Thursday, September 8, 2022

Cancel Culture and Dealing with Sinful People

The author at Taliesen West
Last November, while doing some continuing education in Arizona, I took the opportunity to visit Taliesen West, Frank Lloyd Wright's second home and studio in the desert. Wright has long been someone I admire because of the artistry of his designs, but even more for the way he thought about the experience of his buildings. He wanted to create specific emotions and thoughts for people who used his buildings.

Wright was also a selfish, irresponsible jerk.

History attests to the fact that he abandoned his first family to chase a mistress, he skipped out on many of his debts and contracts, he would often use his students as free labor, and he was known to be rude and condescending. 

My spouse and I have long discussed how to properly balance respect for his work with disgust for his character. Can you admire the art and condemn the artist? How do you praise one part of his life without approving of all of it? Or do we have to be all or nothing -- his art was great so his character doesn't matter OR we shouldn't study him or honor him in any way because he was so flawed?

I've thought about my dilemma with Frank Lloyd Wright often in the past few years, as we've had reckonings and reexamination of many public figures in movements like #metoo, confrontation of racism, and what is sometimes referred to as "cancel culture." 

  • Thomas Jefferson and George Washington made incredible and brilliant contributions to human liberty, but they also kept slaves, the antithesis of human liberty. 
  • Martin Luther King, Jr. was a giant of the civil rights movement for his moral and rhetorical clarity, but he is known to have carried on an affair until his death and to have plagiarized in his college papers.
  • Michael Jackson was one of the best pop music performers of all time, but he's alleged to have sexually exploited boys. 
  • Ellen Degeneres was known for bringing inclusion, kindness, and positivity to daytime television, but she has been accused of being abusive, rude, and uncaring to employees behind the scenes.
  • Bill Cosby, Placido Domingo, Kevin Spacey, Matt Lauer, and on and on...

Let me be very clear up front that I don't think these are all equivalent in terms of the public contributions OR the alleged crimes. Nor do I think the answer to "How should we deal with their legacy?" will be the same in every case. These are all unique situations and problems with different complexities to be debated on their own. But that's partly my point.

One of the observations I've made is the public often wants to take the all-or-nothing route for most cases. Either the good they did was too important and we should ignore their faults altogether, or they are flawed and so we should remove them entirely from the public record. Hence there are pastors who admit to adultery and get standing ovations from their congregation and some people get fired for stupid things they wrote when they were teenagers.

We seem to be really bad at dealing with ambiguity and human foibles. We want our heroes to be pure of heart and are deeply hurt when they aren't. Or we want people to fall neatly into "good or bad" categories and struggle when they (always) fall in between. Exactly why is beyond the space of this blog or scope of my knowledge, but from a Christian perspective (which fits into both) it seems we should be better at handling this. 

The Bible is full of heroes who have serious flaws: Jacob is a liar, Moses has a bad temper, Samson is controlled by his lust, David is an adulterer and murderer, and so on. Yet God was able to redeem them and use them. Paul says in Galatians, "You have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it," but God "called me by his grace" (1:13, 15). 

The Bible doesn't have "good" and "bad" people; it just has human people who "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). And unlike many popular depictions, God's goal isn't to catch people screwing up and condemn them forever, but to transform them and reconcile them to lives of faithfulness, like Paul describes above or Legion in Mark 5. 

None of this is to say that there shouldn't be consequences for moral failings. Christianity also calls for confession of sins, repentance, and justice. Sometimes people should be fired, arrested, or publicly shamed for their faults, but we can never divorce that from the hope for their redemption. 

We should never be surprised that humans can do stupid, hurtful, or even evil things, nor should we assume that great people are free from criticism. We are all what Martin Luther called, "simul justus et peccator" or "simultaneously saint and sinner." And he was a prime example of that. 

Luther was a brilliant theologian, preacher, and pastor, but later in life, he became deeply and violently anti-semitic. Some of the things he wrote were awful enough that Lutherans have publicly apologized and condemned these writings. 

As I said earlier, I don't think there are any one-size-fits-all solutions to the problems of flawed leaders and celebrities, but perhaps that is part of the solution: being honest about sins (either our own or our predecessors) and humbly pledging to do better, while welcoming others who make similar promises. 

At least, I hope I can receive that grace when my imperfections are brought to light... and can share it when the roles are reversed.

From the Gray,

Pastor Ari


“Don’t have to settle the score, ‘cause we all live under the reign of one king.” -Creed, “What’s This Life For?”



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