Connecting emotionally with Jesus is great, she added. But that won’t save your soul.
“I can look at Buddha or Sarah McLachlan or Obama and I can find things in common with them,” she said. “But that does not mean they are going to save me.”
A “He Gets Us” campaign advertisement in New York’s Times Square. Photo courtesy of “He Gets Us”
Michael Cooper, an author and missiologist, agrees. While Cooper is a fan of the ads, saying they powerfully communicate the human side of Jesus, they leave out his divinity.
“I began to wonder, is this the Jesus I know?” he said.
Cooper and a colleague offer what he called a “constructive critique” of the campaign in an upcoming article for the Journal of the Evangelical Missiological Society. That article calls for clearer messaging about the divine nature of Jesus.
“This wasn’t just a great teacher or preacher who was incarnated,” he said. “This was God himself.”
Ryan Beaty, a former Assemblies of God pastor and current doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma, said he’s been fascinated by the ads and wonders how the country’s political polarization may affect how the ads come across.
His conservative friends, he said, see the ads — such as one depicting Jesus as a refugee — as too political. Other folks who are more liberal see the ads as not going far enough.
Beaty also wonders if people outside the church will find the ads more compelling than true believers.
“People of no faith — or moderate learnings toward faith — will find these more compelling than people who identify with the Christian faith or strongly identify with politics,” he said.
Seth Andrews, a podcaster, author and secular activist based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said the campaign seems to be marketing a version of Jesus that’s more in touch with modern American culture than earlier, more dogmatic versions.
“They are latching on to this touchy-feely, conveniently vague, designer Jesus,” he said.
Andrews poses the question of what Jesus would think of the amount of money spent on the ads. Would he prefer that the money be spent on ministering to people’s physical needs or making the world a better place?
“Or would he say, no, go ahead and spend $100 million to tell everybody how great I am?”
While the ads are meant to reach what Vanderground called “spiritually open skeptics,” a secondary audience is Christians, whose reputations have fallen on hard times in recent years.
“We also have this objective of encouraging Christians to follow the example of Jesus in the way that they love and treat each other,” he said.
For her part, Quattlebaum said that in the end, she’s a fan of the ads, because they focus on the main message of Christianity.
“It all goes to Jesus,” she said. “ And if it all goes back to Jesus, it all goes back to love.”
This article originally appeared here.
