This past week, news sources reported that Alexi McCammond was dismissed from her job as editor-in-chief of Teen Vogue even before officially starting. The 27-year-old McCammond was seen as a rising star who covered Joe Biden’s presidential campaign last year for Axios. In 2019, the National Association of Black Journalists named her emerging journalist of the year.
The announcement of her appointment to the job had sparked outrage from the publication’s staffers and readers as well as some celebrities because of anti-Asian and homophobic tweets she posted a decade ago.
We hear a lot of that sort of thing these days. When I read the story, an admonition my parents seemed fond of voicing to me and my siblings years ago came to mind, “Be sure your sins will find you out.”
There are probably not many readers who will not have heard that claim. They may not know it comes from the Bible. Veteran gamblers had a saying, “There is no such thing as a sure thing”, but the Bible says otherwise. The Bible insists there is one thing which is so sure, you can bet your life on it. “Be sure your sin will find you out.” (Numbers 32:23, NASB)
The setting of the claim is interesting. Why was the statement made? Israel was at the threshold of entering the Promised Land. Twelve tribes made up the nation of Israel, but two of the tribes wanted to stop short of crossing over the Jordan River and entering the Promised Land. They liked the land east of the Jordan River and wanted to stay right there. However, God had told the entire nation that, as one people, they must enter the Promised Land, and fight whatever battles had to be fought to take the land that God had promised them.
Moses, the leader of the nation, told these two tribes they had to go and fight. If they still wanted to live on the east side of the Jordan after the land had been claimed, they could. They agreed to fulfill their commitment to the Lord and to the nation. As a warning, Moses said this, “See to it that you do, but if you don’t, be sure your sin will find you out.”
As certain as the Bible is about the claim that our sin will find us out, it is equally certain that there is a dark side, and we can enter the dark side. But we can never get away with it. Those are not my concerns here. My concern is the practice in our culture of holding against persons things they said or did decades ago, especially as it relates to race. McCammond was dismissed because she did something or said something or tweeted something when she was 17 years old.
Never mind what McCammond said, “I became a journalist to help lift up the stories and voices of our most vulnerable communities. As a young woman of color, that’s part of the reason I was so excited to lead the Teen Vogue team in their next chapter,” McCammond tweeted. “My past tweets have overshadowed the work I’ve done to highlight the people and issues that I care about…I should not have tweeted what I did and I have taken full responsibility for that. I look at my work and growth in the years since, and have redoubled my commitment to growing in the years to come as both a person and as a professional.”
A number of journalists have expressed their disappointment in the action of Teen Vogue. CNN correspondent Abby Phillip wrote McCammond was “obviously not who she was when she wrote those tweets,” and while stipulating it was fair to “demand true remorse,” she wished McCammond had been given a chance. MSNBC host Medhi Hasan said the situation made him “sad and frustrated,” tweeting there was a difference between “active, current racists” and people who apologized for things they said long ago.
Be sure your sins will find you out! Just as certain as that is, forgiveness is at the heart of the Christian faith because that is the nature of God.
For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:11-12