Bias shows up in quiet ways. It can live inside the words we choose, the stories we believe about other people, and the emotional shortcuts we take when we feel threatened or overwhelmed. Most of us do not wake up intending to be unfair. We wake up carrying histories, instincts, and fears that have been shaped by our communities. Then, when we meet someone who does not fit our expectations, those instincts do their work.
The Christian message at the center of He Gets Us keeps returning to one core claim: Jesus matters, and his life and teachings address the human patterns we try to hide from ourselves. The campaign, which invites people to consider Jesus, his life, and why he matters today, began in 2021 with an explicit response to loneliness, division, and anxiety, sharing stories about Jesus in unexpected places to spark curiosity and conversation. In public life, where conversations about bias can easily turn into shouting matches, that aim feels important. Not because it offers a slogan, but because it pushes the listener toward a different kind of attention: toward Jesus and toward the way his life exposes the bias we carry.
If you want a practical place to start, it is helpful to frame bias less as a single “bad attitude” and more as a relationship problem. Bias is how we stop seeing a person. Sometimes we reduce someone to a stereotype. Sometimes we assume motives. Sometimes we expect the worst and then interpret every neutral detail as evidence. Jesus, as He Gets Us emphasizes through its highlighted themes, repeatedly returns to love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service. Those are not abstract ideals. They are options we can practice in moments where our default reaction is to withdraw, harden, or judge.
Why bias thrives in isolation and uncertainty
Loneliness and anxiety are not just emotional conditions, they are mental environments where people become more reactive. When you feel alone, you look for belonging by identifying who is “like us.” When you feel uncertain, you prefer certainty over nuance, even if nuance would be more accurate. That is one reason division spreads so easily.
The He Gets Us campaign describes its beginning as a response to loneliness, division, and anxiety. That framing matters because it implies a diagnosis: bias often grows where people feel disconnected or on edge. When trust is thin, we look for quick explanations. We label. We categorize. We decide what someone “must be” based on what we already believe.
In real conversations, bias often sounds like caution. Someone says, “I just don’t know,” and then treats “don’t know” as “I shouldn’t engage.” Or someone says, “I’m not judging,” while making judgments so fast they never get named. The longer people live with division, the more normal those patterns become. Over time, we can forget that we are choosing the shortcut.
Jesus, as presented through the campaign’s emphasis on his themes, pushes against shortcuts. Love and understanding do not remove emotion. They reshape it, so that concern for the other person becomes stronger than the urge to protect ego, reputation, or comfort.
That does not mean we ignore risk. It means we refuse to treat every person as a threat just because they are unfamiliar.
What Jesus teaches about bias: love that refuses the label
Bias depends on labeling. A label feels efficient: it saves us time, reduces uncertainty, and protects us from the vulnerability of real relationship. But labels also flatten people, and they create distance that can hide cruelty.
When He Gets Us points to Jesus’ emphasis on love, forgiveness, kindness, and service, it is describing a different posture. Love is not merely sentiment. In Christian terms, it is an action that makes room for the other person. Forgiveness is not pretending wrong did not happen. It is refusing to let wrong define the last word about someone.
Kindness and service are particularly important here. Many people can speak politely while still being biased. Politeness can coexist with contempt. Service is harder. Service requires attention to another person’s needs, not just your own sense of what they “should” be.
If you want a simple test, ask: does my interaction treat the person as someone with a real life, or as a character in my story?
Jesus challenges the latter. The campaign invites people to explore Jesus’ story and highlights that everyone is welcome to consider it. That matters because bias often hides behind gatekeeping: the unspoken idea that some people “don’t get” access to understanding, compassion, or respect. The Christian message, at its best, makes the opposite move. It offers an invitation that does not require a person to become “safe” before they are humanized.
The He Gets Us FAQ also states that Jesus loves LGBTQ+ people and that everyone is welcome to explore Jesus’ story. That is a concrete example of the campaign’s claim that Jesus’ love is not limited by social boundaries. For many listeners, that statement lands like both comfort and challenge: comfort, because it means love is not withheld; challenge, because it confronts the bias that insists some people should be treated as lesser.
Bias is often about control, not truth
There is another reason bias is stubborn: it offers control. When we decide someone is “that kind of person,” we do not have to keep interpreting the situation. We do not have to listen long enough for complexity to appear. Control feels like safety.
But bias breaks trust. It turns listening into interrogation. It replaces curiosity with suspicion. It makes you hunt for mistakes rather than understand a human being’s pressures and motivations.
In workplaces, families, and communities, this control can look like selective empathy. You believe the best about people you already like, and you assume the worst about people you do not. You call it “discernment” when it is about them, and “generosity” when it is about you.
