A Christian's Guide to Cancel Culture
Originally, this was going to be about statues and monuments only, the difference between them and why that matters, and what Christians might should consider heavily in their application of living the life. However, it was realized that those are smaller parts to a much broader sentiment, and one that was also kind of disconnected from being an exclusively Christian issue: the so-called Cancel Culture.
Recently, my wife was thumbing through social media and came across a video, the voice of which I recognized almost immediately. It was that of John Crist, the Christian comedian who was accused by several women of some pretty substantial sexually-driven, emotional and psychological abuse all made possible by his Christian celebrity status in the culture at the time. Many of these women were not silent about these things for what apparently was quite some time, but it wasn’t until a major religious publication shed light on it, that the Christian culture in whose circle John Crist had his most success, began to take meaningful notice eventually leading to his admittance to treatment and subsequent self-imposed exile.
Let me be clear, I have never really taken to John Crist as a performer, or his comedy. I love great Christian parody, satire, etc., but there was something about his content that lacked value as it never made a venture past the satire and at times, mockery. He found an audience that loved the criticism and the mockery, and I do have some evidence that this is exactly who he was going for, based on his expectations of how the culture would respond to his fall. You can find the full message from him here.
I had assumed that I lived in a community of people that would be the first to look down on me and judge me and point fingers at me…
I hear that and got frustrated, but not at him. He is not an idiot, most successful comedians have a knack for knowing the audience.
…and I felt nothing but the opposite throughout this whole process. Let me just say how hopeful and encouraging that was to be working on my own mental health and my recovery and healing and have a bunch of people rooting for me and supporting me…
I am glad that this was not his experience, but that judgmental assumption he had expected to experience, is who he wrote comedy for.
…that I was portraying a person on the internet that I was not behaving like privately. I think that's the simplest and easiest way to put it. And that's on me…
I spent the past few days thinking through how Christians handle scandal — it usually goes like this:
Take them down
Remove them from influence permanently
Never trust them again
Condemn their actions so hard as to create further distance from them
Usually we are really effective with that. We might actually be the most effective ‘cancel culture’ on the planet.
So let us get into the Christian’s Guide to Cancel Culture, what can our actual response to sin and the sinner actually be?
Let us look at Jesus and let us go ahead and revisit His response to the woman caught in adultery.
We are not sure that she was actually guilty of that sin, and we are not really sure what Jesus was writing on the ground. All we really get from this is that Jesus let this narrative be controlled by the accusations until He made His declaration. The declaration basically said to these men, that if they occupied the moral authority to execute the punishment for this crime, then by all means go for it. As there were no takers, Jesus told her that since no one was there to condemn her, that neither would He, and ‘from now on sin no more’.
This is the GOSPEL at work, because none of us actually do occupy the moral authority to execute punishment they were demanding.
John Crist’s sin is bad, let that be made clear. He also knew that this was his vice, and used his openness about it (in private) as a tool to gain trust through supposed transparency. The ostracizing, dissolution of relationships and trust, public and personal, are all very much in every way deserved. While I may choose to remain not a fan of him personally, or of his comedy — I need Jesus all the same, and there we are all in this together.
So how does this work into the idea of a cancel culture? Does this mean we continue to accept John Crist’s product/brand/comedy?
There is not a simple answer to this question, and if we were to say ‘no’ people will interpret it as a denial of John Crist, and maybe he too would interpret it that way. I would argue that if the latter were true, that John Crist might still have a bit too much of an incorrect focus on John Crist.
Here are some hypotheticals of what cancellation would do:
His cancellation promotes the idea of justice, and prevents the painting of the Gospel as a convenience to be used in promoting himself as the ‘new and improved’ version of John Crist.
His cancellation, out of his control, would certainly force him to address his spiritual health from an unfamiliar place. The circumstances of his downfall was the result of an exposé, not a personal conviction.
Here are some hypotheticals of what restoration would do:
His restoration is an example of what repentance and realizing the need for Christ’s salvation should be. People like him that deal with sexual addiction have to know that they can be helped, and that people care. People are defined by several things, good and bad — the Gospel is for everyone, and every one.
His restoration can be received by critics of Christian culture, as a ‘brush under the rug’ circumstance where he was ‘let off the hook’. John Crist’s behavior was serial and predatory, and this culture let him out.
His restoration can be received by those he hurt, as a furtherance of their experience as having been abandoned by the people who were supposed to protect them from him.
His restoration, even if handled with accountability, exposes the potential for a relapse and more hurt people.
So what can be done? As a believer, how should we look at this in a way that satisfies the demands of justice and fulfills the beauty of grace?
The truth is that Jesus paid for it all, and I truly hope that John Crist moves forward living his life as though he owes it to Him. We should pray that his motivation is founded upon making Him known, and not John Crist. I truly believe that John Crist’s ability to communicate with humor, the idiosyncratic tendencies of Christianity, can be a really positive way to exhibit the joy we should have as believers, and really put into perspective what it is to be free in spite of imperfections.
Christianity is the original cancel culture. While we more than certainly have gotten it right a few times with high profile people, we seem to have very often failed the ones among us who needed more support than we were willing or able to give because they were not as important. Maybe we ‘gave them to Jesus’ and in doing so we lost a disciple. This reputation is antithetical to that of Jesus — and we need to fix that, and that very well must include John Crist.
