Do you think some ideas are so diabolical that they should be outlawed? I’m not asking about ACTIVITIES, like murder, or child abuse. Diabolical activity should be criminal. I’m wondering if you’re in favor of outlawing diabolical thoughts.

The modern term that describes the shutting-down of diabolical thoughts is ‘cancel culture.’ Christian people have been canceling stuff for years. This was called ‘boycotts’ when I was a kid. They were always justified as a kind of passive holy war against the onslaught of evil in America. Cancel culture is similar to Christian boycotts in that the canceling is ALWAYS viewed as morally correct.

The problem is that the very same moral outraged that inspired you to boycott Disney, and Target, and Hardee’s, and Hallmark, and Pepsi, and Ford, and IKEA and so on; can be used to shut down a pizza parlor that refuses to cater a gay wedding. If you’re going to support canceling the stuff you don’t like, you can’t object when your stuff gets canceled too.

The best way to combat a bad idea is to EXPOSE it. Canceling bad ideas doesn’t kill them. They’ll be back before lunchtime in some other form only NOW the bad ideas have cultural leverage. The perpetrators of bad ideas will claim they were victims of abusive bigotry. They will say they were “oppressed.” And they will be correct.

It is not the Church’s job to cancel evil in the culture. It is our job to shine a light on it.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

2 Corinthians 4:6