The rise of “cancel culture” is an interesting manifestation of society’s subconscious biblical yearnings. Behind the forces of cancel culture is our culture’s deep desire to identify sinners. And not only are these identified sinners supposed to display public confession and suffer public shame, but then they are isolated, “canceled”, from the rest of society. This is motivated by a longing to demarcate between the good guys and the bad guys and make sure the bad guys pay up. And turns out, this notion is not a new historical phenomenon, it’s rooted in the Bible. But broken from its original theological-biblical framework, cancel culture is just a secular attempt at atonement that has lost track of the grace that was in integral part of the original system of atonement. Our current political climate (on both sides of the isle!!!) is an expression of the age-old tension between justice and mercy. Humans naturally long for both. And sinful humans tend to long for justice for others and mercy for themselves! Ironic isn’t it. But nonetheless, deep down, we all long for justice and yet we all long for mercy too and this creates a tension within our hearts so much so that most people end up taking sides. Cancel culture has taken the “justice” side, supposedly. Cancel culture has carefully curated a list of offenses (built on the biblical notion of sin) that are not to be forgiven but are to be shamed and punished. The criminal is to be canceled, ostracized, and publicly rebuked. It’s almost as if we are back in Mosaic times and we are sending the “unclean” people outside the camp. But what this approach does not realize, because it has been divorced from its original source in Christianity, is that the Mosaic atonement system was determined to uphold both justice and mercy. It did not take sides.

While the atonement system of Leviticus certainly did demand that sins be paid for, God instituted a way of paying for sins that brought the sinner back to him, not drove him away from him. The purpose of atonement was reconciliation, not isolation. What society tends to think of as incompatible opposites (justice and mercy), the Bible sees as complimentary. While culture has decided to let the elites choose which offenses fall under the “justice” category and which offenses are no real offenses at all and should just be given unlimited mercy, the Bible’s system of atonement is built to give a sinner mercy while never compromising justice for even the smallest offense.

How can this be? How does the Bible resolve the tension between justice and mercy? How can sins be punished but the sinner be saved? The Apostle Paul put it this way, how could God be both “just and the justifier”? God must be just due to His perfect nature. But he also seeks to justify, to declare sinners innocent. How can he do both? It’s the Gospel: “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:24-26). At the cross, justice and mercy meet. God satisfies His perfect moral standards by unleashing punishment and wrath on the sins of the world, but he sends out mercy because the man undergoing the justice does it as an innocent substitute for the guilty. At the cross, sins get paid for. Justice is done. But also at the cross, sinners get forgiven. Mercy is done. And so as Jesus takes His last breath on the tree, He declares, “It is finished”. Justice is finished. Mercy is finished. And neither at the expense of the other.

Cancel culture may not ever realize that the Gospel is the solution to it’s deepest yearnings, but you can. No matter where you fall along the political line, make sure your party doesn’t become your Gospel. When we allow our political commitments to take the place of the Gospel, we fail to realize that it is only at the cross where both justice and mercy can be perfectly upheld. It is only at the cross that our deepest needs can be met. Do not let any political movement make you think it’s found a better Gospel. All justice, cancel-culture, is no Gospel at all. All mercy, affirmation-culture, is no Gospel at all. Only the innocent man from Nazareth crucified is the Gospel. Don’t forget it. You’ve got something everyone wants (even if they don’t realize it). Cling to it.