Anxiety likes to strike when it is least expected. Slithering in the darkness, hiding behind solid stable objects, just waiting for the perfect moment to interrupt and rock the world you live in. Just when everything seems close to perfect, nothing suddenly is. In this moment, it seems as if nothing will ever fall into place again.
Can you imagine a mistake from your past being drug up and smeared across every social media account? The one thing you have buried hoping no one would find has been discovered or perhaps the most embarrassing event that has been long forgotten has been drug back up.
We are living in a cancel culture. A society where your past mistakes, slip ups, or moments where you briefly lost sight of who you really are is not only plastered for all to see, but then your current life is canceled because of it. The mere thought of someone finding out the skeletons of my past makes me hyperventilate.
I don’t want to be remembered for things I am ashamed of; that is why it is a skeleton in the closet, dead.
Sometimes I feel as if I am over here walking on eggshells. I cheated on my multiplications test in second grade. There, that one is out there.
If you think it is just politicians and celebrities being called out, think again. It is happening to people like you and me. Kids trying to get into colleges and those just starting their careers.
We have gotten out of hand. We are forgetting that every single one of us also has something we are working hard to hide and keep in the far corner of our closest.
In an interview for a NY times article, one teenager said, “But social media’s existence has brought that into a place where people can take something you did back then and make it who you are now.”
I don’t know about you, but I am not the mistakes of my past. I am not the same person I was ten or twenty years ago.
In John 8:3 we find Jesus in the middle of what I think we can consider an example of cancel culture.
3 As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.
4 “Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”
Not only is it the woman they are bringing forth, but they are trying to cancel Jesus too.
6 They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. 7 They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” 8 Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.
9 When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman.
Although it is frustrating to not know what Jesus specifically wrote in the sand, we know it was enough to stop the cancelation of her life.
10 Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”
11 “No, Lord,” she said.
And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
Jesus doesn’t agree with her sin, but he doesn’t condemn her. Jesus doesn’t praise her sin, but He doesn’t allow others to drag her through the mud.
When we act like a cancel culture are we not acting like the accusers casting stones?
Are we not casting enough stones to kill the accused? We may not be killing them physically but we are killing their spirit and often their livelihood.
I am not saying those accused haven’t made mistakes, but I am saying, so have I and so have you.
How will we move forward? I think Jesus himself said it best on condemnation, ““Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”
