What do all these have in common? Cancel culture.

We see it across society. Different teams; same technique. We see it through history. Scarlet letters, witch trials, stocks in the town square—cancel culture is old as time. The targets change; the mechanism doesn’t.

Yet do we see cancel culture in the Bible? Is there wisdom for navigating the social dynamics of guilt and fear, contamination and exclusion driving the phenomenon?

For now, let’s define cancellation broadly, as being rejected, mocked, and discarded—whether institutionally, socially, or personally. My thesis is this: cancel culture is all over the Bible, though it’s more complex than you might initially expect.

Negative and Positive

We see both negative and positive versions of cancel culture in the Bible. Negatively, Cain cancels Abel. Joseph gets canceled by his brothers, ejected down to Egypt. Saul tries to cancel David, hunting him down for a decade. Jezebel tries to cancel Elijah, sending mercs to take him out. Stephen gets cancelled by the mob, under a pile of stones. Paul’s let down in a basket, fleeing the city for his life.

The point? As Christians, we have language and narrative to understand these dynamics. Yet they’re not always bad…

On the positive side, if we get honest: Scripture presents righteous forms of judgment and exclusion. We see God cancel Uzzah, for touching the ark and disrespecting the holy things of God. We see God cancel Nadab and Abihu, for burning strange fire as irresponsible leaders before the Lord.

And it’s not only God. Paul commands the Corinthians to “expel the wicked person from among you” (1 Corinthians 5): in other words, remove them from the community—cancel them.

So it’s not so simple as “Cancel = Bad. Full stop. Always.” There are positive and negative versions of the phenomenon.

“Which is it?”

I faced this challenge myself, asking in the aftermath of my firestorm: “Which is it?” Was I like Uzzah, disrespecting the holy things of God? Sex is a sacred subject, had I talked about it inappropriately and was now receiving the just divine consequence for my actions? Or was I like Nadab and Abihu, struck down for mishandling the things of the Lord? Had I gone rushing into the Holy of Holies—talking about a sacred subject like sex—without the appropriate safeguards and precautions to handle it well?

Or, on the other hand, was I like Joseph, mistreated by the family of God? Had outrage dynamics and uncharitable readings provoked an overreaction which led to my ejection from multiple spheres of community? Was I like Job, enduring a satanic storm intended to demolish my faith?

The point? It’s complex. Calling it “cancellation” doesn’t solve the issue, biblically speaking, with whether it’s good or bad. Some Christians might say “God would never cancel anyone” but, I’d suggest, the picture is more complex than that.

How do we distinguish between the good versions and the bad ones? Well, that’s what the next twelve episodes of our podcast (and these accompanying Substack posts) are out to explore.

My hope in this post is simply to populate our imagination with some biblical imagery. To demonstrate that, as Christians, we have rich resources for reflection on these dynamics.

Cancellation is not a fringe topic in Scripture; it’s a major motif.

A Major Motif

The Bible uses a variety of images for cancellation. There’s being “thrown”: Daniel is thrown into the lion’s den. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are thrown into the fiery furnace. Jeremiah is thrown down a well.

There’s being “sent away”: Hagar is sent off into the desert to fend for herself. Uriah is sent to the front lines of battle to be killed. Tamar is sent back to her father’s house. (These three are all “Fall” stories, reflecting the sin of Abraham, David, and Judah.)

There’s a spiritual battle involved. Satan’s goal in cancelling Job is to take out his faith: “he will surely curse you to your face” (Job 1:11) Jesus similarly warns Peter, “Satan has asked to sift you like wheat”—yet even when Peter loses it all, Jesus has prayed that his “faith may not fail.” (Luke 22:31-32) Satan’s out to cancel you; Jesus wants to build you up.

Speaking of Jesus, he is the Canceled One.

The crucifixion is a cancellation—from two different angles. On the one hand, Christ was cancelled on the cross: rejected, mocked, discarded. He was forsaken so we could be forgiven, cast out so we could be brought in. From another angle, however, the cross is where God cancelled our debt: our sin atoned for, our guilt removed, our stain washed away.

This is good news for the cancelled, both for those who’ve been wrong and those who’ve been wronged. Whether you pulled the pin on the grenade and blew up your own life, or you had the pin pulled on you in ways that were unfair.

If you were wrong, the Crucified One died to restore you, to set you free from guilt and regret. If you were wronged, you’re invited into an intimacy with the only truly righteous one, who entered the depths of your rejection to raise you up with him.

