Super Bowl Ad Targets Pro-Lifers | Seth Drayer

Seth Drayer (00:00):

Would Jesus wash the feet of a girl getting an abortion? That’s a question a lot of people are talking about this week after the Super Bowl. I’m Seth Drayer sitting in for Mark Harrington and that’s what we’re talking about today on the Mark Harrington show.

(00:20):

So I dunno if you’ve watched the Super Bowl this past weekend, but a lot of people saw an ad put out by a group called He Gets Us and they’ve been talking about it because it’s a very controversial ad because it talks about Jesus and it portrays Jesus in his ministry and the way that we reflects on what he would be doing today were he here with us. So what I want to do today is start by playing the ad together. If you didn’t watch it, let me set the scene for what you’re going to see. We’ll watch it together and talk about what is actually portrayed in this, how it portrays Jesus, how it reflects on the pro-life movement and what it says about what we should all be doing in culture or perhaps what we think we should be doing in contradiction to what the ad might be suggesting.

(00:54):

So again, lemme set the stage here. A lot of people this past weekend watching the Super Bowl, watching football, and as they’re watching it, there’s always a lot of ads that come up, some very silly ads, some very odd ads, and this one popped up. It was very heavy, very somber, and it showed scene after scene of people having their feet washed at the very end. It had a statement that Jesus didn’t teach hate, he washed feet. The idea was that we should be like the people in the ad washing feet, not like others who might be hateful. So I’m going to play this ad and watch it with me and see what you think about. What is it saying about who Jesus was and what we should be doing today and how does that reflect upon what you think we should be doing if we’re following after him in today’s culture? Let’s watch the ad

Video (00:54):

Seth Drayer (02:32):

Now the ad was slow moving and yet still when you watch it the first time I showed it to several staff members that created equal yesterday. It takes a little time to really absorb what you’re watching, right? Because you see these slow moving scenes, but each scene has an idea behind it. But there was one that really jumped out at me as I was watching the game with some friends, and I want to show you a picture from the ad right now. That’s the one here where you see a young girl at a family planning clinic. Now what’s a family planning clinic? You’re planning your children Planned Parenthood. This is clearly an abortion facility. So what is being portrayed here? You see a scene of there are pro-lifers in the background. You might not be able to read their signs, but there are signs say save life the unborn child.

(03:10):

They’re clearly pro-life people, they’re protesting. You see a young girl on the foreground clearly therefore an abortion. You see this woman beside her washing her feet. So think about again, the end part of the ad. It said, Jesus didn’t teach hate Jesus washed feet. So what are you seeing in this picture? You’re seeing two options, hate and washing feet. Who’s being hateful? Those pro-lifers in the background here. Now, maybe you could say there was a lot of discussion this week about it actually being pro-life. People who might’ve funded this ad. Whether or not that is true at best, what is being portrayed here is that those pro-lifers in the background are not doing it right. They’re at best, aloof, indifferent to the young girl only there to make a message, not to really help her. But this one woman has come out from the crowd or maybe she’s a clinic escort, a pro-choice person.

(03:55):

We don’t really know. But she is the one washing the girl’s feet. She is the one portraying love and ostensibly in the video as Christ would’ve done. That’s the idea here. So we have this scene at the abortion facility. Someone is washing the girl’s feet. That person is being like Christ, the others are not being like him. So the question is, is this accurate? Right? And what does this mean? So as I watched this, I was struck by it, and again, all week long we’ve seen a lot of Christians talking about this ad, some defending a lot of people saying it’s wrong. I think it’s really important we ask what does this say about Jesus before we come back to what does it say about the pro-life movement? And really it was actually very subtle, but at the very end, if you caught it, they take the name Jesus and take the last two letters and underscore those or highlight them to make it us how we are.

(04:39):

It’s our name us in Jesus. I think you really see here what the point is. It’s about us, not about the Lord, it’s about us and about Jesus being here for us, washing feet here, especially in this scene with a young girl, getting an abortion is seen as an act of affirmation. Jesus saying, I accept you as you are and being okay with that and loving her as she is with no indication that she is not to do what she was going to do, that she should not kill her children. That’s why we’re asking this big question. What is what’s going on here? Is this representing Jesus correctly? I think to really get the end of that, to really when you hear anyone talk about Jesus or give pictures of him or make videos about him or talk about him, the way we really know if they’re portraying him correctly is to go to the Bible itself, right?

