Tebow didn’t win, but his bible verse still scored on TV

Maybe things didn’t turn out Saturday the way Tim Tebow might have hoped.

But the gang at Focus on the Family used the big game to run the ad below — which, imho, is a winner.

UPDATE: Melinda Henneberger in the Washington Post is less impressed:

Though not exactly a Benetton commercial – I think I spied one black girl in the crowd at the end – was there anything wrong with a pitch that verbally, anyway, underscores the message that God loves us all? Sure there was; some of my friends on social media were appalled, saying that if they wanted “that garbage” they knew where to look, thanks.

My own, initially positive, reaction was followed by queasiness of a different sort. Were we Christians really hawking Jesus alongside Cialis now? (If you have an epiphany lasting more than four hours…) Not, as anyone who’s ever visited a holy site can tell you, that the commoditizing of faith is anything new. And in following Jesus’s directive that we spread the Word, televised pitches are nowhere near the most extreme measures we have tried.

On Twitter, I asked whether those who were offended by the ad would have minded as much if they hadn’t known that the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family had sponsored it.

“If I were Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic or atheist, yes,’’ tweeted back my ‘She the People’ colleague (and Tim Tebow fan) Sandra Fish. “So I am.”  Others said it wasn’t the cute kiddies they minded, but the unstated, not-cute Focus on the Family opposition to gay marriage.