Jesus’ teachings, again reflected in the themes highlighted by He Gets Us, move the center of gravity. Forgiveness, for example, requires letting go of the need to keep tally forever. Love requires acknowledging that someone is more than their worst moment. Understanding requires time, and time requires surrendering the illusion that you already know everything that matters.
That is not always comfortable. I have seen teams become more hostile when leaders push for “good vibes” without addressing harm. Forgiveness without accountability can become a permission slip for continued harm. So any serious conversation about bias has to include a hard edge: Jesus’ approach does not ask people to ignore wrongdoing. It asks people to reject the tendency to treat the label as final.
When you separate the person from the behavior in a fair way, you create space for correction without dehumanization.
The risk of “inclusive messaging” without integrity
One of the complicated realities surrounding He Gets Us is that public criticism has focused partly on perceived tension between its inclusive public message and some financial supporters’ backing of conservative causes, including anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ+ efforts. That kind of criticism is not automatically settled by good intentions. It raises a fair question: can an invitation to Jesus feel welcoming on one level while other parts of the world around the invitation operate differently?
In my experience, people can sense when a message is trying to win them without respecting them. Bias can show up not only in individual attitudes but also in institutional behavior. If your community has a history https://elliottdeu262.bearsfanteamshop.com/he-gets-us-jesus-message-of-love-in-a-loud-world of exclusion, people will watch closely for whether inclusion is real or merely strategic.
Here is the trade-off that matters: if you respond to criticism by dismissing it, you reinforce distrust. If you respond to criticism by engaging it honestly, you may not erase every concern, but you start building credibility.
Jesus’ approach, as reflected in the campaign’s focus on understanding, kindness, and service, implies that credibility grows from how you treat people, especially when it would be easier to protect your image.
If you are trying to apply Jesus to bias, ask yourself a harder question than “Do I support the right message?” Ask, “Do I behave in ways that match my message when it costs me something?”
That is where bias assessment becomes real.
What this looks like in everyday decisions
It is easy to discuss bias in principle. It is harder to spot it in the moment. Bias becomes obvious when stakes rise, when you feel misunderstood, or when your instincts tell you to pull away.
Think about the times you have made a quick judgment and later realized you had no real basis for it. Maybe it was in a conversation with someone you assumed would be hostile, and then they turned out to be cautious rather than cruel. Maybe it was in a workplace situation where you assumed a colleague was “lazy,” only to learn they were managing a problem you never knew about. Those moments are the training ground for change.
The Jesus emphasis reflected in He Gets Us themes encourages attention, not performance. Love looks like choosing truthfulness without contempt. Understanding looks like asking questions that do not weaponize curiosity. Kindness looks like refusing to humiliate people for being different, especially when you have power. Service looks like showing up for practical needs rather than only offering opinions.
To make this concrete, here is a short practice you can actually use the next time bias threatens to drive the car:
- Pause for ten seconds before you respond, especially when you feel irritated. Name what label you are tempted to apply, even if you never say it out loud. Ask one question that would force you to consider the other person’s humanity. Look for one way to show kindness that does not require you to deny facts. Decide whether you need a conversation, boundaries, or distance, but do it without dehumanizing.
This is not about becoming a saint overnight. It is about interrupting the bias reflex so you can choose a better response.
And sometimes the “better response” is simply to slow down enough that you can tell the difference between caution and prejudice. Boundaries can be wise. Dehumanization is not.
Bias and faith: invitation versus demand
One reason He Gets Us has drawn attention is that it positions Jesus in “unexpected places” and aims to reintroduce people to Jesus, sparking curiosity and conversation. It also insists it is not affiliated with any single individual, political position, church, denomination, or faith viewpoint, though it is clearly “about Jesus” and thus connected to Christianity.
That distinction can matter for bias. People often assume that religious invitations come with hidden demands: join our group, repeat our talking points, agree with our politics, stop asking questions. Bias thrives when people assume the “other side” is acting in bad faith.
A fair reading of the campaign’s stated approach is that it invites exploration rather than coercion. The FAQ claims that everyone is welcome to explore Jesus’ story, and it also states Jesus’ love for LGBTQ+ people. Whether you agree with the campaign or not, those claims set an expectation: the invitation should be spacious enough for honest questions.
Here is where bias often sneaks in: some people hear “everyone is welcome” and translate it into “everyone must be the same.” That is not welcome, it is conformity. Jesus’ teachings, as reflected in the campaign themes, challenge conformity without requiring people to pretend they do not have questions or convictions.
