Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 949 | What ‘He Gets Us’ Gets Wrong

Episode Date: February 12, 2024

Today we're recapping last night's Super Bowl and breaking down the "He Gets Us" campaign, which paid for two ad spots in last night's game. We explain the two "He Gets Us" ads and how they don't actually share the gospel but instead affirm that Christianity is actually about us to people who already dislike Christianity. We talk about what this ad campaign misses about Jesus and how essential the full truth of the gospel is when you have the money, time, and ability to convey the gospel message in 45 seconds during the Super Bowl. We explain why you shouldn't be discouraged by this and how we can be praying for people to hear the real, unapologetic gospel. Then, we discuss the shooting that occurred at Joel Osteen's church yesterday afternoon and the strange pattern that this event follows. Find a church: church.founders.org Go to alliemerch.com to get our new Valentine's Day merch! --- Timecodes: (00:40) Monday encouragement (03:30) Super Bowl recap / Brock Purdy & Travis Kelce (14:55) Biden's Super Bowl tweet (15:45) "Black National Anthem" (20:30) 'He Gets Us' campaign (36:58) What does 'He Gets Us' believe? (47:21) Shooting at Joel Osteen's church --- Today's Sponsors: Good Ranchers — get 10% OFF your box today at GoodRanchers.com – make sure to use code 'ALLIE' when you subscribe. CrowdHealth — get your first 6 months for just $99/month. Use promo code 'ALLIE' when you sign up at JoinCrowdHealth.com. Jase Medical — get up to a year’s worth of many of your prescription medications delivered in advance. Go to JaseMedical.com today and use promo code “ALLIE". Holy Pals — Get your child pajamas that help make the Bible a regular part of their life at home. Go to HolyPals.com and use promo code ALLIE at checkout for a discount. --- Relevant Episodes: Ep 753 | 'He Gets Us': The Good, the Bad & the Unbiblical https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-753-he-gets-us-the-good-the-bad-the-unbiblical/id1359249098?i=1000599425881 Ep 942 | Is Taylor Swift a Psyop? https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-942-is-taylor-swift-a-psyop/id1359249098?i=1000643567248 --- Buy Allie's book, You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love: https://alliebethstuckey.com/book Relatable merchandise – use promo code 'ALLIE10' for a discount: https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey

Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself. On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort.

We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this D-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us. The Super Bowl was last night and he gets us ran a couple more ads. I will give you my take on that as well as some other things on this Super Bowl themed episode of Relatable, which is brought to you by our friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use code alley at checkout.

That's Good Ranchers.com. code Allie. Hey guys, welcome to Relatable. Happy Monday. Hope everyone is having a great day and that you had a great weekend. Remember, the only thing that we can ever do in any given moment is the next right thing in faith with excellence and for the glory of God. So whether you're changing diapers, sending an email, making a major decision or a minor one, that is the only thing that we can really do or are called to do. And God promises to give us the strength to do that, to trust and obey in any given moment. So with all the chaos and the craziness, the confusion that goes on in our culture in our world today, that is what we can focus on with the power of the Holy Spirit,

putting one foot in front of the other for God's glory. All right, just wanted to give you that Monday encouragement before we get into some Super Bowl craziness, but also, of course, talking about some more serious theological stuff in relation to the He Gets Us campaign. Before we get into it, just look, look how cute this is, guys. If you're watching on YouTube, I've got my cruneck. Finally, it came in. The self-love won't save you, cruneck. Self-love won't save you, but Jesus will.

Christians are not called to self-adoration, nor are we called to self-loathing. Those are two sides of the same self-obsession, coin Christians are called to the beauty and the freedom and the liberation found in self-forgetfulness and self-denial, that we are given a new identity, a new self-in-Christ that lives fully and totally for him. So people sometimes when they see something like this self-love won't save you, they might think that I'm saying that you should hate yourself. No, I don't think that we should obsess over ourselves at all in a world that is constantly telling you that it's all about you. You have to psychoanalyze yourself and find yourself and fulfill yourself and make

yourself happy in any given moment. The truth is, is that salvation and satisfaction will not come from those places. They won't come from yourself. They can only be found outside of you, namely in your creator. Self-love is not salvific. In fact, every place that we see this term, self-love, lovers of self in scripture, it's actually seen as a negative. The more we center, and everything that happens on ourselves, the more miserable we are. I think we can see that in the state of the world today. So this is a great conversation starter. Self-love won't save you.

