Ali Stuckey (33:05)
Okay, so this is Jesus showing us what greatness really is. It's a bunch of depictions of people like being there for each other, feeling deeply for someone else, helping someone who either looks like them or doesn't look like them. You've got someone at a pride parade being hugged by a person wearing a John 3:16 hat. You've got someone like washing off some graffiti on a wall that says go back. And apparently this is supposed to be about Jesus. And the tagline is He Gets Us all of us. This was an ad created by Lerma. This is a creative advertising agency who has created the previous He Gets Us ads. And we'll get into that in just a second. I'll tell you my specific thoughts about this campaign and this ad in a moment. But just as a refresher of the background of He Gets Us, like where is this coming from? This is the only explicitly, if you could even call it that explicitly Christian ad at the Super Bowl. And so I think it's worth looking at, well, who created it and why? So He Gets us. Launched in 2022, it was the. Their first super bowl ad. Appeared at Super Bowl 57 in 2023. In its first year, he gets has reportedly caused $100 million. Their ad campaign, it was funded by the signatory and it wasn't. I think that's kind of wrong to say it was funded by the signatory because a Christian. It's just a Christian donor advised fund. And so it wasn't funded by the signatory. It was funded by donors who donated through the signatory. But the signatory is a company that promises to channel its contributors dollars into biblically responsible investments. And so that year it actually caught a lot of flack from progressives in the media because of their ties to the signatory and because the signatory donates, or so these people said. So these angry activists said donate millions of dollars to Alliance Defending Freedom. You guys know what ADF is? The left paints it as anti lgbtq, hateful, all of this stuff, even though they're just fighting for religious liberty, our First Amendment rights. And so because of that connection, a lot of people on the left were angry but this is a really stupid controversy because as I've already alluded to, a donor advised fund, they're not just, they're not actually donating their own dollars to these organizations. A donor advised fund is taking the donor funds from donors and they are donating it to the cause that the donors say that they want to donate to. You can do that through Fidelity. There are a lot of secular corporations that would allow you to donate your funds to Christian or non Christian organizations through them. This just happens to be an explicitly Christian company that works with Christians. Also. The first year of the campaign you had the Hobby Lobby founders, they were a part of it. And their, you know, according to the left, there's controversy surrounding the Green family because Hobby Lobby fought to not have to supply their employees with abortifacient birth control. Which of course He Gets Us now though is run by a non profit group called Come Near. So they took over the He Gets US campaign in 2024 for and they took over the funding, the oversight of the marketing campaign. And that is probably where a lot of the, I would say most of the direction and the content has come from. In addition to He Gets Us using the Lerma Ad Agency. So the Lerma Ad Agency is a far left, pro LGBTQ ad agency. And it's a very strange choice for any Christian campaign. Whether you agree with their content or their strategy or not. It is a very weird choice to choose a pro lgbtq, pro secularism, far left ad agency. There are Christian ad agencies, there are conservative ad agencies, there are more apolitical ad agencies, but they chose Lerma Ad Agency. They say that their focus is on inclusive marketing for diverse audiences to navigate today's complex consumer landscape. We understand the euphemisms being used there. They want to heavily promote, quote unquote, LGBTQIA visibility in marketing. When it came to He Gets Us, they said that they are using the confrontation of Jesus. They're heading confrontation. So this is their overview of the campaign. He Gets Us tells the story of Jesus through a modern lens, but it doesn't even really do that. It's not even telling the story of Jesus to demonstrate the way he fought for radical love and inclusion. So the company that made this campaign, that's what they're saying. This is who Jesus is. Which of course is not the biblical definition of Jesus. Yes, radical love, not radical inclusion. In that he said the way to heaven is very narrow. The way to death and to hell is very wide. And John 14:6, Only those who come through me will make it to the Father, I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. And so it depends on what you mean by inclusion. Yes, he loved the world, as John 3:16 said, but he also told everyone that he came into contact with to go and sin no more, to repent of their sin, to take up their cross and follow Christ. The campaign has garnered 4.8 million website users, 1.4 billion video views, and 196 million digital media. Engagement numbers are growing daily. So a little bit more about Lerma. If you look at their Instagram page, for example, they've got a post that says brands with Pride. A brief history of LGBTQIA plus visibility in advertising. And one of their posts mentioned this 2015 ad by Gillette that promoted a so called transgender teenager shaving for the first time. That's really hard to believe that that was 2015, because I remember that and I'm pretty sure that was just a couple years ago. But their page does say that that was 2015. And so that's what Lerma believes. Who is behind He Gets Us also, if you look at he gets Us their own website, when they're asked about things like the FAQ section, asked about their stance on the LGBTQ community, they say, Jesus loves gay people. He loves trans people. I already have like a problem with that language, especially trans people, because no one is truly transgender. You can't actually transition from one gender or