Teens describe cancel culture. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with the point.

Recently, the New York Times asked 16s to describe what cancel cultures really like. Their responses

show just how normal the term has become. For many, it's basically a joke, a word thrown

around about anything and everything. That's not surprising for a generation so plugged in and

now coming of age, just as the term, has reached critical

mass.

For others, it's a way to take away someone's power and call them out for being problematic

in a situation, as one girl put it.

But that power element makes cancel culture so dangerous.

Cancelling someone is less about holding convictions with integrity than it is convincing

a mob of peers to forever isolate

someone else. And who decides what should be canceled, if not the powerful, which itself is subject

to the changing whims of a moment's majority? This isn't about enduring truths or standing for what's

right. These students have inherited a world with troubling public figures, celebrities, causes,

and past sins, but no example

of what to do with them. This is an opportunity for Christians to show a better way. For the

Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.