Jesus listens as people ask him about the sin of murdered “Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with the blood of his sacrifices.” The people are coerced by rulers to believe those murdered were sinners who deserved their suffering and death. Jesus rejects it all, “Do you think… the Galileans suffered (because) they were greater sinners?” “By no means!”
The Gospel gives an insight into cancel culture. It includes blaming innocent people who suffer and die (the Galileans) while we absent or absolve rulers (Pilate) who are guilty of canceling the people and causing their suffering. U.S. rulers cancel the culture of indigenous people, people who are poor, Black, women, and others. Rulers cancel their suffering – poor people are lazy, unarmed Black men are a threat, women provoke rape,… As people who are cancelled speak, rulers claim it is they who are now being cancelled and are suffering. What they are suffering from is exposure to truth. Rulers tend to evade truth by using projection, unconsciously accusing others of their own behaviors. Thus, Jordan Peterson who cancels persons he identifies as DEI, claims he is being cancelled and is suffering. Peterson is a professor, with financial resources of a podcast, speaking engagements, able to express his ideas, some of which support violence, and he has many fans. One fan is Catholic Bishop Robert Barron who says Peterson’s “presentations are kind of cool and brainy.” Barron concurs with Peterson’s worry that youth are cancelling “tradition – religion… (and) falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness… nihilism… (we need) religious stories of the past.” But it is religion and its past and on-going culture of supremacy, colonialism, and violence that cancels communion, love, and healing that has produced the meaninglessness and the nihilism. Peterson supports the dehumanizing of people who are Black, gay, Muslim, women, and more that produces meaninglessness. He supports capitalists with their financial resources that indebt people and glorify things that produces nihilism. Peterson supports and therefore is a meaningless nihilistic ruler – like Trump – and thus causes murderous chaos. Yet, Peterson blames people who voice their struggle out of his meaningless nihilism, for causing chaos, “Chaos is the domain of ignorance… It’s the foreigner, the stranger… Chaos is symbolically associated with the feminine.” “Order, by contrast… is the hundreds-of-millions-of-years-old hierarchy of place, position, and authority… the structure of society… provided by biology… the flag… tradition… In the domain of order, things behave as God intended.” But it is not God who intends order, rather it is rulers like Pilate, Barron, and especially Peterson who structure chaos but demand order. They invent a God of order in order to sanctify their chaos and violence against people they cancel, “(T)he parameters for my resistance are well defined… we talk, we argue, we push, and then it becomes physical… That’s forbidden in discourse with women… the threat is (not) there.” But of course the threat and the practice of Peterson’s cancel culture targeting women with chaos and violence is always there. It is there in Pilate’s and Barron’s and especially Peterson’s still operative “hundreds-of-millions-of-years-old hierarchy” that justifies violence, including against women. Unlike these rulers, women know that to return violence is un-Christ-like or, absurd unto deadly. Peterson justifies his cancel culture of chaos and violence routinely, by supporting the military and teaching the righteousness of warrior myths. Bishop Barron champions Peterson’s un-Christ-like teaching for men to “internalize the warrior myths… and find the heroic vocation.” Bishop Barron never champions the heroic vocation of indigenous leader Leonard Peltier nor of Black Lives Matter founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi who make known the sufferings of their people. They reject the belief that their people suffer because “they were greater sinners?” “By no means!” Peterson cannot laud them as warriors – they stand against the chaos and violence of Pilates, Barrons, and Petersons. Ruling warriors Peterson and Barron claim enemies are guilty of “Identity Politics” (“a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, etc., to form exclusive political alliances”). But that too is projection as Peterson and Barron routinely identify themselves as wealthy, white, males gladly supportive of the “hundreds-of-million-of-years-old hierarchy” aligning them as rulers. Bishop Barron is such a fan of Peterson, Barron calls him a “spiritual teacher.” Bishop Barron is thus not learning from the spiritual teacher that is Jesus of Nazareth.
The peacemaker Jesus’ spirituality, or experience of God, is as a power to transform. We can transform projections into truth. We can furthermore transform rule into equality, abuse into love, and violence into healing. Living such a witness is likely to get us cancelled by the ruling class of Pilates, Petersons, and Bishops who cancelled Jesus.
Prayer: Holy Spirit, transform me.
Question: What is my experience with the rulers’ Cancel Culture?
March 20, 2022 Gospel Luke 13:1-9 Third Sunday of Lent