Resisting Cancel Culture with Forgiveness
By Andrea Burke
The church isn’t just a hodgepodge of people singing songs together — it’s a weekly practice in refusing to cancel one another.
What Cancel Culture Demands of Us
The overriding tone in our society today is to withhold forgiveness, define someone by their worst day or their most careless word, and refuse to show mercy.
Cancel culture encourages one to cut off difficult people labeled “toxic”; to build a circle of humans who think like us, vote like us, and live like us.
Cancel culture, in essence, tells us that people need to do some penance, earn their forgiveness, and work hard to deserve a place in our world.
When Culture Decides Who Belongs
The world around us doesn’t have a category for spending time with people who are difficult, sinful, and extra complicated, other than jokes about awkward family Thanksgiving tables. During the last election, there were all-out demands to cut people off if they voted differently from us. Facebook was full of status posts that suggested if you voted for a certain candidate, you were no longer welcome as someone’s friend, in their house, or in their life.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when the hot topic was vaccines and people were drawing lines in the sand about who was allowed to socialize and who wasn’t, we found ourselves in a mixed group of friends who had different views on the vaccine. There was one evening when we stood around our kitchen island and I listened as each friend declared how they weren’t getting the vaccine and why. Little did they know, I had made an appointment that morning to get vaccinated later that week at a pharmacy down the road. I had my reasons and they had theirs, and at some point I blurted out, “Well, I’m getting mine on Thursday!” For a moment, the room was heavy with silence.
“Great!” someone replied, and we were able to continue to talk about the “why” for someone like me and the “why not” for someone else. In that moment, we all chose our friendships over the political drama. This wasn’t about policies and protests; this was about our love for one another and our understanding of one another.
Without true community, conversations like this don’t happen.
Such Were Some of Us
In the church, we get weekly and sometimes daily opportunities to practice working out love for our neighbor because they are not just our neighbor but a brother or sister! When those who don’t know Jesus suggest cutting off those toxic people, we admit that such were some of us. When unbelievers say that forgiveness shouldn’t be given freely, we know that we ought to forgive as Christ has forgiven us (Eph. 4:32). When someone says we don’t need anyone else, we know that we do need one another to help carry burdens and to walk this road of life (Gal. 6:2). When someone says they are just fine without the local church, we know that the only way we can spur one another on is by actually showing up with our real bodies for one another, in person if possible, as often as possible (Heb. 10:24–25).
Where Sinners Hear the Gospel Again
This weekly inoculation against the vices of this world is how we help one another. We notice when someone hasn’t shown up for weeks. Community groups and circles of friendship provide places for confession, prayer, and accountability. The church calls us out of the darkness and into the light. When we are known, it is a lot harder to hide. And there in the light we find we are among others, in good company with brothers and sisters who also stumbled out of the darkness only because of the mercy of God.
It is here at church where sinners saved by grace can hear weekly reminders of how much we need the gospel. The Sunday reminder of the communion table, singing the words of truth, listening to the Word preached—these things are like water in a desert for parched souls.
This article has been adapted from Andrea Burke’s book The Quiet Resistance: An Invitation to Slow Down and Find a Richer Life, published by Baker Books. This book is a compassionate guide to a slower, fuller, and more intentional life characterized by striking beauty, true friendship, tangible quiet, and deep contentment.
Get the book from Baker Book House
Get the book from Amazon
Andrea Burke is a podcaster, Bible teacher, and women’s ministry leader. The author of A Bit of Earth, Andrea is married to Jedediah. They are raising their two kids, dogs, a few stray cats, six ducks, and a lot of chickens in an old farmhouse near Rochester, New York.