one sex to the other. It's not possible. And so already they're adopting just deceitful language that could actually affirm and validate someone's sin and the lies that they believe. They say no matter who you are, you are invited to explore the story of Jesus and consider what it means for your life. Well, that's not the gospel. It's not even close to the gospel. It's not even introducing someone to the gospel. It's not even talking. I'm not even saying it has to be fire and brimstone, but it's not even offering a little bit of their need for a savior, which I think is pretty important to articulate, because there's not good news unless you understand the bad news. And the bad news is that we are sinners in need of a savior, that we are dead in sin apart from Christ. And again, I'm not saying that you have to say that in some, like, mean, violent way, but it should be clear or at least, at the very least, low bar here, like implied. Who does he gets Us believe Jesus is, they say that they include people in this project who believe lots of different things about Jesus and they say he gets us as a project under come near, a non profit startup who believed that Jesus was human and divine, rose from the dead and more. And so again just very vague and they talk about on their website that Jesus defined true greatness in a very different way. He showed that the greatest thing that we could be is in humble service to others, which is not completely true. Again, the world already believes that Jesus was just a moral teacher. The world already believes that he was some like hippie dippy loving guy who said true things and told us to live gentler and more service minded lives. People already believe that and these ads just seem to affirm this idea of Jesus being a moralistic hippie teacher who has nothing to offer you beyond just some better rules for life. Natasha Crane has talked about written about He Gets Us very many times. She's got a lot of good thoughts in her rebuttal to He Gets us. I can't read the entire thing she posted on act. I'll read you some of it. I thought she pointed out some really good points here because I get a lot of pushback saying okay, but it's not actually harmful. It might not be perfect, but we shouldn't nitpick it. We should just be glad that Christians are even given any kind of platform. And so I just want to read you part of what she says. So she says these ads are actually incredibly harmful to the cause of evangelism because the campaign reinforces what culture wants to believe about Jesus while leaving out what culture doesn't want to believe. Culture's wrong Ideas about Jesus become more deeply seated due to a campaign like this. It simply makes it harder for biblically faithful Christians to share about the real Jesus, a Jesus people often don't want to hear about. And I think that's a really good point. She also says the ad centers around a question that is problematic in and of itself, which means like what does it mean to be great? She says that they say that loving others is what he gets us says means to be great. But the truth is is that loving others according to Scripture is second to loving God and in order for it to be great, it must be an outflow of our love for God, which He gets us really just dismisses or ignores altogether. She also points out that the immigration and LGBTQ references slightly promote a progressive agenda, which is true. You never really see the reverse. Like they have this historically theologically inaccurate ad saying that like Jesus was A refugee or Jesus was an immigrant and he wasn't. But you never see it like the other way. You never see sly implications of conservatives or Christians being the ones who are. Being the ones who are victimized. And she also mentions Natasha at the end of her post that she believes that the ambiguity in all of this is intended. And I completely agree with that. And that kind of leads to my big problems with these campaigns. One, it misses the point of Jesus. All of these ads miss the point of Jesus. Like I watch them every year truly wanting to be on board with them, truly feeling like, okay, maybe they'll get it right this year, maybe they will get close to it. I'm not looking for someone to like play in AD that's 60 second sermon from Jonathan Edwards. Like, I'm not, I'm not looking for that. I'm not looking for something that is perfect. I'm not looking for someone necessarily to go up there and articulate the Roman road. I don't think that would. Or the Romans road. I don't think that would be bad. But I'm looking for something that would lead people to the cross. I'm looking for an accurate depiction of Jesus. I am looking for at least the implication that, hey, all of this brokenness and this messed up stuff that you see inside of yourself out in the world, there is redemption from that, there is salvation from that. You are not enough. You are insufficient. You're always trying to measure up. You're always trying to find happiness. I mean, wasn't that Tom Brady, what he said famously a few years ago? He's got all this stuff in the world. He never feels like it's quite enough, like all of that that you feel that is not enough. There's a reason for that. It's because you are made in God's image. You were made to need a savior. Here's Jesus and do a website, here's jesus.com. and if you just wanted to do that, if you wanted to leave a cliffhanger, I would say, okay, that is better. But the ambiguity, the vagueness and I think the outright misrepresentation of who Jesus is is actually very damaging and could possibly push people further away from Jesus and again, just reaffirm what the world already believes about Jesus, that he, that he's just like a good guy, that cheer leads us and that he was an activist like us, that he was a renegade, that he was an outcast, that he was a sympathizer, that he was a refugee. It is true that he was some of these things, not all of these things, but he was some of these things. But he is never in any of these ads presented as what he also is. What he very