(05:21):

Because that’s where we have the written accounts. We have the testimonies of people who were with him who followed him. That’s where we really see how he conducted his ministry and whether he would’ve done what this woman is doing in this picture here. So let’s just pause here. Let’s leave aside the ad for a second and talk about Jesus washing feet. Why did Jesus wash the disciples feet in the Bible? Because clearly he did. It’s a powerful scene, right? You’re surely familiar with it. You can read it in John 13, where you see Jesus pick up the base and begin to wash the disciple’s feet, this powerful picture of their master, the not their servant, their master, the one they were serving. He comes to do the very dirty work of washing their feet. I think that in our culture of we have really good shoes, footwear, we’re not walking in the street, we’re sitting in cars driving around.

(06:08):

We failed to grasp the dirtiness of the feet that people would’ve had in that time when they’re wearing sandals, walking in streets filled with manure and other things in it, their feet would be disgusting and Jesus gets up and begins to wash their feet. This is a powerful scene of servant of service as the video suggests he’s serving the disciples, but why is he washing their feet again? Because they were dirty. The feet had to be cleansed. It’s when he comes to Peter, he comes to Peter and Peter is disturbed by this because you’re my master. You shouldn’t wash my feet. And Christ says, I must wash your feet or you’ll have no part with me. And Peter then says, sure, wash all of me Lord. And Christ says, no, only your feet need to be cleaned. The point is the feet were dirty. Christ had to clean them.

(06:51):

This was not an act of Christ saying, I love you as you are and accept you as you are. He was saying, I love you and I want to transform you. I want to clean you. This was not an act of mere affirmation. It was pointing to the greater transformation he had come to do. Christ came not to merely to make us clean on the outside to make us look good. He came to save us, to rescue us from our sin. And so when you think about his ministry, then it was not merely about accepting, it was about transforming, rescuing people from their sin, turning them from slaves to sin, to slaves, to righteousness, to serve and follow after him. Of course, Christ is very clear. He says, if you love me, you will follow my commandments. So Christ’s ministry was not merely one of accepting people and saying, stay as you are.

(07:35):

He accepted them. He loved them. But then he said, go in sin no more. Right? We know this is the powerful scene of where Christ is speaking to the woman caught in sin and says, go in sin no more. So think back to the scene we watched of the He gets us ad now we don’t see a lot. The ad is very brief. We only see one snapshot in each of these scenes. But again, think about the abortion facility scene. You have the people saying, don’t kill your child. They’re the ones seen as aloof or even hateful. And then you have the one woman washing the girl’s feet. She was accepting the girl as she is affirming her that it suggested is what Jesus would have done. But is that true? That is the problem. That’s what we’re getting at where I think we’re missing it.

(08:14):

So I think we think now about what did Jesus do? Why did he wash feet? The next question I have is, what is understanding when you watch this ad, does our culture really get what Jesus’ ministry was? And I don’t think they do. I think when you see this ad, what you see is that the whole idea of transformation has been lost. Today’s idea of Christ is one of ministry, not of transformation, but merely affirmation. Loving people as they are, letting them stay as they are with no requirement to come to him, to change, to repent and turn from their sins. And I think like I know, the gospel is not one of cleaning yourself up to make yourself acceptable to God. Christ saves you, but again, he transforms you. He doesn’t say go and continue in sin. Years ago I used to live in Indiana.

