What ‘He Gets Us' Ads Get Wrong About Jesus

When I first noticed the ads on TV last March, I was cautiously optimistic. Each ad features an array of black-and-white photos with people in contemporary settings followed by a simple, relatable slogan on a plain black screen: “Jesus was wrongly judged,” “Jesus suffered anxiety, too,” “Jesus struggled to make ends meet, too;” each ad ends with the campaign’s tagline, “He get us. All of us.” But one of the ads I saw made me want to know more about who was behind the campaign. The voiceover in this particular ad describes Jesus as “an influencer who became insanely popular,” which led to everybody following him, until “one day he stood up for something he believed in.” At this moment, an image of a Black person and a police officer embracing takes center frame. The ad eventually concludes with the following slogan: “Jesus was canceled.” “But Jesus wasn’t canceled,” I thought to myself when the ad ended. “He was crucified.”