It's up at alleymerch.com. You probably can't get it for Valentine's Day at this point, but you can still get it. It's true all year-round. Great conversation starter for sharing the gospel with the people that you know. You can get a sticker to all that good stuff. All right. Let's get into some of this craziness. there was the Super Bowl yesterday. Did you know that? You might not have known that. If you're like me,

you don't really know anything about football. It is actually incredible. My brain's complete inability, I would say unwillingness to digest anything about how football works. For as long as I have been around it, I mean, growing up in Texas, football is a big deal. I was a cheerleader for a couple years. So you kind of have to know something about football, right? I went to school in the Southeast. Football is a big deal there. I married a man who was a big UGA fan, his entire family big UGA fans. My dad is University of Arkansas fan, so he likes football. And so I've been around football a lot, Texas, the SEC, like big football guys in both those places. And yet I really, beyond just I know that you're trying to get it into the end zone.

I really could not tell you anything else about football. I really could not. I know you're supposed to tackle someone if you're on defense. The guy with the ball is on offense, you're supposed to tackle them. I get that. Got it. I even play Powder Puff in high school. Can you believe it?

And I still somehow don't know football. So, yeah, I can't tell you anything about it other than two teams competed against each other last night. And it was a 49ers and the Chiefs. And obviously there were more eyes on this than usual from a particular demographic. And that is the young female demographic, people who know about as much about football as I do, because Travis Kelsey, the guy who plays for the Chiefs, I don't even know what position he plays. I bet Brie could probably tell us. He is dating Taylor Swift. You've probably heard of Taylor Swift. She is a singer, a musician. And this is her first, like, very public relationship, at least in a long

time. So people have been excited about that. And so the chiefs ended up winning. And I'm going to let Bree comment on this a little bit because Bree is sad this morning. She told me when I walked in, she said she's sad because she was invested and she wanted the 49ers to win. Is that right? I'm devastated. Yeah. No, I, this is the first year I got really into football. Before that, I was like you. I didn't know anything. And believe it or not, it was not because of Taylor Swift. It just got into it.

Essentially, why I cared about this was because of Brock Purdy, who is the quarterback of the 49ers, who is an outspoken Christian and seems like very sweet and very humble. And it would have been if they had won a really cute underdog story because in 2020, 2022, he was drafted last draft pick, which then he was nicknamed Mr. Irrelevant. So no one thought he would go anywhere with his career. He was the third string quarterback for the 49ers. And then the two quarterbacks in front of him, I guess, both got injured. So he ended up playing, starting for the 49ers.

And then he brought his team to the Super Bowl. So it was like lots of potential for an underdog story. And the chiefs just win all the time. They won the Super Bowl last year, right? Yeah. Boy. So I was like, no one needed to see them win again. Yeah.

And a lot of people are annoyed by Patrick Mahomes, the quarterback of the Chiefs and Travis Kelsey. They just have a reputation for being really arrogant. And I thought people like Patrick Mahomes. They like him because he's talented. Yeah. But both of them have very, very big egos. And you can tell Travis Kelsey has a huge attitude and a lot of anger. issues when he is. We'll talk about that. We'll talk about that. Do we have the saw of Brock Purdy

talking about his faith? I think that we do. Let's play that. Our identity isn't in the sport of football. It's in who God calls us to be and what he wants us to do in life and what he says in the Bible. And for us, obviously, we're playing football. It's our job. But it's not who we are. And, you know, we're loved no matter what because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross. And we get to and be transformed and love people through that? I love him. I know. I love him so much.

Okay, just as a parent, that is what you want to see. If your son or daughter stands up, takes the opportunity that he has to share the gospel like that, you as a parent have to watch that and be like, yep, that's all my dreams have come true. That's all you want. As a Christian parent, you want your child, whether they go to the Super Bowl or not, to just know who they are in Christ and what actually matters and be so satisfied and secure in that. So great job, not just Brock Purdy, but Brock Bertie's parents. Okay, we have another

video of him talking about prayer during games. Talk to your dad a couple days ago. He said he prays his guts out when he watches you play. Yeah. Do you pray when you're playing during a game? Yeah, yeah, I do. You know, it's not, can we, God, can we win here? Can we do something great here, it's more just to have that peace, that steadfastness and all the chaos. That's really what it is. It's sinking back into like Holy Spirit, you know, take over and lead me here in this moment and allow me to think clearly, allow me to, you know, obviously go through my reeds and like I said, just have a even killed state of mind that I get from Holy Spirit. So.

Love him. I love that he made that distinction, that he's not like, oh, Philippians 413. That means that I'm going to win this game. If I pray, you know, God is going to give me the strength to win here, that he's distinguishing between no, I'm just asking for peace. I'm asking for presence of mind. I'm asking for steadiness. And so he seems really solid. He talks a lot about how his main goal is to serve his team and to love on them. And I just think it's really sweet how he talks about that.

