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Notes -
“He Gets Us” doesn’t get it
[repost because server wipe, if that’s cool with everyone. Same post as yesterday, but probably some uncorrected mistakes from my note app]
The Christian advertising campaign “He Gets Us” aired two ads during the Super Bowl. The first ad asks “who is my neighbor?” interspersed with shots of mostly unsavory characters. The one you don’t value or welcome, the ad answers, to the drums of glitch-y hip hop. The second ad is titled “Foot Washing” and proved quite controversial. Among the scenes of foot washing depicted in the ad, the following have generated the most discussion: a Mexican police officer washing the feet of a black man wearing gold chains in an alley; a “preppy” normie-coded girl washing the feet of an alt girl; a cowboy washing the feet of aNative American; a woman washing the feet of a girl seeking an abortion (with pro-life activists sidelined, their signs upside down); an oil worker washing the feet of an environmental activist; a woman washing the feet of an illegal migrant; a Christian woman washing the feet of a Muslim; and a priest washing the feet of a sassy gay man. This last ad has tenfold the views on YouTube, in large part due to the negative response by Christians and conservatives, for example Matt Walsh and Babylon Bee editor Joel Berry. Joel writes,
I mostly agree with Joel. I think that this ad campaign is a failure.
The campaign fails to understand what brings people to a religion, or any social movement for that matter, or even any product, and as such it will not lead viewers to join their evangelical church or behave in the intended Christian manner. The audience of the Super Bowl is jointly comprised of people who care about what’s popular and cool, and people who care about remarkable feats of strength and dominance. These people are not going to be compelled to “love” their crack addict neighbor because you tell them to, because why would they listen to you? — there is no deeper motivation substantiated as for why they should do this. In the Gospel, Jesus doesn’t say “love your neighbor because it’s nice to do that and I am guilting you”, he says “love your neighbor so as to be a son of God whom created you, and obtain His reward, or else risk judgment from the eternal judge.” This is reward-driven and status-seeking behavior, the reward being administered by God and the status being administered by the church body. In its context, it requires a belief that the person saying it is the ultimate judge of both life and afterlife. (To behave Christlike, the required motivation is the totalizing significance of Christ... hence the name of the religion.) The starting point of the faith is the most dominant and powerful person telling you to care for the poor, not some cheeky “you should care about the poor because you should.”
Again, the Super Bowl viewer cares about what is popular and what is dominant. That’s normal, I’m not criticizing it. So could you not pull anything out of the religious tradition to depict the popularity and dominance of God? What, you feel bad playing off of FOMO to get people to your church? Jesus did just that on many occasions. 1, 2, 3, 4. Do you somehow feel guilty describing Jesus as glorious and powerful? What about the 72,000 angels he commands? You don’t want to tell the viewer that their prayers will be answered, when every 10 minutes there’s an ad for betting and gambling? Viva Las Vegas, non Vita Christi. So it has to be asked, what exactly is the purpose of the campaign? How is this getting people to your church, or even just getting people to behave better? “Jesus gets me” because… biker smoker and crack addict?
If the object of the ad is the instill a sense of pity to compel the viewer to behave morally, then there’s clearly more relevant subjects. Why not the focal point of the religion, the “innocent beautiful sacrificial lamb slain for our freedom” motif? The religion already comes with a built-in way to empower pity. You could say, “he gets us because he dealt with all our pain and temptation”, and that would make much more sense, while incentivizing the intended result of the ad. As is, I get the idea that the ad campaigners are afraid of any depiction of the life of Christ. I don’t get the sense that these people believe he is an essential ingredient of the moral life. And it’s fine if they don’t, that’s their business, but then dont make multimillion dollars ads that about it. If Christ is indeed essential, then your multimillion dollar ad campaign ought to be directed toward producing an image of Christ that is alluring, whether this be through scenes of pity or scenes of power. In an attempt to make Christianity subversive you should not be subverting Christianity.
Back to Joel’s critique of the ad: yes, the foot washing ad is problematic. Beside the fact that it is misinterpreted (explained below), it only works to further demean the image of Christianity to an irreligious America. “If I become a Christian, I’ll have to wash an old man’s feet?” The only viewers that will be compelled here are the foot fetish enthusiasts piqued by the alt girl. You are not going to convince anyone to join your social movement by promising them the opportunity to wash a man’s feet in an alley.
As was mentioned, the ad elevates the status of people who are not exactly Christ-coded, and those whose status is already elevated. During a Super Bowl, it’s not subversive to elevate the status of a vaguely athletic black man wearing gold chains. The half time show was Usher! Neither is it subversive to show an oil rig worker subservient to an environmental activist. In whose world is an environmental activist not more privileged than a dust-coated oil worker? And a wholesome girl washing an alt girl’s feet is not subversive in an event inaugurated by Post Malone’s national anthem. No, no; show me a wealthy and attractive CEO washing the feet of his fat ugly employee, if you must. But don’t just reinstitute the high/low status dynamic already in place by the world.
My last criticism I’ll try to keep short: the theological ground of these ads is spurious. There is indeed a scene where Jesus washes the feet of his disciples, but the writer goes out of his way to clarify the meaning behind it. It begins by mentioning that Jesus “loved his own who were in the world”, namely his followers present and future. The students are shocked when their superior attempts to perform this subservient act, until it is explained to be necessary. “If your Lord washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do just as I have done to you. I am not speaking of all of you [not Judas]; I know whom I have chosen.” So, rather than being an act that a Christian is compelled to do to anyone, we have an act that Christians do to one another, to cultivate humility spirit and esteem for their brethren. They are told not to do it to merely self-labeled Christians, like Judas, let alone those of other faiths, as the ad suggests they do.
