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Cancel vs. Consequence

HighBeamMinistry.com

“The one who digs a pit will fall into it, and whoever rolls a stone— it will come back on him.” (Proverbs 26:27)

 

The above verse? That’s called consequences.

 

People who celebrated Charlie Kirk’s death on social media are being outed by conservatives and subsequently fired from their jobs. The Left complains that the Right is engaging in Cancel culture. After the heaping abuse upon conservatives over the last eight years, forgive me for not crying.

 

But they’re wrong.

 

I did a quick search on the internet and found some great articles and videos describing the difference between Cancel culture and Consequence culture. While you may not understand the gamer references and some of the technical terms, this guy does a super job clarifying the difference. (Cancel Culture VS Consequence Culture – Why “Both Sides” Aren’t Always Bad (MentisWave), www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-f-RJk2h_8)

 

In short, Cancel culture is when an innocent person is punished based on a lie or nonsense. Consequence culture is when a guilty person is punished based on the truth or sense.

 

As MentisWave puts it, “Cancel culture vs. Consequence culture is about innocence vs. objective guilt. When guilty people get their comeuppance, that is a good thing. When innocent people are attacked and slandered for things that are not real, that is a bad thing. It’s actually not a difficult concept to understand at all” (MentisWave, youtube.com).

 

Think back over the last six years when cancel culture attained full speed in 2018, when Leftist institutions began to persecute and silence anyone, and I mean anyone, who dared to oppose their worldview, ideas, feelings, convictions, or self-imposed standards. People from every strata of life were targeted, isolated, and expelled from the public square for even daring to speak against the Leftists in power.

 

Did the persecuted person break a law or a well-established social norm? Nope. All they had to do was exercise their right to free speech or hold an opinion contrary to the Left’s standard. “How dare you say people can’t switch genders!” Bam! “How dare you challenge the ‘conventional wisdom’ that masks and social distancing prevent the spread of COVID!” Pow! “How dare you think that all white people aren’t racist and all other minorities can’t ever be racist!” Crunch! (I’m beginning to sound like an old Batman program.)

 

And with the full weight of government, law enforcement, and hostile public and social media, the targeted person suffered the ultimate price for their non-compliant uppityness – removal from society through excommunication, notably being banned from the online media town square.

 

The punishment for both Cancel culture and Consequence culture is removal from society. Why remove a person from society if they offend? “Physical removal is a way for a free society to remove people who are guilty of things that are bad for that society, that go against the liberty of that society from the society … Physical removal is necessary for a free society to disassociate itself from liars who would seek to destroy the social order” (MentisWave). When physical removal isn’t possible, then the offender’s media voice must be silenced. That’s why the rise of conservative talk radio and television channels tick off the Left so much.

 

Just as a criminal who breaks society’s laws is removed through incarceration, or the jerk who offends common societal decency is ostracized, the punishment for Cancel and Consequence cultures is the same. The Left’s “removal from society” strategy was mostly excommunication—silencing an opponent’s voice by cutting them off from any means of sharing their highly offensive, non-Left-affirming ideas with other conservatives, leftists, and political or cultural fence-sitters.

 

Recently, the “removal from society” attempts by the Left have turned violent. There was the shooting attack in 2017 during the congressional baseball game practice, which left Rep. Steve Scalise severely wounded along with five others. Then there were the two recent attempts on President Trump’s life by Thomas Crooks (Butler, PA) and Ryan Routh (Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach, FL).

 

However, where Cancel culture and Consequence culture diverge is in the basis of the offense for which societal removal is mandated. Remember, Cancel culture is imposed on an innocent person, and Consequence culture is imposed on a guilty person.

 

What constitutes innocence or guilt? The answer is truth vs. lies.

 

The Left’s Cancel culture persecutes opponents who hold the wrong viewpoints, use the wrong words, voice wrong opinions, and embrace wrong beliefs, according to them. Just look at what our nation has gone through since 2020. In their drive to lock down absolute power and control, the Left used COVID and the George Floyd riots to reinforce their entrenched worldview and beliefs about racism, human sexuality, economics, governmental authority, and everything else they deemed to control. Leftist groupthink was all the rage, and rage they did.

 

Anyone who stood in their way was falsely accused of the most egregious things, like bigotry, intolerance, white supremacy, anti-trans hatred, irrational refusal to “trust the science,” racism, sexism, ageism, and everything else CNN and the Left-wing media are still spewing to justify societal removal of all opponents. But were those accusations true? For all but a minute, right-wing lunatic fringe, no. Those accusations were lies. Blatant lies. Ugly, vicious lies meant to browbeat the accuser’s target into silence. They strived to remove the target from society by cutting off their ability to communicate with others (excommunication), and any other means, like firings and lawsuits, to ghettoize their opponent’s influence on the culture. The Left stretched definitions to the breaking point in order to wrap a proverbial towel around their target’s head and waterboard them into submission.

 

That’s the strategy—use the threat of societal removal to force a person to submit and to gain absolute control over them.

 

I know, because it happened to me. I still have family members who canceled me five years ago because of nonsense and baseless accusations regarding my beliefs, convictions, and character. Because I refused to submit to them, they turned their backs on me. Oh well. That’s something Jesus can fix, and I hope He does someday.

