The Anti-Gospel of Cancel-Culture
Anyone who has ever read the New Testament will understand why its message has been so aptly named “Gospel” or, “the good news.” The story opens to a bleak setting of a world filled with doomed sinners, but immediately introduces the Hero, Jesus Christ. The climax comes as this Savior sacrifices Himself in the place of sinners, not only to save them from destruction, but instead to elevate them to an unimaginable paradise without any sin or scarcity. Unfortunately, too many do not recognize this Gospel as much more than wishful fiction. However, even they must acknowledge the inherent beauty of the story.
Recently, a new system of sin atonement has been offered. Already in America, its theology has been accepted and become routinely practiced by a mob of followers, a disturbing number of whom are proclaimed Christians. As this group has grown, its tendrils have reached into the American way of life to such a point that the movement sweeping our society is now nicknamed by its defining objective: Cancel Culture. To briefly define this culture, these are the people that continuously engineer the demise of those who have made comments in the past that could be perceived as remotely offensive.
Although Cancel Culture’s commitment to atone for sin may parallel the Gospel’s commitment, it’s fair to say that very few (especially those who have had the distinct displeasure of making its acquaintance) would brand its message as “good news,” or gospel. Instead, this crusade offers an anti-gospel.
Despite this fundamental difference, the anti-gospel of Cancel Culture is actually somewhat in agreement with the Gospel. For example, it agrees that sin (or what it deems as sin) requires punishment. The mob of Cancel Culture has shown that they too will, “…not leave the guilty unpunished…” (Ex. 34:7). As a matter of fact, it seems that no punishment in this life is ever sufficient. It is never enough for a person to lose their livelihood, fame, or network of support. The mob recognizes that sin or guilt requires more retribution than can be exacted on the mortal condition. In summary, Cancel Culture teaches that any transgression against the world order the mob has constructed must be punished to the fullest extent. Therefore, after the sinner’s life has successfully been ruined, the guilty person must continue to suffer the condemnation of silence inflicted by the mob. The damning silence is apparently eternal as well, as it has no bound. Note also that at this point, the sinner is separated from his former society forever and is left to despair. The mob has mandated that only by this atonement can justice be reached. Run a search and replace on this last paragraph, substituting the word mob for God and we see an almost exact photo-negative of the God of the Bible.
At this point, some distinctions ought to be made, before we falsely equate the mob to the level of God. In the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the question, “What is God?” is answered: God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. Unlike God, the mob functions as a human conglomeration of reasoning intellect, finite, transient, and changeable, in its being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth. It is finite, not only because it has a recent beginning, but also because all of its members are finite. Unlike God, who is independent of any human limitations, the mob is completely subject to all human limitations of time and space, including impermanence. Finally and perhaps most significantly, we must realize that the mob is changeable. Just think: the mob of today is always wiser, stronger, more holy, more just, better, and more truthful than yesterday (at least, by its own judgment). The mob had been around for a long time before its morality “evolved,” to the point of recognizing the need to eliminate the brands of Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben. Thus, the mob of tomorrow will always be correcting the impurities of the mob of today.
But an obvious problem arises when the fluid morality of today is given absolute authority to make a judgment on the morality of yesterday. This problem arises tomorrow, when we then have to correct the failings of today. We should not forget, we are not the first to mistakenly claim moral supremacy, and neither will we be the last. The moral judgments of Cancel Culture today will certainly be deemed unjust by the “more holy” moral authorities of tomorrow.
Unfortunately, the anti-gospel of Cancel Culture does not stop to consider this. Instead they continue on punishing the sins of yesterday with their evolving standard. Herein lies the biggest difference in the Gospel and the anti-gospel: grace.
Fortunately in the true Gospel, God, in His infinite grace, has given us His Son to take the punishment sinners deserve. Christians understand that they can only be granted forgiveness by this sacrifice. But for the Cancel Culture mob, there is no way out, other than the rare exception that a particular voice is so valuable that the mob simply cannot afford to lose them. The injustice of Cancel Culture rears its ugly head here again, because the sins of the powerful simply go unpunished. This also exposes the great weakness of a mob that is dependent on corrupt humans to achieve its purpose.
In Cancel Culture, the common sinner must pay for their own sins against the mob’s shifting moral standard, and the mob will not have mercy. Example after example of newly ousted pariahs confirm that apologizing for your sins to the mob simply compounds guilt and intensifies punishment. This is one thing that we should immediately notice when the mob confronts its “sinners.” When they do apologize, their predicament seems only to worsen. Yet honestly, this should only make sense, because when there is no Savior to pay for the crime, to beg for forgiveness is to merely beg for injustice.
As we have established, those of us remaining who are still seen as innocent by the mob in the present will soon enough be judged as guilty in the “more holy” future. All of us will be counted as sinners deserving of punishment in the anti-gospel of Cancel Culture. When that day comes, America will clearly see that it has committed to a false and ultimately futile message.
All of these shortcomings in Cancel Culture present Christians with perhaps one of our best opportunities in recent memory to present the Gospel. This newly-arrived system of atonement presents a vengeful false god who judges the world on a forever-changing and thereby unjust metric, while also offering no savior to remove guilt. Neither does it promise a holy spirit to reclaim and restore sinners. All of this results in an anti-gospel that can only disappoint. At this pace, its cruel oppression will soon be felt by all. Both now and then, Christians must be prepared to present the one true Gospel of the God who alone can — and certainly will — mercifully restore His perfect and unchanging justice to this fallen world.
