707: Halftime Hullabaloo and Tyler Johnson

Welcome to the Holy Post. The big game was on Sunday and for most of the country it was a big letdown, unless you're heavily invested in the culture war. Today Phil, Caitlin, and I start by breaking down Bad Bunny's halftime show, En Español, 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 shout out to their Lord and savior or has it 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 esau mccauley 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 Caitlin 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 Vischer. I'm here today with Caitlin Schess. Hi, Caitlin. Hi, Phil. And Sky Jitani down there at the end. Hola. Hola, Sky. Como esta? Fine. Wow, that's as far as you could go. Donde esta Bad Bunny? Why isn't Bad Bunny? What's Spanish for Bad Bunny? Something mal. I don't know. I don't. Yeah. What's rabbit in Spanish? Malorbito. That's probably a different word. I cannot type for somebody. Malorbito. Mike, do you want to help us out, Mike? Conejito? Oh, yeah. Conejito? Conejito. Yeah. Conejito. Malo. Malo. Is that what he goes by in Spanish, or is it just bad bunny? I think it's regardless of language. That's a good question. I have no idea. That's the only time he 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. It's never happened before. It was en español, and that has not happened. It has, actually. Not the entire show. Do you remember Shakira? Yeah, she sang some in Spanish. There was a lot of Spanish. Yeah, so we're going to talk about that. But first, first, we're going to play the theme song. What's the news that you like the most? Who's your favorite podcast host? If it's breakfast, get your toast. It's Sky Phil, Caitlin and the Holy Post. Sky Phil, Caitlin and the Holy Post. And sometimes other people. This episode is sponsored by Glorify. the number one Christian daily devotional app. It's a new year, a new leaf. Would you like to spend more time in the Bible in 2026? The Glorify app can help. With daily Bible readings and devotionals, plus guided meditations you can use anytime, the Glorify app is a great way to engage God's Word in 2026. Glorify's 21-day challenge is the easiest place to start. One devotional a day, one moment of quiet, one step toward a daily rhythm that can improve your spiritual health. Listeners to the show can get full access to Glorify for just $29.99 for the entire year. That's Glorify's lowest price ever when you download the Glorify app now at glorify-app.com slash holypost. Feel closer to God this year with Glorify. Get full access all year for just $29.99 at glorify-app.com slash holypost. That's glorify-app.com slash holypost. 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Support our show and let them know we sent you after checkout. BrooklynBetting.com, promo code HOLYPOST. I'm glad you remembered. That's good. Si, senor. I remembered the theme song. Are we going to do accents this time? Remember the theme song. Nope, we're not. We're not doing that. Keep it holy. Post. Did you see 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 into it. I've seen him on Saturday Night Live. Right. That's where I've heard his music. He was the most streamed artist in 2025 and 2022 and 2021 and 2020. He's popular. He's very big. He's popular. Yes. Are we going to do this? Every third word is going to be in a Spanish pronunciation? Yeah. I'm appreciating our Latino neighbors, friends and neighbors. Okay. by embracing and or stealing and ruining their language. Appropriating. C. We have words for those things. C. Okay. So I didn't really scrutinize it. 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. Yeah, I was going to say, not being transgender. Not being transgender. But he does gender bend. He gender benders. Yep. 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. We're going to do the American show. Hold on a second. Actually, not just American. Over here. The like, how was it marketed? Like more clean. Faith, freedom, family. Yeah. Family, faith, and freedom. Christian-y. Hold on. Can we slow down for a second? It was Christian adjacent. I did a little research. Oh. Since 2002. Yes. Seven of the halftime performances at the Super Bowl have been performed by non-Americans, either individuals or groups. So the idea that. Not this year. I know. He's an American citizen. He's from Puerto Rico. Yeah. So he's more American than U2, Rolling Stones, or Coldplay. Yeah, and Shania Twain, who's Canadian, and The Weeknd, who's not American, and Shakira, and Rihanna. Rihanna. Rihanna. Rihanna. Rihanna. Old man conversation. I just met a girl named Rihanna. Okay, so number one, there's been seven performances that were not from Americans. Number two, as I mentioned earlier, there has been another performance that was predominantly in Spanish. Was it predominantly? There was a lot of Spanish. But 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, popularity, needed to adjust. They record English versions of mine. Whereas Bad Bunny does not. But then the third point I would make is there have been a lot of halftime performances, including very recently, that were far more sexually provocative and explicit than this one. Far more? Oh, yeah. Far more. I mean, we... Someone's clothes came off once. Yeah, we had a wardrobe malfunction at one point. But even, like, some of the performances... I mean, look, I remember the way Beyonce was dressed in one of her performances was like, hello. Yeah. You know, 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 halftime 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 for like the last five years. This is not an obscure decision on the NFL's part to choose this artist. And you don't think the NFL did it to poke at the Trump administration? Not at all. Because big companies just love to have Trump angry with them. The majority of the NFL owners are incredibly wealthy white men who are Republicans. Number two, did they not know? Number two, the ultimate goal of the NFL is to expand their viewership and their audience. internationally. So of course you're going to pick the most popular artists in the world. That's not a huge stretch. So it's just fascinating to me that it's hard to identify exactly what it is about bad money that would provoke such a strong, and I have a theory, which I'll share later, that provokes 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 in arms about Latin American immigrants. I disagree. Oh. Okay, go ahead. Okay. Spin your take. Let's say that is the case. And make it hot. Then Turning Point USA had other options for how they responded. If they were really that offended that we were going to have an artist who was going to sing in Spanish the whole time, 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 bowl or whatever. It's kind of assumed when you make your own thing that you want people to boycott the other person. Yeah, but 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, 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 at the bottom was like a link to give money. That's right. Oh, really? The NFL chose Bad Bunny 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 Bunny. 