Who would Jesus Cancel?
1 Corinthians 1:18-2:5
WWJC?
Who would Jesus Cancel?
One of the earliest depictions of the crucifixion, the one you see on the screen right now, is difficult to date. The most conservative estimate is that it dates from at least the early third century. You might not find it a flattering one. It depicts Jesus on the cross with a donkey’s head. It has a subtitle that reads Alexemenos pray to his God. It was drawn to make fun of somebody that was a Christian.
Did you know that for a long time Christians were ridiculed? They were called atheists because everybody around them worshipped many gods while they insisted there was only one God. They were called cannibals because people said that they ate human flesh when they celebrated communion. And what this and the first depiction of the crucifixion shows is what Paul explains in his letter to the Corinthians. The gospel comes from God and it therefore clashes with sinful mankind’s sensibilities and culture. To the extent of the gospel sometimes looking like foolishness to the world.
Christians were always what one theologian called “resident aliens”, not quite at home in the culture. Upstream swimmers. Outcasts. People that ride on donkeys when everybody thinks that horses is the next big thing. Now saying what is foolishness to the world is the wisdom from God to us and vica versa is not a way to say we are smart and people who do not believe are dumb. It is not a statement on intelligence as much as it is a statement on perspective. A way to say faith makes you look at life and what should be priorities and what is right and wrong, differently. Faith is a gift from God, not a human achievement. This wasn’t written to let Christians know they are better. It was to reassure and explain to Christians why that which they see as life giving and right are often perceived to be the very opposite in the world they live in. Paul wants us to be at peace with our oddness. He wants us to embrace the fact that we are called to be “wise fools”.
A Church, believers, should always have a certain willingness and even appetite to go counter cultural. To endure being unpopular and looked down on. Being counter cultural is different from being anti-cultural. It is sad when a Christian by default just find fault and point fingers. We are called to be different when God’s ways require that of us. Resident aliens, not party poopers! E Stanley Jones said:
“The early Christians did not say, in dismay, ‘Look what the world has come to,’ but, in delight, ‘Look what has come to the world!’
Today it takes a lot of wisdom to know when to be counterculture and when not. What to resist and what to embrace in this world. The thing is, the Roman world did not have any Christian legacy. The powerful ruled. Women were oppressed and the rich had rights poor people did not have. Because of the Christian witness and legacy of many generations that has come before us, we live in a world that look much better even though the same things are still present. Today even non-believers will tell you it is wrong to kill a baby girl because you wanted a son. That was common in the Roman world. Today there are limits on power, even though there are still power abuses. Indeed, even in countries that has seen a sharp decline in Christian religious affiliation they still enjoy the rights and benefits that Christian values has given them as a bedrock. Being counter culture in such a culture is a tricky thing.
Nowadays there is a cultural phenomena that has become mainstream. It is called Cancel Culture. I asked myself a simple question as I was reading how Paul instructs us to be wise fools in this passage. What would be a Christian way to either reject or embrace cancel culture that is so rampant in the world we live in?
What exactly is cancel culture?
What is cancel culture? Cancel culture, also known as “call-out” culture is a form ostracism. In the old Greek city of Athens, a person could be expelled from the city-state of Athens if they did something that perceived them to be a threat to the peace of the city. That was called ostracism. Today we ostracize people more by socially shunning them, by pushing them out of our circle of friends or admired people. Social media has turned out to be quite a weapon in the hands of everyone seeking to cancel or ostracize anybody. Cancel culture has usually to do with public figures. There seem to be few things as popular nowadays as putting people on pedestals, crowning them as celebrities, and then bringing them down bluntly by identifying some flaw or mistake and making sure the world knows about that.
Now this is the popular thing to do. The question is, is this the right thing to do? And…how should Christians behave as wise fools when we come across these cancel culture things? I thought about it and I think there is at least three check boxes we need to have if we want to be wise fools in a cancel culture…
- See what is good…and bad
When it comes to popular culture there are two extremes we should avoid. The first one is to swallow it whole. Just because most people like and do something doesn’t mean what they do honors God. We should see and learn to spot how things the world consider wisdom is sometimes foolishness to God.
