707: Halftime Hullabaloo and Tyler Johnson

letdown, unless you're heavily invested in the culture war. Today, Phil Katelyn and I start by

“breaking down Bad Bunny's halftime show and Espanol and the turning point USA alternative show with”

Kid Rock. Then we discuss how Jesus became such a big part of football culture. Is it good that so many players start their media interviews with a shoutout to their Lord and Savior or has become a distracting cliche? Then I talk with Tyler Johnson, the chief impact officer for the he gets us campaign about how their Super Bowl ad this year still hopes to point people to Jesus but with a little less controversy. Also this week, Bonnie Christian has a new article where

she says everyone is way too obsessed about gender. This week, we also have some brand new content

exclusively for Holy Post plus subscribers. Espanol McColley shares his take on the halftime shows

as well as the Winter Olympics. Is it okay to root for America even if you disagree with many

“of our government's policies right now? And Katelyn and I have a few new episodes of Getting”

Schooled. One is about different kinds of Christian pacifism and the other about just war theory and the conversation about both of those episodes are already getting a little spicy among Holy Post plus followers. So to access all of that and everything else that we're creating, head over to holypost.com to learn how you can join Holy Post Plus. Here is episode 707. Hey there, welcome back to the Holy Post podcast. I'm Phil Vishir. I'm here today with Katelyn Shes, Hi Katelyn. Hi Phil.

And Skye Jutani down there at the end. Hola. Hola Skye. Come on, boy, stop. Fine. Wow, that's as far as you can go. Sunday, a stop by the Bonny. What's Spanish for Bad Bunny? Something Mall. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, what's Rabbit in Spanish? Mall, Rebito. It's probably a different word. I can not type

“for me. Mall or Rebito. Mike, do you want to help us out Mike? Konato?”

Oh yeah, Konahito? Konahito. Yeah. Konahito. Mahalo. Mahalo. Is that what he goes by in Spanish or is it just bad bunny? I think it's written on this one. I have no idea. I have the only tiny speaks English. So if you don't know what we're talking about, where have you been? It's Monday. As we're recording this the day after Sunday, which was the Super Bowl, which we really know is just the warm-up and the wrap-up for the halftime show, which this year was very controversial,

very controversial, because it never happened before. It was in Espanyol. And that is not happened.

It has actually nothing to do. I know. Do you remember Shakira? Yeah, she's saying we have a lot of Spanish. Yeah, yeah. So we're going to talk about that, but first, first, we're going to play the theme song. This episode is sponsored by Glorify. The number one Christian daily devotional app. It's a new year, a new leaf, which I like to spend more time in the Bible in 2026. The Glorify app can help. With daily Bible readings and devotional plus guided meditations, you can use any time.

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“what I did there? Yeah. That was good. Okay. Were you familiar with Bad Bunny before all of this?”

A little bit. A little bit. I'm not. I've seen him on Saturday at life. Right. That's where I've heard his music. He was the the most streamed artist in 2005 and 2022 and 2021 and 2020.

He's popular. He's very big. But you are. Yes. I'm going to do this every third word. He's going to

be a Spanish conversation. Yeah. I'm appreciating our Latino neighbors, friends and neighbors. Okay. By embracing and/or stealing and ruining. Yeah, what's going to say? Bear language, appropriateing. We have words for those things. See. Okay. I didn't really- I didn't really scrutinize that this was interesting because people were mad because he was going to sing in Spanish. But also and I didn't even hear about this. He often performs in dresses and sort of being transgender or

trans- of cross-dressing or- Yeah. I was going to say not being transgender. So not being trans-like. He does- I didn't know about that part. So some people were upset about that. So we got when it was announced that he was going to do the show. We got the turning point USA. Oh, well, we're going to do a

show for Americans. Alright. We're going to do the American show. Hold on a second. Actually,

not just American. Over here. But the like- How was it marketed? Like more friendly, more- Yeah,

“so it was- So it was- So it was- So it was in freedom, right. I call them- Can we slow down for a second?”

It was Christian adjacent. I did a little research. Oh. Since 2002, yes. Seven of the half-time performances at the Super Bowl have been performed by non-Americans, either individuals or groups. Okay. So the idea that- That is here. I know. He's an American citizen. He's from Puerto Rico. Yeah. So he's more American than YouTube, Rolling Stones, or Coldplay. Yeah. And Shnaya Twain, who's Canadian, and the weekend, who's not American,

and Shakira, and Rihanna, Rihanna. Rihanna. Rihanna. Oh, man. Conversation. Yeah. It's just American. Okay. So number one, there's been seven performances that were not from Americans. Yeah. Yeah. Number two, as I mentioned earlier, there was been another performance that was predominantly in Spanish. What was it predominantly? There was a lot of Spanish. But I- I will say, even though you're trying to point out this

was not unique. A lot of people, including scholars, have commented on the fact that people like Shakira to gain mainstream, you know, popularly needed to adjust and learn a lot of English versions.

Where is that money? It's not. But then the third point I would make is there have been a lot of

half-time performances, including very recently, that were far more sexually provocative and explicit than this one. Far more? Oh, yeah. Far. I mean, we- Someone's close, came on. Yeah, we had a

“cordial malfunction at the point. But even like, some of the performance, I mean, look, I remember”

the way Beyoncé was dressed in one of her performances was like, hello. Yeah. So there's been some very, this one, I mean, there's medium. You can point at some things. But like, when you put it all together, there was nothing uniquely scandalous about this half-time show. Yeah. In who performed, how they performed, or even the language thing, which was, I mean, you're talking about the number one streaming artist in the world, like the last five years. Yeah.

This is not an obscure no decision on the NFL's part to choose this song. And you don't think the NFL did it to poke at the Trump administration. Not at all because they- because peak companies, big companies just love to have Trump angry with them. The majority of the NFL owners are incredibly wealthy white men who are Republicans. Yeah. Number two, did they not know well, and what about you? The ultimate goal of the NFL is to expand their viewership

and they're on his end, including internationally. So, of course, you're going to pick the most popular artists in the world. Yeah. That's not a huge stretch. So it's just passing to me that it's hard to identify exactly what it is about bad money that would provoke such a strong aye of a theory, which I'll share later, that provoke such a strong response that this was necessary this year. It's the moment. It's the moment that we're in where we're so

up and arms about Latin American immigrants. I disagree. Oh. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. Spin your take. If let's say that is the case. And make it hot. And turning point USA had other options

who was going to speak in Spanish the whole time. Yeah. They could have just organized a boycott

of the halftime show. Well, they could have just organized a we're going to tune out and go to the puppy board. It's kind of assumed when you make your own thing that you want people to boycott the other person. Yeah. But that you don't have to raise enormous amounts of money for a boycott. You

“do to put on an alternative show. I think this is just flat out outrage opportunism and entrepreneurship,”

where they were like sure. Yeah. We are going to make this Spanish halftime show a reason for people to get angry and give us a ton of money to put on a mediocre halftime show in order to raise our own profile. But did they raise money to put on their show? Yes. Yeah. A lot from whom? Remember when we talked like months ago about them doing the polling around what people wanted to see? Yeah. There was actually very few questions. It just said the bottom was like a link to give

money. That's right. Really. The NFL chose bad money for his financial value to them and expanding their market and getting more audience. And turning point USA decided to do an alternative show because it was financially in their interest to do it and to stoke the outrage, the really ridiculous artificial outrage over bad money. So behind the scenes, all this crazy, this is not about immigrants. This is not about cultural controversy. This is not about Spanish. This is not about Donald Trump.