And they cut to his dad obviously during the game a few times. and you could tell his dad was just like standing there praying like the whole time. It was very sweet. So sweet. I just love that so much. He just got engaged. Yeah. He posted a picture of, I guess this was on Instagram and it was his fiance's Instagram,

posting a picture of them reading their Bibles together, which is really sweet. We love to see that. We love couples that pray and read the Bible together. Also, we have a researcher note here. And my husband told me a little bit about this. So Rockbredi's salary is famously low for an NFL quarterback over $900,000 a year, which we understand in general is a lot of money. But, you know, Dak Prescott, I think my husband said he's making, I don't know how much, tens of millions of dollars a year. So different.

So ranks 54th among NFL quarterbacks in the lowest salary for a starting quarterback. Babylon B joked that he was excited to finally see Taylor Swift in person at the Super Bowl because he couldn't afford air store tickets. That's funny. Yet he made a clear proclamation of the gospel than the $20 million he gets us advertising campaign. Ooh, okay, we'll talk about that in a little bit. So that's why I also was cheering for the 49ers. Now, not very, I wasn't cheering very hard for the 49ers to be fair because I wasn't really paying attention to the game. But I wanted them to win. And the other reason I wanted them to win is because, as I said, on Instagram, Travis Kelsey is a poo-poo head. Yeah.

The definite, like, I don't think I've ever called anyone that, but he is the definition. The definition. I'm sorry. He just is. I think it's, it's the arrogance that gets me. Yeah. Well, a couple games ago, he, I forget what game it was, but he was so mad about something that he went off to the sidelines and he threw his helmet down on the ground. and it bounced up and almost hit one of the like the water girls.

And then in this in the Super Bowl. You know, he was so mad. In the Super Bowl, he was so mad that his coach wasn't putting him in the game that he came up and pushed him. I saw that. And was screaming at him to put him in the game. Okay. I don't know if we have that.

Do we have that video? The fumble. He comes over to Andy. He goes, keep me in. What happened is on the fumble, he was not in the game. Noah Gray went in. and he had to block. That is red flag.

That is a red, that's a red flag. Like I understand tensions, flare and things like that. But I, this is not the first time that he's done something like that. And I just think that you need to, I need, like, you need to look out for personality traits like that. because we know that a man who doesn't have self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls. So you can take that as you will, Taylor Swift. But I heard someone say recently, I think it was a pastor that like you can have all the safety and security in your home, in your family that you can possibly have to keep yourself safe from, you know, outside intruders. but if you are living with a man inside your home who cannot control his anger,

then you are more at risk than you would be even without those protections. And I'm not, I'm just talking like emotionally, spiritually and things like that too. And I'm just saying, you got to look out for a guy that cannot control his anger. We don't be throwing helmets on the ground. We don't be pushing 65-year-old men on the side.

You don't, I don't care if it's a Super Bowl. Because you're mad about a game. Yeah. Come on. Come on. We don't act like toddlers. We really don't. So, yeah, that's part of why I wanted the 49ers to win.

Anti-Poopo head. Plus, I don't like the he shills for Pfizer and all that good stuff. Yeah, there's that too. Yeah. Hey, this is Steve Deast. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and

reality itself. on the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this Steve Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts.

I hope you'll join us. Okay, speaking of Travis and Taylor, there's this whole conspiracy theory that we talked about. I think it was last week in the episode is Taylor Swift to Sciop. And it has to do with basically Democrats and major governmental institutions, intelligence agencies using Taylor Swift as a psychological operation to try to get more people to vote Democrat. I don't know why there is a conspiracy centering on her when there are so many super influential celebrities that are left wing. She is left wing or she thinks she's left wing like a lot of celebrities. And yeah, she does have a lot of influence.

But I don't think that it is some orchestrated thing. But people are saying that this is all rigged. It's all a very highly orchestrated PR push that basically it was a. arranged that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey would get together and they would start dating and there would be a ton of attention on the on the chiefs and all that and then it was already rigged that the chiefs were going to win the Super Bowl and I guess the purpose of this is to get everyone like talking about them looking at them and then they'll you know vote Democrat in November or something like that Travis and Taylor will get engaged sometimes.

this year and it's all carefully orchestrated. While Joe Biden, not Joe Biden himself, we know that. He was already asleep at this point, but someone on his team decided to play on this and tweeted, tweeted this just like we drew it up. And then you've got Joe Biden with laser eyes. I think that's hilarious. I think it's so funny. I saw a lot of people replying under it, conservatives being like, oh, this is awful. This is not funny. This is so cring. Oh, come on. It's so funny. That's so funny. Playing on people's just, I don't know, paranoia about conspiracy theories and things like that. No, I'm not saying that her influence won't be leveraged to try to get people to vote Democrat. Duh, absolutely. That's probably going to happen.

