Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
- Master Yoda
For the past 9 months or so I have taken more of an interest in political and cultural controversies than I have in the past. The two or three people who follow my blog (hi Mom!) may have wondered why I'm doing a series on political/cultural debates on a blog called "Jesus Pieces" that is supposed to be about spiritual things. That's honestly a valid question and one that I have even asked myself!
However, when you look a bit deeper I think everything is spiritual. As I've reflected on the phenomenons of cancel culture and political polarization I've come to think that the core of these issues is in fact very spiritual. You could probably point to many different biblical principles that are relevant to the cancel culture discussion, but I want to draw out some that are most prominent to me.
The Spiritual Phenomena Beneath Cancel Culture
1) The Anger-Murder Spectrum
You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
- Matthew 5:21-22
Jesus' motive in moving us beyond not murdering to not being angry isn't just to make our lives harder. I think he's pointing out that anger and murder are not categorically different things but differing degrees of the same thing. We might imagine a spectrum, with anger being at the mild end of the spectrum and murder being at the extreme end:
There is something murderous about anger or hate that we allow to fester within us. Anger is murder in embryonic form. This is so important to grasp in this polarized moment.
The problem is not that we disagree with each other or have different perspectives—as I've shared previously, the coming together of differing perspectives can actually be really helpful. The problem is when we villanize our opponents and give into feelings of hate, contempt, and disgust towards them. Like so many things in Christian thought, this really boils down to seeing and respecting the image of God in people. If you feel hate or contempt towards someone, that is evidence that you likely feel like they are somehow lesser than you (of lesser worth in some way), which is antithetical to the supreme worth they in fact have as an image bearer. Part of Jesus' point in this teaching is that even if your feelings of anger or hate do not get expressed in literal physical violence, there is still a spiritual violence that is done within you as you feed those feelings. Passion, disagreement, social justice, and respectful debate all still have their place—and passing flashes of anger are an inevitable part of being human—but they must not cross the line into hate or condescension.
While we need to be concerned about the spiritual harm done by harbouring anger, we should also point out that literal physical violence is a concern too! The movie Civil War by A24 studios came out in theatres in the past couple months. While I haven't seen it yet, it's on my want-to-watch list, in part because the concept of America becoming so divided that civil war breaks out doesn't seem like a too far-fetched idea! Even though I don't actually think that civil war will be breaking out soon, all of us who have stakes in the culture wars need to connect the dots between culture war and literal war. The road to literal physical violence is paved by giving in to (and even feeling righteous about) our anger and hate.
2) Our Spiritual War
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
- Ephesians 6:12
If you're like me you probably haven't heard much about demons or spiritual warfare in church. Or maybe you're one of the growing number of Christians that doesn't even believe in literal demons at all. Either way, the drawback of not caring about or believing in demons is that it can become easier to demonize human beings.
It seems that humans are hard-wired to think in warlike terms: we think in an us-vs-them framework, we look for enemies to blame for our problems and to channel our anger towards, and nothing gets a group of people more united than having a common enemy. This way of thinking may just be a fact of being human, but for the Christian the question becomes: am I going to villainize other humans or "the spiritual forces of evil"?
The bible is unequivocal about the spiritual battle taking place. 1 John 3:8 says, "The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil." The irony is that the more that liberals and conservatives think of each other as the enemy, feeding into the hate mentioned above, the more ammunition is given to the real enemy (spiritual evil).
3) The Good and Evil Within
"The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts."
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye."
- Matthew 7:3-5
The battle line between the cosmic spiritual forces of good and evil described above is paralleled by the battle line between good and evil within each of us. When we lash out to cancel someone spouting a view we disagree with, it can be tempting to ignore half of reality in two ways:
We pay attention to the good within us but ignore the evil. We fool ourselves into thinking we're on "the good team" and harbour condescending feelings.
We also pay attention to the bad in the other person but ignore the good (i.e. the image of God in them). However wrong you think they are on a certain issue, the odds are there are other areas of that person's life where they have compassion, intelligence, hopes, giftings, and other expressions of the image of God in them.
That none of us is perfect is a basic Sunday school teaching, but it can be hard to remember when we're scrolling social media or at the family gathering with uncle with extreme political views! In the heat of the moment it can feel like we are 100% good and they are 100% evil, and it can take a few moments of quiet and reflection to remember that each of us is a mix of both.
4) Redemption is the Goal
"Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live."
- Ezekiel 33:11
Too often, our attempts to cancel someone come out of a desire for vengeance or punishment. Or even if we don't act out on our feelings but "cancel them in hearts" by emotionally dismissing them, giving up on them, harbouring condescension, or feeling judgemental, we have lost sight of the fact that God still cares about that person and therefore we should too.
Of course, accountability, consequences, and punishment should still have their place in cases where a legitimate infraction has occurred. The bible does not suggest we downplay sin. But even in cases where a person has sinned and needs to be held accountable in some way, the core issue for our purposes here is the disposition of our hearts towards that person. God's disposition towards that person is love and the desire to see them be restored, so that should be our heart for them too.
Related to this point, when we disagree with someone, we should ask ourselves whether our hope is to silence, embarrass, or persuade them. Certain methods and attitudes of debate might be effective if your goal is to silence or embarrass the other person, but usually those same methods and attitudes are powerless to persuade. Typically it takes empathy, listening to their perspective, respectful dialogue, and lots of time and patience to change someone's mind. (Daryl Davis is a particularly inspirational example of this: he is a black man who convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan members to exit the Klan by befriending them and talking with them.)
It's Personal
I've been guilty of the very things that I am warning against in this blog post. One example that comes to mind is during all the controversy of the pandemic era. I'm sorry to say this, but I had a condescending spirit and mindset towards Trump-supporting, anti-mask/anti-vaxxers. If you are one of those people, please forgive me!
It was easy to slip into that kind of mindset during the pandemic, regardless of your politics. We were all isolated at home, not interacting with a diversity of people anymore, so we were cocooned in our ideological echo chambers. Moreover, it is easier to dehumanize people when you aren't interacting with them face-to-face. So I found myself assuming all sorts of negative things about that group of people and ascribing selfish motives to them. But when we emerged out of the pandemic and I started seeing some of these people again in person, it dawned on me that they were largely decent and kind people, and it was foolish and wrong of me to forget that. They love their families, want to protect those they care about, want to do what's best for society, and have rational and understandable reasons for their beliefs. They have hopes and dreams and bills, do chores and have jobs, want to love and be loved—in other words, they are humans like me!
I never was violent to one of these people. I never even lashed out on social media. But those condescending feelings and thoughts were still bubbling around inside me, and Jesus cares just as much about our insides as he does our outsides. I wouldn't say my political or social perspectives have necessarily changed, but the disposition of my heart has changed. Hopefully I can remember this lesson for all the current and future controversies our society finds itself in.