The Righteousness of being Woke: Resisting the Un-biblical Anti-woke Heresy

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!