Cancelling Cancel Culture

 

Cancel Culture. How does it relate to Orthodoxy, and Christianity in general? The most obvious part of cancel culture is that it does fit the loving, caring and forgiving nature of Christ.  At its core, cancel culture seeks to destroy and devalue any and every position that it finds as wrong and distasteful in the sight of the world. At its core, cancel culture has a sense of pride about it. This is pride is that what anyone believes that goes against the collective majority is wrong and must be stamped out for the greater good. Christianity as we will see will indeed have a cancel culture within it, but not what you might think.

            First, we must understand that cancel culture is a mob mentality. It is a sense of pride and arrogance that the person who has been offended has more value to the world than those who they are trying to cancel. The person who is speaking, usually against something that is morally or spiritually wrong is told that their views are outdated, misogynist, homophobic or racist. While there is some of that going on in the world, yes, the majority of it is trying to belittle their fellow man and create god in their own image. They want a world free of the responsibility of sin, a world in which man can do as he pleases and does not answer to a higher power. We have allowed those who want to allow sin to creep into our doors and places of worship to overrun the society in the media, the government, and the schools that teach our children.  They seek to destroy the fabric of our faith with ideas foreign to that of the gospel, to the teachings of the Church. They seek to liberalize Christ and reject the words that he preached. For example, those who speak against homosexuality. We as Christians know from Romans 1:26-27 that, “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.”  Thus we know from the writings of Paul that homosexuality is a sin. Those who stand up for this belief are told that God is love and that he wouldn’t allow for people to feel this way if it wasn’t natural. The same could be said for me when I want to eat a piece of cake. That cake looks good, its natural to eat food, but if I eat that cake it could cause me to have diabetes down the road. So while it may be “natural” it is a sickness that causes men and women to lust after each other and to commit sins against their own selves. But in the eyes of the world, they are considered pure, almost holy for being homosexual. The same with transgenderism, where men want to become women and women want to become men. The enemy has twisted the minds of people into believing that gender is construct, that people can change who they are based on what they feel in the inside. If you speak against it, you are labeled as evil yourself, and against people being who they are. We as Christians want people to be who they are, but we want them to be built in God’s image, not their own. This is pride. My last final thought on the pride of cancel culture is that of misogyny. People who believe women are devalued in the eyes of the world, the church, and society in general. This in the context of an Orthodox perspective is that the church should allow women priests, because it creates equality, and men and women are equal.  I would argue that Orthodox men and women are some of the most respectable people when it comes to equality, our greatest saint, and the pinnacle of faith is Mary, the Mother of God, called the Theotokos. As far as men and women being equal St. Paul also gives us a teaching regarding this, when he says, “Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.” Paul clearly says that women should not speak or teach in the church. This isn’t a view that women are inferior, but rather that men should take the roles of leadership and allow women to do what they do best, serve. That is why for 2000 years men have been chosen as priests, bishops, and patriarchs. They have governed the church and preserved the faith. Again, it comes back to pride. Instead of humbling themselves, women who call for a women priesthood are prideful and arrogant, unrepentant of their sin and refusing to accept their role within the structure of the church.

            Secondly we see that cancel culture devalues humanity. Instead of instructing and growing a person to become more knowledgeable or to correct their views on an issue, people want them mocked, removed from society. We are seeing this now with those speaking against Ukraine, with those in support of the Nazis in Ukraine calling for the arrest of anyone speaking against the war. We see this with celebrities who have stood for truth and justice being blackballed and removed from roles and other jobs because they did not agree with the narrative. Instead of showing these people the error of their ways, it has created a “My view is the right view and everyone else is wrong” mentality. Eventually when enough people believe the lies they are told, it becomes a mob mentality where the masses rule and the truth is squashed. Though the truth of the Church can never be overcome, see Matthew 16:18 for that, people want to marginalize the Church and its teachings to a point where it can not have any influence on society. People have established in their hearts that something is amiss, and they can fill this void with everything but Christ. They have tried their best to discover hidden truths, hidden messages, forgotten doctrines, instead of leaning on the understanding of the Church for 2000 years. The scriptures again tell us that this is dangerous, when it says in Proverbs 3:5-6, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”  The scriptures remind us that we should not rely on our own thoughts and beliefs but to rely on the Lord. Those that have twisted the scriptures and twisted the hearts and minds of the people have not relied on the Lord, and instead have created this false narrative that permeates through the society and has created this cancel culture. If we are to do anything about it, we must return to the Church and place our faith solely in Christ, nothing else.

            Finally I said I would speak about Christianity having a cancel culture of its own but not in the way you would expect. This of course is the cancelling of sin. Sin cannot abide in the House of God, in the Body of Christ. Sin is a disease that sours the whole loaf. It creates problems and drags down those who even though they might seem strong will break at the very thought of something that goes against their beliefs. Therefore, the Church guards closely against heresies and false teachings. It is why the church only allows members to be entered into the church after a period of reflection and even then some will fall away, either because of their own sins, or because of the sins of others. The Church thus has a system of excommunication in which it expels members for a time to allow the person to repent of their sins and to come back into the fullness of faith. It is a foreign concept to most western Christians, because their churches do not practice it, but it is a custom as old as the Church itself. It when used correctly sees the person living in sin return to the fold stronger and more willing to follow the teachings of the church. When a person rejects the excommunication put on them it leads to further heresies and prelest. The Church cancels sin. It is a part of our culture. We therefore cannot stand idly by when a person is endangering their soul and causing havoc on others. We must stand for what is right and defend the truth.

            I had a lot to say in this article and I hope everyone was able to grow and learn from this today. May God bless you and keep you, guiding you to the place where there is no sorrow or suffering, but life-everlasting.

 

Amen.