Do I think that this was all secretly orchestrated for the chiefs to win the Super Bowl? No, I don't. So you know what? I don't typically give kudos to Joe Biden and his team, but I will. today. That was a funny, funny tweet. All right, let's move on to some other things that happened at the at the Super Bowl. There was a black national anthem. Andra Day performed lift every voice and sing and we have the video. I don't even think we need we need to play it. But they sing it last year too. Or maybe they've yeah, okay, so the NFL started to play the black national anthem in the 2020 season following the death of George Floyd, the NAACP began to promote, lift every voice and sing as the Black National Anthem in 1917. Look, there's no such thing as the Black National Anthem.

There's no such thing. This might be a song that a lot of Black people in America like. Probably most Black people in America don't even know it. Most people in America don't know it. There's no Black National Anthem. The National Anthem, it is for everyone. We live in one country, like it or not. As much as the two sides of the aisle might not like each other, as much as there may be tension between people of different ethnicities and different backgrounds, different classes, different states, whatever it is.

We live in one nation. We have one national anthem. It is stupid. It is divisive. It is completely counterproductive to have a national anthem for one subset of American society who happens to have a particular melanin count. Now, I'm not saying that there is no significance to the differences of our skin color in that, yes, we know the history, we know slavery happened, we know Jim Crow happened, we know that there have been injustices perpetrated against people simply because of their melanin count or in cases of Japanese Americans or Chinese Americans because of their nationality or even perceived nationality. Of course, these things are true. but to highlight those fissures, to highlight those divisions and to glorify them by giving one group a different anthem that is segregated from everyone else's anthem.

That's silly. That's silly. That does nothing. That only harms. It does not help. So that happened. Then we had Riba. We had Riba.

She's saying the actual national. anthem and I thought that she did a great job. I like Riba. I've been listening to Riba for a long time. Then there were quite a few commercials. I think that probably my favorite commercial was the, I didn't see all of them. Like I said, it wasn't paying that close of attention, but it was the Dunkin' Donuts commercial. And it had Ben Affleck and it had Tom Brady and it had J.Lo and Matt Damon. I don't think you should do this. Last year, she came to my work. Now I got to show her what I can do.

He's here. A fleck on the track. What up, Brooks? For your consideration. Here comes the Boston Massacre. The Dunk Kings. Touchdown Tommy on them keys. Play a coach.

Got it. I'm open. And need no introduction, my partner. Sometimes it's really hard to be your friend. You said you were going to support me. Don't keep my heart. Why you don't get me? Girl up.

Why you don't keep my heart. So that one I liked. What I did not like was the He Gets Us ad. Surprise, surprise. We talked about this last year. We talked about this a couple times last year, actually. And I gave you my thoughts on it, but I'm going to give you my thoughts on it again.

So let me play the, at least a few seconds of the He Gets Us ad that played at the Super Bowl last night. Okay, so if you're just listening to this, there were different depictions of people washing each other's feet. And I'll pull up a couple of the pictures. One of them you'll see is a woman washing the feet of another woman in front of the family planning clinic. And off to the side are a bunch of what looked like pro-life protesters. They've got different signs that depict their pro-life meeting. and you've got this woman washing the feet of another woman who, I don't know if she is supposed to be someone who worked at the abortion clinic or someone who has had an abortion.

And so you're supposed to see the contrast there between the people who are in front of the building who are protesting standing there talking to themselves and this woman who is actually bending down washing the feet of this woman outside of the abortion clinic. And then you've got this other picture and here is what looks like a priest that is washing the feet of a very noticeably flamboyantly gay man on a beach. I don't know. Are these AI images, do you think? Yeah. They're AI images, which is very like, I don't know, strange choice. They just look very AI. And I'm just thinking now, like what they had to type in in order to get this.

Like, Orthodox priest washes the feet of a gay black man. It's just, I don't know. It's very strange. And so a lot of people had a lot of thoughts about these various images. Let me play you the other He Gets Us ad before I comment on it. Okay, before I talk about the ad specifically, let me just, I'll just remind you about of my thoughts about he gets us in general. Then we'll talk a little bit about who's behind it,

the funding and all of that, just a review of what we talked about last year. Even if I didn't know anything about who was behind it or if I didn't have any of the problems with the mission that stated on their website, I wouldn't like these ads. So many of you have messaged me over the past couple of years saying I don't know why,

but I just get the kib-jee-jee-b-jee-b about these ads. something just doesn't feel right about them. It feels like it's almost. It feels like we want to like it. Like we want to cheer it on. We want to say yes, at least Jesus is being proclaimed to the masses. And wow,

what a crazy opportunity that a Super Bowl ad is being dedicated to Jesus in the gospel. We all want to say that, okay? And so I know that people are going to hear this and they're going to say, wow, you're just being critical. You're just being a naysayer. You're just not excited about Christians proclaiming Jesus in a way that might be compelling and persuasive to a dying world. That's not true at all. I very much just want to say, yay. At least Jesus is being preached. At least his name is getting out there. Yes and amen. Praise God for the people who put this together. Praise God for the funders behind this. Who knows what this might do for the kingdom of God. Hallelujah.

