What's the deal with "He Gets Us"?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Lately I’ve been seeing cheap ads (black and white photographs with voiceover) about this…group on primetime television. The most recent was the last episode of Quantum Leap.

As far as I can tell, their purposes, to the extent that they can be said to have any, is to spread the word of Jesus. And…that’s it. (They use the “activist” hashtag, for whatever that’s worth.) No trying to get people to church, no grubbing for cash, it’s all very low-key and…black and white.

At first I figured that this was the usual Christian practice of preaching and bible-thumping while ignoring all problems and doing absolute jack squat to fix anything in the world, ever (a mentality the Church repeatedly clubbed me over the head with an 18-wheeler for pretty much every day of high school, but I digress). But from the looks of it, this is a pretty nice bunch, and they’d really like to make some positive change. Trouble is, their method seems to be quoting bible versus and very nicely asking other people to fix things, and, well, I’m fully aware of what kind of track record that has. Look, guys…we know. Woe unto scribes and Pharisees, multiplying the bread and fishes, Lazarus come forth, render unto Caesar, whoever’s without sin cast the first stone, water into wine, not by bread alone, poor in spirit, house of prayer/den of thieves, we freaking know, okay? But remembering how Jesus got flogged by the Roman authorities isn’t going to be much comfort to the next victim of police violence, and not a single mass shooting victim is ever going to make a Lazarus-style comeback.

So what’s the deal? Shelling out for commercial time so you can remind me that some people really put stock into invisible space unicorns? Okay, cool, thanks for sharing. Please be completely useless to someone else now. :roll_eyes:

2

The commercials I’ve seen from this group (or whatever it is) were simpler, apparently, than the ones you describe. The message seems to be “Jesus understands what it means to be you” for people with problems and issues (i.e. everyone). It seems to be promoting the idea of having a personal relationship with Jesus, and if anything good flows from that, swell.

3

Useless to you != useless to everyone. Thinking differently about Jesus and deciding to look into him/Christianity might help some people…and, like Roderick_Femm said, if anything good flows from that, swell.

Are you also annoyed by ads for medication that you don’t need? I see a lot more pharmaceutical commercials than Jesus commercials.

4

Yes, Misnomer, having religion shoved into my face, particularly of the “you just gotta have faith” variety, aggravates me a lot more than a medication commercial. I use medications. They have made my life immeasurably better. Furthermore, medications are scientifically developed and heavily regulated. There are serious consequences for providing false information about the benefits of a medication or failing to list all potential side effects. Religion is under no such scrutiny. No one has ever sued for prayer not working (which, BTW, it never does).

If your argument is that this is doing real good, I’d like firsthand testimonials. Haven’t been able to find any on the website. Here, see for yourself.

5

Looks like your own link, especially this page, gives the answer to the thread title’s question:

6

It’s clear the OP knows exactly what their deal is.:

But if he didn’t start this thread, we’d never know his views on invisible space unicorns…

Me, I think it’s nice that there’s a Christian group that apparently isn’t trying to remove women’s reproductive rights or attack minority groups or fuck kids. Kind of a nice hippy-dippy love-fest. Refreshing.

Also, free stuff with not-really-terrible messages. Well, “free” at any rate.

7

That’s kind of what I was thinking, hence the mildness of my earlier post.

But! Once you start traveling down the irrational path, all that other stuff is likely to show up in front of you sooner or later, with all kinds of cheerleaders making it all sound so normal (well, not the pedophilia stuff necessarily). So it’s not all sweetness and light.

8

Who is this “Jesus” person? Despite living in America for decades, I somehow have managed to never hear about him at all. Thank goodness someone is running ads to remind me about this extremely obscure figure in our culture.

(Seriously though - I’m glad the commercials are at the very least benign, but surely using the money to go help the poor and do other good works instead would have been more Christlike. Just a thought.)

9

Oh, I’m well aware, and I have no intention of actually listening to anything the Jesus freaks at that site are peddling (although those are some sweet t’s), just appreciating they’re not fucking things up for others.

10

I was curious about it myself, as I consider myself to be a liberal Christian, and I believe that if more people followed the teachings of the biblical Jesus (as opposed to the American Jesus), the world would be a better place.

Unfortunately, I learned some things about the “He Gets Us” campaign that are a little alarming. First, that a longtime made man from the Southern Baptist Convention advised the program. And that the He Gets Us campaign is really geared towards young men more than anything.

11

Moderating:

The OP is moderately ranty, and is borderline for IMHO. The rest of the thread has been fairly civil so far, but it has a lot of “pit” potential.

@DKW , if things get heated, would you prefer we close the thread or move it to the pit? (Or proactively move it to the pit?) Please note that we don’t move rants OUT of the pit, I’ve they are there.

12

Gyrate - Exactly. :+1:

During my time in public housing, there have been numerous tenants who, for one reason or another, fell way behind in rent and needed outside assistance to avoid being evicted. The biggest contributor by far? Catholic Charities. Every year they give thousands of dollars…that’s direct material assistance…to desperately needy tenants regardless of religious affiliation. Regardless of the validity of God or Jesus or whatever, I know this institution is capable of doing not just good, but great good. That’s why I have no appreciation for random ads.

ekedolphin - Thank you. This clarifies things quite a bit.

The gist of it is that they’re trying to sell Christianity to a younger, hipper generation by shelving the fire and brimstone in favor or a friendlier, lower-key approach. I remember some well-meaning types trying this soft-sell in my childhood. The problem is while this could work for, say, environmentalism (“Trees are pretty!”), fitness (“Fresh air! Sunshine! The wind in your hair!”), or public service (“The street looks so much nicer without all the garbage!”), captial-G-God religion needs to be driven hard or not at all. There’s a reason the three little words everyone remembers are “thou shalt not”. “Nice conversion” is like “Beatleinterest” or “mad dog zone coverage”. It just doesn’t make sense.

puzzlegal - Hi. :slightly_smiling_face: I was going more for “snarky” (that’s what the roll-eyes was supposed to mean :wink:). In any event, I have no intention of turning this into a Pit rant. Nowadays I don’t have the energy to rant about Republicans or climate change or Vladimir Putin still being in power, and they’re a thousand times more deserving of it than this silly thing. I’m happy to let this be my final word, unless someone has another link.

13

They’ve advertised a lot on Chicago baseball, both Cubs and White Sox. Radio ads, TV ads, signage at the parks, and the phony signage that they use as TV background. If they’re trying for a younger, hipper audience, baseball seems like a dubious place for their money.

14

Yeah, that’s where I remember seeing these ads: while watching baseball (Cardinals in my case).

15

The best thing about cutting the cord is never seeing commercials anymore. Anyway, this kind of Jesus marketing goes back a while. It reminds me of the “I Found It” campaign from the 1970s. It’ll maybe get people who used to be involved in church to get them to check it out again.

16

Yeah,


A little too ‘Jesus gets me… and you can too if you tell me you love Christ!’ for my tastes.

17

Every time a bro finds Jesus someone on Madison Avenue gets his wings.

18

That’s gross, yeah.

19

Real subtle.

20

I’m getting a real Children of God vibe from these guys.