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I was thinking the other day, as I read about another woke person getting trapped in her wokeness and being fileted by the people she was trying to impress, just how familiar that seemed.
I was raised in a traditional Christian home, a fundamentalist Baptist home. I do not regret that one bit. On that foundation, my faith in Christ was built. Early in my journey, however, I saw the trap legalism presents to those entangled in its web. I would never brand all of the preachers and the people in our circle as legalists, but they were among us. They were self-assured, dogmatic, and vocal. They were bible bullies beating others over the head with the rules. They were better than you and they had the Old Testament to prove it. They took on issues like long hair on a man (and some were just as vocal about short hair on women), women wearing pants (“that which pertaineth to a man”), modesty issues like the length of a skirt, for instance, church attendance (“every time the doors are open”), unruly children, tobacco use, abstinence…the list is exhaustive and exhausting.
Where I came from, Jerry Falwell was a liberal!
The feeling I got, even as a teen already entertaining preaching and ministry as my life calling, was that the one with the most rules, rules. Yeah, you may be conservative but are you Jack Hyles conservative? Can you build the world’s largest Sunday School through intimidation and domination? Can you get tens of thousands of people to dress and groom themselves to satisfy your “standards”? Who do you think you are?
Don’t even bring up Jerry Falwell, that liberal!
See where I am going here? Falwell, the original poster boy for right-wing hatred in the Woke community before the Woke community was defined as such, was not conservative enough to suit the people I grew up with.
When you have a rules-based faith there is no way to win. Someone will always have one more rule than you. You will break a rule or fail to acknowledge it as a rule. Besides, you always apply them more vigorously and with greater judgment to others than you do yourself. This is human nature.
Have you woke up yet?
I thought it was telling that when I went to find definitions for “woke,” I found them to be complimentary of the term and the notion – complimentary and protective.
Definition of woke
(Entry 1 of 2)
chiefly US slang
: aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice)But we will only succeed if we reject the growing pressure to retreat into cynicism and hopelessness.
… We have a moral obligation to “stay woke,” take a stand and be active; challenging injustices and racism in our communities and fighting hatred and discrimination wherever it rises. — Barbara Lee
… argued that … Brad Pitt is not only woke, but the wokest man in Hollywood … because he uses his status—and his production company Plan B—to create space for artists of color, with such films as 12 Years a Slave, Selma, and the upcoming film Moonlight. — Giselle Defares
Of course, it is essential to be cognizant of injustice, combat it, and correct it wherever and however we can.
Just like the religionists, however, good intentions in the hands of selfish, power-hungry, ambitious, suspicious, and often hateful people, a standard like wokeness becomes a weapon against any and every person not deemed woke enough.
I came across another example of this just the other day. In fact , it prompted this article.
Following are snippets from the Breitbart.com article about the incident:
NBC has fallen under fire for describing a recent Jeopardy! game show contestant as “the 23-year-old lesbian tutor from Toronto” in a woke social media post, instead of using her actual name.
“The 23-year-old lesbian tutor from Toronto has amassed a total of $320,081, the most by a Canadian contestant in Jeopardy! history,” NBC News tweeted of Jeopardy! winner Mattea Roach.
Social media users quickly took to the comment section of NBC’s post, where they slammed the media outlet for its woke virtue-signaling.
“Is there some significance to her being a lesbian? Is there some kind of unique obstacle to be overcome in order for a lesbian to succeed at Jeopardy? I can’t imagine that is even a question on the form you fill out to be a contestant,” one Twitter user reacted.
“the 23 yr old tutor from Toronto has won a total of etc etc etc.,” another wrote. “don’t know what her sexual orientation has to do with anything. or will you be describing the next big winner the same sort of way? 45 yr old straight man wins… 38 yr old single straight childless woman wins..”
“I’m a tutor & have been one for 20 years,” another tweeted. “Not once has anyone described me as a heterosexual tutor. If you need an adjective to balance your sentence, here’s an idea, ‘23 year-old LSAT tutor from Toronto….’ For most of us, straight or gay, sex remains a private area of life.”
“The grammatical ambiguity of this lede confuses me. Does she teach lesbians part time? Or does she teach how to be a lesbian part time?” one Twitter user asked. “Also, on a related note, for how long has NBC been stuck in the 50s?”
In an effort to be woke and highlight a same-sex orientation, the author invited excoriation from the very ones she must have thought would embrace her. They were all over her like they were a bunch of Independent, Premillennial, beady-eyed Baptist preachers on a long-haired hippy.