That's what I want to say. But I don't want to ignore, and I don't want you to ignore that nagging feeling that we all have, that this is just not right. I want to try my best to give words to it as I did last year and to tell you that I think that nagging is conviction. I think that nagging is wisdom given to you by the Lord. I think the years of your Bible reading and you're praying and you're asking for discernment is pricking your heart and telling you,

this is not quite right. And when it comes to the gospel, when it comes to Jesus, that matters. It matters that we get it right. And I don't think that this is any small thing. The reason, just from a big picture perspective, I'm not on board with He Gets Us, even as a slogan, is because it makes Jesus about you, who you are, what you want, what you're like, trying to create this relatable Jesus who is just like you. And in an effort to do that, they end up saying things that are not true. They have an ad that says Jesus was an immigrant. Jesus was a refugee.

And it looks like they are comparing him to the immigrants who are illegally crossing over the border to say Jesus is just like you. Well, Jesus was not a refugee in today's sense. He didn't leave the kingdom that he was in. He wasn't certainly moving illegally into a place where he was not allowed to go. He stayed within the same kingdom. It would be like going from one state to another state. So that's just not biblically or historically accurate.

They have an ad that talks about poverty, that Jesus also struggled to make ends meet. Jesus did not struggle to make ends meet. That's just not accurate. That is not the Jesus of the Bible. That is not the Jesus of history. And even when you're looking at this feet washing, it still misses the point. It misses the point of who Jesus is and why he came and what the church is and what his followers are and what we are called to. It does not actually share the gospel. It does not actually depict the biblical Jesus. Instead, what it affirms to a people that already don't like Christians, that already hate Christ's church, that already have a problem with Christianity in general, what it affirms to them is, yeah, it actually is all about you. Jesus came to affirm you. He came to be like you. He came to affirm and celebrate your identity, your status, your choices, and that's it.

End of story. And I know some people say, well, that's the beginning of the conversation. And then people can be curious. They can ask questions. And look, praise God, if that happens. I know that they do have a mechanism on their website where you can go and you can ask, hey, like, can you connect me to a church? Can you tell me more about the gospel?

Actually, last year, because I was curious, I did ask some questions. questions to the person on the other end at the other end of the website. And I just asked them to explain the gospel to me. And I asked them, how do you get into heaven? And let me give this person credit. They did tell me the right answers. I was very encouraged by that. So if that is what's happening. If people are connecting and hearing the gospel through the website, then I am happy about that. I truly am. But I also know, because I've talked to some of you who have worked on the campaign for the last couple of years, how you have realized that you have a lot of concerns with how things are being run, the mission, the message, what's going on behind the scenes,

and actually what is being portrayed to the public. And so I don't know if everyone who is going to the He Getsis website is really hearing the gospel and is being connected to a gospel preaching church. Now, God can use a lot of things. He doesn't need our perfection to be glorified or to advance his kingdom. And I genuinely pray that he uses the He gets us campaign to do that. But what I fear, and I think it is a completely legitimate fear, is that it is just affirming what people, what unbelievers, nonbelievers already erroneously think about Jesus and think about Christianity. That really all of these Christians out there who are pro-life, all of these Christians out there who care about, say, illegal immigration, all of these Christians out

there who care about the LGBTQ issue, that they're just haters, that that's just hate. And really, all they're supposed to do is love, quote, unquote. And that means be quiet, sit down, pretend like moral differences don't exist, pretend like God doesn't call us to repentance, pretend like there is no sin that he gets us campaign is all about you. It's all about affirming you. And maybe that's not what they really mean, but that is certainly the message that comes across. And unfortunately, I saw a lot of people online talking about the campaign.

And there were just a lot of jokes about, because they don't understand. non-believers don't understand what washing feet is. And so you had a lot of people being like, what is this a foot fetish? Did Quentin Tarantino, did he direct this? Because he famously has a foot fetish. And so they were making fun of it in that sense because I think we forget the washing of the feet depiction that we see in Scripture, which we do see in Scripture. Now it's a symbol of spiritual cleansing and Jesus' servitude. and the salvation that's found in him.

So it's not exactly what's depicted in this. But it's, it is not something that everyone is familiar with. It's not really a picture necessarily that the world is going to see and say, wow, that shows me a lot of humility. That shows me a lot of kindness. I want to know more about this Jesus.

