The Courage to Hear Critique--February 14, 2022

The Courage to Hear Critique--February 14, 2022

"With [the tongue] we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God.  From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.  My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?  Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs?  No more can salt water yield fresh." [James 3:9-12]

I've got to admit it--every time I hear some talking head bemoaning "cancel culture" like a boogeyman who will come and get you in the night, I think of James--and I think we would not want to have to have him listen to or read our words.  James holds an even higher standard for what comes out of our mouths than what gets branded (often with gross inaccuracy) "cancel culture."  James holds us to the bar of love--genuine love--both for God, and for all who are made in the image of God.

But like I say, every generation needs to invent monsters to use to deal with their own anxieties and insecurities. In the days of the Puritans colonizing New England coasts, it was the specter of witches that whipped up a frenzy. In the 1950s, there was the pervasive fear that Communists were around every corner and hiding in every tree.  In the early 2000s, everyone whose parents had come from particular countries around the world were at risk of being labeled "terrorists."  And in the age of social media, the irrational thing to be afraid of (and to feel grievances over) is the possibility of being "cancelled"--the fear that if you say something unpopular or out of fashion, that a mob of faceless critics will silence you and prevent you from being heard.  

And like those earlier waves of panic, once you've got an ominous threat out there, from witches in Salem to Soviets putting chemicals in your drinking water, it's easy to tell yourself that you're on the side of good by resisting and defying whatever the scary enemy is.  In our time, then, there are talking heads on screens out there insisting that one must rise up against "cancel culture" by being all the more mean-spirited, crude, bigoted, or belligerent.  We should dig your heels in, they say, refuse to consider that we ourselves might have something to learn from someone else's critique, and of course, we should take anybody else's criticism as active persecution or censorship, rather than simply their choice not to listen to what we have to say or to push back in reply to what they disagree with.  In other words, when someone else calls out a problem or critique in what we say publicly, it is always terribly tempting to lash back out at them for trying to "cancel" us than to ask whether they hear something in our words that needs to be addressed, reconsidered, and possibly repented of.  Rather than face the possibility that we could be wrong or be causing hurt to someone else (because we like to imagine ourselves to be perfect peaches), it is always easier to turn those we have hurt into the enemy, and to cast ourselves as noble victims being harassed by some impersonal nefarious thing we label "cancel culture."  Well, like I say, James will have none of our nonsense--he just comes out and says, "You who call yourselves Christians need to watch your own mouths, because there is a lot of garbage coming out of them, and it deserves to be capped up and closed like a poisoned well."

James himself--this writer of the New Testament, and not some imagined boogeyman or faceless cabal whose politics you don't like--is the one telling us to keep our mouths closed if we are speaking hatefully toward other people.  And I suspect as well that he would tell us that if someone else approaches us about our words and says that we have hurt them, we need to listen to them, not get defensive about our "rights" to be jerks.  As far as Christians are concerned, regardless of what the local law of the land will permit, we don't have the right to be jerks.  There is no "freedom to be hateful" for followers of Jesus, and we forfeit any protection of speech that treats someone else made in the image of God as "less-than."  Followers of Jesus should be the ones listening most closely when someone else points out how our words have been harmful or hateful to others; we shouldn't be running away like digital age Chicken Little, riling up everyone else about some insidious thing called "cancel culture." We should be the ones most willing to be corrected in light of love, not the least.

This is the really important--but also really difficult--thing about having a voice like James in the Bible.  He cuts through our defense mechanisms, and he deflates our pride.  Sometimes Respectable Religious Folk can get themselves up in arms that they need to look tough and strong and powerful, and we need to invent enemies so that we can tell ourselves we are being persecuted when we are actually just being reminded we aren't the only ones playing in the sandbox.  And once we do that--once we tell ourselves we are the victims rather than that we may be a part of the problem and in need of correction, growth, or change--it becomes terribly easy to tell ourselves we are right to be obnoxious, and that our "freedom" to be jerks to others must be defended.  It does not.  There is no such freedom for followers of Jesus.  If we are going to bless and praise the God who made us (and indeed, that is right and salutary, as the old line goes), then we are going to hold our speech about other people to the same standard of speaking life rather than death, goodness rather than evil, and to be open to hearing from others when they point out how we have failed at that.  

Being open to other people's critique with our words isn't un-Christian--it is in fact exactly what followers of Jesus do when we realize we aren't perfect and have our own blind-spots where we cannot see how the impact of our words on others.  Being open to hear others' when they tell us we have caused harm isn't "being cancelled"--it's being courage enough to get better at loving.  James brings us face to face with that, if we dare look him in the eye.

Today, rather than getting up in arms against some imaginary "them" out there who are looking to silence and censor, what if started the day open to the input of others, even if it sometimes makes us uncomfortable to gain new perspectives?  That does take bravery--and it is always easier to avoid being brave when we can just hide under a rock and tell someone else they are the problem.  But James is here as an older brother in the faith, and we are here with one another, to find the courage to listen... and the courage to grow.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to listen, rather than to run away, when others help us to see the effects of our words.  Help us to see not only ourselves, but all people, as made in your image.