(09:00):

There was a famous disc jockey who talked about Jesus saying that if a woman wanted to have an abortion, Jesus would go and hold her hand during the abortion. This is a very outrageous claim to make. Christ loves the sinner, but he does not enable the sinner to commit sin, to kill a child or commit any other act of sin. So I think this ad reveals to us that Christ’s ministry has been perverted. It’s no longer seen as one of transformation, but one of merely affirmation, the greatest evil today is now seen as being judgmental to tell someone don’t kill your child. The greatest good is being seen as affirming. So think back to that scene at the abortion facility. When I was thinking about this afterward, I was commenting this week to someone, it’s just interesting to me how so often those who seemingly don’t spend time outside abortion facilities, talking to women, going in, holding signs, whatever it may be, they often have a lot of things to say to those of us who make that a vocation about how we ought to do that.

(09:56):

I think if you were to come to an abortion facility, you would see it is an act of love. Yes, we do have signs. Yes, we do tell people they should not kill their children, but we’re not merely shouting hatefully at them. We’re saying to them things like, you deserve better than abortion. We can help you. We can get you the resources you need. We do offer help in love. We speak the truth but in love. And so I think it’s interesting that people just don’t understand that. So when you think about so far, to summarize what we’ve talked about so far, this added at the Super Bowl, I think it revealed a misunderstanding about Jesus, about his ministry, suggesting he was here for mere affirmation when that’s not true, he was here for transformation. We also see pro-lifers mis portrayed as being aloof at best or worse as hateful, and that we ought to come and wash the young girl’s feet having an abortion.

(10:43):

I tell you, I will love any girl who is having an abortion, but my love for her cannot compel me, will not permit me to enable her to kill her child, to love someone as not to tell them to go do a damaging thing to themselves or to allow them to damage someone else, to kill someone else. You cannot love the victimizer so much that you allow them to kill the victim. You plea for the victim while also loving the victimizer. Anyone who chooses to have a child killed who is actually the official at the facility killing the child. These are people who are engaging in the injustice. Do we love them? Absolutely, but our love for them cannot compel us to overlook the victim who also needs love. Mark Harrington, who I’m sitting in for this week, as you often know, this is his show.

(11:27):

He made the comment that no one talks about Jesus washing the feet of the fetus. Why not? Because we don’t see that fetus as one of us. We all see the young girl as one of us. She’s part of the human species like us, the human family, but that preborn baby we don’t see as one of us. But Christ had let the little children come to me. He would love not only the girl, he would also love the preborn baby. So now my question then for us today, turning a corner is then what do we do? So we see this show us that our society does not really get Christ’s ministry. It doesn’t understand pro-life work at all. It sees pro-lifers as hateful or aloof. It sees Jesus as merely wanting to accept and affirm not transform. So what do we do? Clearly we can’t just fold in, throw the towel and go home, right?

(12:08):

We clearly have work left to do. My response is this compels us to go to the society even more. Go to the streets, go to the downtown squares, go to abortion facilities with the truth in love. When society has forgotten who Christ is, when society does not understand pro-lifers, we don’t go hide somewhere in a basement. We go to them with the right message, with the true message. And that’s what we’re trying to do at Created equal. That is our ministry that we go to the streets, take the message to people recognizing that we live in a post-Christian world, a world in which many people think they know Christ. They think they know the pro-life message, but they really don’t. They think pro-lifers just don’t like abortion. No, we believe it’s an objective evil like human trafficking, like genocide, whatever else the issue might be.

(12:52):

That is an actual evil in killing or harming, intentionally harming innocent human beings. They think that Jesus is just a fairytale or that he is just a good ethical teacher would know he is truly man, truly God. He did die and rise again. And that means that we ought to believe in him, follow after him. So I know it’s hard to do though. You tell someone to go do that and people, I’ve had this before myself years ago, before I started doing pro-life ministry. I thought I want to do something, but I don’t know how to begin. And that’s why created equals whole strategy is really this. We know that you listening today, you are off. You’re very likely you agree with me, right? You agree with me that what Jesus came to do was not merely to make people clean on the outside, not merely to affirm them as they were, but to change them, to be radical.

