Furor over ‘He Gets Us’ Super Bowl ad proves Jesus’s point
Tiana Lowe
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The most controversial advertisement of the Super Bowl was also the simplest. After 45 seconds of black and white shots of rancor in the streets — protesters yelling at police, customers yelling at cashiers, neighbors yelling at neighbors — the ad read, “Jesus loved the people we hate. He gets us. All of us.” Another 60-second spot ran with images of children playing, telling the audience, “Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults. He gets us. All of us.”
That’s it. That was the whole thing. The ad didn’t talk about gay marriage, divorce, or any of the more controversial theological questions within Christianity. It was simply a cursory illustration of Jesus, the man, and his teaching to love one’s enemies.
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But not everyone who saw the ad was so sanguine.
What exactly made Ocasio-Cortez, who says she is Catholic, call the spot sharing two simple teachings of Jesus fascistic? The question may be answered by an equal but opposite strain of vitriol from the Right.
Both sides of criticism here ascribe political and exclusionary motivations to a simple campaign. He Gets Us is summarizing and illustrating the second greatest commandment of Jesus.
“You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,'” Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew. “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
The greatest commandment of God’s law, Jesus would later say, was to love God, but the second is like it: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
(With regards to the left-wing critique that the campaign ought to donate the money elsewhere, Jesus might have a couple of things to say about it. First, he warned us not to “sound a trumpet” when helping the needy. Second, he said, “Go and make disciples of all nations,” which presumably includes some kind of expense to reach people with his message. Third, their objection sounds suspiciously like the one Judas gave on a different occasion when money was spent to honor Jesus.)
There is nothing fascistic or “left-wing” about the He Gets Us campaign. But they are radical because the teachings of Jesus were radical. The AOCs of the world now, just like the Pharisees back then, require division and discord to maintain their power. Both reject the central teaching of Jesus because it is not exclusionary.
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On the other hand, the Charlie Kirks and AOCs alike wish to gate-keep with ever-shifting tests of moral purity. Christianity, in contrast, teaches that the only unforgivable sin is to refuse to seek forgiveness from God.
The New Testament is composed of 27 books by nearly a dozen different authors, written in a dialect of ancient Greek, translating the words of Jesus, who primarily spoke Aramaic. If megamillionaires want to bankroll pure portrayals of the words of Christ himself, that’s not only an incalculable good — it’s one not too different from the Bible stories and studies written in Latin or English or in any other modern language.