But we should be just as weary to reject everything in pop culture outright. Jesus once quipped to his disciples that the people of the world are sometimes smarter than people of faith and that they should learn from them. You see, everything that Genesis says about people as individuals, applies to people as groups in cultures as well. The Bible says we were created good and that good wasn’t completely destroyed. Every person isn’t the worst he or she can possibly be. That also goes for people who don’t even believe at all. Secondly all people have fallen in sin. Yes all people. This also applies for people of faith. Thirdly, Jesus hasn’t given up on anyone of us. There is still a chance to receive grace through faith and to improve. Because Jesus entered our sinful reality, there is hope that sin and pain will not have the final say.
Applied to culture, all cultures have blind spots when it comes to inhumane and cruel things. In every culture there are things we tend to let slip easily. Like excessive consumerism in the west. Some cultures look on our wasteful consumption habits and shake their heads. To them it is clear as daylight that it is harmful and destructive. Other things they will let slip easily like violence or the submission of women. But also, all cultures have something good in it. Even in cancel culture there is something good. That injustices of powerful and privileged people should be called out is a good thing. It is what the Old Testament prophets were called to do. Yes, how we do it is important, but we will get to that.
Cancel culture also has something harmful and wrong. It tends to discriminate. To judge someone in power harshly is one thing. There might be some biblical grounds for doing that but to sentence and punish some people more harshly, even though they are celebrities, could be problematic and quite arbitrary. Also, the way we do that based on popular opinion even before somebody has been proven guilty is also wrong. Which brings us to the next point.
- Know the facts and self-search as well. People used to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Nowadays people are assumed guilty until proven innocent. It is fascinating how we all reckon or assume we are in a perfect position to judge. There is a principle in law known as Audi et alterum partum. It means listen to both sides. A Christian response can never skip the listening–to-both-parties step. Sadly, we often do. Also, when we do recognize and identify something wrong, we should also recognize how we ourselves are guilty of the same thing- maybe not to the same degree but we are often guilty of same kind of sin. Sure, you might not have murdered someone, but you have harboured resentment for someone. Jesus said that everybody that resents his brother has set himself on a road which end will be murder if that person does not change his ways. You might not have raped a woman, but can you really say that you are never tempted to misuse your power for some kind of selfish advantage at times? It is often the atrocities that upset us most, that’s seeds we harbour in our own hearts.
- Know what and how Jesus “cancelled”. First of all, Paul speaks of the message of the cross. The cross was the place where Jesus experienced the most brutal and unfair cancelling ever. If anything, the cross should show us how we can sometimes judge and cancel people completely unfairly. There are ways in which we can call out and cancel that amounts to us playing God. We are really bad at playing God.
Secondly, who did Jesus cancel on that cross? Not anybody who believes in Him. Not even the one criminal on the cross next to Him. He cancelled sin, not sinners. He paid the price for our sins so that our sins could be prevented from marking our identity.
So, let us take all this and get practical. Let us apply this to a heartbreaking misdeed that has come to the light recently. Ravi Zacharias has been seen by many as one of the foremost Christian apologists. He had a way to explain and defend the Christian faith simply, yet profoundly. He got sick. Everybody prayed for him and when he died every Christian saw it as a great loss. And then a few months after it came out that he had all kinds of illicit sexual relations with women. He told some of them their bodies are God’s reward to him for his faithful service. The evidence seems clear. Despicable and sad.