“This is about money. And all the other stuff. And all the other stuff. Yeah. Because if they”

discovered they could make even more money by putting bad money on the turning point website, they would have done that. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. But there are opportunities. No. My point is if you are principled and all you care about is this is somehow bad for America. Yeah. There's a way you can organize a really effective campaign against it. Yeah. That doesn't involve raising millions of millions of millions of dollars to put on your own show. Yeah. But that's not what it was about.

It was about we need a reason to raise all this money so that we can raise all this money. Well, if you, if you could demonstrate to me that it was done profitably, then I would say, oh, okay, maybe there's a point. But could it maybe? It costs money to put that. Yeah. But it was also money. They also raise their profile enormously within a certain segment of the community. Okay. They wanted to raise it. I made the mistake on Twitter of saying I thought the show was fun.

And the bad bunny show. Yeah. The bad bunny show. Yeah. I don't, I have to just go out and on a limb and say I don't speak Spanish. I could not follow the lyrics. Apparently even people who speak Spanish had a hard time with that. And I was paying more attention to what bad bunny was doing than to what people often the distance and on the side. I didn't realize all those grassy bushes were people. They were people. That's insane. It was visually, it was incredibly

visually fascinating. Yeah. It's like, let's how can we make a sugar cane field that we can move in about 60 seconds? To your point, though, Phil, I'm not understanding the lyrics. I don't know how many half-time shows I'm talking about. Some of his lyrics are nasty. Okay. But I hear to tell you, now I have people sending them to me and their nasty. That may well be. Most half-time show performances. I don't understand what anyone is saying. Yeah. But at least it's in your language.

But is it? That's a good question. That's your question. That's, I remember when we talked about this months ago when it was first announced that turning point was doing the alternative half-time show. And I just remember being like, in what universe has anyone ever thought the Super Bowl half-time show was typically a wholesome event. Like, I feel like as a kid there was just this expectation for very different reasons. They were not as racialized and political. Yeah, they were

very different reasons why it was like that will obviously be non-Christian. It's been always the

question for the last 20-25 years of, do we need to send the kids out of the room? Right. Right. Do we need to send out the kids out of the room for the half-time show? I wish we didn't. I wish it was Dr. Soos doing the half-time show. But apparently, that's not the audience. They're

“going for Blueie, the half-time Blueie show, the half-time Peppa Pig show. Why don't they do that?”

Why don't it used to be marching bands if you go way back? Well, some colleges still do that with the coordinated stuff they do. Yeah, but I mean, the Super Bowl half-time show for a while was marching bands doing just very elaborate. Yeah, themed performances. But we get bigger ratings when we do bigger stars. Right. Stars bring in. Remember Michael Jackson Beckwell was a 93. He was one of

the first big star things. He came like launching out of the stage. Yeah. Okay, enough about that.

Hey, in in in related news, there's been a lot of, I don't know if you notice. So Super Bowl half-time shows do not have a lot of Christianity in them. But the games do because so many of the players are talking about Jesus. That's a football thing. They're talking about it. It didn't used to be. It didn't. So this was a piece in Washington Post called Christianity at the Super Bowl

Yeah. He wrote a book. I interviewed him about it. He's at Baylor. Christianity in sports.

“Yeah, director of the Faith in Sports Institute at Baylor University is true at seminary.”

America has grown more secular over the past century. One area of American life. However, has bucked to the trend. Major sporting events such as the Super Bowl have become more not less religious over time except the half-time shows. Today, athletes are some of the most prominent Christians in public life, far exceeding any pastor or priest. In the interviews, offered at the end of sporting events may be the only time many Americans will hear a

proclamation of faith. That's an interesting point. In 1926, it hasn't always been this way.

In 1926, when Red Grange and the Chicago Bears visited New Orleans to play a game and evangelist named Howard Williams saw no room for collaboration to even attend the game was to call into question one's faith, said Howard. There will not be a single Christian man, woman boy or girl

“to attend that New Orleans Sunday game. Oh, it's because it was on Sunday. That's why.”

Isn't it ironic? Yeah, and that is ironic. That wouldn't even occur to me. That shows how far I've fallen. Yeah, the most, the sport most associated with Christianity is the one that is built its entire platform on violating the Sabbath. Yeah, pulls more high schoolers out of church than anything else. Oh my goodness. More high schoolers out of church. For football games. They're not on Sunday. The high schoolers are not on Sunday. Those are usually Friday night.

It's a watch. I don't know. High school games are Friday night. Yeah, college games are sad. They're playing them out of a broken out of the mosque. Hey, I would just like to support Caitlin for really trying to enter into a conversation about sports for 10 minutes. And I like trying to say something. Okay. But now when the contest starts, players will be found at various

points, kneeling and prayer and pointing upward to God in celebration. And he says he and it's amazing

particularly in college football. Most of that on Sunday. Saturday Saturday. Oh, okay. This is Saturday. High school Friday. Like the college Saturday. The number one. The better you get the lesser religious. Your observance can be something like that. The number one draft pick in the upcoming draft, who was the star quarterback last year, the son of Nandom and Doza. For Nandom and Doza. And his brother, who's the backup quarterback, right? His little brother's his backup quarterback. That's fun.

Anyway, every time you point a camera at him, he thinks Jesus. Right. He talks about Jesus first. And I kind of have this thing with my wife where when I hear football players and basketball players think Jesus for winning, you know, I get a little cynical. No. What you do that if they didn't. And my wife thinks I'm too cynical, but we have so we started watching. And if someone talks about Jesus, you take a drink. But no. Of communion. Of course.

But doesn't attribute their victory or performance to God. You know, we could all like to some of them will say, we could only do what we did today because of God. It's like, oh, come on. What, and the other team was they were worshipping Satan. What happened? Yeah, really.

Quite a few don't, though. And it, and it, and it feel, and I've always suspected, are they being

coached? You know, are they in fellowship of Christian athletes? Are they in one of these other organizations? Because they're a number of Christian athletics organizations that started in the one of these starts since the 1950s. Yeah, fellowship of Christian athletes, pro athletes, outreach, athletes in action, networks of Christian athletes that meet together because I find a lot of them use similar language when they're thanking better Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And I'm not saying it's, I think it's sincere. I think it's totally sincere. I'm not opposed to it. It's just interesting that they're using similar language. It's part of this, the evangelical celebrity culture thing, which basically says, if you get a lot of attention and there's lots of cameras on you, that's how you spread the gospel. And so, if you're an athlete and you get lots of attention and there's cameras on you, you need to make sure that that seems to be, you know,

do, do Roman Catholics do this? Do mainline people do this? Or is it like evangelical

“Christianity as coaching people that when you have cameras on you, you have to talk about Jesus?”

Yeah, you either say you're going to Disney World, or you say, "Thank you, Jesus. I'm going to Disney World." And I'm bringing Jesus with you. But I mean, when I was a college student, I was no athlete, obviously, but I was in a campus ministry. You think that's obvious? Yeah, I think it should be. Okay. And kind of what we were formed to think is a couple of things. One,

Number two, try to get the athletes and the professors who have a lot of influence to come to

“your Bible, study it, and then that's how you'll change things. Right. It was all about, you know,”

and that was, I don't know if it was one particular campus ministry that made that a point of target the cool kids. Yeah, because if you get the cool kids, everyone else will come. Ironically, the year when that's what Jesus did. Right. That's what I was like, ironically, there was a year where my sophomore year where that message came in really hot and heavy at the beginning of the year from the campus ministry. And the only

person I saw coming to faith in Jesus that year was the 50 something year old woman who lived in town and cleaned the bathrooms in our dorm. Oh. And, and I attribute that to my dormitory, you did it wrong.