Instead, again, I think it just confirms the suspicions of a dying world that all of the Christians, who ever talk about sin, whoever talk about Jesus being the only way to heaven, all the Christians who care about politics, they're just hateful, they're just divisive, they're just wrong.

This is a progressive depiction of what Jesus and Christianity are, which is just this mushy, mumbo, jumbo, jimbo, wishi, washy stuff. And I don't think it's powerful. I don't think it's compelling. I don't think it's persuasive. And you saw in that picture of the woman who is washing the feet in front of the abortion clinic. Off to the side, you've got the pro-life protesters. That's supposed to be a contrast. The heat gets his campaign is saying, look at these hateful people over here who are protesting in front of the abortion clinic,

when really you're just supposed to be washing the feet of the woman who just had an abortion. Well, first of all, that is a false choice. all of those people, I mean, I don't know then they're AI generated, but all the people I know who are protesting against abortion are also showing up at the pregnancy centers and serving these women who are in crisis, who are pregnant, and who are in need of resources and tools and spiritual and emotional guidance. It doesn't have to be either or. But what the He Getsers campaign wants you to think is that protesting or being adamantly pro-life, that that is on the side of hate. Again, that just confirms what the secular liberal thinks that Christian should be, which is completely weak and silent. I'm not against us being compassionate and being humble and, yes, washing feet metaphorically and literally, but that does not have to, that does not have to preclude speaking the truth. because Jesus did not just wash feet. He didn't just serve, he did, but he also rebuked. He also called people to repentance.

He also told people to go and sin no more. That was the utmost form of his compassion because he didn't only care about their physical state. He also cared infinitely more about their hearts and about their souls, about their salvation. And in order to be saved, we have to know that we need a state. We need a Savior. And we only need a Savior if we've sinned. And so that is an important message to convey. And look, I understand that there's only 30 seconds or so that they had. But if you've got the money, you've got the time, you've got the opportunity to talk about Jesus in a Super Bowl ad. Wow, what an amazing chance you have to tell people about Christ. Let's do it right. Let's not do this wishy-washy mumbo-jumbo, ambiguous nonsense, like pseudo-political statements instead of just sharing

the gospel. Like, just do that. And if you say, okay, well, you can't get a Super Bowl ad by just sharing the gospel, it's just not going to be possible to do that. Then there are better ways to go about it. There are better ways to say, hey, are you miserable? Are you sad? Are you wondering why you're here?

Are you looking for love in all the wrong places? Are you trying and failing to find happiness and purpose and belonging in yourself, in your relationships, in alcohol, in success, in work, in drugs, in sex? Yeah, all of us are on a quest to try to find fulfillment and satisfaction and identity. It's innate. We were made with those longings. But you are going to continue showing up at a dead end until you try to find those things in the only place where they exist and that is in Jesus Christ. If you want to know more about Jesus Christ, then go to our website, whatever it is. It could be something that simple. There are a lot of creative ways to depict the gospel accurately and to depict Jesus accurately. I don't think that he gets us

campaign does that at all, at all. Okay, I'm going to talk a little bit more about who's behind it, what's behind it and all that good stuff. Okay, so there's been some new, there's been some changes at the He Gets Us campaign, a newly formed nonprofit called Come Near, now Spearheads the He Gets Us initiative. The campaign was previously funded by the nonprofit servant foundation. That's what we talked about last year. This caused the marketing campaign to be criticized last year by the left because the Servant Foundation reportedly donates to Alliance Defending Freedom, Alliance Defending Freedom. Obviously, as you guys know, we've had them on several times.

They are protecting freedoms like the First Amendment, for example, particularly religious liberty against the onslaught of the LGBTQ sexual revolution that is trying very hard to trample upon the rights of people to say and express and work in a way that aligns with their Christian values. And so the left, of course, didn't like that. So they criticized the Heat Gets Us initiative. Because of that, the spokesman said that the change in leadership was necessary for Heat gets us to grow rather than as a response to previous affiliation and controversy. So that's been the criticism that they wanted to get the Servant Foundation out of the way because they were possibly in some way anti-LGBQ. And so now they're under new leadership, but they're saying it's not

because of that controversy. We just needed different people at the helm. Now people are talking about the evangelical billionaire family that is funding the He Kits Us initiative. Rolling Stone actually reported on that. The Super Bowl once again featured ads promoting Jesus, thanks in large part to the billionaire family that leads Hobby Lobby. This year, new charity organization come near as leading the heat gets a sad campaign. The group is led by CEO Ken Colwell, previously the chief marketing officer of the Christian charity Compassionate International, though not many other details are known about the organization still in its infancy.

