If you’ve seen this sign before on my website somewhere, do tell me. I can’t find it. Because I so meant to share the message nearly four years ago (June 26, 2020). The United States was in turmoil, with SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19 restrictions making most everyone stay in and widespread looting, protests, and riots pulling people out onto the streets.
Do you remember the chaos, and rampant cancellation? You know: anyone who dared to defy the social media mob’s cries for equity, justice, and racial identity—all while fostering division and segregation that contradicted the presumed purpose of progressives. Black lives mattered, and including any other group(s) made you a racist.
“Hope is not cancelled” was compelling, in context four years ago, but it is still meaningful today. The sign comes from Horizon Christian Fellowship, according to the website behind the URL. Hope is a good topic, this being Palm Sunday—celebrating Jesus Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Four days later, he would be arrested and then murdered.
For his followers, Christ left behind no hope; all that changed with his resurrection—so the story goes. Maybe you believe, maybe you don’t. But consider this: He was cancelled—for daring to teach concepts that offended many people around him. So-called hate speech that riles up some folks in the 21st Century isn’t so different from that which put Christ on the cross. By claiming to be the Son of God, King of King, or forgiver of sins, he offended the Jewish leadership—if no one else.
Stated differently, Christ’s crime was talk: the words he spoke and to whom they offended. How odd that the hope and love he preached to some brought others to raging offense about hate speech.
Being repetitive: You do get the point, right? That this is all too familiar two thousand years later, when people are crucified—ah cancelled—for what they say or believe. The mob yelling “Crucify him!” then isn’t so far removed from the one raging now.
The Featured Image comes from iPhone XS. Vitals: f/2.4, ISO 16, 1/1250 sec, 52mm (film equivalent); 11:28 a.m. PDT.