Well, no, it was fascinating, because I thought this is actually what the two of God kind of looks

like. I mean, I'm not against the athletes coming into faith, obviously, but I don't think we should overlook that person who gets overlooked. So how do we feel about all of the professional athletes thinking God? I do like it when there's more to it than thinking God for the victory.

“Yeah. I think it's, I don't, I haven't seen an interview with an athlete who actually thinks”

God after being defeated. Yeah. Well, they often don't get. Sometimes. Yeah. That's right. Sometimes they do. Yeah. But I'm sure they're out there. I just haven't seen it, but I think that would be, I would, five, five were mentoring a superstar athlete. Yeah. And why aren't you? I know that's a great question. I actually have spoken to some NFL teams,

but I would, I would be so encouraged to hear someone after losing a game, say,

kind of a full of beings for 13 situation where it's like, you know what, as a follower of Jesus, I'm learning to do all things through his strength, including learning how to lose well. Yeah. And I'm still grateful for many things in my life, including the presence of God. I'm grateful for my team. Yeah. I'm grateful that any, I'm disappointed by this loss, but it doesn't change who I am or what I, but you know, that would be a meaningful message. And I'm sure some athlete out there has

done that. I just haven't seen it. Yeah. What if they just said, I can do all things to the Christ who strengthens me, but I couldn't do that. That sounds like I'm, that's that, that would be a viral clip. That would be a viral clip. Okay. It's, it is interesting, though. And I had really thought about this because, you know, NFL games are by far the most viewed TV programming of any kind, by far. So millions of Americans watch every NFL game, no matter who's playing, no matter where it's

broadcast, no really. Oh, yeah. It's one of the few things that still binds us together as a, as a country except for Katelyn. Yeah. Katelyn is not bound by any sporting passion. Well, are you watching the winter Olympics? A little bit, yeah. We're not going to talk about this. We're not going to talk about the looks. My point being, it really is. It has to have some impact that, and these really huge stages, there's such a consistency of somebody popping up saying,

I'd like to, you know, thank my Lord and save your Jesus Christ. It can't be harmful. I don't know if it's harmful. It doesn't. I wonder how many people I'd love to talk to somebody who's just completely outside the Christian fold who watches football. What do they think? But what it tells you, okay, what it tells you is, this is not an entirely secular society that I'm living in. Right.

“But I think the other thing it tells you is because of the frequency with which it happens at football”

games, both college and professional football games, it feels increasingly to me like it's just part of the culture of football. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, just like wearing a high black or or listening to country music. Oh, yeah, it's just like part of football is Jesus now, and I'm not sure if that's necessarily good for the distinctiveness of the God or not. I don't know. Jesus likes football, Katelyn. I even know this is distinct. Like, there is a kind of culture around

this in sports, especially in football. A lot of the ways, and again, I'm not watching football, but like I've seen clips on the internet. Most of the times I see professional athletes talking about God, it's actually very similar to how politicians across the spectrum talk about God when it's not in a, I mean, sometimes they're doing this where they're like, you know, enlisting God in their cause, but there's a whole tradition in America of politicians appealing to God,

both to just sort of signal culturally that they are a Christian and that that puts them in the right camp. But more so than that, to appeal to God in the sense of kind of like personal spiritual comfort. Like, that's a common politician move. It's a common professional athlete move. It's not bad. Like, to your point, Phil, I don't want to be so cynical as to be like, they shouldn't do that. Like, I, you know, there's the, I don't think it's harmful. I do think it fits in most people's minds

in the category of like, oh, I'm happy for them. Like, good for them that they love that personal spiritual comfort, just like a lot of people like when a politician says something like that,

campaign manager at the time said something along the lines of like, people like to know that the

president prays, like people like to know that the president has this kind of comfort. They don't like so much when it's like, God told me the laws to enact, which is understandable. But I think there's something true about that with sports, which is like, I'm sure there are people and again, I would want to talk to someone who is very much not a Christian to see what they think. My guess is though that lots of people in America who are not Christians, see a football player

talk about Jesus after a game and go, I'm so happy for them. Like, we just live in a marketplace where

“that's how it relates to. But also there's so many kids that look up to these players. It's a role model”

thing. Yeah, so yeah. So I see a lot of kids saying, I guess I don't have to be so embarrassed that, you know, my family is Christian when my idol is also willing to talk about Jesus.

Yeah, I hadn't thought about it for kids. That makes sense. I think about it. I think you never think

about it, you never know. But I just, even with like high schoolers, I can imagine, and again, I don't think this is bad. I don't want to be too cynical. But I just can imagine a world where, like, we are so thoroughly in a religious landscape that goes, picking shoes what you want, what's good for you is good for you. I could see it also just being like, oh, I should look into some spiritual practices that could help me meditate before my football game or whatever,

without it being mostly because a lot of these folks, I would imagine like might be less connected to an institutional church. I would love to see like some scientists be interviewed and say, first of all, I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And here's how I discovered this molecule, because otherwise it's so easy to say, well, they're just dumb football players.

That's right. Well, I wouldn't say they're dumb football players. I would say it's part of the

culture of football. So yeah, here's the equivalent. Like when I watch the Academy Awards when I when I cared, you would often, there would be the the cause to juror, whatever it is that Hollywood is all up in arms about and all these different pins, the pins or the ribbons, whatever color it is that year or they would say a statement about whatever. And after a while, you go, okay, I get it. This is like your in-group, Hollywood thing, your virtue signaling about how much you care about,

whatever. And after a while, you just kind of zone out about that. You tune it out because it's just what they do. And I wonder if some people hear football players talking about Jesus and go, okay, it's fine. That's your in-group culture of football. And they just tone out what I do think it matters is for the young people. For kids who idolize these players to see, oh, you can be an athlete. You can be very successful. You can be, you know, a superstar. And you can love Jesus.

And you can love Jesus. It mid it. Talk about that. You can say, I look, not thought about that.

“Okay, hey, we saw that one. You're welcome, America. Moving on, are we obsessed with gender?”

Would you say, would you say we're obsessed with gender? I would say yes. Who's we? We, um, American sky. Bonnie Christian is obsessed with gender. No, she's writing a piece for the uh, for Christianity today. With the title, we are obsessed with gender. And let me give you just a little bit of what she's talking about. She says, we think about gender too much. We talk about gender too much. We are ruminative, mulling, mulling. What it means to be a woman to feel like a real

man to be masculine, but not toxic or feminine, but not retrograde to float stereotypes and profit from them to willingly choose the only option our grandmother's ever had to cut into our bodies to make them meet the very social standards and vanities we denounce. Our obsession is not limited to one side of the culture war. To be sure, the left wing version is the more obvious and disquieting. But the right wing version is more familiar. Tradwife influencing Burley men who

drink whiskey, grow big beards wear flannel and record reformed theology podcasts and get mad at Phil Vischer. She should have said that. President Donald Trump supporters work up AI images that plop his head onto cartoonishly masculine bodies. She brings up Kristinoum and I would expand it

