This blog post is a meditation that serves as introduction to a series of meditations entitled, “The Righteousness of being Woke: Resisting the Un-biblical Anti-woke Heresy.”
These days, it is fashionable on America’s political and cultural right to complain about and rage against what it calls “wokeness,” or “woke culture” —as if sleeping and slumbering are somehow preferable to being awake! It is bizarre. And this is really saying something about a political and cultural movement that is increasing drunken in and addicted to the most bizarre and easily refuted conspiracy theories in America’s long history of infatuation with conspiracy theories. Challenged by and fearful of ideas and individuals that they cannot understand and will not countenance, those on America’s political and cultural right use “woke” as its latest catch-all pejorative for the political left and its defense of those very same challenging and fear-inducing ideas and individuals. Nevertheless, they seem often to struggle to clearly define, explain, or articulate the meaning of the political and cultural phenomena that they so fear and loath. But the word, “woke,” as used in a political and cultural setting is easy to understand and explain. “Woke,” as a political and cultural phenomenon has a nearly hundred-year history. For most of that history it existed in obscurity. For most of its long and rather silent history, “woke” indicated the awareness and acknowledgement of the oppressive racism America has practiced against African Americans from its inception. The Black Lives Matter movement resurrected the term from its obscurity and expanded the meaning to include not only awareness and acknowledgement of racist oppression, but resistance to it as well. More recently “woke” awareness has expanded to include past and present oppression, injustice, and wrong committed against other vulnerable groups such as women and the LBGTQ community. To be “woke,” then, is to remember. To remember and resist oppression. It is to acknowledge, and, most importantly, repent of social injustices and wrongs committed against any individual or group—in America’s case, African Americans, women, and LBGTQ, past and present, have been particularly vulnerable to oppression. In using the term in a pejorative manner, America’s political and cultural right confesses, unbeknownst to itself, its preference for forgetfulness, ignorance, and sin. To be anti-woke represents the refusal to engage in the process of repentance. It calls for spiritual sleepiness and slumber. It is nocturnal, a creature of the night, an inhabitant of dark places. In avoiding the light of day, its slumber is the sleep of hell. One of the foundational tenets of this right-wing anti-woke heresy involves America’s history with slavery and racism. There is an attempt on the part of the slumbering right to deny this history; to deny the oppression African Americans have and do endure; and to deny that much of America’s economic “greatness” was built on the back of the immorality of free and forced labor. More, it wishes to forget and deny present racism and its deleterious effects upon its targets. The movement wishes to remove such truths from school curriculums and public discourse. It wishes to keep our children asleep. Forgetful. Ignorant. Wicked. All of this, one suspects, it does in order to maintain an oppressive order in service to an ungodly white supremacy that has dominated America from its inception. In so doing, it becomes the defender of oppression—not only of African Americans, but of all vulnerable groups. America’s anti-woke mob seeks oppression. It is an oppressor. While most of those who complain loudly of “wokeness” are undisciplined in their rage, tragically, there are some, like Florida’s DeSantis, who, more wickedly crafty than most, cynically seek personal and political gain by further enflaming and manipulating the frenzied and fearful anti-woke or slumbering mind—often making appeal to those deemed more reasonable by dressing up the hateful anti-woke heresy in the language of “parental rights” and other pleasant sounding lies. Whether wielded in an undisciplined or cynical or crafty way, the anti-woke heresy is dangerous to society and the soul of its people. It must be challenged, resisted, and overcome. In this series of meditations, we resist the aspect of the anti-woke heresy that challenges the remembrance of America’s historical and systemic oppression of African Americans. We resist the anti-woke heresy with the Bible—a Book that so many anti-woke heretics claim to know and love. It is yet one more of many sad commentaries on American Christianity that so many who claim the title, “Christian” have adopted the hateful anti-woke heresy that is so incompatible with the Bible. For, make no mistake about it. The anti-woke heresy that seeks to forget America’s past oppression and ignore America’s present oppression of African Americans is decidedly at odds with the Bible. It is unbiblical. It is, in fact, about as unbiblical as one can get. To forget and ignore social injustice is antithetical to every Biblical and Christian principle. It is utterly un-Christian. If it