https://boingboing.net/2024/02/12/super-bowl-jesus-ad-funded-by-groups-fostering-hateful-christian-nationalism.html
Last night's Super Bowl Jesus ad cost a fortune—and comes with strings attached for those unaware of what those paying for it are involved in
Jennifer Sandlin 4:32 am Mon Feb 12, 2024
They've hired a PR firm to address, in the firm's words, the problem of "How did the world's greatest love story in Jesus become known as a hate group?"
More like how did "my dad's gonna torture you forever unless you believe this hogwash" turn into "the world's greatest love story?"
You’re not seeing this right. He’s not going to do it, the devil is. And yeh he is all powerful so technically yes he is also allowing it to happen under his watch. But it’s only to teach you a lesson because he loves you so much. And he agrees on at least some level that burning in a pit of fire for all eternity is a fair, just and effective way for people to learn how to love him.
Actually, in Christian lore the devil will be another inmate in hell, not the leader of it.
Growing up, the justification for hell I always heard was this: No one is torturing you in hell. Hell is just the complete separation from God, which is in and of itself tortuous. God doesn't want to separate you from him. But if you're sinful, and haven't accepted Jesus's washing away of your sins, he doesn't have a choice!
I don't really think this holds up, and honestly I've kinda forgotten why I was writing this comment in the first place.
They made up their own story because they didn't like the original with its reality of there being no afterlife + hell being a graveyard on earth for people mourning those they failed to respect, honor and love in life / heaven being a place on earth accessed via a mindset of what essentially boils down to communism - all of which is hard to exploit for power and profit without some switcheroo...
And to answer the articles question: turning on fellow christians might have something to do with it.
At what point do "hateful christian nationalists" get labeled terrorists as we do with so many hateful muslim nationalists?
Could you guys get on with that already? Please? Pretty please?
Signed: the rest of the world
Believe me, we're trying ...
Signed, a non-binary American about to flee the country if somehow Trump gets elected again (my kind isn't welcome here).
It's not easily done. The most backwards states have the most representation constitutionally.
"How can we keep playing the victim /persecuted Christian card?" says the largest religion on earth.
Na they’re not all hateful. Labeling them all hateful takes some of the heat off the real cunts too, same goes for other religions
The ones that aren't are not doing enough to separate themselves from the ones that are.
If there was a hate group that claimed to represent me, mine would be the loudest voice shouting them down.
We're not listening to the ones that are trying to separate themselves from the right.
My grandparents were proper red Labour (UK) socialists their whole lives, and my grandfather was also a vicar. While in retirement they left the church he had even done some services for simply because that church wouldn't support gay marriage.
There are good people out there who are also Christian, and they are worth listening to.
Are they speaking out? I don't hear any organizations critical of the church. Nobody is buying ads to denounce hate speech and bigotry. Maybe they are out there, but they aren't being very loud.
Not a lot of forthcoming money to amplify the voices of those who speak out against these churches, though.
Not at all what I meant. It's just, think about the fact that, by definition, churches are organizations. It's really easy to crowdsource funding when you have an organization with lots of members (or if you've been, say, pillaging and squirrelling away filthy lucre for hundreds of years.)
Now compare and contrast with a person who leaves a church after realizing the message in their book is different than the hateful message being spewed. A singular person can't even begin to hope to fight the financial resource this campaign commands. There's no special church for "people who are Christian who just realized their church was being hateful and changed churches" and even if there was, those people would be wary of joining a new church.
Their art is so bad. If they don’t make Jesus look 60, then he just looks indiscernible. The lighting is all over the place, the stripes on the flag are so narrow there’d have to be thirty original colonies, and Jesus looks like he has double decker mouths with the OCD that makes you pluck your eyebrows bald.
Would this be allowed if Muslim? No? The it's terrorism.
Christians are terrorists. Full stop, no exceptions, no alterations.
I look forward to all the christofascists trying to "um, actually" me.
Any absolutist statement is inherently false - I've marched in pride parades with leftist Christians who use the Bible as a philosophical foundation of love and tolerance, the way it should be.
This breed of Evangelical fascists you're talking about are a scourge upon both Christianity as a whole and society at large, and have become the biggest government supported terrorist cell in the world. They are why I no longer believe in the "goodness of Christ" anymore.
I'm as anti religion as it gets, but calling every Christian a terrorist is way over board. Most are simply brainwashed and never actually spend any time thinking about religion critically, but a good percentage of them (those leading them) absolutely are evil and are exploiting the credulity of their followers for personal gain and hate.
Half are brainwashed, but the other half are just really thick. They actually think the Bible is real, and even when you point out that even the church doesn't claim that every aspect of the bible is real and that quite a lot of it was written either after the fact (as in centuries later), or was always just a story to serve as a theoretical example, they don't believe you. So they don't actually understand their own religion.
