When "Cancel Culture" cancels Justice

One of the treasures of quarantine is extended time at the dining room table....eating, lingering, then clearing the table for a way-too long game of Settler's or Bananagrams....and the conversations that emerge with my adults-in-training.  They teach us things about Tik-Tok and we try to take advantage of opportunities to slide in one more bit of parental advice without them knowing.  

Tonight's topic:  Cancel Culture.  My daughter who gets the majority of her news on Tik Tok tells of the most recent "campaign":  A business owner in Kentucky has a sign on the door that says "We don't sell to N#$*%&" and the Tik Tok community sets out to punish the owners, shut down the business, and teach this racist a lesson.  

Except....what does the racist learn?  Are they convicted of their sin?  Repent of their racist beliefs and behaviors?  Or are they further emboldened to get revenge on the liberals or Democrats or the "N#$*%&" who ruined their business?

What is our goal in a cancel culture?  

There seems to be alot of satisfaction in our culture for ruining someone's reputation or career or earnings when they don't speak or behave the way we want them to.  I think we'd call that vengence.  Getting back, making them pay. 

The problem is, that's not the same as Justice.  Justice is about making things right.  Making things right might look more like the business owner repenting of their racist beliefs and changing their ways.  Cancel culture doesn't leave room for repentance.  There are very few 2nd chances.  It seems that restoration of a person, or reconciliation isn't expected or even desired in many cases.  

But for the Christian, 2 Corinthians 5:16-20 says we've been given the ministry of reconciliation:

Because of this decision we don’t evaluate people by what they have or how they look. We looked at the Messiah that way once and got it all wrong, as you know. We certainly don’t look at him that way anymore. Now we look inside, and what we see is that anyone united with the Messiah gets a fresh start, is created new. The old life is gone; a new life burgeons! Look at it! All this comes from the God who settled the relationship between us and him, and then called us to settle our relationships with each other. God put the world square with himself through the Messiah, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins. God has given us the task of telling everyone what he is doing. We’re Christ’s representatives. God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter into God’s work of making things right between them. We’re speaking for Christ himself now: Become friends with God; he’s already a friend with you

The problem with Cancel Culture, the idea of "cancelling" a business or a person or an organization because we don't agree with them means we miss out on what is God's best, which is for us to be reconciled, to come to agreement that people shouldn't be mistreated because of their skin color or their gender or their economic status; for us to agree that our society needs to take care of the vulnerable, the poor, the unborn, the undocumented.  

The Gospel, the Good News, is that God doesn't cancel US when we miss the point, act like idiots, screw up, again.  Instead, in Ephesians 2, we read that he preached peace to those those are far...

14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 

The Cancel Culture doesn't reflect the heart of the Savior.  True justice is about making things right and the reconciliation of all things.