is un-American to remember our own or any oppressive past or ignore our own or any oppressive present, then large swaths of America’s population is unbiblical and un-Christian. So, we will begin this series of meditations and our resistance of the anti-woke movement’s slumbering denial and forgetfulness of America’s oppressive history toward African Americans with a story that is familiar to all of us: the story of Israel’s exodus from Egyptian bondage. The story is a staple of western culture. It is the central story of the Hebrew Bible. The story’s point is central to not only the Hebrew Bible, but the Christian Bible as well. It is the central point of Christian doctrine. To wit: God is a Savior, a Redeemer, a Rescuer, a Liberator, an Emancipator. This reality is more than central to the Biblical witness, it is central to the Divine Character. But, for every Savior, Redeemer, Rescuer, Liberator, and Emancipator, there is an enslaver, an oppressor that must be humbled, resisted, defeated, halted and, where necessary due to the hardness of heart, annihilated. The two messages—Liberator and oppressor—go together, hand in glove. One cannot remember one without remembering the other. Nor should one. The remembrance of salvation and liberation without a thorough understanding and remembrance of what it is one is saved and liberated from is meaningless and nonsensical on its face. The battle over wakefulness or slumber in matters related to social justice has a very long history, pre-dating, even, America’s existence. America’s re-branded dalliance with forgetfulness and ignorance is not new. Forgetfulness and ignorance are exactly what one would expect of every oppressor. In its wish to oppress and keep oppression from coming to light, America’s right imitates the great oppressors of the Hebrew Bible, especially Egypt, as we will see in the upcoming meditations. But Israel, the victim of Egyptian oppression, was called out of oppression to stand against oppression. The first step of this resistance to oppression is the remembrance, awareness, and acknowledgement of oppression. Israel was never to forget, sleep, or slumber in relation to its own oppression. It was to remain awake to the possibility of newer oppression of newer vulnerable groups. It was always to remember. It was never to forget. Israel was, then, to be and remain “woke.” The laws and ordinances that God gave to Israel were intended as a safeguard against its falling asleep to oppression and thus becoming the next in history’s long line of oppressors. Like ancient Israel, America is called away from injustice and oppression. Americans, like Israelites are called to remember. They are called away from forgetfulness. They are called to wokeness. They are called to woke remembrance. This series of meditations lends but one more voice to that call. This call to woke remembrance is not simply a matter of righting past wrongs. It is a matter of imagining and carrying out a more just future. Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
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strange notions of diversity and unity
While I call today's blog a meditation, it might more accurately be called a jeremiad. Upon returning from a month long tour across the southern part of the subcontinent of India, I was interested to learn of the little dust up over Dallin Oak’s here-today-gone-tomorrow video (unfortunately, he says and does nothing in it to earn the title “Elder,” “Apostle,” or “President”) in which he seemed to poopoo diversity and any notion of the Lord’s responsibility for, interest in, or use of diversity within the body of Christ. “Jesus did not pray that his followers would be diverse,” he intones. “He prayed that they would be one…” His declaration is so knuckleheaded on so many fronts that it is hard to know where to even begin a discussion. Hearing his unfortunate declaration concerning diversity, unity, and the relationship between them, my wife wondered out loud, “What does that even mean?” While I have some sympathy for my wife’s sense that the declaration was nonsensical and off kilter, I nevertheless find significance in it. It seems to me an example of the quiet part being spoken out loud. I would be willing to bet that this ugly and inciting aphorism has been bandying about the echo chambers of the church’s highest leadership councils for some time. In this rarified, artificial, and vanilla environment of self-perpetuation devoid of self-reflection, it has almost certainly reverberated back and forth with little or no resistance. But when tried out and uttered outside in the real world where such declarations enter rather than bounce off actual human beings it landed with a deafening thud rather than exalted echoes. Enter the public affairs wizards to attempt a white wash. I have little doubt that this and many other ugly assertions that seek to justify a host of institutional errors and defame those perceived as threats to the status quo bounce around uninhibited inside the carefully maintained echo chambers of church leadership. I would be willing to bet that, while those “who seem to be somewhat”[1] lament the decrease in