#Cancelled - What do I do with all of this?

 

If you’re a part of mainstream society in any way these days, then you know the term Cancel Culture.

For the most part, this started, rightfully so, in and around the beginning of the #MeToo movement.  Throughout the US, Canada and around the world, men were beginning to be held accountable for their past actions that had previously be swept under the rug.  People were empowered to come out with their stories that they had hidden for so long and these men are finally starting to pay for some of what they’ve done.

This expanded to scrutinizing old tweets and posts.  Videos and photos from college years started to appear and one after another people were expected to completely forget about person A or person B.  Anything that could be used as a “gotcha” became a headline and it’s still happening today. 

The merits of the cancelling have long been discussed and I’ll dig in a small amount here but first I have a question:  What do I do with the previous work of someone who has been cancelled?

Do I avoid The Cosby Show despite the place it holds in my childhood based on the things that Bill himself has been accused of?  Again, in his case, he was convicted and then had a sentence overturned.  That hasn’t changed the view of him in the public eye now; and I’m not sure that it should.

What if the night you met your first love, a Chris Brown song was playing?  Do his personal actions taint that memory?

Say you favourite sports star gets caught driving drunk or having an affair, do you stop cheering for them at the next game and burn the jersey?

What about if it was family?  Is there anything that close family could do that would make you flip the switch?  And even if you wanted to or thought that you should, could you?

Lastly, what about if it’s a Pastor who has been accused of inappropriate behaviour in some form?  Does their previous work go away?  What about if that Pastor helped to bring you to faith?

While I may take flack for it, I’m here to tell you that I don’t believe we should throw the baby out with the bathwater and if I’m being honest, I don’t think it’s the Christian thing to do.

Should people be held accountable for their actions?  Absolutely.

Should it influence how I interact with that athlete, pastor, actor etc. in the future?  Probably.

Does it mean that everything I have learned from that person, everything that person’s words or work made me feel, everything that person has meant to me, is immediately scrapped?  No, I don’t think so.

It’s easy to find an indiscretion in someone’s life that would have them “cancelled” in today’s society and with social media and blogging etc. it’s getting easier. 

Of all groups, however I would think Christians should be least likely to cancel the other.  We don’t exactly have a leg to stand on in the history department.  Also, last I saw, a lot of the book that many think was written with a quill in God’s hand, was actually written by a man who would most certainly have been cancelled by today’s Christians and never have had a chance to write in the first place.

For now, I will work to educate myself and my family when new facts about people either in my life or in the celebrity realm come to light.  How to engage with that person going forward and how to engage with what they’ve produced, meant to me etc. in the past, will be taken on a case by case basis from an educated point of view.