Are you celebrating cancel culture?

Let’s talk about Cancel Culture.

We can disagree.

We can rebuke.

We can criticize.

BUT..and there’s a big BUT...

We do not bully.

We do not shame.

We do not pursue vengeance.

Cancel culture is not accountability.

Cancel culture seeks to ruin the lives of individuals we don’t agree with.

As followers of Jesus and women who desire to bring value to our society, we ought to reject it at every turn.

People who engage in this toxic behavior feel justified in their position because they believe they are right and the person they’re “holding accountable” is wrong.

Do you know who championed cancel culture in Jesus’ day? The Pharisees.

They were always looking for ways to trip up Jesus and His disciples by asking tricky questions in hopes to cancel them.

They were the people with stones in their hands ready to stone the woman caught in adulatory.

They justified their actions based on the hundreds of new laws they added—and if people didn’t play by their rules they risked being cancelled (in many cases sentenced the death).

Pharisees were eager to point out the wrongs in others and believed they were right and justified in their position.

Sounds familiar.

This wasn’t only present in Jesus’ day but cancel culture has thrived in many authoritarian and Orwellian environments—people doing the cancelling not only disagree with you but feel they have the right to silence you.

Cancel culture is rotting our society and will devour anyone that does not comply or conform.

It’s rooted in moral relativism which denies Absolute Truth—it is a philosophy that asserts there is no global, absolute moral law that applies to all people, for all time, and in all places.

As Christians we are not called to play by those rules. Worldly ideologies and modern day Pharisees don’t set the standard for us.

God’s word is our standard and what we believe and profess is not popular! In fact, what we believe is divisive in nature!

The foundation of our faith is that Jesus is the only way to the father and if one does not accept Jesus as her Lord and Savior she will spend eternity separated from God in hell.

The gospel—yes sister is the good news but guess what, not everyone believes that to be true.

To some, the gospel is viewed as being homophobic, xenophobic, harsh and in our modern culture characterized as a form of White Supremacy.

So the faith that we posses is up for cancellation.

And while the people who are being cancelled right now might be on the “other side” of our political isle or people we might disagree with too, it doesn’t mean we should celebrate it, participate in it or stand idly by watching it happen.

Do you think that the disciples were flogged, beaten, shamed and sentenced to death because they were considered good people?

No.

They were considered intolerant bigots and a threat to society.

Jesus, the blameless, sinless Lamb of God was not accepted by society, but was rejected and brutally murdered on a cross, unjustly.

People are being cancelled and censored in the name of accountability, held to standards determined by our morally bankrupt society, and we must reject it.

• Last week a pro-life organization was banned from all social media platforms in the name of “hate speech.”

• This past week, Gina Carano was fired from her role in The Mandalorian because she refused to put preferred pronouns in her bio and accused of making anti-semetic remarks.

• A few weeks ago, our state’s first black Lt Gov was being likened to the KKK for rejecting the implementation of critical theory curriculum in our schools.

Tomorrow, maybe it’s me.

Maybe it’s you.

Maybe one day it’s my daughter Brooklyn when she decides to run for a government office.

So what do we do in a society obsessed with cancel culture?

We choose messy community instead of cancel culture.

We speak the truth in love even when it’s unpopular.

We let our love for people compel us to be a part of the conversation instead of running from it.

We remember that God is our judge and we answer to Him.

We do not fear man.

We stand up for people even when we don’t agree with them.

This is the way.

“Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.” James‬ ‭3:17-18‬ ‭MSG‬‬