As I understand irony, this is pure, unadulterated irony. The two ends of the spectrum – people who would loathe each other’s life choices – act exactly the same as one another, just with different criteria.
You may be woke but have you WOKE UP? Have you leveled up in your wokeness to the place where you can sit in judgment over all the lesser unwoke or less woke vermin around you?
PLEASE NOTE: Many of the men and women in the movement in which I was raised were anything but judgmental. They were loving, gracious, giving people, who served God the best way they knew how. They were motivated by love. The same is true among the woke. Many – maybe most – are good people who want all people to be treated with dignity and respect.
But those folks are never the ones escalating the situation, turning up the heat, and ultimately, creating an environment for controlling and even eliminating their philosophical or spiritual opposites (opponents).
Enter the Ministry of Truth
The big news lately has been Elon Musk purchasing Twitter and unfettering free speech on the platform. Immediately conservatives that were either kicked off the platform or left it in protest came back. Hell, Donald Trump!
Joe Biden’s response (if Joe himself has anything to do with any of his responses) is to establish a Ministry of Truth. He tagged an agenda-laden woman to lead the thing and now it is on.
One Wall Street Journal author warned of the disaster this will become. And it will!
The Department of Homeland Security has announced the formation of the Disinformation Governance Board—charged, according to Politico, with “countering misinformation related to homeland security, focused specifically on irregular migration and Russia.” In a twist too implausible for fiction, the abbreviation is DGB, one letter off from KGB.
The stated goal of combating mis- and disinformation is framed to seem unobjectionable. Who objects to truth and pines for falsehood? DGB experts will guide the way, separating the informational wheat from the disinformational chaff. But there’s one small problem with empowering “truth experts”: Experts are people.
People respond to incentives. Therefore experts respond to incentives. Graham Medley, a British expert involved in the U.K. policy response to Covid, illustrated the point in recent testimony before Parliament. “The worst thing for me,” he said, “would be for the government to say, ‘Why didn’t you tell us it could be that bad?’ Inevitably, we were always going to have a worst case which is above reality.”
Put yourself in his shoes. If you predict doom and nothing much happens, it was because of your wise warning.
If you don’t predict doom and reality is worse than you predicted, you will be blamed and shamed. The incentives are clear. Truth experts at the DGB will proclaim grave threats around every turn even when any “threats” are minor to nonexistent.
Let me ask you this: What sorts of governments in the annals of human history sought to control the public dialogue? Which ones do so today? They cloak themselves in “honor and truth” and then they destroy their ideological opponents – they either quiet them or they ruin them…or worse.
In Jesus’ day, Pharisees were using their religious and political clout to keep things in order so that they would hold sway over the people. Jesus disrupted that. He exposed them. They conspired to kill Him for doing so. He was branded a threat to Roman governance, a usurper, an enemy of the state.
So, he was crucified as a criminal.
Even the singular-minded Democratic operative and strategist James Carville acknowledges that the liberties Democrats have taken with their current in-charge position is a problem. Of course, Carville is speaking to strategy and the goal of keeping his party in power. But he sees it, nonetheless.
Every Ministry of Truth Must Include…
The Pharisees held the “truth” of Old Testament law and wielded it like a weapon. They badgered and bullied people into compliance, and those who refused to comply were either excommunicated or executed.
(Consider the story of the woman caught in adultery, brought to Jesus for judgment in the Gospel of John, chapter 8.)
The law is unyielding, unfeeling, and devoid of empathy. That is why it must always be applied with love.
The Apostle Paul instructed the church at Ephesus that “speaking the truth in love” is the path to spiritual growth and the proper way to represent Jesus Christ in the world (Ephesians 4:15).
In the Gospel of John, we learn that Jesus Christ is “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Grace without truth leads to anarchy, where there is no accountability.
Truth without grace leads to iron-fisted authoritarianism. There is no room for diversity.
Paul gave us the formula in his description and definition of love. It is the antidote for cancel culture, whether that culture belongs to the “narrow-minded” right or the “broad-minded” left.
It is recorded in 1 Corinthians 13…
1If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a ringing gong or a clanging cymbal. 2If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have absolute faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3If I give all I possess to the poor and exult in the surrender of my body,a but have not love, I gain nothing.
4Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs. 6Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
8Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be restrained; where there is knowledge, it will be dismissed. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10but when the perfect comes, the partial passes away.
11When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I set aside childish ways. 12Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.
Berean Study Bible
The truth in love is the antidote for Pharisaical wokeness, wherever it falls on the spectrum of political, social, and religious dogma.
