Sight Unseen

Having watched the Super Bowl on Sunday, I saw the "He Gets Us" advertisements.

Something tells me Jesus would *not* spend millions of dollars on Super Bowl ads to make fascism look benign.
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York)

Do you think open borders is biblical?
Charlie Kirk, Turning Point USA

I'm not sure that either of these two did.

Personally, I found the spots to be rather dull, perhaps because I'm neither a religious skeptic or cultural Christian, who are, as I understand it, the target audience. But I also didn't find them even potentially harmful, perhaps because I'm not a committed partisan.

I've had plenty of conversations with Christians over the years, given that so many people in the United States identify as such, and so the message of "no matter what you think of as 'good,' Jesus fits the bill," isn't new to me. Frankly, I'm somewhat surprised that the Servant Foundation/The Signatry settled on that message for their advertising campaign, given how common it is. Apparently, I'm not the only one; several commentators have suggested that there should be more of a focus on the divinity of Jesus and messages of salvation. But I suspect that the Servant Foundation feels that would be preaching a bit too much to the choir.

In any event, I wonder about the openly political critiques of people Representative Ocasio-Cortez and Charlie Kirk, which seem to be aimed more at their conceptions of who is sending the message, as opposed to what the message actually is. As the political parties and their messages drift farther apart and become more mutually hostile, I suspect that this sort of suspicion will fall on more and more of the mass media, as "if you're not openly with us, you're clearly against us," becomes a more broadly accepted way of viewing the world.