This week, I sat down with a good friend of mine, John Richardson, to discuss the controversial viral advertisements of the “He Gets Us” Campaign. In this discussion, John and I address the good that we saw in the ads from Super Bowl Sunday, as well as some concerns we have (and that many others have) regarding the campaign as a whole.
This is a conversation meant to encourage unity, not division. It is one that we hope will encourage others to think critically about people and things that claim to represent Christ.
In an era in which the American church as a whole likely would do well to receive a letter from St. Paul, this campaign is merely a symptom to a much larger problem: Western “Christian” culture often doesn’t sound or act like Jesus.
Beyond this discussion, we hope that people will feel convicted to practice discernment and that above all else, this campaign would truly lead people to come to know our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
*Note: There are periods in this where you can hear my son pretending to be Captain America in his playroom. Apologies! This is real life while recording podcasts as a mom sometimes! Enjoy!
John is a Christian event speaker and youth director in Pennsylvania. He shares his life with his amazing wife and their four wonderful children. John's passion for spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ extends to his presence on social media platforms, where he skillfully uses wit and humor to shed light on areas of growth within church culture. John is also an avid sports fan and talented musician. Be sure to catch up with John on TikTok and Instagram, so you don’t miss his awesome content!
Instagram: @JOHNTHEMESSNGER
TikTok: @JOHNTHEMESSENGER
AUDIO TRANSCRIPT
0:00 Introduction/Why We Are Here
Hillary: Hi friend!
John: I think this…well it’s not the first time I’ve been on live with someone, but it’s the first time that it’s been planned, so I wasn’t exactly sure how to get it all started.
Hillary: You know, me and my anxious spirit, I was like 12:25, hit, live! I’ve just been sitting here like so restless, and the coffee probably does not help that, but…
John: Yeah I was thinking even as we were getting…even as I was getting ready and we talked earlier, but I think that it is a good thing, the two of us doing this together because we are different in a lot of ways.
Hillary: Mmhmm!
John: So I think we are able to kind of bring different angles and mindsets.
Hillary: Before you got on, I was just kind of giving a very brief intro to myself since it’s been so long since I’ve been on live. You know, just telling people that we are here to talk about the He Gets Us Campaign.
One of the first things I want to say is that we want this to be a very respectful and productive conversation. So, we would ask to please keep the comment section as respectful as possible. This isn’t about us attacking people from different viewpoints, and we don’t want to get too far into the weeds with some of this stuff. This is ultimately to talk about Jesus, and we want to be respectful of people.
John: It really is something that we…you and I both care about. Like this isn’t something that’s like, “Oh, what’s something that we can talk about that’s, you know, relevant, and we can try and get, you know, whatever out of it.” And it’s not about getting on and giving what we feel and our opinion, which we will, but I mean trying to take an honest look at like what is this, what does it mean, where is it coming from.
You and I, you know, I said as we got on, you know, you and I come from different place and different mindsets, and have different thoughts on things, so I think, you know, kind of the angles that we’re coming from will be good.
For me, this is the stuff that I love to talk about. Like the Christian culture stuff I just find really fascinating, because it’s its own, like, it has the “Christian” label attached to it, but it goes in so many different directions. I don’t like the idea of well if it’s something that’s Christian, then it’s something that we need to just let go and not talk about. And so I think it, you know, is good to dive into these things. So for me, this is something that’s right up my alley.
Hillary: One of the reasons that I first reached out to you was because of exactly what you said, like, we have very different perspectives that we are kind of coming at with this, but we collide in the Christian cultural issue.
My daughter has a terminal illness, and when we first announced that we had complications with my pregnancy with her - you know I grew up in the church, and I think I was sheltered to the many ways in which the church and Western Christian culture in particular can become problematic until that happened. And you witnessed that in real time as I was responding to people.
A lot of the ways that we were deeply hurt by people who were brothers and sisters in Christ - so I was learning to navigate the world of medically complex parenthood, along with my faith and how that intersects with that, a lot of that exploration involved examining some of these cultural narratives, examining the way that the church handles certain things. And this is just one of those topics that is very important and relevant to all of us as Christians. This isn’t, you know, a niche issue, this is a - this should be something that we are all talking about and thinking critically about.
John: I think that often I’ve been - people say it like it’s a bad thing - I think I’ve been accused of being skeptical in a lot of different things. And I guess there is something that could be negative about that, but one thing that. I’ve always said, and I was even recently, you know, I brought up again - the thing that comes to mind is the Asbury thing from last year. That was kind of a big thing.
*Break in audio for video text explaining the context of the Asbury Revival*
That was one of the times on here that I think I brought something up like that that I was just really amazed at the reaction of just, of not even saying like “this is bad,” like “this is a bad thing,” but just saying, “I don’t think we should say this a great thing, yet.” And even that is like, you know, the reaction I got from people I thought was just wild.