He bore our cancellation to bring about our blessing—this is good news indeed.

That silence felt costly. Like stepping away from the chance to immediately explain yourself, clarify misunderstandings, or shape how the story would be told.

And yet, I sensed the voice of the Father: Three years. There was something God wanted to do in me that couldn’t happen if my focus was out there on everyone else. So I followed the Spirit’s lead…

Counseling. Prayer. Spiritual direction. God began surfacing deeper parts of my life story that I hadn’t yet faced. Unearthing assumptions I didn’t know I carried, and ways of coping I was blind to—though they’d been with me most of my life.

I found comfort in passages like:

• “But Jesus remained silent…” (Mark 14:61)

• “Like a sheep before its shearers is silent…” (Isaiah 53:7)

• “Instead, he entrusted himself…” (1 Peter 2:23)

Sometimes, silence isn’t avoidance; it’s obedience. And it can result in something redemptive, making you more like Jesus.

In the last season, God did some of the deepest formation of my life.

This Easter was three years. And something has shifted. I now feel a freedom to talk about what happened, not to relitigate the past but to reflect on what I’ve learned. To celebrate what God can do in us during seasons of collapse, loss, and renewal.

Over the past few years, it was so helpful to hear stories from others who’d been rejected, mocked, discarded—“canceled.” It’s often easier to see the familiar patterns and dynamics at play in someone else’s story.

Yet virtually none of these stories were from a faith perspective. Where is God in the midst of it all? How do we understand these cultural dynamics in light of the biblical story?

That’s part of what I hope to offer. Not a perfect perspective, but a firsthand account—from someone who’s walked through public collapse and come through with a deeper love for Jesus and his Church.

Silence felt like obedience then; speaking feels like obedience now.

In high school and college, I played a lot of music. Whenever a friend went through a breakup, we’d say, “This is going to make a killer song someday.” Because the most meaningful art often doesn’t come in spite of heartbreak, but through it.

That’s what I hope this podcast can be. An attempt to make something beautiful out of the heartbreak. To take one of the hardest seasons of my life and, by God’s grace, make something meaningful out of it that might serve others.

To help those who find themselves in seasons where it all falls apart… and wonder where God is in the midst of it all.

To help us, as the Church, navigate the dynamics of our day with greater wisdom, humility, and maturity.

And maybe—just maybe—to make a killer song out of the heartbreak.

Next week, we’ll release the first episode of Blessed Are the Canceled. Eventually, we all experience some version of rejection, misunderstanding, isolation, or shame. And I’ve become convinced God loves to meet us—perhaps most powerfully—in places like these, with blessing in our breaking.

I was a public spectacle. Not quietly, but with the volume cranked up to 11.

In the aftermath, I couldn’t escape the question: Was I wrong… or was I wronged?

For a year, I woke haunted, wrestling in the middle of the night with the tension.

I felt trapped inside a story about me that I no longer had control over.

But what I began to discover surprised me. Because the place I first felt farthest from God… was actually the place I began to encounter Him most deeply.

Sometimes, the spot where you feel God-forsaken can become the center of his most powerful work.

—

That’s part of what this new podcast is about.

Blessed Are the Canceled is a 12-episode series exploring what happens when it all falls apart. When you’re rejected, misunderstood, or pushed to the margins.

And whether those moments might become a doorway into something deeper with God.

Each episode takes on a different facet of that experience: the storm when everything collapses, the loneliness when relationships shift, the outrage cycles that deform us, betrayal and trauma, forgiveness and resilience, and what it looks like to move forward without becoming hardened.

—

Brenna and I have been working on this behind the scenes for a while now. She steps in as a guide and conversation partner, helping surface questions, tensions, and perspectives I wouldn’t be able to see on my own.

She asks the kinds of questions that slow the conversation down and keep it honest.

We first met through the firestorm and have become good friends since, so it’s been fun to collaborate on this together.

—

If you’ve ever walked through a season when life stops making sense, where you’ve been misunderstood, or where you’ve wondered what God is doing in the middle of it… I think you might enjoy this.

Season One launches May 26, with new episodes dropping every Tuesday.

If you’d like to follow along as the season unfolds, you can subscribe here.

Subscribe now

I’ll be writing here each week with some behind-the-scenes reflections along the way.

Thanks for being here.

Josh