Not long ago, I tweeted something to the effect that when people say they don’t like “cancel culture,” what they really mean is that they don’t like what other people are cancelling. Even at the time, I felt the matter deserved greater explanation, as this statement does not capture all the nuances of my view on the subject. I therefore make this attempt to better elucidate my position.

There is currently much complaint in the United States and the entire Western world about the ease with which members of our culture tend to “cancel” each other, the finality of this cancelling, and the reasons for which the cancelling occurs. Cancellation here can involve a wide variety of actions to reduce one’s interconnection with the offending individual. If the person is a random social media user, it might simply involve blocking their account. If they are a business owner, it may mean no longer patronizing their establishment. If they are a film star, it may result in a vow to never see that person’s films again, and if they are an employee, it may mean terminating their employment. The severest forms of cancelling involve the complete social ostracization of the targeted individual and/or the complete loss of their livelihood.

If you’ve been so unfortunate as to hear me drone on about this subject before, you’ve surely heard me say that cancelling is not a new phenomenon. The advent of social media has made cancelling more widespread and applied to a greater swath of individuals, as we are simply more aware of the thoughts and beliefs of others, but the most basic examination of history reveals that human beings have always found ways to avoid or cut out those who offended them in one way or another.

What is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel The Scarlet Letter but the tale of how one woman was cancelled by her community after committing adultery? What was the Spanish Inquisition but cancellation gone mad? McCarthyism is an obvious twentieth century case of mass cancellation, while the word ostracize has its root in the ancient Athenian process known as ostrakismos, in which any citizen could be expelled for a decade if they were thought to be some kind of threat to the city. (An ostraka was the name for a pottery shard such as the ones on which people cast their votes for whether a person should receive this penalty.)

Every human civilization of which I am aware has displayed some tendency to distance itself from those who are seen to hold unacceptable views or behave in unacceptable ways. Naturally, what is acceptable has varied widely in different times and locations. Today, a young man in Pakistan might cancel you for creating art of the prophet Muhammad, while an elderly woman in Japan might cancel you for calling Japanese WWII soldiers war criminals. A conservative Christian author in America would cancelled for supporting the right to abortion on demand, while an agnostic author in France would be cancelled for saying the death toll of the Holocaust has been exaggerated. Prior to the 20^th century, any man who regularly engaged in sexual intercourse with other men would have been ostracized in most human societies, but not so today.

This is part of why I wrote that people don’t usually object to the concept of cancellation. What they object to is the subjects, frequency, and severity of the cancellation.

There are few of us who would support a completely cancel free society. If you knew that the owner of a bakery near you was an active member of the Ku Klux Klan, would you still buy bread there? If you knew that an Instagram user was a convicted sexual offender, would you still follow their account? Would you give a job to someone who frequently and loudly declares women to be something that rhymes with switch or bunt? Would you want to be friends with someone who goes out of their way to insult your religious beliefs at every possible opportunity? Few of us can honestly say that we would still patronize the bakery, follow the person on Instagram, offer the person a job, and ask the person out for a cup of coffee.

Where the normal human behavior of cancellation turns into what is commonly derided as “cancel culture” is, as I previously suggested, when the number and variety of subjects, the frequency, and the severity of that cancellation increase. Although I have no statistics to back me up (and don’t know how you would collect them), I certainly believe that the past few years have seen a vast increase in these aspects of cancellation, and the interconnection brought about by the internet is largely to blame. The more interconnected we become and the more aspects of our lives depend upon that interconnection, the more any severing of that interconnection will affect us.

Previously, if a lawyer in private practice in some small Oregon town held racist views, it might offend some of the people who knew him personally and cause them to take their business elsewhere, but there would be few negative consequences beyond that for the racist lawyer. No one outside of his personal acquaintance was likely to be aware of these racist opinions unless the lawyer made them known in some widely read publication. Now, a social media post by this lawyer expressing the view that black Americans are inferior to white Americans could be viewed by a million people in a single day. He could arrive at work the next morning to find his voicemail and email inboxes full to capacity with angry messages. By the end of the week, he could have few clients. After all, his contact information is now available to anyone in the world on his personal website.

That is the first development that has created cancel culture. The second is the rapid change in societal views regarding human sexuality and racial justice. Western society has over the course of the past few decades shifted more on these issues than in the previous two thousand years, and in the past five or ten years the shift has been equal to what occurred in the past fifty or one hundred years. This is part of the general speeding up of history, something I have observed since I wrote an (unpublished) essay about it in my college days. Modern methods of mass communication have been the prime drivers of this acceleration, most especially the internet, an invention of no less importance to humanity than the printing press—and perhaps far more.

