the groups that fund He Gets Us has ties to anti-LGBTQ+ groups and pro-life organizations.
An article by Fansided shows some tweets from various people having mixed reactions.
Some celebrated the promotion of Christianity, like SJ Thomason tweeting, “Love the #Jesus SuperBowl commercial! ‘If I could see the world through the eyes of a child….’ He gets us.”
Others expressed skepticism, confusion, laughs and negative responses: “people who haven’t watched the nfl playoffs til now just now experiencing the Jesus ad” with a laughing emoji, and Veronica Gamez-Andrade’s tweet, “I wonder how many people the church could have fed or housed with that Super Bowl commercial: ‘He gets us’ #SuperBowlCommercials” with a pondering emoji.
One specific reaction that has caught the attention of many was a tweet by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY, where she said, “Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.”
In response, He Gets Us spokesperson Jason Vanderground spoke to Fox News, saying, “Our research shows that many people’s only exposure to Jesus is through Christians who reflect him imperfectly, and too often in ways that create a distorted or incomplete picture of his radical compassion and love for others.”
He continued stating, “We believe it’s more important now than ever for the real, authentic Jesus to be represented in the public marketplace as he is in the Bible.”
For criticism, HuffPost writes that He Gets Us spent a lot of money to have those two-time slots for the Super Bowl. This has caused some to argue that all that was spent could have been used for humanitarian purposes.
Another pointer is that the Christian organization gets funding from those who are pro-life and anti-LGBTQ+, according to Deseret. While most of the donors have been anonymous, it came to light that David Green, co-founder of Hobby Lobby, spoke back in November about him getting involved in supporting the group.
CNN reported on this point of criticism stating, “Hobby Lobby has famously been at the center of several legal controversies, including the support of anti-LGBTQ legislation and a successful years-long legal fight that eventually led to the Supreme Court allowing companies to deny medical coverage for contraception on the basis of religious beliefs.”
While the topic has begun to drop in discussions as people move on with their lives, the debate over Christian ethics and people’s views on promoting a Jesus ad at a major event will continue.