A little over two months ago, I returned from a trip to the Boundary Waters Wilderness Canoe Area. I told myself I would write more regularly and use reflections from the trip as a springboard once I made it home. Two posts. Just two! I tapped out more ideas than just two. Honestly!
There’s more to the story.
I have started this piece several times. That may be why there has been a dearth of posts here. Those who know me know that I have little trouble talking. However, some subjects require greater sensitivity, even sensibility, than the democracy that the Interwebs offer. Put another way, sometimes speech is not so free.
Then it happened. Call it serendipitous inspiration. In my Inbox was a digest of articles that included this: In 1990, Milli Vanilli Was Canceled - And No One Cared About the Whole Truth. Yes, I am both old and young enough to remember Milli Vanilli. Candace Frederick gave something of a Paul Harvey Rest of the Story about the duo.
She writes,
But one recollection is crystal clear: Milli Vanilli was a joke. A fraud. Untalented opportunists that pulled the wool over all our eyes.
And the money line,
The lack of interest in the truth, particularly damning to any good journalism, remains frustrating to Morvan today as he reflects on being in that press room in 1990.
What Frederick refers to is a story not often told. Yes, Milli Vanilli was a joke. But, the joke was, in part, on them. Two young men chasing what many young people do left them vulnerable to a producer more interested in money than these two men. In more contemporary parlance, the two would become placeholders for a money scheme to promote the producer’s brand.
When the truth came out, Milli Vanilli was canceled, not the creator of the contract that included the fact they would not sing a note. It was nothing short of a gift. The lip-syncing duo were tools.
Rachel Greenspan wrote something of a history of cancel culture for Insider, How 'cancel culture' quickly became one of the buzziest and most controversial ideas on the internet. Greenspan argues that while the sentiment that underlies canceling dates more than a decade ago, cancel culture came into “collective consciousness around 2017.” She goes on,
Google Trends data indicates that there was almost no search interest in the phrase "cancel culture" until the second half of 2018 and early 2019. The most search interest came in July of this year. [2020]
Do you have friends who have been canceled? I don’t mean A-list celebrities. Have you had friends whose whole stories, like Milli Vanilli’s, never came out until after the Band of Brand Influencers successfully shouted down and shut down anyone who dared question or protest? One more question . . . how many of those Band of Brand Influencers justified their actions as a consequence of their truth-telling and faith commitments?
Let’s take this one step further.
When the Band of Brand Influencers learned the truth, how many do you know that corrected their errors, issued a retraction, and offered to atone for their self-interest at the expense of truth?
Still waiting?
The truth is, there is often enough guilt to go around that our felt need to create and maintain that for another person seems contradictory to the One who invited Matthew into his fold, heard the constant refrain that he hung out with the wrong crowd, and who even supped with his soon-to-be betrayer. What makes it worse is that when confronted with the truth, it seems some are more interested in seeking death, not cancelation.
We should always be careful reading that last sentence. The point is not that those who are canceled are like Jesus. No, the point is those who do the canceling are like those who sought Jesus’ death rather than recognizing the truth was happening to them.
Chris E.W. Green helps those of us who never read the late Robert W. Jenson in seminary, or afterward for that matter. In his book The End Is Music: A Companion to Robert W. Jenson’s Theology, he explicates Jenson’s assertion that truth happens to us.
The truth must happen to us. And it must happen in ways that free us to interact, to respond, to engage with God and with one another. And because God is truth, the truth happens only as God happens: “grace” is just another way of naming the activity of the Spirit in our lives.
Canceling another closes off conversations that may open up opportunities for love and forgiveness. The habit of canceling excludes those as possibilities.
Remember, the Band of Brand Influencers may come for you one day.