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. You're saying. Yeah. No. No. But they're opportune. My point is if you are principled and all you care about is this is somehow bad for America, there's a way you can organize a really effective campaign against it. That doesn't involve raising millions and millions and millions of dollars to put on your own show. 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 could demonstrate to me that it was done profitably, then I would say, oh, okay, maybe there's a point. It cost money to put that together. Yes, but they also raised their profile enormously within a certain segment of the community. Okay. I made the mistake on Twitter of saying I thought the show was fun. The Bad Bunny show. Yeah, the Bad Bunny show. Yeah, I have to just go out 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 off in the distance and on the sides. I didn't realize all those grassy bushes were people. They were people. That's insane. It was visually incredible. It was visually fascinating. Yeah. It's like, how can we make a sugar cane field that we can move in about 60 seconds? To your point, though, Phil, of not understanding the lyrics, I don't know how many halftime shows I've watched. Some of his lyrics are nasty. Okay. I'm here to tell you, now I have people sending them to me, and they're nasty. That may well be. Most halftime show performances, I don't understand what anyone is saying. Yeah. Yeah, but at least it's in your language. But is it? That's a good question. That's a good question. I remember when we talked about this months ago when it was first announced that Turning Point was doing the alternative halftime show. and I just remember being like in what universe has anyone ever thought the Super Bowl halftime 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 but there were very different reasons why it was like that will obviously be non-christian there's been a 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 kids out of the room for the half halftime show I wish we didn't I wish it was Dr. Seuss doing the halftime show, but apparently that's not the audience they're going for. Bluey, the halftime Bluey show, the halftime Peppa Pig show. Why don't they do that? It used to be marching bands, if you go way back. Some colleges still do that with the coordinated stuff they do. The Super Bowl halftime show for a while was marching bands doing just very elaborate, themed performances, but we get bigger ratings when we do bigger stars. Stars bring in remember michael jackson back what was it 93 he was one of the first big star things and 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 halftime shows do not have a lot of christianity in them but the games do because so many of the players are talking about jesus It's a football thing. It is a football thing. It didn't used to be. So this was a piece in Washington Post called Christianity at the Super Bowl defies a trend by Paul Putz. He's been on the show. I was going to say. Paul Putz has been on the show? Yeah. He wrote a book. I interviewed him about it. He's a scholar of Christianity and sports. He's a director of the Faith and Sports Institute at Baylor University's Truett Seminary. America has grown more secular over the past century. One area of American life, however, has bucked the trend. Major sporting events such as the Super Bowl have become more, not less, religious over time. Except the halftime shows. Today, athletes are some of the most prominent Christians in public life, far exceeding any pastor or priest. And 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. That is interesting. And then he goes back in history. 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, an 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 that ironic? Yeah, and that wouldn't even occur to me. That shows how far I've fallen. Yeah, the sport most associated with Christianity is the one that has built its entire platform on violating the Sabbath. 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 school ones are not on Sunday. Those are usually Friday night. To watch? I don't know. High school games are Friday night. College games are Saturday. They're pulling them out of the mosque. Hey, I would just like to support Caitlin for really trying to enter into a conversation about sports. We've been talking about sports for 10 minutes, and I tried to say something. Okay. But now, when the contest starts, players will be found at various points kneeling in prayer and pointing upward to God in celebration. And it's amazing, particularly in college football. Is that on Sundays? Saturday. Oh, okay. Saturday. High school's Friday. Okay, okay. College Saturday. The number one. The better you get, the less religious your observance can be. Something like that. The number one draft pick in the upcoming draft, who was the star quarterback last year. Fernando Mendoza. Fernando Mendoza. 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 thanks 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 thank Jesus for winning, you know, I get a little cynical. It's like, oh, would you do that if they didn't? He lost. 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. Milk. Of communion wine. Of course. but doesn't attribute their victory or performance to God. You know, we could, we could all, because 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 worshiping Satan. What happened? Clearly. Quite a few don't though. 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 there are a number of Christian athletics organizations that started in the, when did they start? Since the 1950s. Yep. 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 their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. And I'm not saying it's, I think it's sincere. I think it's totally sincere and I'm not opposed to it. It's just interesting that they're using similar language. Is 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 Jesus – like that seems to be an – like do Roman Catholics do this? Do mainline people do this? Or is it like evangelical Christianity is 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 me. 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, it should be. Okay. Right. And kind of what we were formed to think is a couple of things. One, use every opportunity you have when you have people's attention to talk about Jesus. Number two, try to get the athletes and the professors who have a lot of influence to come to your Bible study. And then that's how you'll change. 