When Washing Feet Isn't Enough
When Washing Feet Isn't Enough
The church will never make Jesus palatable enough to assuage the world's offense.
Introduction
So I wasn’t planning on writing this. But I’m taking a quick break from the Warrior Shepherds series this morning to get this off my chest.
Like many people who watched the Super Bowl this year, I saw the now-infamous “Foot Washing” commercial produced by He Gets Us. Some of you might recall I wrote on the He Gets Us campaign following last year’s Super Bowl. If you haven’t read that article, the link is below:
If you happened to read it, you’ll remember I was critical of the ads at the time, but remained hopefully optimistic that some good would ultimately come from the campaign. Personally, I thought this year’s ad left a lot to be desired, for reasons others have since done a greater justice than I ever could. But that is not my interest here; what has fascinated me over the past few weeks is the wide-ranging nature of the criticism levied against the campaign.
Here’s what I mean: in just the last week, I’ve come across no fewer than three articles absolutely crushing He Gets Us, but in a very different way than I might be tempted to.
Keep in mind, if these commercials have any kind of target audience they’re hard-selling here…it’s the people reading Vox, Salon, and The Mary Sue! Given the content and suggestive imagery included in the ad, you would think mainstream publications like this would be tickled to see Christians putting out this kind of commercial. But even a cursory reading of the articles’ subheadings show how far short those efforts have fallen.
What’s going on here?
What They Think They’re Doing
While I disagree with many of their conclusions, I actually think these media companies have picked up on a key discrepancy in the marketing. It’s just not the one they think.
The accusation from all three outlets appears to be that He Gets Us is attempting to pull off a bait-and-switch, to sucker people in with a message of compassion and humility, only to later entrap them with rules and make their lives miserable. What they think they’re doing is catching He Gets Us in a poor attempt at con artistry, like a bad street magician discovered midway through his act. But what they’re actually doing is pointing out that you cannot separate the “Jesus” from the “Christ.”
In essence, that is what He Gets Us has set out to do: in an effort to dissociate Jesus from the unwanted baggage of several hundred years of Christianity, almost every major theological issue has been routinely downplayed by the campaign. Hypothetically, this allows people to just focus on the “Jesus” part without worrying about anything else. But this is where, once again, we require the wisdom of A.W. Tozer: “What you win them with is what you win them to.” And using Marketing Jesus to introduce people to Real Jesus is just not going to work, because figs don’t come from thistles in the kingdom of God.1 In this case, the media outlets crying foul here are correct, just in a different way than they think.
It’s ironic that secular media companies (in spite of themselves) are able to identify this point when He Gets Us cannot. We know that the world exists in opposition to the truth, and for them, anything less than a full, unbridled affirmation of sin will be scorned and ridiculed as naive and manipulative. They’re not about to be fooled by a fancy marketing campaign. The world has always known how to treat Jesus when they see Him: they crucify Him. This is what the world does. We should not be surprised when Christians preach a less-theologically-offensive Jesus and the world still refuses to accept Him. When it comes to the Son of Man, the world has no recourse but denial and death.
What The World Needs Now
The fundamental flaw at the heart of winsome-centered attempts at evangelism is this: no matter how engaging the ad campaign, no matter how soft the stance on tough theological issues, Christians will never make following Jesus palatable enough to appeal to the heart of someone who doesn’t believe they need Him. There is no way to announce the good news that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners like you and me without acknowledging that He came for a reason: because we blew it. Because we couldn’t save ourselves then, and we still can’t. Framing Jesus as someone with an affinity for washing feet won’t go far in the eyes of those who instinctively (and correctly) realize there’s more going on here than just a footbath.
Christians should learn to laugh when they receive this brand of lowbrow admonition from the world about their Jesus. We must remember that the world seeks to undermine the message of the cross, and will endeavor to make a mockery of everything it stands for. For this reason, the only Jesus the world will accept is one whose unfailing love towards them is represented exclusively by His radical acceptance of their lifestyle choices, not by the blood shed for them at Calvary. But that is not the Good News of the Gospel. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). A saving Jesus is the only Jesus worth knowing.
The takeaway here is straightforward: people of God, steel yourselves for discomfort and name-calling. If you claim to believe the words of the Bible on an issue the world opposes, you are going to get every slur in the book thrown at you. Bigot. Phobic. Hateful. Privileged. Extremist. The goal here is to make you feel bad enough that you conclude your position cannot be loving, as evidenced by the hurt and offense demonstrated by the name-caller.
Don’t take the bait.
Jesus Himself reminds us that fidelity to his teachings will always put us at odds with the world around us.
“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
-Matthew 5:11-12, NIV
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.”
-John 15:18-19, NIV
Here’s the truth, friends: the world will hate us no matter what. Our enemy is crafty and knows how to prey on our most vulnerable sensibilities, including our desire to be accepted by others. We must not let the world set the terms of engagement by allowing ourselves to be steered by the caustic labels it threatens us with. What the world needs is not “soft soap about God,” as C.S. Lewis put it. What it needs is the pure and unfettered Gospel, delivered simply and without pretense. And like He Gets Us, you and I might only get a sixty-second window to point someone to Jesus.
He Saves Us
Speaking of which, I can’t think of a better way to end this than to attach the now-viral video created by Jamie Bambrick after the Super Bowl commercial aired. If there’s one message Christians the world over ought to be getting behind right now, it’s this one.2
Matthew 7:16, ESV.
Since I began writing this post, theologian Joe Rigney also produced an article at World Opinions highlighting the differences between these two videos and coming to some conclusions I wish I had thought of, like the simple truth that “even our pre-evangelism must be shaped by the Gospel.”
The article is well worth your time and I commend it to you here.