Foot washing was a culture-specific action that reflected the status hierarchy in a way that has no direct American parallel. An approximate American parallel would be for a boss to allow his employer to use his office, or for a boss to cook his employee’s family a dinner, or to clean his employee’s keyboard. The difficulty in understanding the event without careful study is the reason why it’s a mistake depict it as a means of propagating your worldview. Nothing is accomplished.
As another poster mentioned below, "We are, in fact, explicitly commanded to love our enemies... Christians, also, need the reminder that we cannot hate." Nietzsche was correct that Christianity is a slave morality, and the right-wing tradcaths will never be able to make it anything else no matter how many angels Christ is said to command.
Right-wing Christians do indeed need the reminder that they cannot hate, as commanded by their messiah.
There seems to be a translation issue
The distinction also occurs in Greek: πολέμιος versus ἐχϑρός
The issue is occasionally discussed at length (Search for "hostis" to jump to the discussion).
When I first came across this, I was puzzled. Tyndale published the first English bible in 1535. Why did nobody complain about translation issues until 1932? On the other hand. I'm so old that I studied Latin and Greek for O-level in an English Grammar School. I'm guessing that the educated elite in England learned a decent amount of Latin as recently as 1900. If they cared about what Christ meant by 'love your enemies', they would read the Vulgate, find "diligite inimicos vestros", then go off to fight in the Boer War, happy that shooting at a 'hostis' was compatible with Christianity.
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The love for enemies is a Christian love, an imitation of what Christ does. This includes, for example, warning the uncharitable wealthy of the eternal hellfire that awaits them, as Jesus does on many occasions. It may include insulting some by calling them children of Satan, for the purposes of hopefully awakening an obstinate soul. It also means, in some cases, “showing mercy by fear, hating even the garment stained by their flesh”, while still loving the person’s soul. It means that if someone in your church sins against you without apology or listening the church’s correction, the whole community severs all ties with them completely (Matthew 18:17). Historically, perhaps the best example of Christian love is the execution of criminals: allow them the dignity to confess and speak to a priest, then execute them quickly without needless pain. Hence the death penalty was justified by Ambrose, Chrysostom, Augustine, in a framework of Christian love.
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...And the reply to you, of course, is that "not hating" does not obviously preclude burning cities to ash together with their occupants. Christianity is not a pacifistic religion.
Just so I can understand, if Christians were burn down a city, you'd say they had a moral requirement to do so from a place of sorrow and concern, not hatred?
I don't think "Sorrow and concern" cover the full range, but they are at least a start.
I do not think Christianity necessarily implies pacifism, and war sometimes involves burning cities, together with their occupants. If I'm correct about that, then the Christian thing to do is to try to keep it to a minimum, and on a tight leash. It would be dishonest to pretend that war is not war, though.
The correct balance will always be criticized by the bloodthirsty as cowardly and slave-like, and by the pacifistic as bloodthirsty and merciless. There is, in fact, a balance, and we should keep to it. Does it seem otherwise to you? Do you object to the morality of the examples above?
[EDIT] ...of all the aspects of being a mod, the absolute worst is fat-fingering the "remove post" button while trying to talk to people. I don't know if removals and reinstatements show up in a log or if people notice, but please take this as a pre-emptive apology to you and anyone else in case it comes up.
I am fine with the idea that Christianity doesn't require its adherents to be pacifist. Nor do I oppose the idea of collateral damage, though there are substantial requirements, in my view, on who is allowed to claim the victims of their attacks qualify.
Tangentially, I also do not agree that the examples you gave constitute something morally acceptable.
Do you think they are questionable, or obviously unacceptable?
I can definately agree with the questionable, and I can at least recognize the arguments for completely unacceptable. I see the picture of the woman and child burned to charcoal in the Tokyo firebombing article, and i think of my wife and my daughter plausibly suffering a similar fate. Death is the common lot of all humanity, and Christians have subtle but important disagreements with non-Christians about the nature and importance of particular forms of death.
Obviously morally unacceptable. There are arguments for doing it, but they are dwarfed by the power of the arguments against bombing population centers without some kind of impending mass disaster. As far as I know, there was never a time where the danger posed by more selective bombing (or just not bombing) was so immediate and high that it could justify destroying entire cities.
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Reporting my reply from before the wipe:
The purpose of a Christian ad in the Super Bowl is to reach non-Christians.
From a non-Christian perspective, the Christian God is neither dominant nor popular, and it's not clear to me how one would change that through the medium of a Super Bowl ad.
Yes, and the successor culture has long-since made memetic antibodies to such appeals ubiquitous: Any talk of hell, sin, or damnation is simply assumed to be an expression of hate and intolerance. If you are attempting to communicate the message of Christ to the world, you need to engage with the fact that the world you're speaking to is not merely unaware, but actively armored against your message. Now, it's an interesting question where a Christian's responsibility goes from there, but it seems to me that interpretations of Paul's answer are at least colorable:
Jesus also told people that his yoke was easy and his burden was light, and that they would find rest for their souls. He told people that the poor and the suffering were blessed, while the rich and prosperous were destined for woe. This is not to say that the Gospel message can be reduced to a message of naive love-as-the-world-understands-it, any more than it can be reduced purely to hellfire and damnation. Both damnation and love-as-it-actually-is are integral, and different people need to hear different parts of those elements at different times.
No, but such descriptions are meaningless and pointless to people whose understanding of Jesus amounts to a cartoon.
I think it's aimed at saying "we do not and will not hate you." Given the considerable effort by the faith's opponents to paint sincere Christians as fundamentally hateful, and given the nature of the society we find ourselves in, this seems to me to be a plausibly-valuable message.
