No one is safe. No one can hide their past forever. If you have messed up, everyone will eventually know about it. Whatever you do you better make sure you don’t get on anyone’s bad side so that they don’t dig up your dirt. That’s what our world is telling us right now.
I remember seeing a comment on social media after Alabama Wide Receiver Henry Ruggs ran a stunningly fast 40 yard dash (4.27 seconds!!!). Ruggs had dominated at the NFL Combine to establish himself as a sure top pick in the 2020 NFL Draft. When the news of Ruggs’ time was released, there was one person who posted on social media (very sarcastically I would add) a statement like this:
Well, now it’s time to go back through his entire Twitter history to see what dirt we can pull up on him so that we can make him look like he has questionable character.
This is “Cancel Culture” and this guy nailed it with that summary. Cancel Culture is unraveling society right now. It is highly destructive. In actuality, it is really just a power play by others to get what they want by hanging people’s faults over their heads. This is what Cancel Culture does:
If someone disagrees with you just go and dig up their dirt and show it to the world.
If someone has done something wrong make sure you show them no mercy.
If someone has messed up in the past make sure they live in fear that you might blackmail them.
If someone has sinned in a way that isn’t socially acceptable make sure they go to the bottom of our society and never influence anyone ever.
No matter if someone has changed and confessed, destroy them for the one instance they slipped up.
What Happens In Response To A Cancel Culture
It’s no wonder then that iGen is the generation with the most anxiety and depression that we have seen in a long time. It’s no wonder that shame is the most crippling and debilitating sensation in our culture today. It’s no wonder that millions live in fear of “being found out” or being misrepresented. Youth are living in a mental hell every day hoping that their shameful past might not revisit them.
We are at a point in history where we are pulling out our spiritual mircoscopes to find the specks in others eyes and proclaiming them to be unforgivable sins. We are throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water. If our culture had a self-given name it might be the name from Hosea 1:6 “No Mercy”. It’s not the name of us not receiving mercy from God but rather the name we bestow on ourselves as we relate to each other.
If a forefather was an ardent follower of Christ and yet still had slaves (even if he did treat them well for the most part in that system), we must refuse to let him teach us anything today. If a politician messed up sexually in the past then we must “out” him and tear down his entire life (even if he has confessed and sought forgiveness). If a coach, teacher, pastor, businessman, doctor, writer, celebrity, or whoever has done anything, said anything, or failed to support something then we must start an outrage to ruin their lives. It doesn’t matter what good things they have done. It doesn’t matter what benefits they have brought to our society. If they are not perfect in our eyes then we must shatter them into thousands of irrepairable pieces. Oh, and let’s make sure we get their friends and families and anyone who associates with them as well. We demand perfect. Even in the Church, we demand that our forefathers and foremothers in the faith be more perfect than Jesus Himself (as if that is possible!) or else we will seek to destroy anything they stand for.
It’s not unbelievers alone who do this. Plenty of Christians do this. We do this with politics, sports, denominations, and friendships. We post on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram in hopes that we might add to the destruction of another. Do we realize that God Almighty will judge us for everything we post, repost, and like on social media? His judgment will be even more strict than our culture.
Safe No More
No one is safe. No one is secure. The Internet is your worst enemy. If you messed up in college, you better watch out. If you said something racially insensitive, sexually discriminating, or politically incorrect then you’re essential done for in this society. It doesn’t matter if you’re genuinely sorry. It doesn’t matter if it was 45 years ago. It doesn’t matter if you have repented and changed. It doesn’t matter if the other person has forgiven you. Once you’ve sinned in this country, you’re damned for eternity. Get ready to experience social hell.
If we had a choice, we would create our own pits of despair and round all those people up so that we don’t have to live amongst them or be influenced by them. We would punish them. We would shame them. We would make them look out into our world with jealousy. We would want them to never bring their disease into our culture ever again. Oh wait, that’s what we’re already doing on social media.
No wonder there is a lot of suicide today.
This is what Cancel Culture feels like. Once again, if we’re not careful, we’ll shame ourselves into our very own self-destruction. No one can stand for long under this. This is where an evolutionary worldview has brought us. We should have evolved by now. We should be better. We should be past this. This is 2020 people!
No one wants to remember the fact that we are sinners living in a sinful world. Matter of fact, the only sin is to say that there is such thing as sin.
What Does 1st Century Jerusalem Have To Do With 21st Century America?