And so we do know that the Hobby Lobby co-founder is really who is kind of funding it. who was putting out the money for the campaign. Here's what he said to Glenn back in 2022. What we're known as as Christians, we're known as haters. We're beginning to be known as haters. We hate this group. We hate that group,

but we're not. We are people that have the very, very best love story ever written, and we need to tell that love story. So our idea is let's tell the story. Look, okay, okay. I do think that we should be telling the love story of the gospel. Absolutely.

Christians should not be known by the things or the people that we hate. We should primarily be known by what we love. But there is a way to do that without creating ads that seems like they seem like they're just chastising Christians. They seem like they're just going over here to the secular libs that have and will always hate Christians until they are converted to Christ and saying, yeah, you know those Christians over there who are pro-life, who aren't for drag queens? Story Hour who are against chopping off the genitals of kids. Yeah, I know. I know. They're a little much. I know. It's kind of embarrassing. But look, like, just ignore them. And no, no, Jesus is totally on your side on these issues. He doesn't care about all that stuff. They're just haters. They're just, I know, they're making a mountain out of a molehill. Don't worry about them. Yeah,

we're kind of embarrassed of them too. Look this way. No, you're totally right about illegal immigration. You're totally right about all of these other issues. Oh, no, no, no. We don't have to talk about sin and salvation and things like that. Don't you worry about that. We don't do fire and brimstone. That's what it seems like.

They really seem like ads that are not for the non-believer, but are for the conservative Christian to tell you to stop being the way that you are, to stop caring about the things that you care about, to stop being. so political. Stop being so quote unquote divisive. It's definitely an implicit knock on you for caring about the things that you care about. And you know what? I know it might feel like effective propaganda because it sucks when even people on your side chastise you. Don't like you. Think that you care too much about things. Think that you're too political and too divisive. Meanwhile, all of these ads are at least subliminally political. And they're all making fun of you. And they're all making fun of

you conservative Christian. It never goes the other direction. It's not interesting. It's just affirming, again, this idea that Christian conservatives are hateful because we are pro-biblical marriage, because we tend to be conservative on a lot of issues like immigration, because, yeah, we are against the transition of people, attempted transition from one sex to the next, especially when it comes to children. And so that's really, the message I think that these are portraying, which is really unfortunate because that's not the gospel. You're actually just stoking the culture war fires even more. So don't be dissuaded by this. Don't be discouraged by this. Don't be convinced just like the after party, just like so many of

these organizations that are dedicated to telling you Christian conservative that you and you alone must have a certain form of humility that shames you into silence about issues like abortion and gender and sexuality and marriage and immigration and all of these things. Just don't even let it get to you. What do we always say? What have we been saying for years now? Politics matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy.

Policy affects people. And we know as Christians that people matter. not just to us, but also to God. And that's why we have to care about politics. That's why we care about abortion. That's why we care about immigration. That's why we care about crime. That's why we care about what the definition of justice is.

That's why we care about gender and marriage and all these things, things like surrogacy and reproductive technology. The things that we talk about, we don't talk about just to be angry. We don't talk about to be haters. We talk about them because we need clarity on these issues because the church as a reference, in a world that is tossed to and fro by the chaos of our culture. Like, we have to know what is true on these things. We have to provide the answer for these things.

We are agents of order as Christians. That is part of what we do and why we are here. That's what Christians have done throughout history. We have been agents of order. We have been agents of civilization. We have been ambassadors. of the message that you have innate rights as a human being because you were given them by a creator in whose image you are made. And that, yes, has laid a foundation politically

for the greatest country and the freest country and the best country that has ever existed. And so of course Christians, conservative Christians, Christians who believe the Bible is the final authority, of course we need to continue speaking up about the things that matter because if we stop, if we conservative evangelicals that the world calls hateful and all that stuff, if we stop caring about the unborn, like if we stop pushing for legislation to protect them, if we stop caring about the gender transition of children, if we stop caring about the definition of marriage, if we stop caring about the dignity and the sanctity of life, if we stop caring about borders and sovereignty, the right to protect yourself, the right to speak out, the right

to worship freely. If we stop caring about that, then that's it. it's done. It's done. And we will reach the point of no return if we have it already. So that's personally what I think these ads are about. I don't see the gospel in them. Now again, I pray that the Lord would use them to bring people to himself because he can do that. He can absolutely do that. And we should all be praying that. We should. We should all be praying that through this and through whatever means God has ordained, that people will, would hear the gospel, that they would be connected to a Bible believing church. Yes and amen. I'm going to link, a link that we've linked in the past. I believe it is founders.org

slash church search. I'm going to do a couple of church searches and put the link in the description of this episode. And I've done this several times and I always love getting the stories a few months later from those of you who you found a Bible preaching church in your area through these links and it's just transformed your family's life. I love hearing that. And so I'm going to, I'm going to link those because I too want you to find a Bible believing church. I too want you to find a pastor who is going to preach the true gospel to you every Sunday. All right, there was a shooting at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church over the weekend. The shooter was killed. and identified by as Janess Moreno also went by Jeffrey.