@reactionary_peasant brings up the salient point about how each era pretends that one virtue is the only virtue that exists. This is very true. He further quotes C.S. Lewis' observation that the current era's virtue is charity, and again, this is true. It seems to me that there's two other points that should go along with it, though. First, Lewis made that observation more than half a century ago, and it seems to me that our society is very clearly and quite rapidly moving away from Charity as the virtue du jour, toward Justice. The old days of universal license and freedom and live-and-let-live liberalism have largely gone away, and now we are all hurtling toward the opposite extreme, toward authority, laws, demands, and vicious enforcement. And secondly, to the extent that Charity is still over-played by the culture at large, the value of actual, balanced charity is not thereby reduced. It is still both good and necessary to maintain proper charity in balance with the other virtues, regardless of how the broader culture behaves.
God is love. Christianity is defined by emulation of God's love. Our message is not hateful, and there is no room for hate of other humans within it. Walsh argues that washing the feet of sinners and enemies of the faith can be seen as affirming their sin and opposition. While such misinterpretation is obviously possible, it does not seem to me that it is inevitable, or indeed, strictly speaking, avoidable. We are, in fact, explicitly commanded to love our enemies. We are, in fact, explicitly commanded to repay evil with good. It is true that the Gospel does not record Jesus washing the feet of non-believers; it does record him dying in humiliating, wretched agony to secure their salvation, which is a rather more extreme form of submission than washing feet. Showing kindness to defiant sinners does not necessarily concede approval of their sin, and showing kindness to real or presumed enemies is the direct command of our savior. Misperception of such kindness as approval of sin requires either willful blindness, or a complete absence of meaningful communication.
Christians, also, need the reminder that we cannot hate. We may oppose our enemies, and perhaps we may even fight or kill our enemies, but whatever we do must be compatible with love for those on the other side. It seems to me that this requirement is much less restrictive than many in the world would presume, but I do not believe that this makes it any less meaningful a restriction. The civil war killed more than half a million Americans, but when it ended, the winners did not exterminate the losers, nor even enslave them. Instead, they made peace, and many soldiers who had spent years earnestly trying to kill each other laid down their arms and lived together. Our modern society spits on that idea, furious that the wicked were not sufficiently punished, that injustice was merely greatly reduced rather than entirely eliminated. I do not, and it seems to me that Christians should not. Humans will always sin, and many of them will always embrace their sin defiantly. Nothing we do or say will change that fact. Our job is to attempt to reach them despite their defiance, and that requires contact, communication, personal connection. Given the current climate, "We refuse to hate you" seems like a reasonable attempt at a start.
Is it? The purpose of this one appears to be trying to reach Christians and explain to them why the Christian thing to do is submit themselves to the left.
I disagree, for reasons explained in the rest of the comment.
Christianity demands a balance between loving the sinner and hating the sin. Non-Christians seem determined to insist that we only do one or the other, as their short-term-preferences dictate, but we will continue to do both regardless.
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For what it's worth, I consider "the server got wiped so I'm reposting it" to be 100% justified.
. . . even if it makes naraburns's job a little harder from having duplicate copies of quality contributions.
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There's a difference between humility and humiliation.
The CEO of a McDonalds choosing to spend a day at the fryer getting shouted at by customers is humbling himself; so is the Pope washing feet. He's the Pope! Even now, one of the most powerful men on earth. Likewise if, say, JK Rowling were to anonymously attend a writing group and read my awful prose because someone did the same for her once upon a time.
Jesus Christ, the son of God, part of the Trinity, letting himself be crucified by a mob is humbling himself. He is deliberately not taking the position that his nature entitles him to, but taking on our burdens because he chooses to.
In this day and age, Christianity does not enjoy a high reputation among the mighty. The sassy gay man can get any Christian he likes fired at any time, purely by accusing him of saying something homophobic. Silent prayer near a girl getting her abortion can get you arrested. Under such circumstances
does not show the mighty being humbled, it reifies the social pecking order. And it throws Christian teaching and Christians themselves under the bus to do so.
Christians are commanded to humble themselves regardless of their station, and are commanded to accept humiliation in service to their Lord, in addition to other forms of mistreatment, imprisonment, torture and death. Not all Christians are good at doing this, but the instructions are quite clear. Whether the sassy gay man can or does get a Christian fired, Christians are still required to love him, to repay evil with good, to not take revenge. That's a mouthful to put into an ad, hence the washing of feet.
Christianity does not aim to overturn the social pecking order through a revolution of the pecked. It accepts being pecked upon, and declines to peck back. That is Christian teaching, which is why most of the complaints from actual Christians are not about Christians being humiliated, but about whether the ad is condoning sin. It is not, in my opinion, but the concern is an understandable one.
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The entire framing of this ad points to an unseriousness about Christ on the part of its creators. There is a growing tendency in protestant circles to believe that our mission is to shepherd the path to individual and societal self-actualization. This is clear in mainline denominations, where in my town only coffee shops are more likely to prominently display price/transgender flags. But it's seeping into "evangelical" denominations as well. Even doctrinally sound churches sing insipid lyrics about Christ as our friend (rightfully lampooned by South Park), are pastorally lenient on premarital cohabitation and divorce (even protestants are supposed to consider marriage covenantal), and are quite squishy around women ordination.
We are trapped in the culture's post-Christian milieu, and we like it. We just want to be a little more recognized within it.