(13:35):

Calling them to repent, turn from sins, to believe in himself, to orient their lives around God, not around themselves. That’s what he came to do. You probably agree with me. You probably agree that we ought to be at abortion facilities not merely affirming, saying, you know what? Have the abortion. It’s fine helping girls to do that. We ought to say, you should not do this. You deserve better. Your baby deserves better. You probably agree, but you might be thinking, I don’t know where to begin. So our whole philosophy, here’s the anyone anywhere you know you’re listening. You might be in high school, you might be in middle school, you might be in college, you might be way beyond college. You might be far advanced in your twilight years looking at your grandchildren. You might think, you know what? I don’t know where to begin. So our goal is to give anyone anywhere the tools you need to talk about abortion the right way.

(14:18):

We firmly believe that the pro-life case defending babies is not something merely for professionals. It’s not merely for those who have spent years in service doing this. Anyone, anywhere who cares, who loves babies, who loves their mothers and fathers can have an impact. What they need are the proper tools. Those tools come in a couple of forms. One, you need to know what to say, how to talk about abortion, how to share the gospel. Number two, you need some visual tools to show people what abortion is and does, because nothing can capture the horror of abortion like pictures of, but it’s not just the tools I could give them to you. You can go to our website, download. We have a website. Let’s talk abortion.com where you can see conversation guides, how to talk about abortion. You can get pictures from our website, but sometimes we hear that’s not enough.

(15:04):

People also need experience. So our goal, our ministry at created equals not merely to put tools in your hand, but to say, come join us. We will lead you for your first steps talking to people about abortion, and we have a great opportunity to do just that in our upcoming day of action. The day of action is truly for anyone. Our justice ride, you’ve probably heard about it a lot before, and you’ll hear about it in a few weeks. We’re going to go on the justice ride. We’ll share videos of the Justice ride on our Facebook and Twitter, Instagram, but our justice ride, if that’s for high school and college students to come spend a week on the road talking about abortion on college campuses and debriefing with us and becoming more educated in how to defend Preborn babies. But our day of action is for any one of any age.

(15:45):

Usually. We’ve had one every year and it’s been successful. But we decided that we need to expand this, grow it beyond. So this year we have four day of action events. So we could pull up for you the website where you can go to create equal.org/action. That’s created equal.org/action. On this page, you’ll see basic information about what the day of action is. You’ll see if you scroll down that we have four times this year, four opportunities. You might think last year you couldn’t come to the one we were having. This year, we’re giving you four options in four different cities around the state of Ohio. We have one in Columbus, one in Cleveland, one in Cincinnati, one in Toledo. They’re going to happen end of March and throughout April. You can be from Ohio. You can be far away and fly into Ohio. It does not matter or drive here.

(16:24):

Anyone anywhere is welcome to come here. What’s going to happen is a couple of things. Number one, we begin with training because I said, you need the right tools, right? And evening training will teach you how to talk about abortion. Our first presentation is called Just that. Let’s talk abortion. What do we say? How do we talk about, how do we begin the conversation? How can we defend the idea that babies really are humans like us and that they’re equal to us? And how can we respond to complex or common abortion arguments? We hear from people, but we don’t stop there. We also give you five steps, five basic steps for effective sidewalk counseling because that’s what you saw in the picture from the He gets us sidewalk counseling. We don’t want to just hold signs. We don’t want to affirm girls saying It’s okay to have an abortion.

(17:06):

We want to be effective. That means that we want to be there with signs, speaking the truth lovingly, that you deserve better, your baby deserves better. We can help you and we will give you tips on how to sidewalk counsel effectively so you’re not aloof, hateful. You’re also not just saying it’s fine, have an abortion. You’re speaking the truth and love. But again, create equal. We’re not the only ones who teach pro-life apologetics or sidewalk counseling. We know many other groups do that. What we try to do that is unique is combine that with immediate activism efforts, immediate outreach, experience and practice. So you’ll come to Columbus, come to Cincinnati, Toledo, or Cleveland. You’ll have the evening training and the next day you’ll come with us. You’ll have two options. Come to an abortion facility or come to a college campus and stand shoulder to shoulder with our experienced team where you will either engage in sidewalk counseling, offering help to young girls going in and to their fathers going into the abortion facilities.

