OPINION
Super Bowl Ad Brings Love to Millions
God is Love
By DeAnna Rudisill
USA: The 2024 Super Bowl Sunday drew 123 million viewers. That is quite a captive audience. I was one of those viewers, the ones paying less attention to the game than the commercials and Half Time. But something grabbed a hold of me during all of the excitement and Taylor Swift, a God-centered commercial put out by an organization called He Gets Us.
The ad showed Christians washing the feet of illegal immigrants, protesters, criminals, a punk girl in high school, a girl at an abortion clinic, and a priest washing the feet of a homosexual male. The scenes were so serene and full of humility and love.
It was like being struck by lightning. In a flash, I revisited the comments I had made, repeatedly, about the influx of illegal aliens combined with the hatred that spewed out of my mouth when 50 cities were burning during the pandemic. These people were all individuals that Jesus loved. He loved them with a perfect love. He loved crooked politicians, Antifa, and aggressive drivers.
“For God so loved the World,” did not solely mean the church dwellers, which can include crooked politicians and aggressive drivers. When the disciples asked Jesus about the most important commandments, he did not say narcissism is the way to the kingdom, he said love God and love each other.
Jesus also said we must love our enemies.
I love my family with all of my heart. That night [Super Bowl night] when I was praying so fervently for the salvation of my son, God spoke to my heart, saying, “I love the people in Gaza just as much as your son. When I said I know every hair on your head, I was talking to everyone – even your enemies.”
Love God and love each other. I have known this about God my whole
life. The Love of God is so simple. Pick up your cross and follow him. It looks so hard. But really it is to love each other, spread the gospel, and pray.
But I can’t spread the gospel if I don’t love the unsaved first. It is a tree that will not bear fruit.
I was a tree that was not bearing fruit. I know in the Bible it says to judge a tree by its fruit. It is funny how we can hear all these and forget. We can know these things and not apply them to our life.
Prejudice has always existed. The disciples complained to Jesus for talking to the woman at the well. She was a Samaritan and the Jews hated the Samaritans. Jesus did not listen to their hatred of the woman. Instead, he saved her and sent her to her Samaritan village to testify and bring out more Samaritans for the word.
The commercial that says He Gets US, puts Jesus in our time.
“Jesus, you should not talk or be seen with this gay man or young woman who just had an abortion,” he would smile at us, though his heart was heavy, and he would continue to show them love.
Would we then be trees full of good or bad fruit?
This is what I felt. So many scriptures flew through my mind and I knew I could not plead ignorance.
Jesus stayed at the homes of sinners and dined at banquets with sinners. The Pharisees and teachers run around half insane by his love, vowing to kill him. Meanwhile, Jesus is drinking wine with the ones we too think he should ignore and having a marvelous time. He loved everyone during his days on earth and still loves everyone now.
What an eye-opener that bolt of lightning was. My political self-righteousness was not going to make Jesus hate my opponents. Who do I think I am? He loves them just as much as he loves me. If we are at war, God loves the other side just as much as us. Should we pray for the souls of the other side just as much as our own? Do we ever pray for the souls of our soldiers? Do we pray God’s will ever?
It was no longer quite as easy as love, sharing the gospel, and praying. The first step to love everyone is quite a hurdle. I do not want to love everyone and what I want does not change the God of all creation. Maybe I should try to love the ones I do not like and pray for them.
My mind went back to Christians washing the feet of the unsaved at the Super Bowl and I realized that not only was that a good first step, but the ad was talking to the Christians and not the unsaved. The unsaved did however see a glimpse of God’s love while the Christians saw a glimpse of their own hate.
I looked up the negative response to the ads and the group behind it. The most hate was pointed at the young white girl at the abortion clinic and the homosexual black male. The thought of being kind to them somehow condones their sin, but we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
If I hug a prostitute, give her a hot coffee on a cold day, and tell her God loves her, will this action make it more likely for her to walk into a church someday? All I did was not judge her and then hug her. Maybe that was the first true kindness anyone had ever shown her. Would you then say I did not list all of her sins? I guarantee you she knows how it feels to be put down.
Hopefully the unsaved will not research the online response to He Gets Us because like it or not we as a whole represent Christ.
Their second ad was called, “Who is my Neighbor,” as in “Love thy Neighbor.”
Only the saved would get such a reference. It showed the broken, the needy, and the homeless. The last time I saw a homeless camp, a friend said no one ever helps them and I made a negative comment. The ad showed very sad people. I felt like a hypocrite.
Jesus did not teach his disciples how to judge and reject people. He taught them how to love. He did not teach prejudice, he taught unity. Like in the parable of the good Samaritan, Jesus shows them how wrong their preconceived notions of others are in his eyes.
I looked up hegetsus.org and their site confirmed that they are talking mainly to the saved. After all, we need the saved to reach all of the unsaved. I felt like saying heathen sounded like a slur against them and that sinner was an inaccurate title since we are all sinners. Unsaved reminds us that they need our love and to be saved. They are lost but not beneath us. Remember how much our Lord loved the lost sheep?
He Gets Us explains where they are coming from quite clearly on their website, “How can the story of Jesus, the world’s greatest Love story, get twisted into a tool to Judge, Harm, and Divide? How do we remind people the story of Jesus belongs to everyone? These questions are the beating heart of He Gets Us.”
This was a message I needed to hear and the best way for me to ignite my spiritual tuneup, just might be to start off praying for my enemies and then my son.
So did John. “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows of God. Anyone who does not love does not know of God, because God is Love,” – 1 John 4:7-8
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DeAnna Rudisill is a U.S. Army Veteran and long-time journalist. She left a 20-year jaunt in the secular media to write the unadulterated truth and bring God back into the public forum, finding her niche at Blue Ridge Christian News / BRCNews.Com.
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