'Some of you are going to Hell with clean feet': Mark Driscoll responds to Super Bowl 'He Gets Us' ad
While the controversial “He Gets Us” ad that aired during the Super Bowl stirred up plenty of conversation, pastor and author Mark Driscoll offered his own unfiltered take.
In response to the 60-second “Foot Washing” ad, Driscoll, 53, tweeted, “Jesus washed Judas’s feet and still sent him to hell #HeGetsUs.”
Jesus washed Judas’s feet and still sent him to hell #HeGetsUs
— Pastor Mark Driscoll (@PastorMark) February 13, 2024 Get Our Latest News for FREE
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In a second post on the topic shared Wednesday, Driscoll watched the ad before calling it “soft, woke, garbage, nonsense, virtue signaling to those who don't like God.”
“Jesus Christ got murdered,” he said. “It's because some people felt hated by what He was teaching. All of this is just soft, woke garbage nonsense virtue signaling to those who don't like God, that you should like them because they're willing to change God for you.
“Jesus did wash feet. He washed the feet of a guy named Judas Iscariot before He sent him to hell. Some of you are going to hell with clean feet. But that's not an upgrade."
Driscoll was one of several high-profile Evangelicals who criticized the “He Gets Us” ad, which featured still photographs of people washing the feet of others in various settings, including outside a “family planning clinic.”
In a statement posted on its website, "He Gets Us" elaborated on the intended message of the ad and even noted that Jesus did wash the feet of the same disciple He would call the “son of destruction” in John 17:12.
"We recalled the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet and realized this was the perfect example of how we should treat one another, even those people with whom we don't see eye to eye," the statement reads.
"Jesus had washed Peter's feet, a loyal friend who would publicly deny that he knew Jesus later that very night. And even more astoundingly, Jesus washed Judas Iscariot's feet, the one who would betray him for 30 pieces of silver."
Several commentators noted the striking commonalities of those whose feet were being washed, including Andrew Walker, an ethics and public theology professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, who said the commercial had a “a leftward tinge, communicating the respectability of certain sins over others in our culture.”
"It is curious that Jesus never showed up washing feet at a [Make America Great Again] rally, a truck stop porn store in Alabama, to dilapidated and drugged-out factory workers in Ohio, or a white nationalist militia meeting in Michigan," Walker added.
"If Jesus really is for all sinners, we should want right-wing racists converted as well, right? How would we respond to Jesus washing the feet of someone outside the Capitol on January 6?"
Once named among America's "most prominent and celebrated pastors" by Forbes, Driscoll resigned in disgrace as senior pastor of Seattle-based Mars Hill in October 2014 after a series of controversies, including allegations of plagiarism and fostering an abusive work environment.
Two weeks after Driscoll's resignation, Mars Hill Church announced that it would dissolve.
He launched Trinity Church in 2016 and later started Real Faith, a digital Bible study ministry, with his wife, Grace, and their eldest daughter, Ashley.
Ian M. Giatti is a reporter for The Christian Post and the author of BACKWARDS DAD: a children's book for grownups. He can be reached at: [email protected].
