While we were busy poking fun at the silliness of political correctness, it quietly grew into a Marxist monster called the “Woke” movement. We flirted with it for decades, rightfully eager to become more sensitive to people, movements, and minorities. But the more we fed it, the bigger it grew until it gathered a gang of political-corporate thugs and began terrorizing the playground. And even worse, the teachers and school principle have sided against the skinny kids.
“Woke-ness” divides. It’s a form of Marxism that focuses on race, gender, language and power. Energized by outrage, it separates neighbor from neighbor, blacks from whites, men from women, gays from straights, and natives from immigrants. It rewrites history, topples statues, bans books, cancels dissidence, redefines words, and crushes freedom. And it has been creeping into our churches for decades.
On Easter Sunday I rode past a church in East Texas which proudly declared “We are a Social Justice – Black Lives Matter Church”. It felt both ominous and odd. While most were celebrating the resurrection, our misguided brethren were declaring a political gospel and standing boldly against whiteness. To our well-intentioned friends, activism has replaced evangelism, conversion has given way to “woke-ness”, and the “Enemy” has become the person next door who refuses to play along with the game.
I’ve already experienced the rage of the mob, unfriended for my lack of outrage, condemned for my want of “nuance”, and shunned for refusing to denounce people based on their skin color, or the uniform they wear. Make no mistake, the woke movement is as far from the heart of Jesus as the Pharisees of old.
Please, my friends, hold fast to the beauty of the Gospel: Sin infects us all, the cure is in Christ, true power is expressed in humility, and hope is found in God’s Kingdom. “There is a way which seems right to a man, But it’s end is the way of death.” Proverbs 16:25
Dispatches from the Shadowlands: Hopeful glimpses of a Kingdom 