Now what? To say things like “but be for the grace of God” or “he has done so many good things that he could be forgiven the bad things” is to downplay the seriousness of the misdeeds. More than that it is to deny the pain of the victims involved. What he did should be called out as not right under any circumstances. But also, to now go through everything he said with a fine-tooth comb to find errors, mistakes and gaps will also not be benefitting anybody. We do not stop reading Psalm 23 because David committed adultery with Bathsheba. Well, I think if David lived in our time it would have been a good idea put aside everything he has written for some time and attend to the matter at hand. That probably did happen. Ravi’s teaching shouldn’t now be the focus of our attention but the pain of the victims. Lamenting what was done to them and that in the name of Christian authority should be our priority along with listening to the victim’s stories.
Then also as men and even as women, we should take a deep and serious look at ourselves. All these horrible stories of men treating women like sexual objects comes out. Not all of us has taken our views on masculinity to these extremes but we have to admit that something about the way our culture thinks and defines male and female is wrong if it leads to these kinds of misdeeds all over. It would be a great thing to now think of what ideas about masculinity you have been raised with as a man or a woman. How we have either contributed to or embraced wrong ideas about what it means to be a man and a woman. By allowing this kind of critical thinking and conversations not just about others, but about ourselves, we could do much to solve the problem. Ravi’s conduct is also a good reminder of how important it is to pursue both orthodoxy and orthopraxis. Orthodoxy is the right doctrine and believes. It is about holding the right beliefs. Orthopraxis is about living our daily lives in a way that compliments our beliefs or at least in a way that does not contradict them. It is about holding our beliefs right. When only orthodoxy matters, our conduct might come to contradict our beliefs and scar its credibility. When we only pursue orthopraxis, we might become self-righteous, judgemental people who forget that we are saved by Christ’s righteousness, not our own good deeds.
But then most importantly. Our hope does not lie in another Ravi coming along with great teachings and no misdealing with women. That would be great, but it wouldn’t be our salvation. Our hope is anchored not only in Someone who will come along and do great things, but in somebody that will come and make all things new that has already come and did the ultimate thing on the cross for us. Jesus got cancelled so that we don’t have to be. Ravi will not be saved by his good teachings, not even his best. Ravi will be condemned by his sins but only if he did not really believe. If he is in Christ, his ugliest sins nor his greatest achievements will get to have the last say over him but the grace of God. And that gives us hope not only for Ravi but also for his victims. Also, in the victims lives through faith in Christ the things done to them will not get to have the last say. Their hope does not lie in that they are good, and Ravi is bad. It lies in the fact that Christ is perfect and loves them perfectly. Enough to eventually bring them and Ravi to complete healing and transformation.
Holding on to this is indeed foolishness to the world. The world says burn and destroy Ravi, it will make you feel better. Or the world says hush and suck it up, nobody cares. Or sell yourself as good and the other as bad. The gospel says, accept Christ in faith. Rejoice in the fact that his grace is sufficient for your sins and sufficient for healing of the pain inflicted on you through the sins of others. Be forgiven and seek to forgive. Christian forgiveness means that we take our hands off a perpetrator’s throat so that God could save him.
Slot
How do we live as Wise Fools in a cancel culture? I can summarize everything I told you by saying; By being mindful of Jesus as we engage with it. Mindful living is also a big thing in culture nowadays. You could buy books that teaches you to empty your mind so that you could be less distracted and more mindful. But they rarely tell you with what to fill your mind. A wise fool, Paul says, is somebody that fills his mind with Christ and the things important to Him. We might not always get that right but even just starting to do that, is a huge step in the right direction.
On the screen you will see a picture. It looks superimposed, like a picture was pasted onto another one. If I were to tell you that this is a totally natural, unchanged picture, you will think I have lost my mind.
But look at the next picture which is the same picture turned upside down and everything will make sense. You are looking at a rock in a pond.
We live in a world where people struggle to make sense and where everybody is suspicious of being deceived. People call fake…even at faith.
May God grant us the wisdom to be wise fools. May you trust him to show you the right angle so that you can distinguish between what is right and what is wrong.
Some people will look at the cross and see a fool dying for nothing. Faith makes us see a Saviour that embrace us all when we look at it.
Amen
Gabriel J Snyman
March 7th 2021
Copywrited