Christian spectators of the 2024 Super Bowl received a drop of respite in a bucket of sacrilegious attacks on their faith.
Actor Mark Wahlberg was featured in a short, 30-second advertisement for his prayer app Hallow, calmly inviting viewers to “stay prayed up” with him for Lent. One can only hope this quick breath of fresh air was enough for all the Christians watching the Super Bowl on Sunday to hold the rest of their breath throughout the endless barrage of hostility and mockery that followed.
The organization He Gets Us played an advertisement as well, but it was the greatest perversion of Christianity that was displayed that night. It flashed 12 still images of one person washing another’s feet in a symbolic reference to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples.
Some of the images showed a mother washing the feet of a girl visiting an abortion clinic, a lawful citizen washing the feet of an illegal immigrant, and a priest washing the feet of someone presumably within the LGBT sphere. The video ends with the message, “Jesus didn’t teach hate. He washed feet.”
“We reimagined a world where people, especially those with opposing ideologies, took off their shoes and washed each other’s feet,” the He Gets Us website reads. That line alone would mean so much if the actual message was not so obviously disingenuous. The organization is bastardizing Jesus’s kindness into a political message by only demanding that those whom the Left deems heroes and victims should be serviced by the evil Christian conservatives.
Usher’s halftime show was admittedly an impressive spectacle, yet it was not without its own insulting contributions. Some hopeful conservatives latched on to the R&B legend’s comment during his performance that “God answers prayers,” but they forgot about or were disproven by all his songs’ themes of hookup sex and “gyrating, possible relationship issues” featured on his suspiciously colored introduction card.
The “U” rating before Usher’s Super Bowl halftime show got us screaming YEAH.
#SBLVIII pic.twitter.com/FcRvaPCBNK
— Entertainment Tonight (@etnow) February 12, 2024
To Usher’s credit, he has been adamant that his faith is genuine and keeps him “grounded.” While it is not my place to accuse him of falsehood because only God can truly know, one must wonder why Usher would continue to make songs throughout his career that promote an anti-Christian lifestyle if not to try to have his cake and eat it too.
This final game of the season concluded the year’s tradition of placing an annoying amount of focus on Taylor Swift in the top box with the other underserved elites of our generation, one such person being rapper Ice Spice. The rising star was seen wearing an upside-down cross necklace and making the “sign of the horns,” a pagan hand gesture appropriated by Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey to symbolize the devil.
Super Bowl organizers had to have been deliberately scheming all of this, for the frequency of instances in which this many featured stars and organizations mocked Christianity could not have been mere coincidence. It is consistent with the worrying recent influx of pro-Satanic behavior in society.
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Last Wednesday, Arizona state Sen. Juan Mendez introduced members of the Satanic Temple to a state Senate meeting, saying that he was “graced with their presence.” In late January, a veteran was charged with a hate crime for destroying a demon statue placed in the Iowa Capitol. Days before that, rapper Lil Nas X released yet another sacrilegious music video mocking Jesus’s crucifixion.
Christianity is at a very dangerous crossroads in America. Many who claim to be followers drag Jesus’s name and teachings through the dirt and catastrophically misrepresent them. As the cowardice of the faithful leans even further into appeasement to the culture, Satan’s public presence will only grow stronger.
Parker Miller is a 2024 Washington Examiner Winter Fellow.