By now you’ve probably seen the short video ads for He Gets Us on YouTube.  

The website, appropriately, is www.hegetsus.com.  If you read that as He Get Sus, you can be forgiven on the basis of Freudian slip alone, especially if you’ve seen one or two of these.  

The idea of Jesus “getting” us is Biblical on the face of it.  

The incarnation indeed means something in this direction.  His Priesthood also relates to this, according to the Book of Hebrews.  

He has hungry. He was thirsty. He grieved (wept) when His friend died. At Gethsemane there was a desire for human fellowship in prayer (I don’t want to call this loneliness since I am not sure the doctrine of the Trinity can comport with that, but it’s at least a desire for a prayer meeting on the eve of His crucifixion).  

The Depature

The departure from Biblical truth is when this glorious truth of the Incarnation ignores the equally glorious truth of His Deity.  Or when it downplays the equally true fact of our sin.

Now, to be fair, there is only so much you can do in a thirty second YouTube ad.  It’s possible that this org is doing some Biblical counseling with those who contact them and is using the psycho-babble bait of our day to bring in some hurting people.  From a marketing standpoint, this is solid work.

I do not want to judge motives.  But we can judge content. In fact, we are commanded to.

Take their Christmas ad that’s currently running.  Jesus is depicted as any other bastard child and Mary was just a teenage mom in a crisis pregnancy.  So, He gets us.  

Are you a bastard child?  He was too, they insinuate.  He gets us.  

Are you a fornicating teenager?  Mary was too.  He gets us.  

Speaking of something Mary did NOT know (apologies to Mark Lowry), it was both of these ideas.  
This is absurd from a Biblical and basic (think “Sunday School”) theology persepective. To make it plain: Jesus was not a bastard child. Mary and Joseph were married. Joseph was Jesus’ legal earthly father. The mystery of the Virgin Birth holds that the Holy Spirit caused Mary to conceive. Therefore, Mary did not fornicate, as the Jewish rabbis of Jesus’ day (and after) taught.  

Yes, Jesus knew what it was like to be considered a bastard child.  And He must have known the pain of hearing His mother being called a prostitute. But that is not the primary message of The Nativity.

We’ve been discussing this internally in our chats at Loor.  Our CTO pointed out that this whole endeavor is an example of therapeutic moral deism.  It’s big evangelical, mega-church philosophy boiled down to its essentials. Christianity is reduced to a therapeutic message with a certain set of moral standards (somewhere) with some passing reference to God in general terms.  

That’s not Christianity either.  

So What?

So you might be wondering, what does this have to do with a company that says Christian Films Shouldn’t Suck?  “Don’t you guys get popular culture?  How are you going to market to this narcissitic culture?”  

We’ll let our content creators speak for themselves with their creations. For now, I’ll only say that any project that comes across my desk that makes Jesus out to be ONLY human and not GOD is going to get a no-vote from me.  

Muslims, Hindus, Black Hebrew Israelites, New Agers, Buddhists, atheists, and Mormons all have NO problem with Jesus being human.  Neither do liberal mainline Christian denominations.  Or most mega-churches.

The reason why SOME Christian films suck is that they are squarely in the moralistic therapeutic deist camp.  In other words, they are Christian films that are not Christian by definition.  

It seems painfully obvious to say it, but the reason why we have films masquerading as Christian that are not is because culture is downstream from the Church, as Pastor Toby Sumpter likes to say.  

Behind every Christian film or YouTube ad that highlights the humanity of Jesus at the expense of His Deity is a local church that has failed in its duty to be the pillar and ground of truth.  In the meantime, the Christian film gatekeepers focus on the morality in their therapeutic “deism” and make sure you’re expletives don’t get spicier than “heck” or “darny-darn-darn”.  

I propose an edit for this moralistic crap.  “Moralistic therapeutic HUMANism.”  Clearly, deity doesn’t matter anymore.  “Make Jesus God Again.”  

Break out of the every day.  Soft launch is coming soon.