(17:57):

Or you’ll go to a college campus and talk about students passing by about abortion. Either way, you’ll get experience with us actually doing the outreach. You’ll debrief with, you’ll debrief with us afterward. And when you finish, you’ll have had a full experience of being trained, doing outreach, and by the end, you’ll go home more confident to go home and do this wherever you live, whether it be in Ohio or far away across the country. So let me play for you a really short promo video, giving a picture of what this day of action looks like.

Video (18:22):

This is it.

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This is your call, your call to action. Join us in Columbus, Toledo, Cleveland in Cincinnati.

Seth Drayer (18:34):

Challenge, challenge this culture of death.

Video (18:38):

Speak

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For those who

Video (18:39):

Can’t.

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This is the day of action.

Seth Drayer (18:49):

So join us, whether it be in Columbus, Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Toledo. Come here, join us. It’s a free event open to all ages. Again, go to created equal.org/action to learn more about this. We love to have you join us. That is truly, this is the heart of our ministry. We want to empower you not only with the right tools, but also lead you with experience so that you have the confidence to go and engage others in lifesaving dialogue to help a mother going into an abortion facility to help that baby, to set that baby free so that she would not be killed. We want to also empower you to talk to anyone anywhere about abortion, because in Ohio last year, you know what happened here? We had the great majority of voters voted abortion in to our state constitution through virtually all nine months of pregnancy.

(19:33):

That means we have a big job. We can’t retreat from culture. When we see ads like what we saw, the Super Bowl, misportrayed pro-lifers portraying Christ’s ministry, we can’t just go over retreat from the society. When we see voters vote against us in our view, we have to go and bring more truth, more frequently doing it. Rightly gentleness and respect as we read in one Peter chapter three, having the right conversation tools as you can learn it, our day of action. But we have to go. We have to do, we have to take action. Being pro-life is not a spectator sport. Being pro-life means you’re going to get into the trenches, have the hard conversations, be loving for those girls and their father, and the baby’s fathers offer real help. Do what is effective to save babies’ lives. So would Jesus love a girl who’s getting an abortion?

(20:17):

Absolutely, he would love her. But what does it mean to love her? And more importantly, I think is the question for us. What would Jesus have us do? If you know someone who is pro-choice, if you know someone considering abortion, it means that you do not affirm or enable their choice to kill their child. If you had a friend who was considering killing their toddler, you would not affirm that choice. You would beg and plead with them not to hurt that child. You would defend that child. You would still love the parent, but you would defend the child as well because you recognize there’s not only one person involved. We love both mother and child, father and child, even the abortionist and child. We love everyone. But that love is not really affirmation. That love is calling them to follow after Christ, to kneel to the cross.

(21:00):

And certainly that means not to kill their children. So when you see things like this, there’ll be a lot more ads like this. There’s also a lot of conversation I’d recommend to you. Jamie Ba brick is a guy, a pastor, I believe who you can look up his name, Jamie Brick, Google that you will find a video he made the Super Bowl ad they should have made taking the same idea, same ideas of Christ washing feet or his ministry. Really not showing washing feet, but showing how Christ transformed people. That’s the beauty of the gospel. When we see these ads, we don’t just say, that’s wrong, terrible. We respond with truth by correcting the lies like Jamie Bambrick did with his correction video or go to talk to people this week. People are still talking about this. I would say, if you can’t come to the day of action, a very simple first step you can do right now is take advantage of this ad that’s being talked about and ask people, did you see it?

(21:42):

What did you think about it? Share with them what I’ve shared with you today. The Christ did not merely come to affirm, but to transform and ask them, what do you think that means? What should we do? But all of us, no matter what we do, we should make our everyday endeavor to defend Preborn babies because we know that no matter who you are, no matter whether you’re male or female, whether you’ve had an abortion, not had an abortion, whether you’re black or white, rich or poor, born or pre-born, we know an important truth we have to share everywhere we go. And that is a simple truth that God made us in his image. And because of that, every human being truly is created equal.

Outro (22:14):

You’ve been listening to Mark Harrington, your radio activist. For more information on how to make a difference for the cause of life, liberty and justice, go to created equal.org.org. To follow mark, go to Mark Harrington show.com. Be sure to tune in next time for your marching orders in the Culture war.