importantly is, which is king, Savior, Lord, and God. And I would think that that would be important if you want to reach people with the gospel, not just tell them, like, how to be happier or to lead a better life, because that's not why Jesus came. But if you wanted to save their souls, if you wanted to soften their hearts for the gospel, you would think that they would at the very least try to depict Jesus accurately. And then the second big thing that I have a problem with is that they choose confusion over clarity. I think a lot of people, Christian or not, they're watching it and they're like, what's the point of this ad? Again, I'm looking for the point. I want to love it. I do. I don't want to be a hater, but. But there's so much vagueness and so much ambiguity that it's not helpful. So, like, what's the point of the ad? Is the point that we should love others that look differently than us? Okay, then make it about that. Just say that. But if the ad is that Christianity is true, that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, that we are sinners in need of a Savior, then no one got that. No one got anywhere close to that. If it is just that God loves you and cares for you, which is what a lot of people have argued to me, that that's what it's about. Make it about that. Say that. Say God loves you and cares for you, not he gets you. It is true that he made us and that he is a high priest that sympathizes with our weaknesses, but that is not the primary focus of who Jesus is. That's not what we see in the Gospels. That's not what we see in his ministry. He is not primarily concerned at all, if at all, with us understanding that he gets us. He is primarily concerned with us understanding who he is, who God the Father is, and what we need to do in order to be saved. And we don't get anywhere close to that in the he gets us ads. My thought is that if you have 30 to 60 seconds of airtime and millions of dollars share the Gospel, the word of God does not return void. You would never fail by just saying the word of God. And maybe you say, oh, we can't put Bible verses in there. It can't be explicit. We have to just, like, hint at it. Then hint at it. I didn't see any hinting of the Gospel in any of these ads. What if it was a 60 second depiction of the prodigal son or a shepherd seeking the lost sheep? Or even if you modernized this, but it was like a modern depiction of a parable that Jesus told. Like, I would be happier with that because again, it would seem to me like we are going in the right direction. But the mentality behind this is a mentality that a lot of Christians suffer from and that is that Jesus and Christians need help with. Primarily that. The reason that Christians aren't liked, the reason that Jesus is misunderstood, is because of bad legalistic pharisaical Christians who care too much about sin and are just too mean. But the truth is Christianity doesn't have a PR problem. The world has always hated Jesus and because of that, the world has always hated Christians. Matthew 10:22 says, and you will be hated by all for my name's sake. John 3:16 says that God so loved the world. And that was actually, you saw that on a hat in the ad. But then after that, a few verses later, John 3:19 says this. The light has come into the world and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works are evil. So yes, we should be the aroma of Christ. We should lead people to the cross. We should be as persuasive as we possibly can through our lives, through our words, absolutely. But just reaffirming and validating what non believers already think about this powerless Jesus, I don't think is leaving people there. Now my hope and my prayer is that someone would be led to Christ through this. Through imperfect means. We have been entrusted with the gospel, which means we are always going to be imperfect vessels of God's message of salvation. And I have heard stories, some of you have told me, like you're a non Christian friend, you're a lukewarm friend. Their interest was piqued by these ads. They went onto the website and they read about them or you know, they read about he gets us, or they chatted with someone and they heard the real gospel, Gospel. And I praise God for that and I pray for that and I hope that that is successful. But if that is successful, if people hear the gospel and become saved through this, it will be not because of the failings of he gets us, the theological shortcomings of he gets us, but despite them, and because God is good and he's gonna save who he wants to save, even through imperfect means. And so I pray that, and coincidentally that is also my prayer for this new, like White House faith office that Donald Trump has established and is being spearheaded by heretical teacher Paula White. So I'll get into some of that in just a second. We're kind of closing in on time, but I'll try to be as thorough as I can on my thoughts on her. But let me pause and tell you about our third sponsor for the day. And that is my Patriot Supply. They're a company that sells emergency preparedness and survival gear. They've got all different kinds of products. But today I want to tell you about their mega three month emergency food kit. This is not your typical survivor survival food. Each kit provides more than 252,500 calories daily for 90 days. They've got delicious meals and extras including chicken, beef, fruits and veggies. You want to get one 3 month emergency food kit for every member of your family. It's just better to be safe than sorry. You never know what's going to happen with our supply chain. Keep this in storage. It'll stay in storage for up to 25 years. Hopefully you'll never need it, but if you do, you will be so happy you have it. And when you use my link preparewithally.com you get a 250 discount. That is really significant. Go to preparewithally.com all right. Last week President Trump announced that he has created a new White House faith office. He appointed pastor so called Paula White to lead this organization. Here's top 15 this week I'm also.