So apparently this person is so-called trans-identifying. Now, I think it's always so confusing in these situations. This is another reason why Satan loves this ideology because it just compounds chaos and confusion in these types of situations. So I think that this is actually a woman who started identifying as a man. Now, the reason that that is significant, I think, is because we know that testosterone, if this person was on testosterone, that testosterone hormones, synthetic hormones can make you extremely aggressive, extremely agitated, prone to anger, and prone to violence, especially

when it comes to women. We're not, our bodies just weren't created to house that much testosterone. And so it's going to affect our mind. Now, Some people would say that when they got on testosterone, it made them feel great. Their depression went away, things like that. That is, of course, temporary. That can happen. There can be some euphoria when a woman who wants to be the opposite sex starts going on testosterone. But still, you're going to get that aggression, that violence, that agitation that also comes with it, especially the more that you start to use.

Was that the case here? We are not completely sure. This is according to the post-millennial. The Harris County Sheriff's Office said deputies responded to an active shift. shooting at Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church. Now, if you're not familiar, this is a huge, huge mega church down in Houston. Shortly after 2 p.m. on Sunday afternoon, police had a woman in her mid-30s, entered the church, armed with a long rifle wearing a trench coat and a backpack. She was reportedly accompanied by a five-year-old boy. Just breaks my heart for the little boy.

Who knows what he had been through? The shooter used in AR-15 that had free Palestine written on it. According to K-H-O-U reporter Jeremy Rigalski, Multiple independent sources confirmed that Janice Yvonne Moreno 36 is the person responsible for the shooting. According to law enforcement records, Moreno also identified as Jeffrey Escalante and had prior arrest for assault, forgery, marijuana, possession, theft, evading, and unlawful carrying of weapons. So we don't really know that much about her. We do know that, so two off-duty officers engaged and fired at the suspect, killing her at the scene. According to authorities, the child was hit. Is in critical condition at the hospital.

Let's just pray for that little boy. Let's pray for that five-year-old. I mean, how much trauma has he already experienced? I pray that he lives. I pray that God would redeem his life. I pray that he is sent to live with someone who can care for him and love him and show him the love of Jesus. just how awful is that? A 57-year-old man was also shot in the leg as a bystander taken to the hospital for treatment. He is reportedly okay. So praise God for that. I mean, I just praise God that

more people were not hurt. This could have been absolutely devastating, especially if she had come just like a couple hours earlier. I would assume that they would have all been at church still at that point. And so, oh my goodness, thank God for these police officers doing their job. It's just absolutely tragic. And I mean, there's a lot of play here. There's a lot to discuss why she was there, what was going on, what the motives were. But I do think it is relevant to talk about also what substances she had in her body, what ideology she was ascribing to. And this is true, no matter what side of the aisle that someone is on, we should take a look at the ideology that is motivating them. And yet again, we always hear in a case like this, it will be that

the gun is the problem. Because it's a lot. You can't talk about the toxic patriarchy, toxic masculinity. You can't talk about white supremacy or white privilege. She's not a white woman. You can't talk about right-wing extremist hate here. And so it's going to be about the guns. When the identity changes, when any of those other factors change, then we have to talk about white supremacy and we have to talk about right-wing extremism

and MAGA Republicans and how crazy they are. But when the rest of it doesn't fit that narrative, then you just focus on the guns. It's very cynical and awful and stupid. It's terrible how these conversations typically go after a shooting. But just pray for that child. Pray for his health and his salvation too. Gosh, awful. Just a terrible story.

And again, praise God for the police officers. And hopefully they can preempt any future threats. So we should just continue praying for this church community too because this will be traumatizing for many years to come. All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. We've got a lot going on this week. Don't forget tomorrow we've got Candace Cameron Burey, y'all. Candace Cameron, Beeray.

It's going to be an amazing conversation. I cannot wait for you to hear it. We will see you back here then. Hey, this is Steve Day. If you're listening to Allie, you already understand that the biggest issues facing our country aren't just political. They're moral, spiritual, and rooted in what we believe is true about God, humanity, and reality itself.

On the Steve Day show, we take the news of the day and tested against first principles, faith, truth, and objective reality. We don't just chase narratives and we don't offer false comfort. We ask the hard questions and follow the answers wherever they leave, even when it's unpopular. This is a show for people who want honesty over hype and clarity over chaos. If you're looking for commentary grounded in conviction and unwilling to lie to you about where we are or where we're headed, you can watch this T-Day show right here on Blaze TV or listen wherever you get podcasts. I hope you'll join us.