“to the entire MAGA feminine look. If you join the administration, you need to look like a barbified”

version of that role. Yeah, it's like a like an iPhone filter at this point. It is. Bonnie says when I was a child, she's been on the show, right? We've had it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've had her on the show. When I was a child, gender was a polite euphemism for sex. But the way we now speak about gender and popular conversation is downstream of the convoluted work of academic gender theorists. So she says they're two ways we speak about gender and they're

kind of in conflict with another. Sometimes we distinguish between gender and sex that sex is the biological fact. Well, gender is about the cultural expectations, norms, and habits related to each sex. Gender is a social construct is the common phrase. But sometimes we speak about gender as and she's quoting a Catholic scholar who's describing what she sees in culture. The sex of the soul, the innate manhood or womanhood that may or may not align with the sex of the body. In this

understanding, gender is decidedly not a mere construct. But his rather a presocial reality, the inner truth against which the body must be measured. Sex of the soul sounds like the worst

likely to have written that. Oh my gosh. It is incoherent to hold these two colloquial ideas of

gender simultaneously. Gender cannot be both an external social construct and an internal indisputable sex of the soul. And then she goes on to talk about thinking of a couple of authors, Christian author, Leah LeBresco Sergeant. Who was just on the show recently? Yeah last week's interview. Oh my gosh. That was her. She was great. We are so. We're with it. We are with it. We are with it. We are with it. We are in the moment. Next week, we're having bad

bunny on the show. On Spanish. Leah Sergeant says in an interview that being a man or woman is not dependent on our feelings or actions, it is a fact of biological reality, a relational necessity, a given, and a gift of God, though a gift we may sometimes struggle to understand. So she says the better understanding other than, um, we ruminate on our gender, which implies

“that being a man or a woman is something that you can fail at. So you have to work harder”

to be the thing you think you're supposed to be. What grade did you get in masculinity class fell? Oh my gosh. At which point in my upbringing? Middle school. It varied. Middle school. The marks were not high. The better understanding Sergeant said is that there are men and there are women and both men and women are called to virtue. Sex is a given but virtue is not in our individual pursuits of virtue may well be shaped by our sex and gender in the social sets. So what would

it mean to understand that we can't fail in being a man or a woman? That's an interesting thought.

I just got to sit on that for a second. That it's a given that male and female he created us.

To begin with, we can be free of the taxing and ridiculous idea of gender affirmation, and that may offend some people to hear her say that. If a woman is something that I am, not something I must somehow feel or do, then there's no way to make me more or less a woman. There is no way to diminish my sex and no way to affirm it. There is nothing to achieve, no performance to perfect, no lack of what I can add. Oh no lack to which I can add. I can decide

to play by the current rules of social gender or not. I thought this was so good and so fascinating. All of both common sense and wisdom. And Caitlyn, I had a brief conversation before we were

“recording about this. Caitlyn would be helpful, I think, for you to re-articulate what she”

is saying is the tension between these two conflicting views of gender that we want both, we want both of them, some people do. Especially in the left. I think you read more of the piece that was about how this plays out on the right, which is really helpful. Part of what she's talking about on the left is that there's both this idea that gender is entirely socially constructed. Like anything about what it means to be a man or a woman other than just the biological difference

of our bodies. It's society. It's just society. Like it's a come from anywhere eternal. It's not set in stone. It's great. It's like paying complaint with dolls because society has handed them a doll. Yes. So there's on one hand this idea that like it all boils down to social construction, not that there's some social construction, social construction is everything and on the other hand, there's a lot of talk about gender that assumes or explicitly says that gender is this

innate, unchangeable, personal, and determinative thing about you. Not only is it this deep understanding you have and only you have. No one else shapes it. It's just your knowledge. It also

“determines sometimes kind of everything about you. It's one of the most important things about you.”

So those two things cannot both be true because either your gender is something innate to you and social construction has nothing to do with it or it's socially constructed in which case your sense of your gender might be shaped more by people outside of you than by yourself. But somehow we want to hold both of those two together. And to be clear, the idea that gender is an innate thing that I internally know about myself is a lot of the argument you hear, especially on online

discussions about the transgender movement because there's a sense of I might be x, y, chromosome to male, but in my inner self, I know myself to be female. But if it's a socially constructed thing, right, then it can't be an innate internal thing and yet you hear both of these arguments come from the left and they're in contradiction with each other. And I was telling you that the feminist theory class that I took at Duke, there were quite a few people in that class that had not taken

a lot of feminist theory before gender studies. They were encountering these ideas for the first time,

somewhat myself included. And there were a bunch of them though that were really involved in like leftist political activism online where they had heard a lot of this stuff of like to support my transgender friends is to say they know they're gender more than anyone else. Like they can know this deep personal thing about themselves and it could contradict everything about the society,

some gender theorists like Judith Butler who's mentioned in this article who very strongly

take the social construction position and say like it's social construction all the way down. And they were so discomforted because they were like, how can it be true that all of our expectations about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman are entirely socially constructed. And yet I'm trying to support this friend who is saying, no, actually I know deeply in my soul that apart from my body there is this other thing that is true of me gender wise. And they were

they were struggling with it in class because they were being asked to in class believe these two pretty much just entirely contradictory things at the same time. And what's fascinating is both of those arguments are coming from the academic and political left. Totally. This is not a right versus left thing. This is a left and left disagreement on this fundamental issue. My favorite thing about this piece and there's other things towards the end that she's pointing

“out that I think are worthy of talking about, but I just love that someone finally named like”

right and left. We're just obsessed with this. Like I feel like I got out of the conservative evangelical world like when I was in seminary where I was one of the only women in my classes and it just felt like everything about my life was about being a woman. Like everything was about who's allowed to preach or who's allowed to lead a church. But also how you did it. Like along

the lines of the Christy Nome example, my first academic conference in seminary I remember being like

do I dress not super feminine so that I'm taken seriously or do I dress super feminine so that they know like I'm a woman and I like being a woman and don't worry I like agree with your social gender category. Like it felt like every second like every day, every class. We were just going to talk about gender and I felt like I got out of that by being in a theological institution where there was no question about what women can do. It's like oh I'm finally free of that. Just kidding,

we are all still obsessed with gender because there's so much pressure in that environment to like hyper focus on your own experience and be like I mean I talked to people who they had gone to seminary at Duke. They were fresh out of college. Maybe they even went to an evangelical college. They felt so much pressure to figure out who might sexually attracted to. What's my gender identity? How am I expressing it? Like I thought I got out of obsessing with gender

and because I was in the other end of the political spectrum, no everyone is obsessed with gender just in different ways. And then you came to the Holy Post. Yeah, we are so obsessed about them. So obsessed about them. Oh, sky, you're so boy. She's quite the Christian Emma saying that also been on our show. Yeah, a generic aimed toward virtue is not enough for many people, especially many men. Young men and boys are telling us often literally that they desperately

need and desire direction norms in a concrete rubric for how to be a man, not just a good person. And that in fact, the lack of said norms is causing considerable distress. She also quotes the ologian Alistair Roberts, who talks about how concrete relationships elicit our senses of ourselves as male and female. Things like being a husband, father, son, or brother. This sort of thing is very grounded. Our increasingly isolated disembodied way of life will tend to elicit rumination.

He argues, because it requires us to craft a sense of self and purpose as male or female

for and by ourselves. Yeah, I had never thought about that. But it's hard, it's hard to male

in isolation with no relationship to any other living beings. You don't know what it means. And so if you're entirely online to be to be a man online is completely different than being a man in real life. So you end up just looking for fights, weird little fights and posting pictures of yourself at the gym. Isn't this just another case of our species for thousands and thousands of

“years has more or less figured out how to do this until recently when we've lost our freaking minds?”

Am I wrong about this? We have generally lived in communities. Well, that part, yes, we've lived in extended communities with fathers and uncles and grandparents and cousins and all these on the male side. We have a whole community and in churches and in religious communities and villages or whatever where we see all kinds of other men, different ages, different vocations, different relationships. And we, they all model for us of a variety of spectrum ways of being

and same thing with women. And we've so isolated and so share about that. Are we just now so isolated and atomized? And so many people, for example, are growing out without male figures in their homes these days. We just don't have the model. So we turn online. I would have said probably before I start thinking about this because of this article that my goal is to be a good person. It's not necessarily to be a good man. I'm not sure exactly how to define that what that is,

“but then I realize that my being a good person is in these roles as father and husband, right?”

