[Darris McNeely] We're wrapped up now in an experience that is unlike anything we've seen in my lifetime, at least. It's called the cancel culture, where corporations, events, writers, actors, preachers, teachers, journalists, people are being canceled because of views held in the past, words that they might use or write, and views that they might hold even today because of a spirit of the age. And it's a bit different than anything that I've ever experienced and likely, you as well, as you look at our culture today. There's an alignment of major institutions within the United States, at least, that are contributing to this. You have entertainment and media that are working toward a particular standard, a set of rules that they dictate to the culture.

Big tech, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and other large tech companies, Twitter, and Facebook, have the power to enforce their particular value or point of view across the United States, across the world in many different ways, and to actually cancel out people who may hold alternative views. Academia has been impacted as well and big business. And so, all of these major movers and shakers, these influencers of culture are coming together, and government, I don't wanna leave out government, to create this huge movement that is called cancel culture right now. Now, you might not think it will come to you or it has come to you, but I guarantee you that it will.

Right now might be a good time for all of us to just understand how we should react and what we should think when it does come to us.

First of all, you want to be speaking truth. You want to be acting truth in all ways. Those of us who hold a Biblical worldview and understand the Bible, the Word of God, to be our standard for life, for hope, for living, even down to how we conduct ourselves and the words that we use and the way we approach so much of everything in our daily life, this dictates that. We have a Biblical view of the world. That's what "Beyond Today" is all about. We must always speak truth. We must always be speaking what is true. We must understand what Biblical truth is, but also how that applies when it comes to the everyday life of our culture. Do that, and you have a very firm ground to stand on.

Now, when it comes to us, when someone might want to cancel you out or when you run afoul in your job, at school, even in a family discussion of someone who says that your particular point of view may not be what is right, if you hold the truth, there's one other element that you do need to have and that is the conviction of your truth.

There's a Scripture, two of them actually, in Ephesians 4 that help us to understand this. In Ephesians 4:15, Paul writes that we should be speaking the truth in love, speaking the truth in love. Again, truth is what undergirds our entire life, Biblical truth, ethical truth, moral truth. Truth translates into values rooted in Scripture. Speak the truth in love. When we do, then we have firm ground to stand on and we've got to hold to the convictions that we have. It says that you may grow up in all things unto Him who is the head, Christ. Jesus Christ was the embodiment of truth in His life and ministry. He is as the Son of God as the right hand of the Father today, the embodiment of that same truth. When we are growing up spiritually to Christ as the head, then we are in truth and we should speak the truth in love.

Now, in verse 25, this is mentioned once again. Paul writes, "Therefore putting away lying, let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor for we are members of one another." Speak truth with his neighbor.

When the cancel culture comes to us, in whatever form and way, and I'm not saying that we're going to become overnight celebrities, and on the headlines and whatever, it doesn't always happen that way. Eventually, the spirit of the age is going to come to each one of us. Make sure that you are speaking the truth in love and hold to that truth to one another. Have the conviction of it. That's how we deal with cancel culture. That's how we stand in truth and not let ourselves be overwhelmed and overcome by the spirit of an age that has a completely different motive basis that is not a Biblical worldview.

That's "BT Daily." Join us next time.