"He gets us". What narcissism! God needs nothing outside of himself. God is the almighty, the Triune, omnipotent, without whom nothing would exist and without whose ongoing sustenance nothing would continue to exist. The Spirit hovered over the face of the waters, and creation began. The Word was in the beginning, was God, and spoke through the Law and the Prophets of the Old Testament; and became flesh and dwelt among us. Christ came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, the very laws and prophecies that he inspired. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways," says the Lord. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts." Our response is not to bloviate banalities on national TV. Our response is to fall on our knees in holy fear, reverence, and repentance.
While I don't like that genre of music either, calling Christ our friend isn't necessarily wrong (and has a history). The scriptures at least called Abraham a friend of God.
On the whole, though, yes. The attempting to promote soft forms of Christianity doesn't work well.
I like that your observation does not constrain itself to the mainline liberal denominations. The abandonment of church discipline is not without precedent (see, e.g. Europe pre-Protestant Reformation), but is certainly not healthy, and this is one serious concern I have about the increasingly prevalent non-denominational-style Christianity today.
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You know, it’s important to acknowledge how much of a minority the ‘dissident right’ position (not just, like, Moldbug and BAP, but the tradcaths and the paganlarpers and the HBDers and Fuentes and so on) is. Even Tucker, obviously he’s popular, but to a lot of his viewers he’s popular in a shock jock way, they don’t necessarily agree with his WASPish affect, ultrarealist Buchananite foreign policy and with all his other stances all the time.
There are a lot of flyover state Republicans who will vote for Donald Trump this November but who - largely - agree with social justice theology within a Christian framework. They may not like Critical Race Theory™️ and take a skeptical view of Black Lives Matter®️, but they’re not reactionaries. They largely agree with the New York Times worldview with minor disagreements about gay marriage and abortion.
...with the exceptions, as you note, of CRT, BLM, Gays and Abortion, which between them comprise the majority of Social Justice's most visible ideological commitments. As my father was fond of saying, if we had ham we could have ham and eggs, if we had eggs.
Christianity is, to put it gently, an awkward fit for actual racism and misogyny, though humans are certainly capable of the contortions necessary. Opposition to such things does not imply a yearning or even an acceptance of progressive "social justice". What Christians are is civil. They are not, generally speaking, revolutionaries, and they try to fit in and live in peace with others to the extent that doing so does not require disobeying their understanding of God's commands.
It is probably true that many Christians consider themselves to largely be in agreement with the New York Times. This is because the New York Times, like most media organs, is a purpose-built propaganda machine designed explicitly to manufacture consent and to present itself as the voice of reasonable civil society, and that it has a long history of routine deceit about where we as a society were, are, and are going. That does not change the fact that a very large chunk of serious Christians are fundamentally opposed to the Times' actual aims and goals, and that a wildly disproportionate percentage of the opposition the Times faces in those goals comes from Christians.
And trans.
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Does this actually matter to anyone? Religion as practiced by most adherents is a loose collection of rituals and superstitions that serves chiefly as a tribal identifier; to the extent that such people follow their own religious doctrines, they tend to pick and choose what already fits their values while selectively ignoring anything that doesn't. This is why, for example, you can have an explicitly pacifist faith that decries the accumulation of wealth serve as the official religion for a bunch of bling-obsessed warrior aristocrats without everyone's head exploding or decamping to a better aligned belief system.
In the last iteration of the thread, someone articulated the point that right now Christianity is very heavily right-coded and enjoys a fairly poor reputation with young people (not unrelated). These commercials seem best understood as attempts to challenge both of those perceptions. It may not be true to some platonic ideal of Christian theology, but you can say that about most Actually Existing Christianity (it's only relatively recently that they mostly chileld.
Yes! Though I don't think you have to appeal to Theology as a dogma to make this point. I'm atheist/agnostic and I can still see that the gospel was onto something with game-theoretic, social, and causal merit here. Christianity gained dominance in the real world at a time when there were plenty of other people preaching their own versions of Judaism. It was a competitive memetic environment. It matters to people in the sense that if you fail to convey the things that actually made the gospel powerful, you won't touch anyone. And part of that was definitely the radical proposition that those of higher status ought to perform actual care for those of lower status.
I am positing that this had little to do with the details of Christian theology, most of which weren't even settled until after a particular sect of Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and resolved its disagreements in the traditional way. Conveying the good vibes is more important to attracting converts (or just avoiding deconversion) than being theologically sound. Is the ad in question theologically dubious? Yeah, probably. Is it any more theologically dubious than other modern (or ancient, for that matter) variants of Christianity? Probably not.
(Also, you're producing for an American audience. The Good News is not news for most of them them, so that's not a very strong angle of attack).
Theology and soteriology (study of salvation) have always had a push-and-pull relationship. How much of what is true about God must be believed accurately for a saving faith? (Not much.) Does knowing a lot of theology before being saved actually reduce the likelihood of conversion? (Probably.) Is the underlying reality of God, the afterlives, and the spiritual realm(s?) able to be modeled by human minds? (Comic books have tried in fascinating ways, from DC’s The Source to Marvel’s One Above All to Cerebus The Aardvark’s asymmetrical Light and Dark.) What does it matter if nobody believes on a gut level anymore?
So yes, please take it back to first century Roman-occupied Judea. Take it back to an era where reading the future in the guts of animal sacrifices was official Roman decision-making policy and the high priest of Israel transferred the sins of his people to a ram before running it off a cliff. Take it back to the era when “love your neighbor as much as you love yourself” was simple, spiritual, subversive, and called “atheistic” by the polytheists who ran the Mediterranean world. Take it back to when we didn’t have Superman and Wolverine returning from death whenever the comic sales slumped, like Greek heroes escaping the clutches of Hades.