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... And that's what Jesus did. Right. I think we can look back. That's sort of like, ironically, there was a year, 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 come to faith in Jesus that year was the 50-something-year-old woman who lived in town and cleaned the bathrooms in her dorm. Oh. And I attribute that to my roommate. So clearly you did it wrong. Well, no, it was fascinating because I thought this is actually what the kingdom of God kind of looks like. I mean, I'm not against athletes coming to 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 thanking God? I do like it when there more to it than thanking God for the victory Yeah I think it I don know I haven seen an interview with an athlete who actually thanks God after being defeated Well they often don get interviewed Sometimes Yeah that right Sometimes they do Yeah But I am sure they're out there. I just haven't seen it. But I think that would be I would if I were mentoring a superstar athlete. And why aren't you? That's a great question. I actually have spoken to some NFL teams, but I would be so encouraged to hear someone after losing a game say kind of a Philippians 4.13 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. And I'm so grateful for many things in my life, including the presence of God. I'm grateful for my team. And yet I'm disappointed by this loss, but it doesn't change who I am or what I – 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 through Christ who strengthens me, but I couldn't do that? That sounds like a meatloaf song. I mean, that would be a viral clip. That would be a viral clip. Okay. It is interesting, though, and I hadn't 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. Really? Oh, yeah. It's one of the few things that still binds us together as a country, except for Caitlin. Yeah, Caitlin is not bound by any sporting passion. Are you watching the Winter Olympics? A little bit, yeah. We're not going to talk about the Olympics. I know, I'm just wondering. We're not going to talk about the Olympics. My point being, it really is, it has to have some impact that in these really huge stages, there's such a consistency of somebody popping up saying, I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It can't be harmful. I don't know if it's harmful. I wonder how many people, I'd love to talk to somebody who's just completely outside the Christian fold, who watches football. I'd be curious what they think. 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, like just like wearing an eye black or. Or listening to country music. 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 gospel. We don't even know if Jesus liked football. Caitlin? Even though 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. Um, 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 like, I'm, 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, 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 have that personal spiritual comfort, just like a lot of people like when a politician says something like that, because they're like, I mean, this was true when when George Bush, George W. Bush was campaigning, his 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, where it's 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 religion is talked about. But also, there's so many kids that look up to these players. It's a role model thing. 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 that's a You never think about me. Never. Caitlin. Never. But I just even with 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 pick and choose 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 true. I wouldn't say they're dumb football players. I would say it's part of the culture of football. So here's the equivalent. Like when I watched the Academy Awards when I cared, there would be the cause du jour, whatever it is that Hollywood is all up in arms about, and all these different – The 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. 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 turn it out. What I do think 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 a superstar. And you can love Jesus. And you can love Jesus. And you can admit it. Talk about it. I had not thought about that. Okay. Hey, we solved that one. You're welcome, America. Moving on. Are we obsessed with gender? Would you say we're obsessed with gender? I would say yes. Who's we? We Americans. Sky. Bonnie Christian is obsessed with gender. No, she's writing a piece 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, 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 flout stereotypes and profit from them, to willingly choose the only option our grandmothers 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, trad wife influencing, burly 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 Kristi Noem, 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 an iPhone filter at this point. It is. Bonnie says, when I was a child, she's been on the show, right? Yeah, yeah. Certainly 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 in popular conversation is downstream of the convoluted work of academic gender theorists. So she says there are 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 is rather a pre-social reality, the inner truth against which the body must be measured. Sex of the soul sounds like the worst premarital book ever. Yep, it does. Later we can play a little game as who would be most 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 Labresco Sargent. 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 in the moment. Next week, we're having Bad Bunny on the show. All in Spanish. Leah Sargent says in an interview that being a man or woman is not dependent on our feelings or actions. It is a fact, a 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 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, Bill? Oh, my gosh. At which point in my upbringing? Middle school. It varied. Middle school, the marks were not high. The better understanding, Sargent 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, and our individual pursuits of virtue may well be shaped by our sex and gender in the social sense. 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. or 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 full of both common sense and wisdom. And Caitlin and I had a brief conversation before we were recording about this. Caitlin, it would be helpful, I think, for you to rearticulate 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 on 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. Is society. Is just society. Like it doesn't come from anywhere eternal. It's not set in stone. It's just. Girls like pink and play with dolls because society is hot. Because someone handed them a doll. Exactly. Exactly. 