What does the Bible have to do with this? Everything.
I heard something phenomenal the other day from RTS professor Miles Van Pelt (I mean, who hasn’t heard something phenomenal from him?). He said something that rocked my world.
You’ll never find closure if you only seek justice. You’ll only find closure if you rest in grace.
If I had a Twitter still, I would tweet that. It’s almost worth it to create a Twitter and just tweet that one thing right now. Did you read that? He said, “You’ll never find closure if you only seek justice. You’ll only find closure if you rest in grace.”
Right now, our culture has gotten rid of all grace and mercy. There is only justice and wrath.
Listen. Justice is crucial. Let’s make no mistake about that. Justice is central to a society and it’s central to Christianity. Justice is an attribute of God. God would not be God if He were not just. But, justice is not the only thing we receive. Justice is not the only attribute of God. Grace is what we receive. Grace is what we need.
Can I just say something? What our country needs most is the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are fools if we think our country is Christian. We are fools if we think our churches know enough of the gospel (let alone our country). What our churches and country needs most is the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We don’t need less gospel; we need more gospel.
So, where do we see this grace in the Bible that might apply to the Cancel Culture?
Jesus’ Earthly Father
In Matthew 1:19, we find something absolutely stunning. I’ve read over this portion of Scripture hundreds of times. I’ve never seen what I just saw. Thanks to Roy Ciampa in Devotions on the Greek New Testament: 52 Reflections to Inspire & Instruct, I saw the light in a dark world.
And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly.
Matthew 1:19
This verse is not necessarily a verse you tell your kids to memorize. It’s not the verse you might post as your “Verse of the Day” post. It’s not the verse you would get framed or put on your Christmas cards. It’s probably not the choice text for you if you had to teach a Bible study. Let me tell you something. There is more light in this one verse than there is in 10,000 Suns. Let me show you.
Joseph thought Mary had broken their engagement by sinning sexually. We now know that she obviously didn’t and Joseph would soon realize that too. But, there was a point when he looked at her pregnant belly and was heart broken that she had an affair. After all, virgin births are not a natural event! It required a miracle for the Son of God to come into this world! If she was pregnant and he wasn’t the one who slept with her then it must’ve been another man.
Joseph was torn over this. He was heart broken, ashamed, anxious, and in despair. Some of you might know this pain. But, here is the thing about Joseph. He was a just man (lit. “being righteous”). So, what would a righteous man (who obviously cares deeply about justice) do in the face of someone committing great sin against him?
To be sure, I am not saying that Mary wasn’t a virgin. I am not saying that Mary slept with someone else. We are only looking at this through the experience of Joseph before he received word from the angel (v20-25) that Mary was going to be the virgin who would fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14.
Responding To Sin With Righteous Compassion
How would righteous Joseph respond in the face of such heinous sin? I know what our culture would do. Our culture would put on a shame show. They would parade her sin and guilt on Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and Facebook. Late night talk show hosts would include her in their jokes. She would turn into a “meme” of shame. Some Christians would unfortunately wag their heads at her as if she weren’t a Christian at all. “If she was really a Christian then she would’ve never put herself in that situation.”
If Mary lived in the U.S. today and eventually decided to run for a political office, her childhood friends who didn’t agree with her political views would find her medical records and show them off to the world like she is the worst human walking since Adolf Hitler.
How was righteous Joseph going to respond? Well, we can see more clearly how he might when we look at the next phrase. Joseph was righteous and unwilling to put her to shame. Joseph didn’t have two opposing qualities in himself that were fighting over what to do in this situation. There wasn’t the “good angel and bad angel” or the “righteous angel and the compassionate angel” on either shoulder whispering to him what he should do. “Should I do what would be culturally acceptable during these times and make it publicly known to the proper Jewish and Romans authorities? Should I write her off and start a campaign to have her removed from the Temple? Should I expose what she has done to everyone I know so that all might shame her with me? Or, should I have mercy on her? Should I keep it quiet? Should I not divulge that information?”
Joseph was not playing the either/or game. Actually, what this text is saying is that because Joseph was righteous he was also unwilling to put her to shame. It’s not about whether to show justice or compassion but rather to show justice and compassion.
To say it another way, Joseph shows his righteousness as he shows compassion for her.
The present participle (“being a just man”) indicates not that he had been righteous but (now) thought of acting unrighteously in this instance, but rather he was righteous even as he decided on his plan of action.