And dad, particularly dad of boys, but also dad of girls, where what I am male makes a difference

So we should all strive to be good people, virtuous people. But in the context of the roles

“we play in a, and is this, I don't know, is this like limiting? Am I trying to put women in a box”

to say in a gendered society? Caitlin. I'm a woman. I, I, I both just want to say my little bit of like discomfort with what sky was saying was not about you're totally right. We have lived much more communal lives and then have very recently not and have gone weight. Why are our lives

so much harder and worse? And the thing I, I thought you were going to say was like, we basically

had sex and gender figured out and then now we messed up and it's like, no, we've been a mess the whole time. I do think though what's happened and a book that describes this really well is Tara isabel Burton's self-made. She's, and she does such a good job of like, she's not trying to take a position on this, but she's arguing about how, she's showing historically how we have up until quite recently had very firm ideas about the role that you played when it came to gender when it

came to the job, you had when it came to the class that you inhabited. Like people were born in the town that they died in and the occupation of their father largely determined what their life was like. And we have pushed against that so hard for some very good reasons like it was not good

to just say, well, God made you a surf. So your life will be miserable and hard and messy and that

wasn't good and it wasn't good when it came to gender or sex either that we just said or to be a man is to look a certain way and to have certain kinds of relationships and to have a certain kind of job and to be a woman is to fill, you know, that was not good. But neither is it good for us to just live in this world where we have no guidance on any of it and it's like everyone can have their

“choose their own adventure novel for every part of their lives. Like I think we've talked on the show”

before but I have multiple friends you have teenage siblings that have quite a gap in age from them and they feel like, well, your universe of like your high school and what is also different and almost all of them have said that their siblings are exhausted by just I have to choose everything about my identity and every option is available to me. So I think part of what I just want to say is like when it comes to gender and sex, both of those extremes are not good,

we've been confused about this for all of human history. I mean, this is why at the very beginning like in the beginning of Genesis, it names that the relationship between men and women will be affected by the fall in ways that are going to have cascading effects on how families are built and how communities are. You see examples of that all throughout the book of Genesis. We've been messed up on this the whole time. It's just this particular version of messed up is

we're both obsessed with it, which again, I love that that Bonnie points this out. We're obsessed with this and you have no guidance to give anyone and people are just struggling without any context to even try or make mistakes and figure it out or be corrected and they have none of that. What scares me about what you just said is referring to your friends who have teenage siblings that are exhausted by this. That because they have endless choice and they're constantly

having to navigate, that is exactly the recipe that leads to the rise of fundamentalism. Totally. Give me something solid. Exactly. I don't know. I'm tired of having to navigate everything and make all these decisions for myself. Give me a system of certainty that tells me all the answers already and we see this cultural pendulum swinging back and forth and that's open up at different can of worms but you can see how the immigration policies of the Biden

administration give rise to the immigration policies of the Trump administration. You go from one extreme to the other rather than sensible wise legislation that has a humane and compassionate and understanding immigration policy. Now we're doing that on gender. One site says, there are no boundaries. There are no rules. Everyone's out for themselves. Do whatever you want. And the other site is trying to say, "No, these are trad-wise and whisky drinking Calvinist masculinity."

And you're like, "That's it. Those are my options. Where's Fred Rogers in this?" I think I-- Where is Fred Rogers in all of this? If I had a nickel for every time I thought

that in a masculine situation, I think I was fortunate in that I've always been fairly detached from

what other people think of me. Like I just have never cared that much. I was fine just being off on my own. But even as an adult going to evangelical churches, the men were always going off to do golf outings. They were always having a football player come to speak at their pancake breakfasts. And I have zero interest in any of that. I'm the same way. I like pancakes. I'm not interested in the testimonies of sports figures or golf outings. I have never been big in the management experience.

I don't like men's ministries. But it would be easy to think. I'm not a very good man.

“Or that's what I think. Maybe I'm not a man at all. I'm like, I don't fit. But I never did”

that my reaction was always, I'm not that kind of man. That's not the kind of man that I am, but not that I'm not a man. Because I absolutely love providing for my family. And it's not just like, I got to do it. I got to provide. Let's know. I actually enjoy it. You know, and I enjoy

some wives are taller than their husbands. And that's fine. But there still is a masculinity that I actually enjoy. But even the example you just gave goes back to this point of roles and relationships and contexts, like, which is all fungible. It's not, it's not. It is culture specific,

it is. But I appreciate, I forget who I first heard this. It might have been from Flippe Dovelle,

who's a scholar that writes a lot about gender two. The idea that Jesus gives us an example of inhabiting a culture that has certain gender expectations, confronting and not meeting some of them,

“intentionally. And then meeting some of them. I think some of the examples he talks about are like,”

Jesus on the cross says to John and Mary, like, here is your son, here is your mother. Part of he's fulfilling a deeply cultural expectation for a man, which is to provide for his mother. He's doing that in very specific, you know, horrible circumstances where he's being crucified. But he's fulfilling a certain expectation of what it means to care for his mother as a man. In other instances,

like hanging out alone with a woman or an unmarried woman or allowing a woman to touch his feet,

he confronts and undoes certain expectations about gender. He had to delete disregard for the Billy Graham rule. He had complete disregard for the Billy Graham rule. Very untrue. Very untrue. But I think that's a model for us to go, that is a kind of third way in between these options. If like being obsessed, not caring at all, or having very rigid rules, or having no guidance at all, is to say, and I love how she points this out, like virtue is not gendered, but how you live out

virtues will be gendered. To be a courageous man in any culture and any time in place will be somewhat different than what it looks like to be a courageous woman. That doesn't mean that women

and men never do the same things. It doesn't mean that you're a bad woman. If you do something

that a man does, it just means that we will live as finite contingent creatures under the circumstances of what it means in our time and place to be a man or a woman. And we will have to figure out without guidance coming down from heaven about exactly how to do it, how to inhabit that cultural context with all of its things that are good things that are bad things that are neutral in a faithful and virtuous way. We need to wrap it up, but I just want to say that I'm bringing

this back to Bad Bunny, that some people on the evangelical right seemed most concerned that he was going to show up at the halftime show wearing a dress and the message that would send to young boys. And I've had that debate online, like is that is it unbiblical for a man to wear a dress? Not a robe, not a tunic, but women's clothing. And it's just interesting in the 19, how these things can change over time because they are cultural. And in the 1940s, a woman in Los Angeles was

held in contempt of court and put in jail for a day because she showed up to court wearing pants. She was put in jail for wearing pants to court. So you can see how quickly these things can change these cultural constructs and the notion that it's an eternal truth that no man can ever wear what appears to be a dress is at one point is just to secure it's that no woman could ever show up wearing pants. Okay, so I'm going to wear a dress. No, I'm not. I'm kidding. I just think the

“cultural aspect of it. Are you being a good man or a good woman? I think the best. The bad”

bunny thing though, I think speaks to the culture anxiety people have over there being no gender categories anymore and their desire for some yeah, differentiation, right? So, and whatever, I get the anxiety that some people have about this, I just think rather than being led by wisdom, we're being led through reaction. Both sides are reacting to the other and that's not helpful and I appreciate bunny Christians article because I think she is pointing to the wisdom that we've

inherited from both scripture, Christian tradition and just human history. Yeah, that says you don't perform masculinity, you don't perform femininity, you don't pass or fail it, it's innate to who you are and there's lots of different ways to be masculine, there's lots of different ways to be feminine and we need to take this issue somewhat off of the table that everyone's fighting about so that we can focus on virtue. Okay, can we do it? Can we can do it? We'll see. I'm still

“kind of chilling on this whole article and what it means for my personal life, but if you want to”

check it out, we'll post it in the show notes by Bonnie Christian. Thanks for this Bonnie, we appreciate it, lively conversation. Hey, everybody, thanks for listening, thanks for tuning in, thanks for supporting us. Go to holypostplots.com because there's lots of other stuff that you can check out and you can help us keep making more and we will see you next time. Bye.