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. Like 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 in online discussions about the transgender movement, because there's a sense of I might be XY chromosomed male, but in my inner self, I know myself to be female. I know this about me, yeah. So 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 coming 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 their gender more than anyone else. Like they can know this deep personal thing about themselves and it could contradict everything about the society, the sex of the soul. And that was so ingrained in them that then they started reading 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. 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 Gnome 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 am I 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 on 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 that. So obsessed. Oh, Sky, you're so boy. She quotes Christine Emba, saying that. Also have been on our show. Yeah. A generic aim 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, and 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 theologian 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. I had never thought about that. But 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 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? Like we have generally lived in communities. Well, that part, yes. Right. We've lived in extended communities with fathers and uncles and grandparents and cousins and all these on the male side. i'm saying like yeah 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 and different vocations different relationships and we they all model for us yeah of a variety of spectrum ways of being and same thing with women yeah we're so isolated isn't so sure 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 that we just don't have the model, so we turn online. I would have said probably before I started 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 what that is, but then I realized that my being a good person is in these roles as father and husband and dad, particularly dad of boys, but also dad of girls, where what I am male makes a difference in the role I play in these people's lives. Right. So and that honestly hadn't really occurred to me. So we can 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. um 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 wait 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've 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 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, well, 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 who have teenage-ish 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 Bonnie points this out. We're obsessed with this and yet have no guidance to give anyone. And people are just struggling without any context to even try or like 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 that 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, not to open up a 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 side says there are no boundaries, there are no rules, everyone's out for themselves, do whatever you want. And the other side is trying to say, no, these are trad wives and whiskey drinking Calvinist masculinity. And you're like, that's it? Those are my options? Where's Fred Rogers in this? 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 in, you know, 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 out. I have never been big into men's ministries. I don't like men's ministries, but it would be easy to think I'm not a very good man or maybe I'm not a man at all. 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. Right. Because I absolutely love providing for my family. And it's not just like, oh, I've got to do it. I've got to provide. No, I actually enjoy it, and I enjoy protecting my family. I love reaching things my wife can't reach. not all men can do that i understand some wives are taller than their husbands and that's fine but the kind there still is a masculinity that i actually enjoy but even the example you just gave goes back to this point of of roles and relationships and context like which is all fungible it's not yeah it's not it is culture specific it is but i appreciate i forget who i first heard this it might have been from felipe de vale who's a scholar that writes a lot about gender too, 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. 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 complete disregard for the Billy Graham rule. He had complete disregard for the Billy Graham rule. Very true. Very upsetting. But I think that's a model for us to go, that is a kind of third way in between these options of like being obsessed, not caring at all, or having very rigid rules or having like 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, in any time and 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, you know, 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 19th, how these things can change over time because they are cultural. 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 And it's an eternal truth that no man can ever wear what appears to be a dress is at one point is just as secure as that no woman could ever show up wearing pants. OK, 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 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 differentiation, right? 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 Bonnie Christian's article because I think she is pointing to the wisdom that we've inherited from both Scripture, Christian tradition and just human history 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? We can. We can do it? We'll see. I'm still kind of chewing 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 holypostblots.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. The Holy Post is sponsored by BetterHelp. This year, Lisa and I will celebrate 36 years of marriage. I'd love to say it's been blissfully easy all the way, but I'd be lying. Making relationships work over the long haul is hard. I've benefited hugely from time spent with a trained therapist talking things through. Finding a good therapist who shared our faith convictions has been a huge help. And that's what BetterHelp can do for you. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served more than 5 million people around the world. It's easy to describe what you're looking for and BetterHelp will match you with a therapist. You can join a session with the click of a button to help fit therapy into your busy life. And you can switch therapists at any time. 