The story of the death of the Son of God is one of the most dramatic in all of scripture. None of us can really even imagine being able to sacrifice oneself the way He did for the reasons He did. The story is truly a pivot not just of scripture, but of human history itself. Redemption came into the world by the suffering of the most perfect human being ever to walk the face of the earth, and it is important to recall the manner in which He died. There exist, suffice it to say, ways to die far more pleasant than crucifixion. This torturous means of execution places the weight of the afflicted’s body into the arms – appendages not built for such a purpose – and after his strength expires, the weight of his body pulls him towards the earth, asphyxiating him.
The physical pain and bodily damage, of course, are why the Romans favored crucifixion as a capital punishment, but bear in mind as well the other torments Christ suffered. He was mocked and ridiculed while enduring such a quite literally excruciating fate. We should count ourselves eternally grateful that we cannot imagine the sensations of such an experience. And somewhere, in the midst of all of this, Christ summoned the grace to utter those most famous words: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I have to remind myself of these words on more occasions than I care to admit. As a schoolteacher, I deal with, to put it politely, a more than slightly difficult customer base. I am not exactly catching people at their best. My clients are still growing and evolving as people, and they have yet to learn a lot of important life lessons. Suffice it to say, I do not always deal with them with as much patience as might profit everyone. I endure tribulations minuscule in comparison to those of Jesus of Nazareth, and yet I do not always have as much grace in my heart as I should. I have probably raised my voice more times than really necessary, and I cannot say that it has always helped.
Grace abounds, and yet it seems in such short supply. An unruly student, like a condemned criminal, does not deserve grace, but that is, in fact, the point of grace: we show it even when people do not deserve precisely because that is how God deals with us. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that nobody deserves any kind of wrath for anything ever, but we should remember our own journeys towards the throne of grace whenever our hearts incline us towards anger. It does not seem fair. We want people to suffer penalties for what they have done. But that is, in some respects, what grace is about: people do not get what they deserve, and that is why grace is so beautiful.
It is precisely this notion of grace, this idea that we ought to contend with each other gently lest we cast judgment on ourselves, that we find so sorely lacking. In the age of “cancel culture,” our idea of justice entails punishing people for sins that may not truly even be sins. We want to see people driven out of their jobs for past missteps. We want to see them pay. We want to see them suffer. We want to make sure that they never thrive again. We do not stop to think about how important any of this is. How small of a crime must merit termination? Do not also the wicked need housing, sustenance, and a life worth living? None of this matters. The moment we find a sinner, he lash him to the whipping post.
This becomes even uglier as we begin counting coup in the cancellation wars. We condemn the culture as one of our own goes down for an old, intemperate Tweet, but we eagerly buy into it when our sworn enemies fall victim to it. We are, after all, only playing buy the rules that have been forced upon us. We satisfy ourselves that even if we do not entirely like the world we are in, at least we have collected more scalps than the other guys. We’d rather not play by these rules, but as long as we have them, we may as well try to win.
In our own Pharisaical righteousness, of course, we seldom stop and think this could happen to us. “I thank thee, Lord, that I am not like these other cishet white men,” we say to ourselves as we sip our kombucha. Certainly, though, we would insist upon receiving the very grace we would deny others. We, you see, have earned this grace, not those other people. On the strength of our own sanctification, we stake our lives and our futures. And that is precisely why we shall be condemned. None of us, however bothersome it may be, are truly righteous, yet we continue to cancel each other apace.
The cancel culture – which does in fact exist – is at bottom a denial of grace. A people who know no grace, will know no mercy, and a people who know no mercy will show none. A world built on nothing more than power and penalties, and the desire to wield those against others, is a world ruled over by the devil himself. Our enemies do not deserve grace. Neither, sadly, do we. One of the most unfair parts of the gospel is that we must show grace even to those who deny it to us. It is not fair, but the crucifixion was not fair either. Yet in the face of nigh incalculable suffering, the Son of God after whose life we must mold our own, had it within himself to be gracious in the presence of so much darkness. We, who deal with far less, cannot be bothered to show this same grace. This speaks to the impossibility of attaining righteousness on our own, but it also shows us the ideal of who we should be. Life is not fair, and we should be thankful for our own sake that it is not.