And if you want to see what such a simple, awe-filled faith looks like, watch The Chosen. It’s a bingeable dramatization of the gospels, in prestige TV format. It shows how a simple rabbi from the rural hill country overturned the world. And it’s making white Baptist-flavored Christians invite their neighbors to watch Brown Jesus unironically.
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Yes, theology matters quite a lot to many people. In general though Protestant denominations care much less than Catholics or Orthodox Christians.
Is this really true? Perhaps I'm just in the "really cares about theology" corner of denominations. But I know a bunch of other laypeople besides me who I know have read at least a thousand pages of theological writings, not counting the bible. (one I directly know, at least four more whom it would be inconcievable for them not to have done so, many more who I'd be surprised if that weren't the case, and still more who I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it was the case)
Actually, yeah, maybe I'm in a subculture, that's definitely less true broadly across protestantism. That said, what with preaching being a larger emphasis, I'd expect that that would push a little more towards caring about teaching. I guess you definitely see it in the end-times things, in some groups.
My sense was that Eastern Orthodox Christians were often there for the vibes, or maybe due to their ethnicity.
My feeling is that there’s a pretty big division between ‘serious’ or ‘hardcore’ Catholics who do things like have big families and refuse to go to gay weddings, who really care about theology(the actual IRL tradcaths are a subset of this group), and ‘Sunday’ Catholics who go home after church and don’t think about it all that much until next weekend. I kind of assume it’s the same for Eastern Orthodox because there’s similar dynamics.
Now, disclaimer that this is just IME, but IME evangelicals don’t care very much about theology, even very religious ones. They’re more interested in ascertaining a minimum level of commitment and piety than they are in the details of theological beliefs and surveys tend to show that they really don’t know a lot about their own theology, either.
Yeah, this seems pretty true. (And the further divide, I assume, between those who call themselves Catholic but don't even attend regularly.)
I think this varies, but after rethinking it, yeah, you're generally right. Doctrine can be seen as a barrier to unity (which it can be, all too often!), and as relatively unimportant compared to caring about Jesus, the basics of the gospel, etc. They will have some beliefs that they're committed to, but it's not as central.
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For the past 25 years or so, Christians have, among the irreligious, had a connotation of being the kind of bible-thumping holy rollers who promote conservative politics. Even among a lot of actual Christians (Catholics in particular), the idea of subscribing to some explicitly Christian conceptions (like advertising yourself as a Christian bathroom remodeling company, Christian Rock, etc.) usually brands someone not as a regular guy that happens to attend a Methodist church, or whatever, but a megachurch-attending wackaloon. I think the idea of these ads isn't to convey some complex theological thought but to reassure the masses that faith in Jesus doesn't necessarily put you in this bucket. For all the complaints among conservatives that mainstream Protestants and liberal Catholics have gone off the woke deep end, this is only apparent to people who are already immersed in Christian culture; it certainly isn't represented in the media, except for maybe a few minutes at the end of the news if the story involves the Pope. It's certainly a ham-fisted, dumb, and probably vain attempt, but I don't think it's necessary to read too much into it. You may complain about how certain facets of the ads are on spurious theological ground, but as a Catholic I could argue that most of the Christian churches in this country are operating on spurious theological ground (and they'd say the same about me, of course).
I don't think you see a ton of laypeople off the deep end.
What you see is liberal clergy (often exacerbated by the conservative clergy going to more hardline denominations), combined with something more unconsidered among the people in the churches. Further, many of the mainline denominations are full of old people, who I'm guessing you aren't exactly as likely to run across. Not sure what'll remain of them in a generation's time.
Those who identify as Christian among conservatives are more likely to do so in a meaningful sense. More "you are a sinner, but Christ died for sinners; follow him" and less "Christianity's about being nice to people." (Not that we shouldn't love our neighbor; we should. But if that is what Christianity is to you, you don't understand Christianity.)
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My original reply was lost in site reset but I will try to sum up.
While it is very possible that “He Gets Us doesn’t get it" it seems obvious to me from the rest of your post that you don't really "get it" either. I think that by attempting to frame/justify Christainity in explicitly secular left-wing/Rousseauean terms you're effectively falling into the trap I described in my Inferential Distance post about narratives and the Matrix. In short, you still think that's air you're breathing.
If you were to ask a representative sample of sincere Christians for the "starting point" of the Christian faith I'd wager that a significant majority would respond with some take on John 3:16 i.e. For God so loved the world he gave his only begotten son. For such a short phrase there's a whole lot to unpack there, but I'm going to stick to the elephant in the room. God is not just mighty, he is the mightiest, the literally All-Mighty. And yet he sacrifices, he suffers, and he is humbled. Consider the narrative role of this act. Consider the obvious question it raises in the mind of the attentive reader. Why would he do that? Sure, in the very next line we get so that whoever believeth in him should not perish but that doesn't the question so much as add a layer of abstraction. Why would God care if our sorry sinful asses perish or not? That's the Big question.
In contrast the whole "sky-daddy said so" brand of rhetoric, you seem to be endorsing here with your talk of Jesus as "the most dominant person" and virtue as mere "status-seeking behavior" is a weak/straw man more common amongst woke academics and edgy teenagers who've read a summary of Nietzsche than actual Christians. The oft heard refrain amongst Christians is not "what did God tell you?" or "what's in it for me?" it is "What would Jesus do?" Sometimes to "be Christlike" means associating with undesirables. Sometimes it means humbling yourself by washing the feet of your guests. Sometimes it means beating the shit out of a shady money changer in the temple square, and sometimes it means having a specific hill that you are not only ready but willing to die on.
Virtue is not desirable because it leads to higher status and other worldly rewards (though it can) it is desirable because contra the irony-pilled twitter and substack perverts that get regularly linked on this forum. Good things are good in and of themselves.
