The “He Gets Us” Super Bowl ad was sixty seconds of genius propaganda for the social justice gospel of tolerance and inclusion that resonates with a generation grasping for ultimate freedom, identity without limits, and sexuality without boundaries. It was a postmodern sleight of hand that brilliantly transformed the Biblical virtue of God’s love, agape, into division and judgment.
The “He Gets Us” feel-good ad brilliantly hid the duplicitous message that’s becoming the mantra of a post-Christian America: The social gospel of inclusion is Jesus’ real gospel and Christians pervert His message by making moral judgments that cause division and harm.
The message of “He Gets Us” is clear—morals that “restrict” personal expression are anathema and boundaries that “stigmatize” lifestyles are hate.
It is literally on the home page of their website: “How did the story of Jesus, the world’s greatest love story, get twisted into a tool to judge, harm, and divide?” They believe the answer is simple—Christians. Christians have twisted Jesus’ message of inclusion by using the Bible to make moral discernments about sexuality, lifestyles, and choices. In their view, loving disagreement is the new hate because Christians dare to challenge unbridled freedom.
“He Gets Us” wants us to believe that Jesus was tolerant because He treated everyone with kindness and compassion, regardless of their lifestyle. They portray Jesus as the ultimate inclusive moral teacher. He ate with sinners, washed Judas’ feet, forgave prostitutes, a serial divorcee’ and a married woman caught the act of shacking up with the local bad boy. The Pharisees, the most ungracious and intolerant of His generation, are the only people he wouldn’t tolerate. Jesus embraced everyone, offering universal forgiveness and inclusion in the Kingdom of Heaven to all. He only condemned intolerance.
There is a partial truth: Jesus loves everyone through His patient kindness. But “He Gets Us” conflates this into a narrative that God’s love is defined only by His compassion. Yes, Jesus embraced everyone, but it’s an incomplete narrative of God’s love that “He Gets Us” uses to affirm the gospel of social justice for a postmodern generation that demands the right to reimagine truth as it desires.
How fatally ironic that a generation that despises Christianity now rejoices in a false narrative about Jesus to emancipate themselves from any moral evaluation of their choices. It is cultural appropriation at its finest.
God’s agape is the love story of the cross, and agape comes with boundaries—hard, firm, unyielding boundaries that won’t tolerate behaviors and lifestyles that kill the soul. Jesus’ compassion is only one aspect of His love that refuses to tolerate the choices that separate us from Him. Boundaries are unacceptable in an infinitely permissive society that wants to define love on its own terms.
Yes, Jesus is patient, kind, and long-suffering to all, but He also despises evil, rejoices in truth, protects, and perseveres. His love discerns behaviors that distance us from Him, providing moral guidance to keep us from harming ourselves and society.
These arrive as the “Thou shalt nots” that the neo-pagans so thoroughly despise. When Christians refuse to tolerate the reimagining of everything from gender to sex to racism and social justice, the post-Christian world is set ablaze with utter disdain for the truth of God’s love for humanity.
“He Gets Us” would have us believe that patience, kindness, and long-suffering reveal God’s tolerance and inclusion while despising evil, rejoicing in truth, protecting, and persevering are vestiges of Christian intolerance that turned the world’s greatest love story into a tool of judgment, harm, and division. They fail to recognize God’s love includes all of these.
“Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it does not pride itself. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, and always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13:4-7 NIV)
This is love in action; it’s an inclusive verb that comes with boundaries that feel like a straight jacket to the unrestrained soul that despises repentance. God’s love is unconditional, but inclusion into the Kingdom of Heaven comes with strings that boundaries help us understand. See, Jesus offered forgiveness to all, but granted it only to those who repented and turned to Him. Multitudes rejected Him because they wouldn’t repent, including people in His inner circle. Jesus had 70 disciples early in His ministry, and 58 walked away from Him because they found His teaching too demanding for their taste. He didn’t change His message to accommodate their version of truth. He embraced the twelve who accepted Him and transformed the world.
Jesus openly declared He would divide the closest relationships because people don’t like tough love, and His love can be as tough as it gets. He refused to change His message to make it more relatable and inclusive so that everyone gets their lifestyle of choice without guilt and moral evaluation.
The false narrative of “He Gets Us” of the “only” inclusive and tolerant Jesus is as counterfactual as it gets. God’s love is inclusive in that forgiveness and grace are offered to everyone. However, life in His presence in the Kingdom of Heaven is exclusive because only those who choose repentance and seek forgiveness can enter. His grace is inclusive to all who repent and receive.
God’s love is all-encompassing; He won’t settle for kindness and compassion alone to get us there.
Love discerns behavior and sets boundaries, which our post-truth-influenced, narcissistic, participation trophy-driven generation rebels against. They are willing to do anything to gain their freedom. They’ll turn the love of the Cross into hate so they can dismantle boundaries and enjoy life on their terms.
Boundaries are complex, and discernment is tough. Humanity has rebelled against them from the beginning in Eden, so it shouldn’t surprise us that our generation takes its shot today.
But the message of “He Gets Us” should make us all concerned.
Their critical reimagining of the Gospel has no grounding in Jesus’ biblical reality. His message brings division because He makes exclusive claims to truth that place difficult and demanding boundaries on human behavior. He is not the God of infinite tolerance and inclusion that “He Gets Us” portrays. He came to save the world but made it clear to all that His death and resurrection would divide humanity. He was good with the consequences, even if the multitudes rejected Him.
What do we make of a world that turns God’s love into a tool of judgment, hate, and division? This postmodern cultural appropriation forces thousands of years of Biblical history to conform to the preferences and desires of a post-Christian world. One wonders how society can last if the very basis of God’s love that sustained Western civilization can be so inexorably mutilated by a world that wants ultimate freedom for lifestyles and personal pleasure.
When love is identified as hate, love is no longer a virtue.
If you’re looking for help fighting the culture war, you can find more resources here on our Battleground: Ideas website. Start with How Do I Respond To The Transgender Ideology? and What is a Woman? – Matt Walsh Here’s Your Answer. For a more in-depth look, get a copy of my book How Do I Talk to My Kids About Social Justice? and How Do I Respond to the Culture War? These will take you from a basic understanding of LGBTQ to drafting public policy statements you can use on your local school board. Let us know what you need and what you think. We are here to help. Peace be unto you…CM.