new members entering and the increase in old members exiting, within the leadership echo chambers there is a wizened, self-satisfied, and self-righteous nod of the head that this decrease in coming and increase in going is, in the end, inevitable—simply a matter of prophecy being fulfilled: an increasing and clearer demarcation between the goats and the sheep, the wheat and the tares. Convenient echo, this, since it allows the shouters to continue the status quo and avoid the sort of change that we call repentance and associate with progression. Here we recall that it was this same man who asserted that the church felt no need to apologize for past church errors—probably as much a dig at, say, the Catholic Church and its willingness to admit past errors as belligerent refusal to confess sin and error and ask for forgiveness. We also call to mind the church’s passive, responsibility-avoiding “mistakes were made” rather than the active and accountable “we made mistakes” when addressing its twenty-year-long fraudulent and unethical investment practices that have recently come to light. Those who lead the church simply seem incapable and/ or unwilling to admit error and make godly confession of sin as God requires of disciples.[2] Troubling, to say the least. It is such maintenance of the status quo and avoidance of repentance and progression that Oak’s latest howl concerning diversity seems intent on setting in concrete. But through scripture, we can easily identify the sophistry of his strange assertion and that has likely bounced about and then escaped the self-perpetuating echo chambers of the church’s leading councils. We can call to mind scripture’s insight that it is God, Himself, who appreciates, creates, and utilizes diversity. “For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, “Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body;” is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, “Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body;” is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, “I have no need of thee:” nor again the a head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary: and those members of the body, which we think to be less honourable, upon these we bestow more abundant honour; and our uncomely parts have more abundant comeliness. For our comely parts have no need: but God hath tempered the body together, having given more abundant honour to that part which lacked: that there should be no schism in the body; but that the members should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it. Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.”[3] If this is not a paean to diversity, I don’t know what is. “Jesus did not pray that his followers would be diverse,” but one, you say? Well duh. Of course, Jesus does not pray for diversity within the church. There is no need! He created diversity; built diversity into it from the very beginning! He is pleased with diversity. Finds it necessary. Mixes and combines diverse elements to form a healthy whole. Diversity keeps the more “valued” and “honorable” members—those such as Oaks?—from thinking more of themselves than they ought and allows the less valued members to think more of themselves than they are otherwise inclined to do. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all. But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal.”[4] And you do know, don’t you, that diversity and unity are not mutually exclusive? That, in fact, they belong together, go hand in hand? All are profited; all are blessed through the diversity God makes and cherishes as part of His Kingdom. Diversity is fundamental to the advancement of the institutional church and its individual members. Oak’s sophistry rejects divinely ordained diversity and falsely characterizes unity and oneness. But the sophistry goes further. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, it defames those who laud diversity, suggesting that they are somehow uninterested in and even adverse to the idea of unity and oneness in Christ when, in fact, those who laud diversity actually assert that a recognition and respect for diversity is a key to unity and oneness. The sophistry is more than gaslighting. It is itself divisive and inciting. If left to stand, it will do as much as anything to create disunity. Those who seem to be somewhat in the church seem to become ever more reactionary and irrational in their defense of a status quo that is increasingly indefensible. Here’s hoping they can be constrained in their irrational reactionary impulses by something more than a bunch of hired public affairs professionals. Here’s hoping they can find their way to humble acknowledgement of imperfection and error that leads to godly repentance. Even so, come, Lord Jesus! [1] See Galatians 2.6 [2] According to one GA’s recent ridiculous assertion, one can replace the name of the church with “Jesus.” It is, then, disconcerting to witness mere humans fining Jesus for fraudulent financial practices. [3] 1 Corinthians 12.14-27 [4] 1 Corinthians 12.4-7 dispossession and homelessness: a societal choice |
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