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Drink it first thing in the morning, before your tea or coffee, before you even check your phone. It will become a micro habit that anchors everything else and a good springboard for the rest of your healthy habits. And it's not too late to create a new healthy habit for 2026 by starting AG1 for yourself. It's something I've actually been able to stay consistent with, and that's why I'm still partnering with AG1. And AG1 is offering new subscribers a free $76 gift when you sign up. You'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of the D3K2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure to check out drinkag1.com slash holypost to get this offer. That's drinkag1.com slash holypost to start the year on a healthier note. And thanks to AG1 for sponsoring this episode. Back in 2022, when I first heard that a Christian group was going to be running a commercial about Jesus during the Super Bowl, I thought, uh-oh, this could get 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 Come Near. Since 2022, Come Near 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 pushback, especially from those on 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 Come Near. 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 I'm from Denver, Colorado, baseball family. My dad's a really iconic amateur baseball coach, coached 51 years, all-time winningest coach in Colorado. I played baseball at Arizona State, came to faith in Jesus just before that, ended up in local church ministry for the vast majority of my career. I led a multi-congregational church in the Phoenix area called Redemption Church and transitioned out of there in 23. I was invited to a conversation by some people around the authentic Jesus. There, I met Ken Caldwell. I was quite intrigued at the time. He gets us in some different Jesus things that were happening in media. 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. You and I first met when you were at Redemption many years ago. Many years ago. Yeah. I was working for Christianity Today and I was in Phoenix with some regularity doing some reporting on stuff down there. I don't want to necessarily know why did you want to leave pastoral ministry, but explain to me the journey from pastoral ministry to chief impact officer for a media campaign like this. What's the connecting tissue there? Yeah. I mean, I think there's, like anything, 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 in culture for what I think is Jesus' reasons. You never know that totally. 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 and 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, but just, I really think if we zero in on the person of Jesus, it can, it may be able to, I don't know if the word balances 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. I resonate with that for sure. And it certainly comes out in the work that he gets us campaign has done since 2022. Let's talk about that a little bit, because your new Super Bowl ad is out. 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 released starting in 22. 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 loved the people we hate. 2024 maybe the more most controversial one that was put out was the foot washing ad showing what would typically be seen as people on in 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 with the johnny cash vocals of him singing your own personal jesus and ask 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 a cacophony 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 team's thinking about this pivot this year to a different approach. Yeah, thanks for the question. It's good analysis and true. So one of the things we really did in the last year is we've put a ton of time into knowing our neighbors. 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 simple way that we heard consistently. And 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 the 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 dot 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 him 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. 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 meme that we have of Leo, you know, 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 think I'm going to do more yoga. Or you know what? I'm going to do what that young woman at the end of the ad does. I'm going to go take a walk in nature. Like what how does this ad actually point to Jesus rather than just the craziness of modern life is bad for my mental health? Yeah Yeah That that a great question So in the end one of the ways in this we thinking about advertising a way you can think about it in a Jesus lane is when Jesus asked the woman at the well the question can I get a drink is we not trying to do everything in an ad You can possibly do everything in an ad So what we are trying to do is create a moment where somebody kind of goes, like, that's interesting. 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 quiets 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 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 are maybe sitting, you could say, at a spiritual buffet, we're kind of going, hey, on this, If before you were thinking about sound bowls or yoga, and now we're giving you an opportunity to think about Jesus or converse 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 happen in the midst of this. So that was a lot of the thinking. And again, I do want to say it ends with he gets us dot com. 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 the beginning process of this to do through the advertising. I released my first book in 2009, and it was a book critiquing consumerism, materialism, the kind of stuff exactly that you guys 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 guy, you've written a book critiquing consumerism, which you are now marketing to us so that we will buy it and consume it. Like, does the medium by which you are communicating this message contradict the message you were trying to say? I felt that when I released that book. I know over the years you guys have been critiqued heavily at the amount of money it costs to produce and air these Super Bowl ads. And now you're doing one about materialism. So how do you respond to those critics who are like, you know, 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'd probably say, look at Jesus again. So I would never want to say 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? it. And if you can show up in an environment and get somebody to go, hmm, 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, for 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 is more about the party than it