Modern mass communication has allowed people with minority views to find each other and organize in ways that were previously impossible. It has allowed an individual to be constantly bombarded by the opinions of others, even as that individual’s opinions become increasingly known to the rest of the world. It used to be that only authors and politicians were likely to face much public wrath for their views, but thanks to social media, we are all authors and politicians. Every one of us is in danger of invoking that wrath.

I therefore do not believe that cancel culture is a myth: far from it. Cancel culture is a major problem, but not because the concept of cancellation exists. If we are unable to distance ourselves from the problematic beliefs of others in some way, we will not be able to protect those principles that are most dear to us. I happen to believe that the only thing holding certain human beings back from committing certain evils is the knowledge that they will face social penalties if they do so, and a world with fewer evils is a better world. What I find problematic about cancel culture is the following.

First, there seems to be a “one strike and you’re out” nature to cancellation in our current sphere. A private individual can be taped on a smartphone appearing to verbally antagonize another person for no good reason in the morning (the fact that they were not the one who began the fight being unknown to internet viewers), become the target of Twitter’s collective wrath by lunch time and be out of a job by closing time. The speed with which this all occurs prevents people from engaging in critical thinking and proper research. More than that, it negates the possibility of genuine repentance. For the Christian, any form of cancellation must include some possibility of redemption. There may never be a complete restoration of the person’s previous position in society, but the punishment must fit more than the nature of the crime: if the punishment is ongoing, as cancellations often are, then it must also take into account the nature of the criminal and how that nature changes over time: whether they show any remorse, express genuine repentance, and make efforts at restitution.

Second, I am concerned by the number of people being cancelled. As the standard for socially acceptable speech and behavior narrows by the day, so does the percentage of the population outside the bounds of acceptability. We are fast approaching a time when we will be unable to praise anyone, because everyone will be evil—that is, everyone but the individual doing the judging. (Biblically speaking, everyone is evil, but Scripture also recognizes that human beings can do good things and we should give honor to whom honor is due.)

I believe there is a place for reevaluating historical figures. You won’t find me crying when a statue of a Confederate general is taken down, because despite what you may have heard, historical documentation indicates that they were very much fighting for their right to own other human beings. When Pennsylvania State University removed a statue of Joe Paterno after it was discovered that he had done too little in response to the gross sexual abuses committed by Jerry Sandusky, I supported that decision. But we must also be careful not to become guilty of chronological arrogance, believing that only we in this age are righteous and wise, while all who came before us were awful. This is an exaggeration of our own goodness more than an exaggeration of past evils, for the past was certainly full of evils.

Third, and getting more to the culture part of cancel culture, I am concerned by the glee with which many cancellations take place. There is not only a spirit of self-righteousness on the part of the cancellers, but also a kind of perverse enjoyment. We have all become familiar with the ritual by which an offending statement or action is identified and the pile on begins, each commenter on social media or advertising sponsor signaling their own virtue by publicly cancelling perceived vice. Cancellation is America’s pastime just as much as baseball, and the comparisons with public executions in past eras is apt. I recall hearing a professor once say that if we were to have a public execution in the highly industrialized West today, a lot of people would probably turn up for it. There will always be a certain segment of humanity that derives joy from witnessing the punishment of a heretic. Such an attitude has no place among God’s children. The only proper way to respond to the misdeeds of others is in fear and trembling, knowing what grace we have received and longing for all sinners to repent and be saved.

I’ve just outlined three problems with cancel culture. This naturally leads to the question of whether a Christian should ever cancel someone. I think it depends very much on the reason the individual is being cancelled, the severity of the cancellation, and the context of the cancellation. Scripture gives us principles for evaluating the behavior and teachings of those within the Church and responding to sin correctly. We do not hold those outside the Church to the same standard, but we may still disassociate from non-Christian individuals if they do things or promote ideas that are severely harmful to our society. The worst of the worst—those who actively promote or engage in violent activities against other humans—should most certainly be cancelled in various ways, but cancellation never means forsaking the obligation to love and forgive others. Sin may have practical consequences in this life and trust may need to be earned back, but the Christian always thinks in terms of the eternal above all, seeking to serve his or her Lord in everything.

I hope these few thoughts about cancel culture have been helpful in explaining my views on the subject and may even benefit you as you attempt to navigate our cancel happy world.