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New Year's Resolutions are hard for me for at least two reasons. First, because forming new habits is just a hard thing to do for anybody, but secondly, it's hard because the New Year starts in the middle of winter. The coldest, darkest, most miserable time of the year. And I start to look at my carcassad of bed and get going in the morning. And when my resolutions have to do with my health or fitness, that's a real problem. That's also why it's

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really bad." But thankfully, it wasn't. In fact, I thought the ad was remarkably well done,

it was powerful, provocative, even prophetic. The ad was part of a larger campaign called He Gets Us,

which is now overseen by a nonprofit organization called Commir. Since 2022, Commir has continued to run He Gets Us ads during the Super Bowl. They've all been really well done, but they've also sparked controversy and pushed back, especially from those in the political right. The Jesus

“depicted in a lot of those ads is a Jesus who welcomes refugees, loves his enemies, and finds”

greatness in humble service. That doesn't look a lot like the American Jesus of Christian Nationalism. This year, the He Gets Us campaign has pivoted with a different kind of ad. You may have seen it during the fourth quarter of the game on Sunday, it wasn't about Jesus' love or humility or radical inclusion, instead it focused on our culture's materialism and overstimulation, and the invitation of Jesus towards stillness and simplicity. Like the previous ads,

this one was also really well done, but it represents a clear pivot from what the He Gets Us campaign has done in the past. To talk about the new ad and the new direction for the campaign, I spoke with Tyler Johnson, the chief impact officer for Commir. Johnson became involved with He Gets Us after many years in pastoral ministry, and he explains not only the mission behind this year's Super Bowl ad, but also the wider goal for He Gets Us, and he responds to criticism

they've gotten for past ads, and why those who say a Super Bowl ad is an extravagant waste of money are missing the point. Here's my conversation with Tyler Johnson. Tyler Johnson, welcome to the Holy Post. It's great to be here, Sky. Nice to talk to you again. I want to begin before we get into the ad, and he gets us and kind of all that stuff. Tell me a little bit more about your story and background and how you got connected

to the He Gets Us campaign and come near. Yeah, great. I'll just do this briefly, but I'll give you a full-fledged background. So from Denver, Colorado, baseball family, my dad's a really iconic amateur baseball coach coach 51 years, all-time winning his coach in Colorado. I played baseball airs on a state, became the faith in Jesus just before that, ended up in local church ministry for the vast majority of my career. I'd let traditional church in the Phoenix area called Redemption

the authentic Jesus their met can call well was quite intrigued at the time with he gets us in

some different Jesus things that were happening in media, and one thing led to another, we had some incredible conversations. I came in and started working with them in a contract role, and then in November of 25, no November of 24, they offered me a role as the chief impact officer with come near. Okay, what, you and I first met when you were redemption many years ago. I was working for Christianity today, and I was in Phoenix with some regularity doing some reporting on stuff

down there. What, I don't want to necessarily know why did you want to leave pastoral ministry, but what explained to me the journey from pastoral ministry to chief impact officer for a media campaign,

“like this, like what's the connecting tissue there? Yeah, I mean, I think there's like anything,”

there's with transitions, there's always pushes and pulls to dynamics of that. But specifically

with come near, I was really looking and wanting to be a bit more upstream and culture. For what I think is Jesus reasons, you never know that totally, but so I was looking in different environments. I'd done some consulting outside, specifically faith-based organizations, leadership stuff, and I was so intrigued with the upstream nature of what come near was trying to do. The fact that we were working with people, some of the best in cultural environments,

and trying to really wrestle with the phrase we use at the center of our mission statement, a value proposition, is the authentic Jesus. And that was something I had felt for a burden for some

“time, is, which I know has a lot of commonality with work you've done sky, but just I really think”

if we zero in on the person of Jesus, it may be able to, I don't know if the word balance is

some things, but right sets some things that felt pretty off to me in ways that Christianity or Jesus himself was being embodied in the world. So that's really what was what attracted me. Yeah, I resonate with that for sure, and it certainly comes out in the work that he gets us campaign as done since 2022. Let's talk about that a little bit, because your new Super Bowl ad is, people are going to see this after the Super Bowl, so hopefully they

saw it during the game, and they can watch it on YouTube or online, and certainly go to the he gets us website and see it. I went back and watched the previous Super Bowl ads, you guys really starting in 2022, and this year feels different. It's a different approach. So I want to kind of unpack some of that, and there's different elements to this. So let me run through and you could recite this as easily as I could. What the previous ads were, in 2022, the ad focused

on refugees, and it gives the story of Mary Joseph and Jesus fleeing from Israel to Egypt as refugees, but it's all done with the images of modern day refugees and asylum seekers. 2023, the ad was about loving your enemies, and it shows all these images of people fighting in our culture in different settings and all the divisiveness that's going on, and it ends with saying, Jesus love the people we hate. 2024, maybe the more most controversial one that was put out was the

footwashing ad showing what would typically be seen as people on an opposite identity groups, washing one another's feet, and the the ad ended with Jesus didn't teach hate. He washed feet, and then last year, beautiful ad with the Johnny Cash vocals from him singing your own personal Jesus, and asked the question, "What is greatness?" And it has all these images of people serving one another, again across different barriers of identity and politics and things. And at the end it says,

Jesus showed what greatness really is. All four of those ads had a number of commonalities. One is they were all explicitly telling us something about who Jesus is, right? He loves those who we hate. He served those that we wouldn't normally serve. He bridges barriers. He welcomes the immigrant refugee. This year's ad is still brilliantly done, but it doesn't really say something about Jesus. It's a depiction of the frenetic craziness of modern life and materialism,

and it's all predicated on more. Is there more to life? It's just, it's like a coffee of noise and sound and color and light and all that. And then ends with this stillness. But it doesn't actually

“say something specific about who Jesus is. It just kind of points more to how crazy our life is,”

and maybe there's a different way. Explain what was going on in your own teams thinking about this

So one of the things we really did in the last year is we've put a ton of time into knowing our

“neighbor. So a lot of the background conversations is this idea of if the authentic Jesus is the”

lens and lane in which we look through. We can't love our neighbors if we don't know our neighbors. So tremendous amounts of research has gone into this. And so quantitative and qualitatively listening and the common theme that came up through different cultures, different economic classes is that our neighbors are experiencing a tremendous amount of noise both out there and in here. That's kind of the the simple way that we heard consistently in one thing that we're constantly

trying to show in this campaign is that Jesus sees us. Jesus hears us. Jesus knows us and then

ultimately he loves us. That was the origin brief that then came back with he gets us. So Jesus sees

us. Jesus hears us. Jesus loves us. Jesus knows us. So explicitly there may not be a sense that this

“says something about Jesus but implicitly what we're trying to say is Jesus himself is not distant.”

