“Shame on You”
“Digital Liturgies” — Week 7 Reflection
Shaming Others is Timeless but Growing in the Digital Age
Reading this week's chapter, I couldn’t help but think about the verses we just read together in Ecclesiastes 7:21-22:
“Do not take to heart all the things that people say, lest you hear your servant cursing you. Your heart knows that many times you yourself have cursed others.”
There is great wisdom in not overreacting to everything you hear from another person, especially when you consider the things you know you have said or thought—all the things you’d hope no one else would overhear you saying.
Samuel D. James is pushing us toward a similar thought in Chapter 6: “Shame on You” of Digital Liturgies when he asks, “What if those texts I sent, that joke I told, that relationship I misused—what if someone were to broadcast those things?” What if one of our worst moments, or stupidest comments, became the main thing that people knew about us?
In Ecclesiastes, the target of such wisdom is the master of a servant, someone with the power to punish the person they overheard speaking out of turn in a moment thoughtlessness. While most of us today don’t have a servant that we could lash out in anger against for saying something we didn’t like. Some of us do have employees or children or other people with relatively less power than us in our particular sphere. But what makes the wisdom of those two verses timely wisdom for all of us is that we all have the internet.
Cancel Culture
We’re talking about cancel culture. Make no mistake, cancel culture is not a phenomenon of any specific demographic of our society. You can find it among liberals and conservatives, religious people and atheists, young and old, sports fans, music fans, and any other subculture you could possibly think of. Surely, there is a stamp collector somewhere who regrets the off-handed comment he made about the 1918 Inverted Jenny because it cost him all of his friends. The Christian internet subculture is exactly the same with people waiting to find any hint of scandal so they can post it online and watch the entire world pile on.
This is not the product of a group of weak-minded, emotionally fragile people. This is a human sin problem being exasperated by a “Digital Liturgy.” Samuel notes for us, “As the importance of religion has decreased and expressive individualism has increased, the result has not been a culture-wide renewal of compassion, tolerance, and understanding. Instead, the social internet has documented an astonishing ascendant shame culture that digitally punishes and erases those who run afoul of its values.”
Resisting a Culture of Shame
The internet has transferred the ability to punish and condemn others from just the “master of servants” to anyone with a keyboard. Tragically, we all now have a chance to rain the wrath of the world down on others. We have to resist participation in a culture like this or this digital liturgy will shape us into people less like our savior Jesus Christ. While judgement and wrath are certainly Biblical concepts, the social world of the internet severely lacks the repentance and grace that Christians should be modeling.
Next time you’re tempted to revel in the exposed evil in someone else’s life and join in with the masses condemning, canceling, and removing all trace of that person, first consider Ecclesiastes 7:21-22. First, ask if your response is shaped more by God’s word or by the spirit of our present culture. First, remove the plank from your eye, remove yourself from that culture, pound your chest, and pray, “Father, have mercy on me, for I am a sinner.” Then, pray for that mercy for others.