-Roy Ciampa
***With my emphasis to make the wording a little more clear.***
What is Ciampa saying? He is saying that the Bible is saying that because Joseph was righteous he was also compassionate. And look at the context. Joseph thought that Mary had sinned greatly! And what did this righteous man decide to do in the face of great sin? He decided not to put her to shame but rather to show her compassion.
The Gospel of Justice and Grace
My friends, this is the gospel. This is what Jesus does to us. In the face of such horrendous sin and betrayal against the King of Glory, He came to earth and died in our place out of compassion. Jesus didn’t “cancel” us. He came to us. He had compassion on us.
The gospel of Matthew seeks to transform our understanding of the true nature of righteousness in light of its redefinition by Jesus and by Matthew’s telling of his story. In this gospel it becomes clear that for Jesus (and Matthew), mercy and compassion are not at odds with righteousness, but are crucial marks of righteousness, just as they are in the Old Testament. Jesus demands not the same righteousness as the scribes and Pharisees but a greater righteousness (5:20), one that will lead his disciples to show mercy to the least of his brothers (25:34-40). Jesus emphasized the theme of Hosea 6:6 [that] God prefers mercy over sacrifice (Matt. 9:13; 12:7), and he demonstrated what that preference looks like by befriending tax collectors and sinners. His sacrifice on the cross is about extending mercy to us sinners rather than leaving us to our own destruction.
-Roy Ciampa
This is what Joseph is doing. In the face of great sin, he is acting righteously! He is pressing into righteous living. He is living out what Jesus would live out. He is imaging God the Redeemer. That is why he decided to treat her with dignity, love, compassion, and grace. He cared about justice and grace and he realized that justice and grace are not rivals but best friends.
How This Could Change Our Culture
People are dying for hope. Everyone has sinned. Everyone has baggage. Everyone has said horrible things. Everyone has treated someone in unspeakable ways. No one is exempt. Was Paul not clear enough about this in Romans 3:10-12 when he said:
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.
The people who do the most shaming tend to have a lot of shame. The people who point out the specks in others eyes tend to have logs in their own. We’re all truly depraved and soaked in sin. When we forget that we get into these spiritual shame shows so that we can make ourselves feel better.
Here is where the gospel comes in. The gospel says that we are worse than we could ever dare admit and yet more loved than we could ever imagine. This gospel is a gospel of grace and righteousness. Jesus didn’t sacrifice justice in order to give us grace. He gave us grace through justice. He went to the Cross to absorb the wrath we deserved for our sins so that we might receive grace and compassion. That is how we can have spiritual closure.
Repentant Sinners In Heaven
Our country, believers and unbelievers, are holding their breaths hoping that maybe they can just make it to the end of their lives without their worst mistakes being exposed. We mentally and emotionally murder others a thousand times over whenever we hold their sin over their heads. We destroy them time and time again whenever we don’t accept someone’s confession or genuine repentance. We sever all hopes of change whenever we fail to celebrate the work of change that the Holy Spirit has done in us.
Did we forget that former sinners will be in heaven? Jesus came for the sick sinners and not for the healthy self-righteous ones. There will be former racists and rapists in heaven. There will be former sexual abusers and drug abusers in heaven. There will be former slave traders in heaven. There will be former Nazis and Neo-Nazis in heaven. There will be former murderers, drunks, hookers, atheists, homosexuals, liars, cheaters, swindlers, and anarchists who will be in heaven. There are scores of people who once lived this way who have now found life and grace in Jesus Christ. He took their wrath. He dealt with their sin. Who in the world are we to shame them with what they repent from?
They are not only being sanctified right now but they will be so glorified that even those in heaven who were victims of their sinful lifestyle on earth will see so much beauty in them because of the work of the Holy Spirit within. The bond of joy and friendship between former enemies will be stronger than any friendship on this earth. This is what Jesus does to saved sinners.
We need Christians who proclaim this gospel. This country is DYING for hope. Don’t believe me? Just any youth you know who have been through or have had friends go through these social shame fests whenever they fail in the smallest way. Just go into our schools and ask middle and high schools students what their biggest fears are. Just read literature of youth culture and see the staggering stats and interviews that talk about this issue.
We can learn a lot from Joseph here. We need to learn a lot. Only grace can transform us. Only Jesus can make us new by the power of the Spirit.
