In this week’s captivating sermon by Pastor Diran Adeleke he explained that Anger serves as the primary fuel that drives cancel culture, providing the emotional energy that transforms disagreements into campaigns of destruction. In today’s social media landscape, outrage spreads faster than understanding, and collective anger can mobilize thousands of people within hours to demand someone’s removal, firing, or public humiliation. This anger often feels righteous and justified—after all, when someone says or does something offensive, hurtful, or wrong, anger seems like the appropriate response. However, cancel culture takes this natural emotion and weaponizes it, channeling legitimate frustration into mob justice that seeks not correction or reconciliation but complete erasure. The anonymity and distance of online platforms amplify this anger, making it easier to dehumanize targets and unleash fury without witnessing the real human cost. What begins as righteous indignation against genuine wrongdoing quickly metastasizes into a perpetual state of rage-seeking, where people actively hunt for reasons to be offended and opportunities to express their moral superiority through public condemnation.

The anger that fuels cancel culture often reveals deeper issues within our hearts and society—unresolved pain, desire for power, hunger for justice without mercy, and an addiction to the temporary satisfaction that comes from collective outrage. When we participate in cancel culture’s anger, we’re often projecting our own insecurities, failures, and frustrations onto convenient scapegoats, experiencing a fleeting sense of righteousness by tearing down others. This anger operates from a worldview that divides humanity into the purely good and the irredeemably bad, with no room for nuance, context, growth, or redemption. It’s an anger that refuses to see the full humanity of those being canceled, reducing complex individuals to their worst moment, statement, or mistake. Scripture warns that human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires, and that we should be slow to anger because unchecked rage destroys rather than restores. Cancel culture’s anger is particularly dangerous because it masquerades as moral courage and social justice, making participants feel virtuous even as they engage in cruel and destructive behavior that leaves lasting damage on real people and their families.

Breaking free from anger as fuel for cancel culture requires intentional cultivation of different responses—patience, understanding, discernment, and a commitment to redemptive rather than destructive justice. This doesn’t mean we become passive in the face of genuine wrongdoing or that we never express righteous anger at injustice; rather, it means we refuse to let anger control our responses and dictate our actions. The biblical model calls us to be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry, creating space for truth-seeking rather than immediate condemnation. It means asking questions before making judgments, seeking to understand context and intent, and recognizing that we ourselves are capable of the same failures we’re quick to condemn in others. When we feel anger rising in response to someone’s words or actions, we must pause and examine whether our anger is leading us toward restoration or destruction, toward understanding or condemnation, toward justice or vengeance. By replacing anger-driven cancel culture with grace-informed accountability, we create space for genuine transformation—where wrongs are addressed, victims are heard, offenders can repent and grow, and communities can heal rather than fracture. This approach honors both truth and mercy, holding people accountable while still believing in their capacity for change and redemption.