is the game. And we've had numbers of stories of people going, where are ads in the past stop people? And in the end, they're now sitting around the chip bowl, 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 it 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 are questions Christians have asked throughout centuries of what does it mean to faithfully show up? And they've been hotly debated and practiced 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 Gelinas at Colorado 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, Tyler, my question would be, 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 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 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 in one way or another so i'll give you some examples of this um i think most people would say that there I have a lot of people in my life, including family who have no Christian background, no church background, the their their 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 MAGA 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 washed 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 this ad, again, 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, feels safer? You go on YouTube. I'm sure you've been there. There is a mountain of criticism of the ads you guys have done over the years, mostly coming from the right. I mean, your foot washing 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 at all involved in the strategy to move in this other direction for this year's ad? Yes, I'll 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, Sky, 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 ecclesial or 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, 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 a 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 when 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 of, so in Romans 12, the 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 mulling on the mold of more, like how the whole nature of, and again, in theological terminology, you 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 conformed to 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 this nature of a critique isn't just an out there critique. It sits inside of us. It does sit inside of our churches. So since you brought this up, and this is not the main intention of the ad is to hit people where they're living. But the truth is one of the major critiques of the church right now is look at all the, like I show up at a worship, look at all the 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 critique and 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 in 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' eyes is to go, where are his eyes going? When the gospels say like when he looks at something, why is he looking places no one else is looking? Why is he drawing the audience's 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 and get people to consider Jesus again, maybe over time, whether they've had an 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. It 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 ad airs on Sunday, we're recording this Friday before the Super Bowl. Do you anticipate after this ad airs 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 a bit. I mean, I think 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 ad is going to trigger people in a negative way? Yeah, I mean, 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 we're never trying to avoid critique. What we are trying to do is get people to consider, contemplate and wrestle with Jesus. 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 wholly 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 guests talk about here. What do you do with folks? I'm assuming that part of your hope is people see your ads. They go onto the website. They explore some of the resources that are there. they are taking a step 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. My hope would be, though, on your end, you anticipate some people are actually going to want to find a Christian community to be a part of, to find a church. What do you do when someone sees this ad and is like, yeah, I need that slower pace of life, that reflective, contemplative kind of life that Jesus and his followers have historically represented, then they step into a church and it's an overwhelming cacophony of noise and light and sound and technology. Or they'd see one of the previous ads and go, yeah, 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 they're 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 in your campaign? Like, 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 incarnates that kind of Jesus, what do you do with that? What kind of conversations are you guys having at that end of the journey? We are 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 recognize there really are amazing work happening in multiple places. There are incredible 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. 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 response to that specific issue. We are having these conversations. We're in a growing number of conversations with Christian leaders, some in churches, some in different environments, some like yourself, saying, what does that mean? And some of the people that are viewed organizationally a bit more upstream have 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 wheat of the fields, basically, to point at 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 it the field that's white in the 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 our 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. Is there a different way we need to show up for these people? And then those forms seem in history to be the things that can actually begin to reform the existing 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, Sky, and honestly, 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. 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 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 in 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 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 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, 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 going from it. So appreciate it. Thank you for being here. The Holy Post Podcast is a production of Holy Post Media, produced by Mike Strelow, editing by Seth Gorvett. Help us create more thoughtful Christian media by subscribing to Holy Post Plus at holypost.com slash plus. Also, be sure to leave a review on Apple Podcasts so more people can discover thoughtful Christian commentary plus ukulele and occasional butt news. 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