I think that’s kind of just a preface to like why we’re doing this, is that I think that even if you disagree with what we say, I think it’s good to hear from different people. Quite frankly, I find it a little annoying where it’s like, you know, “I can’t believe that you would speak out against something that is so clearly…” whatever. And it’s not all bad, so this is not just going to be us on here for an hour and a half just, like, bashing everything that’s going on. Like, we want to take a well-rounded look at it.
06:40 Our Initial Responses to the Super Bowl Ads and the Campaign
Hillary: And I like that you mentioned that you lean towards skepticism, and I don’t view that to be a bad thing. That was very enlightening to me when we started talking about this, because you and I initially had very different responses to the campaign in general. So, I’ll let you share first kind of when you first - when you first started to become aware of the campaign. I guess, when did you first become aware of it?
John: Usually, these are the kind of things that I learn about, like, on social media. But I was watching - it was early on, it was at least early summer or late spring - I was watching a Pirates game, a baseball game. And right behind home plate, there are, like, these advertisements. I think it was actually on both - I forget exactly what they said. One said, “He gets us,” and another one had a reference to Jesus in some way, which I was - I was kind of taken aback by that, because you just don’t see that anywhere.
And so, my initial reaction, you know, the first time I heard about it was like, “Oh that’s really cool. It’s cool that someone is caring enough to do that.” And then they actually took out advertising space on, like, the local Pittsburg local sports talk station. So, there were like full-formed commercials on there. But they all had this - this kind of tone of - it didn’t mention it right away - but it was kind of setting it up, like, “if your friends have turned their back on you” and like all of these different things and it kind of led to, “these are things that Jesus went through, too.”
And again, I was like, “Okay! Cool! This is a cool way to, you know, to kind of draw people in.” Then, I started seeing more on here (not a ton), you know, people kind of talking about it. I did, like, a very little bit of research at that point, and, you know ,found some things here and there. But it wasn’t - honestly it was something that I kind of forgot about.
When I saw the ad on Sunday, I - I feel like I kind of knew what it was right away, and, again, I think that it was - in a sense - for me like, “Okay, let’s kind of see where this goes,” but I will say, from the very get-go, like from the very start of it, I was - there was something about that I just wasn’t…I don’t know how to say it other than it just felt weird.
Hillary: Like it didn’t sit right?
John: Yeah, it just didn’t sit right. But, which is why whenever you first reached out to me, I was excited that we were talking, because you had said that you had a very different reaction to that.
Hillary: Yeah, I did, and when I got to digging into it, I honestly felt a little bit ignorant. I was like, “Where have I been? What rock have I been under.” And I said, “Oh, I’ve under - you know, I’ve been at the hospital a bunch, so no wonder I haven’t seen this.” We don’t watch a lot of T.V., I don’t listen to the radio very much, so if we’re watching anything live, it’s a sport event, that we just pay for to watch. You know, like a big event like the Super Bowl.
John: Right.
Hillary: So this was the first time, you know, Josh and I had seen anything about it, and our first reaction was just, “Oh, my gosh!” (just shock, like what you mentioned). “I can’t believe I’m seeing an ad about - about Jesus.” And we were - there was an emotional response, and we can talk about later what - that after some reflection I kind of view that emotional a little bit differently. But that emotional response initially was one of just, “I am so grateful! I am so glad to see an ad about Jesus!”
*Audio Transcript and Time Stamps in Progress*
REFERENCES
Weissman, S. (2023). A mass prayer gathering at Asbury University drew worshippers from across the country to campus. Insider Higher Ed. Retrieved February 17, 2024, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/03/02/asbury-revival-comes-close. Photo provided by Asbury University. Used in article by Weissman titled "The Aftershocks of the Asbury Revival."
Beard, A. (2016). Greyscale full-body portrait of Penn Jillette dressed in dark business suit and tennis shoes, leaning against a wall in a hallway, framed photo advertisement from PennTeller tour hanging next to him. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved February 17, 2024, from https://hbr.org/2016/10/penn-jillette. Photo provided by Michael Lewis. Used in article by Beard titled "Life’s Work: An Interview with Penn Jillette."
@beinzee (Ed.). (2010, July 8). A gift of a Bible. YouTube. Penn Jillette seen in video. Original source of video unknown.
Smith, S. (2012, April 8). The gospel in one minute. YouTube. John Piper speaking in video. Original source of video unknown.
What was the significance of Jesus washing the feet of the disciples?. GotQuestions.org. (2011, May 4). https://www.gotquestions.org/Jesus-washing-feet.html
He Gets Us. (n.d.). Home. He Gets Us. https://hegetsus.com/en
Bambrick, J. (2024, February 13). The Christian Super Bowl ad they should have made | he saves us. YouTube.
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