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Cancel Culture
A Christ-centered vantage point, from the “Inside Out” podcast
In a culture without agreed-upon standards, people across the faith and political spectrum sometimes hold others accountable by “cancelling” them. Christian attorney and apologist Abdu Murray believes the impulse to correct a wrong is natural and biblical.
“What Cancel Culture has become is the–I think a quite biblical–act of holding people accountable, but run amok,” he says. According to Murray, Cancel Culture and Christian accountability have different goals. “Cancel Culture is public erasure. There’s almost nothing redemptive in it. It’s an act that looks a lot more like revenge than it looks like accountability.”
Murray is the founder of Embrace the Truth, a non-profit dedicated to Christian apologetics and evangelism. He reminds us that when you feel that the wrongs of others should be addressed, cancelling is not the only choice.
“If you refuse to cancel them,” he says, “you can still hold them accountable.”
We need to know our motivation: do we want wrongdoers to take responsibility and repent, or do we want to ruin them?
“We always have to think redemptively,” Murray says. “How can this be redeemed? A good friend of mine once said this, ‘that I always want to make it easier for someone to sincerely apologize rather than harder.’ And sometimes Cancel Culture makes it harder for someone to sincerely apologize.”
Cancelling, of course, goes both ways, and it is possible that you could be cancelled and feel that it is because of your faith in Jesus Christ.
“The phrase that’s been repeated many, many times: ‘You can’t always control your reputation, but you can control your character.’ And as painful as it can be to be rejected, the real issue is: are we looking to Jesus to say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’?”
Learn about Abdu Murray and Embrace the Truth here.
Learn about his books here.