 

Consequence culture, on the other hand, is based on truth revealed by God’s word, ingrained through just laws, and practiced through long-established societal norms of behavior based on those same laws and God’s truth.

 

Charlie Kirk’s killer faces the consequences of his deed. God’s truth says, “Don’t murder.” The law says, “Don’t murder.” Society says, “Don’t murder.” If convicted of murder, Charlie Kirk’s assassin will face the consequence of societal removal, even to the extreme, through the death penalty. But the consequences related to Charlie Kirk’s murder aren’t limited to his shooter.

 

From the moment of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, unhinged people with obvious left-wing orientations have posted horrible celebrations over his death with a side-helping of disdain for Charlie’s wife and children. Now, these same miscreants are blubbering all over social media about getting fired from their jobs. Why? Although we are free to express ourselves in our nation, we face constraints from ethics (God’s laws), legal repercussions (man’s laws), and pushback from ordinary, decent people (social norms).

 

Words reflect on the person, and the person reflects upon their situation, that is, their family, friends, employer, church, civic organization, political party, and anything else with which they are connected. Contrary to Leftist belief, no one is entitled to a dang thing, and that’s an immense ice-cold slap in the face for a generation that’s been led to believe they’re entitled to a trophy simply for showing up.

 

Hey y’all. Welcome to the real world. Now, wise up.

 

Is this cancellation? No, because the smarmy, virulent trash-talkers are not being falsely accused of breaking an ethical standard, law, or societal norm. They are actually doing so, and the whole world has the proof of their dreadful speech. Hasn’t anyone told them the internet is global and forever?

 

By celebrating Charlie’s murder, wishing harm upon his widow, and their happiness that his children will now grow up without their father’s love and influence, they have violated the decency within which a healthy society functions and flourishes.

 

The consequence of getting fired is entirely fair because the societal blowback is based on truth. Person X lost their job because the hospital they worked for is an institution predicated on care and mercy. Yet, that carefully cultivated image is wrecked by their mean-spirited employee, who barfed their verbal bile on a corpse. Fired.

 

Person Y lost their job as a teacher because they expressed horrible delight in murder, made especially grievous because of the high-quality man that Charlie was. Do we really want people with that kind of character instilling their warped character into impressionable minds?

 

And yet, that’s what we as a nation have weakly and foolishly put up with for far too many decades, at least since the 60s. If someone had done this in the 1950s, forget their parents smacking them down. The perp would have to face the entire neighborhood first. That was once known quaintly as peer pressure. Then the parents would have the opportunity to complete the brat’s significant emotional experience.

 

It’s way past time for righteous pushback. You break libel laws, prepare to be sued. You stomp on the lines of decency, prepare to be fired, ostracized, buked, and rebuked. Our nation is done with attacking the innocent via cancellation. It’s time for the guilty to bear their consequences to the degree they’ve offended society.

 

The ugly Left is finally falling into the hole they dug for anyone else not living up to their concocted standards while ignoring the objective standards of God’s ways, our laws, and social norms. After pushing the stone as far as they could to the Left, the stone is finally rolling back to its reasonable and beneficial detent position.

 

You can hear the squeals from every direction. The movement is underway. Consequences are rolling. But it can’t stop there.

 

With the apparent rise of a God-embracing revival around the world following Charlie’s death, we need to promote Confirmation culture, where people from every social spectrum come together to affirm what is good and beneficial for all of us in our global societies. For us Christians, let’s not get all self-righteous, but be Jesus-righteous as we confirm the same standards Charlie espoused and carry on his work in the way he so graciously modeled.

 

As I pointed out, our societal norms and laws are based on a solid foundation—God’s truth. Through His word, our Heavenly Father has clearly revealed His truth that we’re all busted-up sinners who desperately need a complete overhaul. The guilt of our offenses against Him is based on truth. Whether it’s “You shall” or “You shall not,” we all fall short. Break one, we break them all (James 2:10). As a result, we all face not cancellation, but the worst consequence, a removal from God’s society, called eternal death.

 

But there’s hope. A great hope. A remarkable hope. A gracious, stunning, overwhelming hope. To His magnificent glory and praise, our Heavenly Father has provided total forgiveness and cleansing, based on His absolute truth and divine law. Jesus took our real guilt so that we could take on His absolute innocence. Through that transaction, no accusation from Satan can stick to us. Therefore, no cancellation and no consequence. Only confirmation that we’re His family, affirming the good He’s doing through us as we become a benefit to God’s Kingdom.

 

And not a pit or stone to worry about.

 

A special note to you, dear reader: I want to know what you think of the Frothy Thoughts Blog. If you will, please send a quick email to HighBeamMinistry@gmail.com with your comment about this blog, or just to let me know you read it. Your response can be a sentence or a page. Don’t worry. High Beam Ministry won’t use your email for spam. For notifications about new material, please use the subscribe button on the website. Thanks so much for reading and replying!

 

Sources:

 

Shining the Light of God’s Truth on the Road Ahead

 

Pastor Jay Christianson

The Truth Barista, Frothy Thoughts

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