He's very aware that you're experiencing noise around you and inside you and that outcome of that is that many people are seeking to just relieve the noise. So a lot of what we saw is these deep amounts of spiritual seeking. So people might be using sound bowls or going to yoga or a variety of different approaches. And it isn't so much that they're asking these existential questions as much as how do I just get relief now? So at least implicitly what we're trying to say is what if Jesus

has a different way true but we're also trying to say he sees this. He hears this. He knows the

impact of what this is ultimately. So then the setup of the question is what if Jesus shows us a

different way is what is different also is we're trying to have journeys this year. So if you went to he gets us.com there's new journeys based upon all the ads that themselves are trying to slow people down that in the end really make them potentially reconsider Jesus again or consider a maybe for the first time of wow maybe in the midst of the noise the authentic Jesus may have something more than I ever conceived he had for me. Okay my job in this podcast is to represent the audience

and ask the questions that they want to ask. So I have to push you brought it up earlier like it's hard to disagree with anything in this ad obviously the pace of modern life and we've seen overwhelming evidence that our inability to slow down and reflect is having detrimental impact on all of us especially young people and anyone who watches this ad is going to immediately go yeah they're going to do the what's that mean that we have of Leo pointing at the screen going yeah that's it that's

my life that's exactly what's going on. No one's going to disagree with that but why wouldn't somebody

“see this ad and go yeah you know what I'm I think I'm going to do more yoga or you know what I'm”

I'm going to do with that young woman at the end of the ad does I'm going to take a walk in nature like like what how does this ad actually point to Jesus rather than just the craziness of modern life is is bad for my mental health yeah yeah that's that's a great question so in the end one of the ways in this we're thinking about advertising a way you could think about it in a Jesus lane is when Jesus asks the woman at the well the question can I get a drink is we're not trying to do

everything in an ad you can't possibly do everything in an ad sure so what we are trying to do is create a moment where somebody kind of goes like that's interesting I I feel seen I feel heard they get it like you just said it they get the noise and then the question alone what if Jesus offers us a different way what we're trying to do is create a process where they may just step in again so even if in the end they go maybe I should do what the woman at the end does is it all quiet

down maybe in the end I should go take a walk but they said what if Jesus shows a different way so if somebody out of this says you know what I'm going to go take a walk maybe in my neighborhood or outside but the what's in their head is man they're walking thinking they said what if Jesus shows us a different way so when our neighbors or maybe sitting you could say the spiritual buffet we're kind of going hey on this if before you were thinking about sound bowls or yoga and now

we're given you an opportunity to think about Jesus or convers about Jesus our sense is the more we can draw eyes to Jesus and what people are doing we really believe some significant things can

with he gets us calm so there is extension journeys that end up we're hoping more and more people

“do take those journeys but if all they did even sky honestly if they went to yoga saying”

what if Jesus showed us a different way we look at that and go they were likely thinking about yoga before probably even doing yoga before if now they're doing yoga thinking about Jesus contemplating Jesus that's a lot of what we're trying that beginning process of this to do through the advertising

I released my first book in 2009 and it was it was a book critiquing consumerism materialism

the kind of stuff exactly that you guys are are uncovering in this ad and when that book came out I found myself on the receiving end of a fair amount of criticism and accusations of hypocrisy because what was basically said is nice sky you've written a book critiquing consumerism which you are now marketing to us so that we will buy it and consume it like it does the medium by which you are communicating this message contradict the message you are trying to say I felt that

when I really sat book I know over the years you guys have been critiqued heavily at the amount of money it costs to produce an air these super bowl ads and now you're doing one about materialism so how do you respond to those critics or like you know yeah this is a lot of money in a form during a cultural event which is sort of the epitome of gluttony and excess

“is this the wrong medium for this message yeah I think the first thing we would say is”

it's an awesome question and we think if you're taking the authentic Jesus seriously and not

asking that question we probably say look at Jesus again so I would never want to say it's

it's a bad question I think in a conversation I would love to say what is it worth to raise the public conversation about Jesus' period and if you can show up in an environment and get somebody to go mmm Jesus what's that worth and different people would answer that different ways there's a far better way to use your money those are not new conversations even to the Bible themselves so those that know the Bible but to me all of these questions when we are living in a society where tons of

eyeballs and communal moments the Super Bowl is not just about the game for many people the Super Bowl's more about the party than it is the game and we've had numbers of stories of people going where our ads in the past stop people and in the end they're now sitting around the chip ball maybe having a different kind of drink and they're talking about Jesus we've had stories of reconciliation where people felt divided by faith looking at each other going do you believe that

about Jesus and a creating conversation so we're showing up in moments that are not just consumeristic moments they're communal moments and this is the complication of living in a highly consumeristic culture is you can't get away from the culture and so the questions of what it looks like to rightfully represent Jesus our questions Christians have asked throughout centuries of what does it mean to faithfully show up and they've been hotly debated and

practice differently at different times and so in the end we actually embrace the conversation like the conversation but feel like the value of showing up in moments like this to help people take one step closer is better with people doing it than it would be with them not doing it I'll tell

“one other quick story you and I actually have a mutual friend I believe you know Robert”

Jalinas and Clark Community Church and years ago I had a question about a really complex situation of whether or not we as Christians should show up in an environment and he wisely said to me Ty the my question would be what it what happens if you don't show up so the kind of constant Jesus language of the preservative nature or being in and not of all of this language that you see is the power of showing up in a moment with Jesus we believe has the potential to do some

real good in the world so that's that's a little bit of the background of how we think about showing up in environments even related to the cost of getting into those moments okay what one of the

other things that always struck me about the previous ads you guys have done is they they struck me as

a form of of correction that they were correcting a distorted vision that a lot of people had of Jesus they were targeting popular criticisms of contemporary American Christianity and when we're

of people in my life including family who have no Christian background no church background though there

“they're understanding of Christianity is what they see in the media it's what they see in politics it's”

what they see a popular Christian figures on television and on the internet and when you when you look at that it's fascinating to notice that the group in America that is most likely to not be welcoming of refugees and immigrants are conservative white Christians the group in America that has made empathy into a sin and talk about it as a toxic element are conservative white Christians the group in America that most supports the magma movement make America great again are white

conservative Christians where greatness is defined through strength and power and wealth and all

your previous ads felt to me like they were a correction on those perceptions saying okay whatever you've seen of American Christianity let's point I want to show you what Jesus actually looks like

“Jesus was a refugee and empathizes with them Jesus welcomes people that we tend to hate”

Jesus served and watched the feet of people that are different than us he wasn't against empathy and in Jesus life greatness looked like service it didn't look like domination or power so it's his corrective kind of thing and again this year's ad feels like a significant pivot away from that

more prophetic messaging I'm assuming that was deliberate because you're this this add again it's

it's true and good there's nothing I would critique about it but it's not in line with what we saw from your campaign over the last couple of years was that intentional to move away from those more pointed prophetic messages toward one that frankly feel safer that you go on YouTube I'm sure you've been there like there is a mountain of criticism of the ads you guys have done over the years mostly coming from the right I mean your your footwashing ad was lambasted as being woke

so how did that criticism affect you guys as it was coming in did it affect you and was it and all involved in the strategy to move in this other direction for this year's ad yes well start with the criticism I mean that's very real it doesn't like you said you can go to YouTube or anywhere and see the level of criticism that has been taken to the ads you know okay we really do try to center this kind of Jesus is the lens and the lane in which we're doing

things so where we started this year was really in this neighbor and trying to say if before there was cultural and even a crazy alert church kind of critique in the midst of this both cultural and otherwise I'll get to this in a minute but right now so kind of the he gets us understanding broad culture not understanding these moments we really were zeroing in on our neighbor like you guys are feeling the noise you guys are experiencing the anguish we're responding

to the level of noise in saying even the way the ad begins to quiet at the end we've had tons of people that have engaged this in kind of testing that have gone I felt the release that I feel like I want to have the release and then when you see what if Jesus shows us a different way so it really was not so much a pivot from the past as a response to what we were seeing in our neighbors that said let me take this to step further about the current spot is anytime you're doing something creative

and artistic there are different things that are being communicated so one of the things we've said