While the Lord knows I have my own issues both theological and otherwise with Bill High, the Signatory Foundation, and wider Calvary Chapel-adjacent subculture that puts out these adds, I have to give credit where credit is due, they seem to have come up with a strong pitch, and it seems to be annoying the correct people.
Edit: spelling/links
I’ll supply two answers, one theological and one psychological. IMO the psychological is more interesting.
Theologically: see how Jesus unpacks John 3:16. To finish the phrase and with my emphasis added,
The loving God is loving, but His love is defined on His own terms, the terms defined in his book. So important is faith and so assured is punishment, that immediately after the mention of love we are lead to eternal life versus condemnation. “God so loved the world, that he saves only those who believe in his son.”
You are right that this passage does not explain why God is loving. But I think an answer to this question isn’t possible when we know that God’s very nature is love. God is loving because that is what God is. And yet, it is up to God to define the term. This is explained in the Book of Job. Job continually seeks a final explanation from God, only to be shown how absolutely powerful God. At the end, Job admits —
Note that Job was the best of the best. “None like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man.” Yet he was put through his trials because of the question, “does Job fear God for no reason?” In the end, Job understands that the final justification of the fear of God is that He is infinitely powerful and totally beyond him in understanding. He did not find affection as the final answer, although God did shower him in gifts after his ordeal. Instead he found frightening, awe-full power beyond his understanding, which worked to compel his faith despite heroic tragedy.
But maybe you believe that Christ somehow changed the nature of God from the old to the New Testament. Is he no longer to be feared? But Jesus says, “fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell”. In Luke, this is a rare case of triple emphasis: “ I will warn you whom to fear: fear the One who, after He has killed, has authority to cast into hell; yes, I tell you, fear Him!”. And in the Magnificat we read, “mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear Him.”
Did the atonement somehow eradicate fear? Not for everyone. Because we read in Hebrews,
Maybe I am sidetracked now. To get directly back to the question: Jesus must be seen as dominant and powerful, possibly even before he is loving. This is what “Lord” means. The Lord had power over the entire kingdom. Jesus acted mercifully toward those who already feared God (as was normative in first century Judea), but who lacked an understanding of God’s forgiveness and compassion. But these two things — fear and love — are tied together. The threat of punishment is key: “it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” which doesn’t believe. It is precisely because of our nature that God needed to send the highest status man, his Son, to rescue sinners.
Psychological explanation
We can reliably predict what humans desire: it relates to status and reward. Super Bowl commercials illustrate our hopeless addiction to status and reward, as companies vie to associate their false hopes with the highest status and pleasure. What ads attempt to get across is that their product will deliver you beatitude, ie happiness. Iteration after iteration proves that this changes consumer behavior. “This is the way to beatitude; its absence will result in loss and alienation and pain.” There must be some reward for a behavior to occur, or some threat of pain, and the whole world is trying to sell you things based on this. There is no Stanley Cup without the felt sense of loss without its possession. There is no desire for the Super Bowl ring without the fear of losing it — causing many to fumble. They use celebrities in their ads because, in addition to being woefully sinful, humans are woefully social.
Man is inherently, comically bad at not giving in to easy but harmful pleasure-seeking. Obesity, addiction, 90% of dieting attempts failing, everyone’s constant lament about their screen time — this is well-proven. Civilization devised a way to fight against this by the institution of social environments. Put a boy in a classroom with a strong and dominant male teacher, who praises upon doing well, and he will study well. Put a boy in a classroom with an inattentive and cold teacher, and he will scroll through Andrew Tate videos on his phone — the dominant man who sells a cohesive existential worldview with a path to beatitude.
So now: what is the reward shown in the ad for becoming a servant of Christ? There is no reward, only discomfort. Why would depicting submissive Christians motivate anyone to seek Christ? Psychologically, the ad is inexplicable. No one wants to be subservient, yet the ad tells us that [advertised social movement] is submissive and uncomfortable — whereas Jesus tells us that the humble are exalted. There is no promise of beatitude, no promise of vitality or eternal life. No promise of Sonship to the Almighty, no promise of retribution to the evildoer. No promise that the worldly interests cast aside are repaid a hundredfold by God. No other advertisement tells you that buying their product will result in you being submissive, right? The best that can be hoped for is a pitiful, “wow, these embarrassing Christians like to show their humility. I guess I dont want to execute them, but neither do I want these losers as my friends and leaders”.
The reaction that a viewer should have for a well-made advert of Christianity should be the same reaction that people had to Christ’s preaching. Amazement. Wonder. A desire for glory. “And amazement seized them all, and they glorified God and were filled with awe, saying, ‘We have seen extraordinary things today.’” Yeah, this isn’t easy to come up with, but if I throw you 100 million dollars I’m sure you could figure something out.
Yes, Christianity is deeply patriarchal. The children do not understand the wisdom of the father, and they don't want to get their vaccines, because the needle hurts, and they do not comprehend the suffering they are being saved from. So they need to trust in the wisdom of the father, and trust that he loves them, even if they don't understand why he asks the things he asks.
Yet this is a very hard sell in a deeply individualized society that rejects patriarchy.
The problem with that metaphor is that in human experience, you are actually supposed to catch up to your father one day. Even in a patriarchal society. He will teach you all he knows, and then he will be old, weak and mind-addled (if he lives that long) while you are young, strong and wiser than you were.
I don't agree with that. The goal of becoming an adult is to fulfill your potential, which can be more, equal or less than that of your father.
In the relationship with God, one can never equal or better, but the crucial part is fulfilling your potential, which is possible.
