Let me clue you in on a new game that’s all the rage now. Trust me, all the kids are playing it.
One weekend we kept two little boys overnight for some friends of ours. They stayed up late watching movies with our girls and had a terrific time. The next morning, my wife made breakfast for all of them.
The scene at the table was cute, so I snapped a photo of it on my cell phone and posted it on Facebook.
A friend of mine commented on how beautiful the kids were. I joked they were all lucky to be alive considering how late they kept us up the night before. A couple more comments and we were done.
But someone else watching wasn’t done yet, by far.
An acquaintance who had never before commented on my page started blasting me out of nowhere. He accused me of being a racist for the joke about my kids. He announced I was the problem in our country today. In fact, people like me were responsible for the killing of an African-American man by the police.
You see, it was the weekend George Floyd was killed. And all the kids at my breakfast table were mixed race.
I made a vain attempt to explain I was simply making a “parent joke”. I felt ridiculous explaining that I actually had no intent to physically kill my own children, nor those of our friends who stayed over. I don’t think of my kids as pawns in racial arguments, and when I look at them I’m not thinking of their race. I’m usually thinking of how beautiful they are and how blessed I am to be their father.
Like the rest of the country, I was completely horrified by the killing of George Floyd. The scene at my breakfast table had nothing to do with his death. In fact, our mixed race family was to some extent the antidote for racism in our country.
But my Facebook friend wasn’t interested in logic or the truth. That’s not how you play the game.
He then took a screenshot of our children. He posted it on his Facebook page and tagged me, announcing my villainy to our mutual friends. He posted also on Instagram, where random people I’d never met began sending me hate messages. They asked for my address so they could come protest me in person outside my home. Thankfully they never found where we lived.
As you read this, you probably realize the absurdity of the situation. But the funny thing was, at the time several of our mutual friends began to question whether I was indeed a bad person. I guess nothing’s more fun that finding out a pastor is really evil. Just watch any Law and Order episode with a pastor in it and you don’t have to guess who the murderer will be in the end! People I expected to laugh this off weren’t laughing.
So how do you prove to the world you’re not racist? Evidently loving and raising mixed race children in my own home wasn’t enough.
What happened to me is called being “cancelled”. That’s when because of someone’s beliefs or ideology, you attack them using shame as your weapon. Instead of trying to understand another person’s viewpoint, you label them as “evil” and attempt to get as many people as possible to shame and reject them too.
The game is played as follows:
First, find someone you disagree with. Now take their belief and polarize it to the farthest extreme example of that belief. In other words, if they are conservative, their politics must be the same as Hitler’s. If progressive, they are communists who want to give our country to China.
Then make the blanket statement that anyone who believes (insert idea, person, or political party) is a (racist, woke, a nazi or a communist). The labels are interchangeable depending on your politics.
Next, repeat your accusation over and over on social media.
The people you accuse don’t want to be seen as a racist, woke, a nazi or a communist, so they immediately stop saying what they believe and go into hiding. However, they continue to believe it. You haven’t changed any minds, you’ve only made enemies.
But for anyone who won’t back down, you rally the rest of your friends against them saying, “Surely you don’t want to be friends with a (insert random epithet here). That would mean you are a (random epithet) too!”
At the end of this, no wrong has been righted. People are simply made to choose sides, and encouraged to paint their opponents as evil incarnate. Hearts are never won over to the side of truth, and injustices go on unchecked…
All because we’re too childish to talk to each other like adults.
The people who play this game possess a rabid self-righteousness about their cause. They believe they are actually doing good by cancelling their opponents. But more than Republican or Democrat, Pro-life or Pro-Choice, more than even racism, this mindset is what may actually bring about the end of our civilization.
If we only shout accusations and labels at each other, we can never talk about our differences. And when people can’t talk about differences, all that’s left is to go to war over them.
Do you have a right to unfriend people? Of course, you do. I have had to do it myself, but I have never done it because I disagreed. In some cases, it was the only way to keep people from vomiting their own hatred into my life. But the hatred is rarely inherent in people’s beliefs or ideas, but in how they choose to respond to people with different ideas.
The reason I know cancel culture is toxic is because I understand the power of hate.
“But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.” – 1 John 2:11
“Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in them” – 1 John 3:14-15
Hate is indeed a powerful weapon. It has been the fuel for many of the greatest conquests in history. It has empowered men to utterly destroy their opponents, and to even slaughter the innocent. If you doubt hate is powerful, just look at every atrocity of the last 100 years. Dictators have risen to power by destroying those who dared disagree with them.
Hate also works in the lives of regular folks like you and me. It causes warring couples to rip children apart, demanding they side with one parent or the other. It empowers gossip to destroy reputations and separate friends. It makes family members refuse to speak to each other for years at a time, usually over some minor slight.
But while hate is a powerful fuel, there is a consequence for employing it as your weapon. Even if what you are fighting for is a good cause, fighting with hate ultimately ends in evil. The ends never justify the means.
Here’s the the secret of hate we never discover until it’s too late. After all the destruction is done, hate always turns around and kills its host. The fire that empowers eventually burns out of control and consumes the one employing it.
What’s the solution? It’s simple…
“…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven…” – Matthew 5:44-45
That was the difference in the approaches of Malcolm X and MLK to racial injustice. One was willing to destroy his enemy by any means necessary for his cause, the other chose to love his enemies in the example of Christ. In doing so, many of King’s enemies ended up becoming his friends and marching with him.
It was that love that changed the hearts of a nation. The hatred might have worked also, but at what cost? What would have been left after the carnage was over?
That’s the question I’m asking you now. After you finish cancelling everyone who disagrees with you and utterly destroying them, what will be left even if you win?
That would be the most pyrrhic of all victories.
I’m choosing not to play the “Cancellation” game. I know what it feels like and I don’t want to make anyone know that level of pain. Most of all, I refuse to let hate destroy me.
Our disagreements will never destroy us by themselves. But HOW we choose to disagree absolutely may. I believe the joy around my children’s breakfast table is more of an answer to the hatred in the world than a hundred cancellations. So my choice is to fight against evil by doing good. That way, everyone wins.
