The term woke has been getting an intense workout of late. Jake Tapper asked Nikki Haley to define woke on a CNN town meeting. Haley couldn’t define it, but she did offer this nice word salad:
“The idea that we have biological boys playing in girls’ sports – it is the women’s issue of our time…”
And she was just getting started.
Before an event in Alabama last month, Mike Pence was asked to define woke. The best he could do was:
“There’s been an effort to suppress voices that that cherish traditional values. People that will hold up traditional conservative views and use the opportunity in academia in the corporate America to advance a liberal social agenda that comes to be known as, as the woke movement in this country.”
But the worst offender is none other than Ron DeSantis—DeSanctimonious, as his rival calls him. This last weekend he told the crowd gathered:
“As president, I recognize that the woke mind virus represents a war on the truth so we will wage a war on the woke. We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of congress.”
It kind of reminded me of Monty Python’s Spam sketch, only there weren’t any vikings.
The bottom line is that none of them know what woke is, and even though the definition of the word is as close as their phone, they won’t bother to look it up. Instead, it’s become a catchall term they use to define the Left in general, but more specifically, gay and trans-affirming attitudes, supporters of women’s health care, science-based thinkers, anti-racists, and non-Evangelicals, to name a few.
And when Liberals point out that the man Christianity is based on, Jesus, was woke, Evangelicals rush to pronounce that proclamation heresy. Jesus was not woke. He could not be woke. Only the Liberal, Marxist, Communist, Gay, Trans, and Abortionists would dare to say such a thing.
So what is woke? According to Wikipedia:
Woke is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination". Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities, such as sexism, and has also been used as shorthand for some ideas of the American Left involving identity politics and social justice, such as white privilege and slavery reparations for African Americans.
It’s immediately obvious why Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, and Mike Pence find the concept of woke so repugnant. It represents the one thing Evangelicals despise. “The ‘Liberal’ Teachings of Jesus.” So to avoid this, they make up new definitions, vilify those that Jesus loved the most, and then “kill” it… “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
If God were to approach Ron DeSantis and ask about his "brother," DeSantis would ask, "Am I my brother's keeper?" Yet those who are "woke" would know that we are our brothers and sisters’ keepers. Jesus knew that. Jesus taught that. That was the whole point of the parable of the Sheep and the Goats.:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
Then Jesus went even further and told us that our enemies were also our brothers. So it could be said we are also our “enemies” keepers as well.
No wonder DeSantis is so desperate to distance himself from that teaching. And he brags about how successful he’s been all over the country. Florida is where ‘woke’ goes to die. Florida is where you don’t have to care for your brother. You don’t have to feed them or clothe them or educate them.
Whether Jesus would be comfortable with the label, ‘woke,’ he indeed agreed with the concepts behind it, and that comes through in his teachings.
For instance, the parable of the Good Samaritan was a powerful discussion on racial justice, and it was radical as well. Jesus presented a scenario where a man was mugged and beaten mostly to death, and two people, his own “kind,” passed him by. Only the third person, a Samaritan, would stop and help.
Ultimately, the man showed not only the compassion of the communist/Marxist/leftist liberal but also the wholly debased and depraved attitudes of the Temple leaders: such as DeSantis, Haley, and Pence. What kind of “Godly” men would leave one of their own to die? What kind of godly men would deny women’s health care, turn a blind eye to the pain their actions have caused, and leave their “brother” on the side of the road to suffer?
Jesus addressed racism head-on, and spoiler alert; he was against it. And he portrayed racists as downright deplorable.
Regarding social inequalities, Jesus told the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. I have two versions of how it affected the politics of the day here:
- Women were featured prominently among Jesus’ disciples and were highly respected.
- The Sermon on the Mount is a roadmap of how Jesus thought we could achieve social justice.
- When it came to the poor, Jesus demanded that we care for them… period. We don’t ask them to "work" either. Instead, he put the onus on the rich. "Sell all you have and give to the poor."
He started a revolutionary underground movement, bottom up. He had little regard for the Temple/Spiritual authorities that put into place policies that would give themselves power while stealing the very few resources of those they led. The first—those in power—shall be last. The first serve those beneath them, the way Jesus washed the feet of those who should have been washing his.
Indeed, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, or Ron DeSantis will never hear from those they don’t want to hear from, so they’ll never be challenged regarding their opposition to everything Jesus stood for. Nobody will quote the words of Jesus to them: If you’ve done it unto the least of these, my brothers, you’ve done it unto me.
This makes for an interesting question. When DeSantis tells us that “Florida is where woke goes to die…” Does he mean, “Florida is where Jesus’ teachings go to die”? I somehow get the feeling that the whole anti-woke group is simply trying to suppress those teachings of Jesus they don’t want to follow.
I think John Fugelsang put it best:
Donald Trump is like Jesus for Christians who've rejected the teachings of Jesus.
But we can substitute any name—or the anti-woke movement as a whole—here as well.