Cancel culture Is dangerous

We live in the midst of a cancel culture. Recently The Mandalorian star Gina Carano was fired for a statement made on social media. She said, “Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views?”

She implied that being a conservative today is like being Jewish in Germany just before the Holocaust. For this she was canceled by Disney. This is not surprising. We live in a Romans 1 culture. A Romans 1 culture “suppresses the truth in unrighteousness” (verse 18). Satan always deals in lies. The greatest threat to the kingdom of lies is the truth.

Cancel culture is nothing new. Jeremiah the prophet faced a cancel culture many years ago. In Jeremiah 11 the men of Anathoth (his hometown!) conspired against him. Jesus was unsuspecting. God revealed the conspiracy to him (verse 18). Their plan was to kill him. They said, “Let us destroy the tree with its fruit, and let us cut him off from the land of the living” (verse 19). The devil always hates the truth. The men of Anathoth said, “Do not prophecy in the name of the Lord, so that you will not die at our hand!” (verse 21).

Plato said, “No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.’ George Orwell said, “The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.” The Nazi era produced the saying, “Those who burn books will soon burn people.”

How did Jeremiah respond to this conspiracy? The conspiracy led to his complaint. He talked to God about it! Jeremiah began by acknowledging God’s righteousness. “Righteous are You, oh Lord, that I would plead my case with you” (Jeremiah 12:1). Jeremiah took God to court. He filed a legal brief with God.

The prophet asked a very old question, “Why do the wicked prosper?” He said, “Why has the way of the wicked prospered? Why are all those who deal in treachery at ease (verse 2)?”

We ask the same question today. It seems we are back under a king. There is one executive order after another. Our government promises to fly a gay pride flag from every embassy on the planet. Why God? Why do You allow this?

God’s answer to Jeremiah and to you and me is surprising. First, God says, “The worst is yet to come!” God said, “If you have run with footmen and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses? If you fall down in a land of peace, how will you do in the thicket of the Jordan (verse 5)?”

Jeremiah suffered in Anathoth but later he would suffer far more in Jerusalem. The “thicket of the Jordan” refers to the narrow strip of land on either side of the river where there was foliage and vegetation. It was filled with wild animals. Lions lived there!

God said, “Jeremiah, you must strengthen yourself. Tougher times are coming.” Later in Jerusalem Jeremiah suffered greatly. His body was twisted in the painful stocks. He ended up in prison and in a muddy, awful cistern. He was mocked unmercifully.

We must strengthen ourselves today by learning God’s Word. As we learn the Bible we know God better. The better we know Him the more we trust Him! Our Lord Jesus revealed the future to us to prepare us for the future. The closing days of this age are birth pains that will give way to the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus.

Second, God said, “Jeremiah, you are much too impatient” (verse 6). God’s justice and God’s righteousness will be worked out in God’s timetable- not ours. We must keep the faith and trust God to do the rest. God’s justice has leaden feet but iron hands.

Be strong. Be bold. Don’t be intimidated. In 2 Timothy 2:9 the apostle Paul said, “The Word of God is not bound (imprisoned).” Nothing is more powerful than the truth. It cannot be suppressed for long. They asked Martin Luther about the Reformation. He said, “I simply taught, preached, wrote God’s Word: otherwise I did nothing. And then, while I slept and drank Wittenberg beer with my Philip of Amsdorf the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that never a prince or emperor did such damage to it.” The Word of God is not bound!

Ethan Hansen is ma pastor at Faith Bible Fellowship in Big Lake.