for those who have been cancelled

Cancel culture. Ubiquitous in recent years, the phrase started as a way to call people out and has evolved into a dynamic of judging and defining people by snapshots of their imperfect lives. Cancelling provides an easy out for frustrating relationships or people we’d rather not get to know. Thanks to polarized politics and a pandemic keeping us in front of our screens all day, this special kind of rejection is now a familiar phrase and I’m guessing it’s here to stay. 

 

I don’t know how all of you have fared in recent months or years – how many of you have spoken up, how many have just shut down, how many of you have taken risks that panned out or ones that put you in facebook jail. I have friends across the spectrum – activists and passivists alike – and I’ve noticed in general that cancel culture has a lot of us on edge. 

 

I realize a blog post about cancel culture would probably have been more timely six months to a year ago, but I’ve been too timid to write, still recovering from the sting of cancelation myself. Not a lot of cancelation mind you, but when you’re an Enneagram 3, and a little bit addicted to approval from others, it doesn’t take a lot of cancelling to feel wounded. 

 

I’ve always been a truth teller, but in the last several years have added in the Christian practice of lament. With the number of injustices that have been upheld by people hijacking the name of Christ I’ve found it increasingly difficult to hold my peace. 

 

Opinionated as I am, I’ve never been a keyboard warrior and I don’t think even my harshest critics would label me as such. But I’ve not been silent about many things – namely, my belief that black lives matter, that immigrants are humans, that guns shouldn’t kill kids, Christian nationalism is heresy, racism is real, corporate greed is gross, vaccines save lives, patriarchy sucks and health care for all would be super duper nice. And not to diminish the love and solidarity from the overwhelming majority, I also never realized I could strike so many nerves without even trying. 

 

In the online world, cancel culture takes on many forms, ranging from the tacit unfollow to the flamboyant one-two punch of unfriend and block. 

 

Typical social media users have friends, while more public figures tend to have followers. By virtue of my work, I have both friends and followers, with a good amount of overlap in a special group labeled funders. Missionaries are a bit of a public commodity and financial support is used as a sign of approval – both personally and professionally. I’ve unfortunately learned that cancelling donations is a special kind of cancel culture with its own pointed message. 

 

Our true friends have always stuck with us, even when we’ve gotten a bit fringy. This past year though, our followers who assumed that “missionary” was synonymous with conservative, Trump-supporting exporters of white nationalism, (it’s not,) got a whiff of our actual relationship with Jesus (justice, mercy and Kingdom of God) had a choice to make. In 15 years we’ve never experienced anything like this. Only since cancel culture really became a thing, have funders who disagreed with us personally begun to show their disapproval with their wallets. The cancellation has occasionally come with a written explanation – We can’t send money to support socialists (we’re definitely not). Other times we’ve just picked up on the correlation: when on Monday I lament the loss of Black Lives and on Tuesday I see the cancelation by known MAGA folk it doesn’t feel coincidental. 

 

Our close friends have tried to encourage us, you don’t want people like that on your support team anyway, which is soothing in one sense but troubling in another. I’ve always believed that the ministry we run is so absolutely worthwhile – in a global, macro, human-kind sense. Our tag line is Seeking the Peace of Luapula, our ministry geared in every way towards the total flourishing of every dimension of society. Our non-Christian friends (we have lots!) are largely unmoved by our motivation – for Christ – because the common ground we share is more than enough. The logic of Christian cancellers however is far more fixated on nuance – I smell a hint of feminism in the air and I’m highly uncomfortable with the implications of this and will therefore be withdrawing my support for the feeding program because your egalitarian marriage is somehow incongruent with lunch for little Mwewa and I will pray for you.

 

I’m not actually radical. Or that outspoken. Honestly. I have plenty of friends for whom I am the most conservative person they know and I have other friends for whom I am the most liberal person they know and really I’m the same person in front of all of them – it’s just where we all land on the spectrum. I follow the Gospel Coalition and Mother Jones. Don’t try to make sense of it. I don’t fit in many boxes and I’m happy with that, but I do hate feeling like I have to shape-shift simply so that my neighbors here aren’t punished for my authenticity. Because canceling me for personal ideologies never just cancels me. It cancels a web of people who are connected to our funders through me and that is what keeps me awake at night. 

 

I’ve played the chameleon for so long and I’m really good at it. I know every word in the Baptist hymnal but have also shared office space with the Stop Walmart Campaign so yes, I can hang with all sorts. I’m also at a place in my journey where congruency is really important to me. There’s a Seinfeld episode where George Castanza is having a characteristic freak out because his girlfriend and regular friends are mixing and he can’t cope. “There’s friendship George and there’s relationship George, and the two can never meet!” I too played this game through most of my 20s and 30s and maybe it’s because I’m now old and cranky but I just don’t want to anymore. You can cancel me if you like. But please don’t cancel my people. 

