The piece I wrote a few weeks ago about the Olympic boxers, unlike most others I’ve written, had me feeling less like I’d shared my thoughts concerning a troubling situation and more like I’d turned over the detritus of our culture’s forest floor. You know what happens when you kick over a rotten log, right? The creatures living in its decay suddenly scatter. Some scurry to find other dank places to dwell, aware that they’ve been discovered. However, the more territorial residents attack their rot’s disturber. That also happened in this instance.

The initial disturbance brought a steady stream of hate-filled termites with caps-locked keyboards and the foulest vernacular. I spent a good part of the week that followed blocking content and profiles from hundreds of “tolerant” intolerants. So much for my typical “post and ghost” policy. Although, I suppose it’s good that I hadn’t yet turned off notifications for the post. I was able to run a measure of defense.

For the most part, they swarmed me through private messaging. They chirped and trilled and clicked their usual angry sounds, calling me ignorant, bigoted, and so many other names adorned with vile adjectives. Thankfully, their stingers were words and nothing more.

I experienced only one venomous spray that seemed to invite conversation, even as I knew how that conversation might go if I engaged. So, I didn’t. All the others were colorfully uninviting. Few were spelled correctly. Seriously, if you’re going to speak viciously, the least you can do is run your savagery through Grammarly. It would appear far too many believe the word “bigot” has more than one “g.”

The grammatical ignorance was enough for me to turn off overall messaging access. After deleting a number of equally vicious remarks, I also changed the comment access for the post.

There was one private message that interested me, but only because it seemed to capture the hive logic used by so many of the others. Concerned by a relatively inconsequential detail the person thought was inaccurate, the message read something like, “If you can’t even get this one thing right, then you don’t deserve to call yourself a reverend.”

Two things about this.

First, imagine if one mistake—real or supposed—was enough to strip any of us of our livelihoods or identity completely. Of course, some mistakes, even simple ones, can have life-altering consequences. Something as simple as forgetting to use your turn signal can result in someone’s death. But the reality is that most often, our typical mistakes don’t produce those results. They’re merely incidentals along life’s imperfect way, all serving as reminders of a deeper need, a deeper incapacity in Sin. That said, there’s a reason that forgetting to put the milk carton back into the refrigerator isn’t a punishable crime. In the scheme of things, it’s not important.

But imagine if it was a punishable offense. Imagine if such a simple slip was enough to condemn you. I had a professor in my doctoral program who accidentally parsed a Greek verb incorrectly in the comments on one of my papers. Being attuned to language, especially in what has become an overly-emojied society, I remember such errors, and so I remember the mistake vividly. However, did the error prove his credentials empty? By it, did he forfeit all rights to the title “professor”? The cancel-culture insects perpetuating society’s rot would say yes.

Second, they’d say yes because forgiveness is not a part of their world. Whatever falls to the dark forest floor is eaten. But forgiveness drops light into the darkness. Indeed, its light offends the dark spaces ruled by death and decay. Still, forgiveness—the Gospel’s divine lifeblood—is meant for and goes into these spaces. It goes there understanding everyone’s dreadful imperfections while announcing promises that draw all toward the sunshine of God’s grace—a grace that gives mistake-makers what they do not deserve. Mercilessness and condemnation comprise the Gospel’s anti-nature. It is the sum and substance, the body and soul, of cancel culture. One mistake, one misstep apart from rot’s narrative, brings irrevocable imprisonment.

If this describes you, then I dare to offer two more diagnoses.

First, likely, you are so ideologically captured that you’ve become incapable of receiving information and navigating disagreements in ways beneficial to societal stability. I’m convinced one of the inevitable demonstrations of ideological imprisonment is when one is entirely oblivious to self-contradiction. An ideologically captured person willfully embraces two incompatible or inconsistent premises simultaneously and yet cannot see their incompatibility. What does that look like in real time? Well, one example might be the group “Queers for Palestine.” Homosexuality is illegal in Palestine, and I’m guessing these folks missed the news story about the 25-year-old gay Palestinian man whose decapitated torso was found in the West Bank city of Hebron. Another example might be the folks praising Kamala Harris for potentially being the first female president while also pummeling anyone who dares define what a woman is. They inevitably target with vitriol someone like me who boils the definition down to its mineral elements—the science of XY and XX chromosomes. These same people do this while demanding that folks “trust the science.” How can this be? Because when someone is ideologically captured, the only consistency that matters is one’s subscription to the narrative. Everything else, even facts, becomes pliable, and if not pliable, then irrelevant or labeled as misinformation.

Second, cancel-culture tactics prohibit the exchange of ideas, resulting in societal rot. Cancel-culture’s goal is to ostracize, boycott, and crush others into silence because of their opposing viewpoints. By default, this hinders open discussion and the free exchange of ideas. Why? Because humans are survivalists. When onlookers see a person viciously canceled for expressing his or her views, no matter how controversial or disagreeable they may be, others become fearful of speaking freely. Such an environment produces rot, which is the gradual decline or decay of essential values and mechanisms that bind a thriving society together. In a cancel culture, society suffers and inevitably comes undone because it loses the ability to challenge ideas or events that require refining or preservation.

If you are inclined to cancel others, then I encourage you to reconsider your heading. For as virtuous as you might believe yourself to be, to work this way is to be a part of the problem, not the solution. Are your ideas better? Put them into the arena for testing. We’ll see. However, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that natural law—God’s beautifully designed framework for life in this world—will always be the final determiner, even if society makes an epic mistake. Natural law will forever trounce a man who jumps from a three-story building because he’s ideologically convinced he’s a bird. Natural law promises him a painful landing. Natural law will forever complicate the biology of a person undergoing hormone therapy because he believes he was born in the wrong body. No matter how many surgeries he might have, his chromosomes and everything they’re in place to determine will never be or do anything other than what their design requires. Natural law will do what it’s constructed to do, and we’ll always be kept within its boundaries, even when we believe otherwise.

To conclude, I’ll simply say this—and maybe consider it a basic rule of thumb. If you find yourself resorting to insults, threats, or unhinged attempts to go after and silence others entirely, you might pause to consider whether your position is as strong as you think it is. Another thing to keep in mind: Truth doesn’t fear scrutiny; it thrives on it. And in the end, it will win. In one sense, that’s why Christians will always have the upper hand in life. We already know we’re mistake-makers, and yet, we’re attached to the One who is the way, the truth, and the life. The entirety of this spectacular trifecta comes together in the Gospel. Christians live in the sphere of forgiveness. Jesus lives there, too. He is the “way” of forgiveness. He is forgiveness’s epicentral “truth.” He is forgiveness’s best result—eternal “life”!

By faith, we know these things, and we’re more than familiar with the wonderful byproducts of this grace. The blessings of humble repentance stirred by an overabundance of forgiveness given by God are not lost on us. We’re glad for the newfound ability to amend our lives and share that same forgiveness with others. Ultimately, these are spirit-freeing mechanisms for courage and confidence. They lift believers above rot’s capture to the grace-drenched treetops, where we can see the world as it truly is and be quite comfortable describing what we see.