Has Cancel Culture Snuck into Your Neighborhood?

Hanging out with neighbors. Sharing meals, life stories, babysitting, tools, and vanilla. Good for you, but you haven’t met my neighbors, you might be thinking. There’s Betty who told my kids to stay out of her year. Bill who drives without a muffler. Sarah who’s sweet to your face but talks behind everyone’s backs.

There’s that house with all the signs, the unfriendly dog, the missing shutter or leaning fence or tattered trampoline.

The drivers who don’t come to a full stop. Or take forever to turn left.

When it comes to the little things that wedge between neighbors, we’ve been both recipient and offender, but we’re not keeping score. Or are we?

Sharing lemonade on front porches and lazy Sunday afternoons have given way to diced-up communities. Most of our neighbors are name-less and face-less. And us? Interaction dodgers, conveniently so.

We band-aid our loneliness by keeping busy. Too busy to have a conversation with that one neighbor who offended us three years ago. Too busy to let go of the past.

Instead of communicating, we cancel each other without a second thought. But we’ve become so quick to move on that we can’t see what we’re missing: the treasure of the people right in front of us.

A neighborhood treasure hunt

Yes, I’m talking about your neighbors. Betty, Bill, and Sarah included. The potential for deep community embedded into neighborhood life is a treasure I hope to never stop appreciating.

Neighborhoods are pockets of people, each created to reflect a piece of God. We’re different because there are too many of God’s attributes to be contained in a single human.

The Enneagram—an ancient and now popular way of describing the various lens people see the world through—showcases this wonderfully. In the final chapter of The Road Back to You, authors Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile, contend that “every number on the Enneagram teaches us something about the nature and character of the God who made us” (p. 228). As they further explain,

Ones show us God’s perfection and his desire to restore the world to its original goodness, while Twos witness to God’s unstoppable, selfless giving. Threes remind us about God’s glory, and Fours about the creativity and pathos of God. Fives show God’s omniscience, Sixes God’s steadfast love and loyalty, and Sevens God’s childlike joy and delight in creation. Eights mirror God’s power and intensity, while Nine’s God’s love of peace and desire for union with his children.

p. 228

What if, rather than focusing on things we don’t understand about our neighbors, we go on a treasure hunt? Look for ways our neighbors mirror aspects of God instead of canceling them for being human. Commit to being curious, unoffendable treasure-finders.

The heart of cancel culture

Cancel culture is a heart issue. We see it as far back as the story of Cain and Abel, when jealousy grew and spilled blood broke God’s heart.

Little offenses don’t stay little when we let them fester. Unchecked, unforgiveness can become destructive. Bitterness is never neutral. Gossip grows. And what’s rooted in our hearts shows.

So let’s change course. Uncover the ugly in our hearts before the gentle but holy gaze of God.

The answer is always Jesus. Jesus when we’re feelingly slighted or justified. Jesus when it’s messy. Jesus when our vision’s cloudy and we veer off course. Jesus when we’re tired, or someone else is. Jesus when we’re the one misunderstood.

The deep places where you’re hurting—they hurt God too. So trust Him to dislodge the rifts and not-rights in your heart making it hard to see the treasure in the people near you. Surrender the things He brings to your attention. The pride. Defensiveness. Unforgiveness.

When you’re ready, I invite you to pray Psalm 51:10 with me.

Create a new, clean heart within me. Fill me with pure thoughts and holy desires, ready to please you.

TPT

God doesn’t just remove the gunk in our hearts, He gives us brand-new hearts. Why? Because the picture He has in mind, found in Jesus’ prayer John 17:20-23, looks like this:

And I ask not only for these disciples, but also for all those who will one day believe in me through their message.

I pray for them all to be joined together as one even as you and I, Father, are joined together as one. I pray for them to become one with us so that the world will recognize that you sent me.

For the very glory you have given to me I have given them so that they will be joined together as one and experience the same unity that we enjoy.

You live fully in me and now I live fully in them so that they will experience perfect unity, and the world will be convinced that you have sent me, for they will see that you love each one of them with the same passionate love that you have for me.

TPT

Not only do we miss out on the community possible right at our doorsteps, we can’t exhibit the unity that shows the world the way God loves them when we stoop to canceling our neighbors.

God sees the big picture even when we get stuck in the difficulties, annoyances, and inconveniences of right now. As Carrie Stephens phrases it in Jesus, Love, and Tacos,

“The hope in God’s heart has always been a simple one: that the people he created would accept the invite to his party, join his dance, and learn to receive and serve spiritual tacos.”

p. 155

We’re to joyfully invite, not cancel, our neighbors. Know the way God loves us so we can make Him known. Borrow His vision to see how He treasures all of us.

Let’s pray.

God, we confess that we’ve let the wrong things linger in our hearts. We repent and we ask for your help. Give us brand-new hearts and borrowed vision so we don’t miss the treasure of the people near us.

Just a friend over here in your corner,

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