Christians are not victims here. They are all, and let me be fully clear here, all terrorists who will tell you to your face that they have authority to take over the entire world, by force if necessary.
It's absolutely a mental illness. The entire religion is full of sociopaths that want nothing more than themselves to be in control and everyone else who isn't on board to be killed.
Why in the actual fuck do we as a society continue to give them cart blanche to attack anyone who doesn't share their mental illness? Why are they a protected group? Why do they get tax free status?
Just watch and see what they're going to do in this election cycle. Time to take off the blinders and get real, because they're destroying the country for their beliefs and they're not going to stop.
For all the downvoters, tell me, the Christians continue to say that they are allowed to take away the rights of anyone they want; be dicks to anyone they want, and some of them are saying that the LGBTQ should be "exterminated" (their words, not mine) and Christians believe they'll get a "reward" for it when they die...
How is that anything but being heavily mentally ill? They're saying out loud that they want people dead and nobody is making a big fucking deal out of it. If ANYBODY said that shit about them, shit would hit the fan. But instead they're allowed, in spite of laws and logic, to continue goose stepping all over anyone in their way.
You've got Christian preachers talking, yet again, about"The end is nigh" and calling Trump the second coming of Jesus... If you think that people won't do some heinous shit because they totally believe that, then I just don't know what to tell you.
For every atheist I've met who's kind and empathetic, I've met a Christian who's kind an empathetic. For every Christian I've met who's an ignorant, egocentric absolutist, I've met an atheist who's an ignorant, egocentric absolutist.
The problem isn't religion. It's people who don't prioritize empathy. Being an atheist doesn't make you a good person. Being a Christian doesn't make you a good person. Being kind makes you a good person.
For a lot of the Christian audience a reminder that Jesus didn't teach hate is something well needed that they aren't getting in church. Maybe my expectations were too low but I was pleasantly surprised with the message considering how it could have gone regardless of any issues around who funded it.
Honestly, I thought the same thing. I got really apprehensive the moment that I saw the foot washing begin, but so many different types of people were depicted having their feet washed (girl in front of a Planned Parenthood, white dude washing the feet of a Native American activist, cop washing the foot of a black dude in an inner city alley, white family washing the feet of who I assume are meant to represent immigrants because its a bus full of Hispanic people, etc), that I felt like they were doing their best to remind everyone to love even those that "society" (Republicans) deems "unfit". Now, were some of those depictions made with underlying racist undertones? Yes. But I honestly cannot determine if it was purposeful, or if this was one of those "they tried their best. More work to be done, but the effort was there" moments. Maybe I'm still just not jaded enough.
By being shown washing the feet of the "unfit" we are still being reminded that they are infact "unfit". They are still other, lesser than and to be saved. The target audience, the Christian viewer, is the white person doing the washing, and is meant to feel empowered and that they are good like Jesus for showing compassion to these poor other people.
Noone will actually wash the feet of someone in need. They will translate their Christian compassion to help them by saving them from themselves, i.e. restrictive laws.
That's a fair take on it for sure, and one I hadn't considered. When I went to rewatch the commercial to make sure that I didn't misremember it, there were a lot of "Controversial Superbowl Ad" type videos that I did not click on, because I don't need hyper-Christian videos defending it or anything else in my YT reccs, so that clearly shows an intense difference of reception of this ad.
I'm just wary of immediately poking holes in anything/everything the right does, if I feel like they're at least making an attempt, rather than being like, "Hey, you tried, and that's good. Maybe next time showcase your message like this instead so more people find this palatable.."
Maybe it's because I grew up in a Republican household, and even spewed some of that rhetoric, and I had my own journey into Progressive thinking, so I like to give people the benefit of the doubt/growth/seeing the error of their ways/etc.
Definitely give people the benefit of the doubt. But corporations spending superbowl-ad money I always assume the worst and maybe will one day be pleasantly surprised.
Overall there's probably more misguided good intent than mal-intent. I've just become so jaded.
I've said this before, you cannot combat a lie with a lie.
Jesus and all the things said about him are made up stories. Pretending to discuss the "real" Jesus, who we want to be nice and accepting, is a losing battle.
It's like arguing which Saiyan is the most powerful, when they are all not real.
Making better Christians means ridding them of nonsensical beliefs not trying to replace the lies in their head, with the nicer lies you would like them to believe.
Here "real" refers to "the character that's really in the Bible". It doesn't matter if it's fictional. Same as criticizing a bad fan fiction with "real Harry Potter wouldn't have done that", with "real" meaning "in the actual source material".
Christians who buy super bowl ads rather than try to convert people through good deeds are literally virtue signaling.
American wen temu ads on super ball: nooooooooo it's bad ! Ban it ! Wen jebus: ah yes please :3