Tag Archives: Counterfeit Kingdoms

Worldview & Truth

The “Woke” Deception

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A friend recently observed, “If the church doesn’t offer our young people the Kingdom of God, they will look for it in “wokeness.”   That statement landed on me like a load of bricks.  So-called “Woke” Christianity is a deadly counterfeit of the Kingdom that promises a world of tolerance and equity at the expense of the God-man and Savior of the world.  The Christ of the woke church is Jesus the social-reformer, Jesus the revolutionary, the activist, the anti-racist, the Neo-Marxist or the abortion crusader. 

In past centuries there seemed to be enough godly fear and Biblical literacy in Western culture to tamp-down the counterfeits of liberal, progressive and “woke” Christianity.  People had little interest in a church focused on issues yet bereft of life-changing power.  But in today’s Western culture the fear of God is so rare, and the human race is so desperate that every impostor and counterfeit Christ is welcomed like the latest episode of Yellowstone.

How can we identify the counterfeit?   Here are a few red flags to look for:  

  1. Woke Christians are often identified by their open disdain towards the historical church.  While Biblical Christians lament the failings of the church, (which are mentioned often in the Epistles), they still embrace the church as the flawed yet  beloved bride of Christ.  
  2. “Woke” Christians often display an air of patronizing superiority. “You just wouldn’t understand.”  To become woke is a counterfeit conversion, an initiation into a special priesthood which lectures and judges the unenlightened.   
  3. Woke Christians are often overly focused on causes rather than Christ: equity, anti-racism, special rights, over-population, climate change, and  immigration to name only a few.  In the woke world these causes become frontline issues while the saving life of Christ is minimized, if not forgotten altogether. (It’s important to mention here that the Kingdom of God squarely addresses every one of these issues with the utmost tenderness and grace, yet always in context of Jesus first).  
  4. Woke Christians are prone to elevate government, environment, feelings, and selfhood, to the place of idolatry. 
  5. Woke Christians often embrace abortion almost as a sacrament of the faith.  
  6. And finally, woke Christians utilize a distinct language and vocabulary to express their unbiblical theology and worldview.  Examples include “heteronormativity”, “white patriarchy”, “parity”, “implicit bias”, “systemic racism”,  “micro-aggressions”, “hegemony”, “gender binary”, “intersectionality”, “social justice”, and “equity”, to name but a few.    


If you see these things in your friend or brother, pray for him and look for ways to help him see the destructive course he’s on.  It’s no small thing to follow a counterfeit Christ. 

The Kingdom, Worldview & Truth

Leftism and the Kingdom

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Someone has said, “When the church does not disciple the world, the world disciples the church.”

For nearly two weeks now I’ve had a growing sadness and alarm in the depths of my spirit:  The news of the church shootings in Charleston was a well-placed punch in the gut for most of us.  And quickly on its heels came two Supreme Court decisions that severed America from Constitutional clarity and set it adrift in the tides of relativism, public opinion and political expediency.  Facebook and web forums predictably erupted into vicious denunciations and hostile invective.  And now we have entered a contentious new territory which – apart from a great turning – could explode into unimaginable destabilization and bloodshed.

Today I simply want to remind my friends of two things:

#1. People are never the problem.  I know it’s quite easy to feel that way, and in fact there is a large segment of America already practiced at maligning others as “evil”, “racist”, and “standing in the way of progress.”  Jesus followers must never allow themselves to descend into that mindless approach, for whenever a culture has demonized people, it inevitably falls into the blackness of genocide, gas chambers and “final solutions.”

The problem is not people, but the lies people believe.  Let me go a step further and say it’s the lies we believe, because whether we know it or not, there are always vestiges of deception lying around in our own thought processes, and that realization ought to keep each of us perpetually humble before God.  For this reason Kingdom-seekers ought to forever champion humility, understanding and Truth.

#2. There is still the great untried truth of the Kingdom.  Leftism has gained such staggering ground in America because the leftists have learned to articulate their story and sought out the places of cultural influence to tell it.  They preach from hollywood sound-studios, academic halls, and media outlets a story that offers a hope, (false as  it is), to the hungry masses.   Their story has been told well, it’s being tested at this moment, and it will ultimately usher us into a living hell on earth.

And meanwhile…  we stand before church congregations and preach a shriveled narrative of forgiveness and escape from this world of darkness – a story that cannot even be tested until we die!   This narrative of getting into heaven when we die has played itself out; It will NOT capture the minds and hearts of this confused generation.  But the story of the Kingdom will!  How do I know?  It’s the same story that has fueled our hearts from our earliest years, and it’s the very story the King himself told to invite the world into life and blessing.

Worldview & Truth

Jesus and the one percent

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This morning it occurred to me that the Gospel of Luke tells a delightful story about Jesus’ encounter with a 1%  Wall-Street-type rich man.


Jesus was passing through Jericho.  A man named Zacchaeus was there. He was the director of tax collectors, and he was rich.  (We’re traditionally reminded that these tax collectors acquired their fabulous wealth by extorting money from the “ninety-nine percent”).  He tried to see Jesus, but Zacchaeus was a small man, and he couldn’t see Him because of the crowd.  So Zacchaeus ran ahead and climbed a fig tree to see Jesus, who was coming that way.  When Jesus came to the tree, he looked up and said, “Zacchaeus, come down! I must stay at your house today.”  Zacchaeus came down and was glad to welcome Jesus into his home.  But the people who saw this began to express disapproval.  (Maybe they made signs and occupied tents out in front of Zaccheaus’ house)?  They said, “He went to be the guest of a sinner.”  Later, at dinner, Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Lord, I’ll give half of my property to the poor. I’ll pay four times as much as I owe to those I have cheated in any way.”  Then Jesus said to Zacchaeus, “You and your family have been saved today. You’ve shown that you, too, are one of Abraham’s descendants.  Indeed, the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that  which was lost.”   (Luke 19:1-10)

The obvious truth lies in the details of how Zacchaeus was changed.  It wasn’t shame nor legislation that loosened his purse strings, but the love of a man named Jesus.  To my Christian friends tempted to “occupy” Wall Street, I remind you that the Kingdom begins not in anger and protest, but in love, witness, and the declaration of a new Kingdom.