“back end and I think this is appropriate in this conversation is what you think about the way the”

Bible talks about distortion of humanity what we call sin is you have these elements of it the cosmic elements the societal elements the ecclesial the church elements of this and then the individual elements of it so this whole idea so in Romans 12 that Phillips translation just has this really interesting line where it says don't be forced into the mold of the world so we started really mowing on the mold of more like how the whole nature of and again in theological terminology could go

what is the empire of our times but this economic engine that creates all of these things around us that are at least partially a part of all of this so could you critique the mold of more that Romans 12 don't be transformed the world but be transformed could you evaluate that in cosmic societal and ecclesial ways that affect us individually and vice versa and we went yeah totally I mean so

inside of our churches so since you brought this up and this is not the main intention of the

“attest to hit people where they're living but the truth is one of the major critiques of the church right”

now is looking all like like I show up and we're looking all this stuff here the burden many church leaders feels like I feel like I constantly have to do more I need to get more people in the seats I'm struggling with my budget I'm going and then the way in which they do it many people would critiquing go it kind of feels like they have you know like they're showing up in these moments and we're just trying to say this isn't directly about a critique of anything we're really trying

to say if you begin to slow down consider Jesus and we talk about this internally of like this

language and the Bible of being in Christ if you actually had the opportunity to be in Jesus looking

out of his eyes what would happen like what's the pace of those moments and so the only way you can begin to see what would it look like to look out of Jesus's eyes just to go where his eyes going

“when the gospel say like when he looks at something why is he looking places no one else is looking”

why is he drawing the audiences eyes to places nobody else's eyes are going and then when it says he feels compassion that word is literal bowels of mercy like his guts are being moved then he acts so we're trying to say if you can slow down get people to consider Jesus again maybe over time whether they've had experience of faith with Jesus or they haven't he seems to communicate to all people the religious the non-religious all these types of people that it can give us a bit

of a clear sight to this mold of more that's going on around us so that's really the intention really started with the audience but it does have some rich conversation underneath it of what the prophetic the word you used prophetic critique of this could be do you anticipate after this add errors on Sunday we're recording this Friday before the Super Bowl do you anticipate after

“this add errors that you guys will receive any critique for it yeah I mean we've had the conversations”

I mean all you can do is speculate I mean I but to be you knew in some of those previous years some people are going to be super triggered by this stuff because they're triggered by Jesus he was a controversial figure even 2000 years ago do you anticipate this add is going to trigger people in a negative way yeah I mean my gut Tyler Johnson alone I don't think it will trigger the amount of response the previous ones have because of the same reasons you said there isn't as explicit notions in this

our hope would be we've never were never trying to avoid critique what we are trying to do is get people

to consider contemplate and wrestle with Jesus um that's really what we're trying to do so our hope would be that we walk out of this moment critique or not critique and people are thinking and conversing about Jesus and ultimately hopefully taking one step closer to him one of the things we hear pretty regularly from our audience especially those who are holy post committed kind of listeners and they enjoy and appreciate the perspective we bring is love you guys but I can't find a church

that represents the kind of Christianity that you all talk about here or that your desk talk about here what do you do with folks I'm assuming that part of your hope is people see your ads they go under the website they explore some of the resources that are there they are taking us that closer to Jesus maybe they're opening up a Bible maybe they're talking to a Christian friend that they know who knows what that journey looks like for them by hope would be though on your end you anticipate

some people are actually gonna want to find a Christian community to be a part of to find a church what do you do when someone sees this ad is like yeah I I need that slower pace of life that that reflective contemplative kind of life that Jesus and his followers have historically represented and then they step into a church and it's an overwhelming cacophony of noise and light and sound in technology or they see one of the previous ads and like yeah I want to I want to be part of a

Christian community that welcomes people who are different and isn't demonizing their political enemies and then they step into a church or they look for a church and like no one's talking about this stuff forget doing all the negative things they're just not talking about these things is that a challenge for you guys and your campaign like it I who can't be on board with wanting to present Jesus to the culture but if there's nowhere for those folks to land in their communities

that what it incarnates that kind of Jesus what do you do with that what kind of conversations you guys having at that end of the journey we're having a lot of these conversations and feel a burden like you and holy post would be feeling and so in the end one we want to

communities of Christians doing things we also want to recognize that the experience you just

articulated is not an isolated experience there are tons of people feeling like it's hard to do

“this just I think in this past week I heard John Mark Comer making a statement about how some”

people are transitioning to other Christian traditions primarily because it's slower and quieter which I found a pretty interesting thought in in response to that specific issue we are having these conversations we're in a growing number of conversations with Christian leaders some you know in churches some in different environments some like yourself saying what does that mean some of the people that are viewed organizationally a bit more upstream it even told us keep pressing because

we need to go even more upstream and one of the scenes we look at in the gospels a lot is the woman at the well scene which I know a lot of people do but there's some really interesting parts of that like why did Jesus not take the disciples originally to him when they show up seemingly my impression is they're probably hungry which is why they ask him if he's hungry he uses

you know the weed of the fields basically to point something but then again he draws their eyes

to the fields to say hey guys you're missing this which in my view when I talk to business people I'll use blue ocean strategy and say hey that book blue ocean strategy is essentially Jesus calls that the field that's wide into harvest but it seems like that's the language we use of upstream

“in any time I think Jesus is again if you want to say going outside the camp from Hebrews 13 these”

moments where he's really trying to draw attention to not the common path feels like it's both disruptive to the religious environments but it necessitates people that are taking Jesus seriously to wrestle with questions like this like is there a different way we need to show up for these people and then those forms seen in history to be the things that can actually begin to reform the existing you know establishment of faith, religious whatever they are so this is where we want to just keep saying

let's just keep pressing these questions let's keep having these conversations but hopefully it's guy and honestly we're we're having these conversations at a significant level hopefully it does allow Christians to organize in some new ways and think about what does it mean to be the people of God in these times specifically and respond to these so I mean this is one of the things I actually have really really appreciated about the work you guys have done over the years and I

I have no official connection to he gets us but I do know a number of people who do it's when I see

“these ads and I see the other things you've done I think a lot of Christians assume well this is”

evangelistic and purpose it's trying to introduce people to Jesus who don't know him or don't go to church whatever I look at these ads and I'm like no I think that's part of it but I think they're actually trying to help Christians remember who Jesus is because many of us have lost track of this and our churches and its leaders and those who represent him in the public square we need to be reminded of who Jesus is because ultimately we are his representatives in our households and schools and neighborhoods

and communities and offices and things and we need to be inspired again by the gospels and what

we find there of this incarnate God among us and that's been a powerful and wonderful thing so

regardless of what institutional churches might be doing if more believers see these ads and are inspired to draw closer to Jesus and able to then say hey as I'm trying to follow this guy you follow me maybe the country would be in a better place. Tyler thank you for your time and for your work on this and for you I mean just this conversation I hope many others have conversations like these in their Super Bowl parties and afterwards based on these ads and that

there's fruit porn from it so appreciate it thank you for being here. The Holy Post podcast is a production of Holy Post media produced by Mike Strailo editing by Seth Gorvet help us create more thoughtful Christian media by subscribing to Holy Post plus at holypost.com/plus also be sure to leave a review on Apple podcasts so more people can discover thoughtful Christian commentary plus ukulele educational butnus visit holypost.com for show notes news stories holypost merchandise

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