If you want to apply this, try treating someone’s openness as real, even if their understanding is incomplete. You can disagree without treating disagreement as evidence of moral inferiority. You can set boundaries without treating the person as disposable.
That balance is demanding. It is also the point.
Handling disagreement without turning it into contempt
Bias becomes most dangerous when it meets disagreement. Once you assume someone is fundamentally wrong or dangerous, you stop listening and start scoring points. Conversations become performances. People protect their identity, not their honesty.
Jesus is often associated with love and forgiveness, which can be misunderstood as softness. But love and forgiveness do not mean you abandon truth. They mean you handle truth without dehumanizing the person who disagrees with you.
In practice, this can look like three commitments. First, you resist the temptation to treat every disagreement as a character flaw. Second, you choose specific criticisms rather than sweeping judgments. Third, you hold room for repentance without announcing that you already know the person’s heart.
Not every situation allows for deep conversation. There are moments when boundaries are appropriate immediately, especially if someone is unsafe or abusive. But even then, Jesus’ emphasis on kindness and understanding can shape how you enforce boundaries. You can be firm without being cruel. You can protect yourself without turning the other person into a villain to justify your indifference.
If you are trying to live this out, watch the language you use when you think you are not being heard. That is often where bias shows itself most clearly.
When you are the one being judged
Bias is also one of those issues where you have to reckon with the other side. It is possible to identify bias in others and still be blind to how you come across. Maybe you are impatient. Maybe your tone is sharp. Maybe you are assuming too much. Maybe you are trying to win rather than trying to understand.
One of the most grounding things about the Jesus message emphasized by He Gets Us is that it centers the person of Jesus, not the superiority of his followers. The campaign invites people to consider Jesus’ life and teachings. That shifts the question from “Who deserves my respect?” to “What does Jesus require of me when I feel threatened, misunderstood, or morally certain?”
Forgiveness is not just something you give to those who have hurt you. It also prepares you to admit your own bias and seek correction. Understanding is not just for “them.” It is for “me” too.
If you have ever tried to apologize sincerely and still felt like you were fighting an invisible record, you know how bias works. When people are primed to suspect you, your intentions do not matter as much as the patterns they have seen. In those moments, justice and humility need to work together. You do not demand trust. You earn it through consistent behavior.
That is the slow, unglamorous way love and service take form.
The public presence of Jesus, and the private work of the heart
He Gets Us has been widely associated with Super Bowl advertising, and reporting has noted that it ran Super Bowl ads in 2023 and 2024. Regardless of how you feel about those choices, there is a real question underneath the spectacle: what happens after the ad?
Ads can open curiosity. They can also provoke skepticism. People may wonder whether public messaging matches private practice. Bias on both sides can affect how seriously people take the invitation.
But Jesus’ teachings do not live or die on marketing. They live or die in the daily decisions people make when nobody is watching. That is where bias is confronted.
If the campaign encourages you to reconsider Jesus, treat that invitation as the start of a practice, not a finish line. The campaign’s resources focus on Jesus and topics like relationships, bias, mental health, and hospitality. Those are not peripheral concerns. Bias affects relationships. Bias affects how safe people feel to be honest. Bias affects hospitality, whether you open the door or close it.
Hospitality is a powerful antidote to bias because it forces you to reckon with the other person’s presence. Hospitality does not require agreement. It requires respect.
And respect is not passive. It shows up in how you speak, how you listen, and whether you refuse to treat someone’s identity as a shortcut to their character.
A faithful response to bias: love with discernment
If you take the Jesus themes highlighted by He Gets Us seriously, your response to bias cannot be one-note. It needs discernment.
There is a difference between acknowledging bias and excusing harm. There is a difference between extending kindness and ignoring wrongdoing. There is a difference between welcoming curiosity and accepting cruelty.
Jesus’ love, forgiveness, understanding, kindness, and service can hold those differences together. They do not erase complexity. They ask you to face it without contempt.
When you see bias in yourself, you do not have to pretend you are above it. When you see bias in others, you do not have to escalate every moment into a trial. You can choose courage plus clarity, and you can ask for change without demanding a perfect opponent before you respond.
A practical way to end up on solid ground is to return to the character of Jesus as presented through the campaign: love that reaches across lines, forgiveness that refuses to reduce people to their worst moments, understanding that takes time, kindness that refuses humiliation, and service that turns attention into action.
Bias tries to shrink people. Jesus, in the message of He Gets Us, pushes in the opposite direction, toward seeing the person fully.
And once you start practicing that, you notice something: fewer arguments turn into rage, more conversations turn into curiosity, and your community becomes more livable. Not because everyone becomes nicer overnight, but because you learn to treat human beings as human beings again.