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And from the other end of it, no understanding of God and Jesus is complete unless it includes both the power and the love. I think you are correct that sometimes, the power needs to come first. The question is whether this is one of those times.
I don't think so, no. The love and tender mercies and so on are repeatedly visible throughout the OT. It's a major theme of the Prophets and the Psalms, and it shows up repeatedly through the histories as well. It undergirds the idea of why God would send his rain to the unrighteous as well as the righteous. The basic problem is that without a personal or communal relationship, his love and tenderness is not legible, not that it is absent; his blessings and mercies are interpreted as either "just the way things are", or worse, as proof of the utility of evil.
The point of the ad is not "you should do this". The point of the ad is "this is who we are." The point seems to be to peel back some of the enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world (and some foolish Christians, it must be admitted) has worked so hard to cement. There is no ad you can make that is going to get non-Christians to adopt Christianity. Moving them toward openness to interaction with actual Christians as Christians would be a clear improvement on the status quo.
I'm skeptical. The problem is that our society is firmly post-Christian; to a first approximation, non-Christians think they know what the Gospel is and think they've already heard it.
In your original post, I think you objected to one or both of the ads showing low-class losers. Unfortunately, those are the people most willing to listen: people who understand that they are missing something, that they are not, in fact, self-sufficient and self-actualized Masters of their own Destiny. Progressivism is the successor ideology because it promises a better path, and there is no better argument against it than to point out that the path it offers is not in fact better. Those who have been failed most disastrously by Progressivism's principles are those most willing to investigate alternatives.
So:
Because it seems to me that those are the messages being sent.
Is submitting really sending that message, or would it have made more sense to show Christians doing good works. Because in the modern context, washing people's feet are not good works, but seem more like either weird virtue-signalling or a foot-fetish.
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But I don't think this will work much. I think it's pretty commonly believed that Jesus was basically a progressive, and so you see people who oppose Christianity as it exists today to it as it originally existed. Doing this doesn't help that, and doesn't help people get a broader vision of what Christianity is actually about.
If I were designing an ad for the purposes of attracting people, I'd try to show Christianity in a way that connects it to real churches with real people that actually exist. I'd try also to make it alluring in the sense of a place where a healthy, well-ordered life can be found in a community. And something to grab the attention.
I'm not sure how well that would work, and so I'd undoubtedly want to put more thought into what would be most needed and most effective if I were trying to commission something super-bowl sized, but I don't think showing "Jesus is nice and this is what Christianity should be like" will do much without also showing that this is what Christianity actually can look like if you go looking for it.
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There’s hardly a case in the Old Testament where God’s love and mercy does not hinge on recognition and submission. See how Christ came in the sign of Jonah: the mercy of God is by swallowing Jonah in a whale when God produced a storm to traumatize him for failing to heed His desire. And Jonah was only released when he “called out to the Lord”, declaring “salvation belongs to the Lord”. Jonah’s mission of mercy was to warn Ninevah of the consequences of their sin: “Yet forty days and Ninevah will be overthrown!” As a response, the Ninevans fasted, sat in ashes, called out to God, and turned from their evil ways.
You write that there is an “enculturated dismissal of Christians as hateful bigots that the world has worked so hard to cement”, and I have to say, I dont think this is what is stopping people from being Christian to any significant degree. These people have met Christians, they have passed church signs, they have already seen ads, they have already imbibed the cool-aid Christ that acts like a hippie, they’ve seen the reels or tik toks by Christians before. They actually have an image in their mind of a much weaker and accepting Jesus, I bet. And we don’t actually see the standard irreligious American choose their social identification based on what people are nicest. They don’t chase the jobs which allow them to be nicest to those in need, they chase the job that gives them money. (There’s not a waiting list for retirement community volunteers.) They buy the product that gives them status. They listen to the self-aggrandizing, self-worshipful hymns of rappers. They want the university that gives them status. They care a lot about their hairlines and jawlines. They watch shows and model their identity based off of characters who are cool and beautiful. They are, you know, animals with instincts, like you and me. Or at least just me. The girls used to like Kim Kardashian, now they adore Taylor Swift. The boys like Andrew Tate or John Wick. Humans like high status people, not nice people. I mean, maybe Taylor Swift is nice, but she doesn’t sing songs about washing feet and loving homeless people. Her
liturgiesmusic videos are filled with status signifiers and handsome men.If there are ads that can make people watch movies for three hours, there are ads that can make people pick up some Christian literature or attend a church once. Do you think anyone is watching a movie about the nicest man in existence? The top movies of 2023 are the heroic spider man and the beautiful Barbie.
Yes
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And yet the only public messaging, including this, is about the first two.
They may lobby to ‘beat the shit’ out of money lenders, but inevitably it just means taxing the wealthy or “Wall Street” more to pay for welfare programs of dubious efficacy. The problem with Jesus is that by his present reputation (I will avoid the debate about whether it was his actual character, although the evidence is not uncompelling) he really just was a populist, he was the Bernie Sanders of his day. Sadly we can’t quantify the economic effects of kicking the money lenders out of the temple (presumably they were there for a reason, perhaps its centrality and large size improving access to and the efficiency of credit markets), because for the most part only
Bernie’sJesus’ narrative survives in that event.They were money changers. They exchanged Greek and Roman coins for Tyrian Shekels that could be accepted as Temple tax payments. He also chased out people selling animals for sacrifice.
Money lending at interest between Jews is explicitly forbidden in Mosaic law and the idea that it would be allowed at the Temple is ridiculous.
He wasn't a Bernie Sanders railing against money lenders, because he wasn't railing against money lenders, and his whole society hated them.
