Several mainstream pro-life organizations shared a cropped image from a “He Gets Us” commercial that aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday night, missing the fact that the image was included in the commercial only to villainize pro-life Christians as hateful.
The advertisement from “He Gets Us” showed a young woman sitting on a bench outside of a building marked “Family Planning Clinic” as an older Christian woman washes her feet in a small basin. In the background are other figures who appear to represent Christians holding signs to protest the evil of abortion. March for Life and Students for Life each praised a version of the image which had intentionally cropped out the pro-life Christians in the background.
This commercial was a part of the much larger “He Gets Us” campaign, a media-driven project that is supposed to use commercials to market the gospel to those who would otherwise not be willing to listen. The problem is, from the very beginning, the campaign has come off far more like a sermon from pagans to the church than an actual gospel presentation to pagans.
The campaign presents a Jesus who is far more like a cosmic therapist who seeks only to convey his understanding and empathy toward sinners, and who only ever stands in judgment when he stands alongside the world to judge the church.
Yet this is not the true and living Jesus of the Bible. This is instead an idol concocted in the hearts of American advertisers seeking to recreate Jesus in their own image.
This is how the woman who is seeking to murder her own child becomes the hero of the story, and how the people who are trying to stop her become the villains.
The overarching message of the commercial, which ultimately scrolls across the screen at the conclusion, is that “Jesus didn’t teach hate, he washed feet.” The point is quite clear: the lady washing the woman’s feet is like Jesus, and the sidewalk advocates are preaching hate.
There are several problems with the framing of this narrative. First, this narrative completely ignores the humanity and sanctity of the baby, and devotes all of the attention to the mother. Second, this narrative ignores how the Bible teaches that God hates the shedding of innocent blood (Proverbs 6:17). Third, this narrative misrepresents the work of Christians who sacrificially stand on the sidewalk in front of abortion clinics all over the country, seeking to save the lives of innocent children by expressing love and concern for both the mother and the baby.
The most significant issue is how this advertisement drastically misses the nature of God and therefore dramatically misunderstands the nature of love and hate.
Washing feet is not always an expression of love, and offering correction is not always an expression of hate. A holistic view of the life and ministry of Christ demonstrates this truth. Jesus, for example, both rebuked Peter, even calling him Satan (Matthew 16:23), but later washes Peter’s feet (John 13:6). Both of these actions were full of love: the first was sharp but necessary correction, and the second was tangible service which pointed to the cross.
When Christians stand on the sidewalk to plead with women not to follow through with the murder of their children, they are engaging in an action of both love and hate. They are expressing love toward the woman and her baby (Proverbs 24:11-12) while at the same time expressing hate toward the act of shedding the blood of innocent children (Proverbs 6:17), and they are seeking to be like Christ on both accounts.
Both the March for Life and Students for Life accounts chose to cut out the pro-lifers on the sidewalk and focus exclusively on the two women in the foreground of the picture. What is absent from both of these two posts is eye-opening, to say the least. They make no mention of the fact that the original image was intended to condemn sidewalk ministry, choosing instead to focus their entire message on how there is hope and healing for post-abortive women. Even the comments about hope and healing from both groups fall short as there is no mention of repentance, no mention of the gospel, and no mention of the murdered baby.
Here we have a perfect example of how leaders in the pro-life movement often worsen an already bad situation. Rather than taking the advertisement as an opportunity to speak on behalf of the preborn and encouraging more people to be involved in the battle to end child sacrifice, they chose to advance a weak message that ignores the murder of innocent children.
This situation highlights the importance of bravehearted Christian men disrupting the apathy among the leaders in the pro-life movement and shifting the conversation back to the truth of the gospel, the suffering of the preborn, and the need to criminalize abortion in our land.
We must return to the core truths of our message: abortion is fundamentally wrong because abortion is the willing slaughter of innocent children who are created in the image of God.
When Christians lovingly and firmly stand on behalf of the preborn, we are externalizing our religion by loving that which God loves and hating that which God hates. That is our message, and we will settle for nothing less.
We cannot depend on many of the current leaders of the pro-life movement to stand with us in this fight because their message is different from our message. Many of them have embraced the same idolatrous Americanized Jesus that is presented in the “He Gets Us” campaign.
Today, more than ever, we need strong and godly men to rise up and confront the weakness and idolatry that has taken root in the leadership of the pro-life movement, to be a clear and sound voice proclaiming the message of the living Christ, and to establish true justice on behalf of preborn children. This is the only hope of victory in the battle against abortion.