 

It’s mostly for the 400 school aged children and the 250 adults living with HIV and the 300 farmers and the 50 pastors who are direct beneficiaries of programs that I administer that I don’t want people to cancel me over my completely unrelated views on whatever is coming out of Tucker Carlson’s mouth. Caring about current events is not a “distraction” from my life’s work nor is it a reflection of missional drift. We’ve had some advisors remind us that we must be “diplomatic” and we do that too. I bite my tongue ten times for every one time I post something even loosely debatable. But this isn’t the way things ought to be. In my heart of hearts I don’t want to completely overhaul our donor base to include only ideological carbon-copies. Nor do I want to walk on eggshells pretending I have no opinions beyond what happens inside of this little village. I want something healthier than that. 

 

I want curiosity.

Those who have written to say that they are withdrawing support of the ministry because of a clash of personal views have never actually dialogued with us. I wish so much that someone would say, “That’s a really interesting perspective, can you tell me how you arrived at that conclusion?” Or, “I see that this is really important to you. Would you mind sharing what your experience has been?” Without curiosity, there is no connection. Without connection, there is no empathy. Without empathy, there is no humanity. And just like that, cancel culture fuels itself by vilifying because it’s easier to label someone as evil and move on. 

 

I’ve watched so many cancelers explain their “unfriend and blocking spree” as simply wanting to “get rid of the negativity in my life.” Boundaries are reasonable, but I don’t think that’s what cancel culture is. Canceling someone outright for a difference of opinion isn’t being boundaried, it’s a sign of low differentiation. Low differentiation can’t cope when another person sees the world differently as it feels personally threatened by a plurality of viewpoints. Differentiated people however are confident in their own thinking and can either support another's view without becoming wishy-washy or reject another's view without becoming hostile. Differentiation is the polar opposite of cancel culture – and if we’re adults, we should probably take note of that. 

Even well differentiated people have boundaries. I can be friends with you if you think BLM is a terrorist organization – we can stick to what we have in common, like cake-baking or needle point – but if you start spewing hate in the presence of my black son, for his sake, I’m going to ask you to leave. And I would expect that others would respond the same to me. But cancel culture says, there is zero redeeming quality in you, and that can’t be true. 

Our human hearts are wired for more than this. Would you know the real me and love me just the same?Isn’t that what we all want – empathy, kindness, connection? Is that asking too much? I don’t think so. Are empathy, kindness and connection incongruent with passion, activism, or even righteous anger? I don’t think so. Nuance matters here, and I think Christians could stand to manage nuance a lot better than we currently are. 

We can’t remain neutral because that’s not being present in the world. 
We ought not fight with everything because that’s undifferentiated.

We do have to fight with some things because that is what’s Christlike. 

Jesus flipped tables. He also healed. All of his actions were intended to restore relationship – never to break it. Cancel culture prioritizes rightness over relationship, cause over curiosity, yet it doesn’t yield the fruit it’s hoping for. In trying to balance what feel like contending energies (ie, righteous anger and loving kindness) I think a good rule of thumb is “bear more pain than you inflict.” 

When I read Luke’s gospel and scan the headings, in-between all the parables I read:  Jesus heals, heals, preaches, cleanses, heals, ministers, heals, forgives, calms, heals, heals, feeds, heals, heals, heals, JESUS BRAIDS A WHIP AND CLEARS THE TEMPLE… and finally, Jesus gives his life for those who were still trying to cancel him. 

When I look at the life of Jesus. His ministry of restoring right relationship between people and God included a whole lot of healing and only a little bit of table flipping so when Christians reverse that balance, they are doing it in the name of ego, not the name of Christ. 

I recently listened to a friend explain that Christ is the cure for human arrogance. He said, “There is no idea more powerful for humility than the gospel because the gospel invites us to embrace our wrongness and to recognize above all that Jesus is right.” It’s a dramatic reorientation. To be a Christian is to admit, I don’t have to be right because Jesus is right. It is so freeing to not have to defend your own rightness tooth and nail to protect your own pride. Because your pride has died with Christ. In this way we experience the healing of self-righteousness and receive an invitation to something more holy and this is the place I want to find myself.  

 

I’ll admit there are some butterflies in my stomach even at the thought of posting this. I’m afraid of being canceled for talking about being canceled. Oh the irony. At a time when I’m ready to sell a kidney to build a library, I’m wondering, are my readers curious and differentiated enough to hear my heart and love me anyway? I don’t know. I hope so. And if not, you still matter to me.