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Funnily enough, on my current read through Gibbon, I finally got to the last chapter of volume 1 where he goes into the beliefs and behavior of Christians in the first 100 years of their church. And he points out that most of their behavior was irredeemably antisocial and borderline suicidal. However, they also believed that the end times would literally occur in their lifetime, and the most important thing was doing whatever it took to prove their virtue before that happened. Preserving society, institutions, even their own progeny ranked distant to non-existent concerns.
In the second century AD their behavior was... moderated. Far more pragmatic.
"Borderline suicidal" I will grant, but whether their behavior was "antisocial" or their concerns "non-existent" is another matter.
As you say, "the most important thing was doing whatever it took to prove their virtue" and I think there is a tendency amongst those who've only ever experienced a prosperous liberal society to falsely conflate "virtuous" and "pro-social" behavior with being supportive polite and inoffensive. Point being that being a "good guy" does not necessarily entail being a "nice guy".
One could argue that the subsequent moderation was a product of having successfully established a reputation for virtue rather than the inverse.
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He Saves Us is a response from Associate Pastor Jamie Bambrick that I think would have had more weight (though I question their selection choices, with more time\ I'm sure a team could come up with something more inspiring.)
Bambrick changes the emphasis to the transformation that Christianity demands and promises. Such an ad would also be countercultural because it implies it's not great to be a gang leader or a porn star, such that being a former gang leader or a former porn star is a step up.
The problem with that ad is that he just had to throw in abortion and LGBT stuff, when it was completely unnecessary. If the idea is to change the image of Christianity so it appeals more to liberals, you can't throw potshots at gays and abortionists when condemnation of gays and abortion is part of the reason that's keeping them away in the first place. It only confirms their suspicions. They also could have thrown a few people of color in there. I know conservatives don't like tokenism, and I know that blacks and Hispanics are already more religious than whites, but you have to know who your audience is. Otherwise, you're just preaching to the choir.
I really question his selection choices. I laughed when I saw "Dawkin's Former Right Hand Man" surrounded between "Former Gang Member" and "Former KKK Member."
The idea being that one of these things is not like the other? That's one of the basic disagreements, though.
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I'm not even Christian, but all that ad said to me is "Ha ha, we stole your religion!"
It came off exactly like the smarmy atheist who claims that Jesus really would have been an open borders communist. Not because he's studied the bible and the context of primitive Christians, but because it's a meme he chooses to believe and it pisses off equally ignorant Christians who can't argue against it any more than he can argue for it.
And so the ad spends it's time ritually humiliating Christians, showing them debasing themselves, subservient to people who hate them. All while making a facile claim that it's actually the true expression of their religion.
Trying to google who sponsored the ad, apparently the left maligned family behind Hobby Lobby did it? Which doesn't exactly mesh with my immediate reaction to it. But then again, plenty of religious organizations are acting as suicidal hollowed out zombies of late, so who knows.
I don't have a problem with the fact that it humiliates Christians - humility is a virtue in our religion after all. The first shall be last and the last shall be first and all that.
But I do share a roughly similar feeling about the ad in the sense that it falls into a genre of "non-offensive" Christianity that keeps all the love-thy-neighbour stuff but excludes the wages-of-sin-is-death stuff. An absolutely central part of the faith is forgiveness for repentant sinners, but again and again I've seen that twisted into outright acceptance or celebration of sin itself. And this ad pattern matches to that sort of thing.
The message of Christianity is "You are evil and deserve hell but Jesus loves you anyway". That first part gets interpreted as "hate" pretty often. So when I see something emphasising the "Jesus loves you" while distancing from "hate", while I agree with the literal message, it feels very much like a flavour of Christianity that is never going to get around to mentioning that sin is a thing and you're supposed to repent and turn from it.
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Isn't your response in the same genre? You are telling a group that you are not a part of how they should feel about a particular issue on the basis of your beliefs about what that group believes.
I don't think so. If Coil is anything like me, he's had some experience fighting the Christian Right in his heyday before The Turning. We have a rough familiarity with what the average US Christian tends to value and believe because we spent years sparring with it. As outsiders, our understanding may have been necessarily imperfect, and our arguments motivated. But we could detect the general shape of the thing, and it did not include 'love poor migrants', 'the kids are totally fine', and 'kiss black people's feet'.
That may be a generalization (it is), and I may not be a Christian (I'm not), but it's not impossible for me compare where Christian status and power stood in my youth versus today. I can't NOT notice how that ad panders to so many modern lefty sensibilities, meanwhile actual churchgoers I know are decidedly on the Right, regardless of what their religious leadership decrees towards the purpose of modernizing the faith. Is there any cultural bone they could have thrown to social conservatives (y'know, the foremost representative group in US Christianity), or would that have been too icky?
Like... don't show me an ad full of lefty tokens with every group that's been earning side-eye getting their feet smooched and pretend my criticism is some sort of gatekeeping. It's disrespectful to my old foe, and I just feel bad for them.
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I'm not an op-ed journalist. I'm not ranting on a conservative Christian message board trying to rally them to offense. I'm not on twitter stirring the pot for attention or rage-click/income. I had a reaction I kept to myself, and my wife, until it came up here. And here is notable as a place relatively removed from both the ignorant edgy atheist and the ignorant triggered Christians.
No, I don't think my response is the same at all.
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It’s an attempt to define the cultural place of Christianity. And that cultural place is one that is at the very least compatible with prevailing secular folkways, or rather, doesn’t require its adherents to push back on them very hard.
I don’t think these people love abortions and Muslims. I think they have standardly normie boomercon opinions about such things. I think instead they want an uneasy peace, and aren’t able to learn from the existing evidence that that’s not going to happen.
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