Woke: Living for an Audience of One in a Cancel CultureSýnishorn

Our Eyes Are Watching God

One of my favorite novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It was required reading in college, but it quickly became one of my all-time favorites because of the conclusion that without God, human nature is unpredictable at best, and depraved at worst. 

The novel was written in 1936, but a survey of today’s culture would confirm that not much has changed. Now more than ever, men and women are desperate to play God, anxious to exert God-like authority, and frantically rejecting biblical standards of living. It is no wonder that cancel culture -- an attempt at enforcing groupthink while penalizing outliers -- has become one of the most imposing forces of the culture. 

The prevailing definition of cancel culture is the collective withdrawal of support as a way of expressing disapproval against individuals and brands with influence. It works because, by exerting social pressure, the mass's disapproval often leads to the target’s loss of revenue and power. 

On a large scale, it has permanently tarnished some celebrities' image and led to the loss of endorsement deals and movie contracts. For the average person, cancel culture triggers a sense of fear that refusal to conform to groupthink will lead to social ostracization, or at minimum, the appearance of being uninformed, unintelligent, or a bigot. For Christians, this fear can lead to hesitation to live and speak according to a counter-cultural biblical standard.

While cancel culture has become trendy in recent years, it is not a new idea. In the bible, countless men and women faced the possibility of public and social alienation and humiliation; even Jesus faced the same threats. The good news is that there is nothing new under the sun, and the bible provides insight for standing out in the culture. Over the next few days, we will look at how scripture says we can engage the culture to live in the world, but not be of it.