Woke Ideology – Censored Series

Woke Ideology

Introduction

The term “woke” is a modern term that can be difficult to define, yet it seems like no matter what topic we look at, woke ideology is present. In order to address this ideology we need to define it and understand where it came from. Someone who is “woke” is someone who has been awakened to or made aware of an issue of injustice that exists and is now actively fighting to fix that injustice. While this definition is true, it still does not truly define someone who is woke. We also have to look at what is being called an injustice. The injustice being addressed is crucial to being “woke”. In particular, woke ideology takes a look at social justice issues. What is social justice? Social justice is aimed at addressing disparities in society, its aim is to bring an end to power dynamics and bring about an “equitable” future. Once again, this brings us down the rabbit hole of definitions. Equity in the social justice sense means that no disparities exist between races, sexes, sexual orientations, and many other classifications of people. The fundamental understanding is that disparities, or differences, means there is inequity and inequity means there is injustice. Christians can agree with the second part of this statement, God calls for there to be equity under the law, and God gives his judgment equitably, but we cannot agree that differences are inequitable. Someone who is “woke” is going to work to achieve a society with no disparities between individuals, which requires them to discriminate to achieve this end. Rather than treating people equally, they want to treat people partially to make them appear equal in outcome. To achieve this they must end the power struggles that they see in every human interaction and between all groups of people.

What is Justice?

It is important that we understand what justice really is. If we don’t have a good understanding of what is just and unjust we will fall for causes that call good evil and evil good. True justice comes from God, so we have to know what God calls justice. Amos chapter 5 verse 24 says, “But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” The bible tells us that God is a just God, meaning that He does not judge with partiality. Each and every person gets their due. For unrepentant sinners that means condemnation and for believers in Christ that means the punishment that was due to us was placed upon Christ on the cross. Each and every sin is accounted for and duly punished without partiality. That is equity under the law, and God is the perfect judge. 

The woke movement breaks this definition of justice seeing equality of outcome as the proper definition of equity. If we hold to the woke definition of justice then God would not be equitable or just in punishing sinners because they would end in a different state of judgment than believers. This is a disparity and would have to be an injustice. In order to fix disparities there must be partiality, people must be treated differently to achieve the same outcome. This means that the woke definition of justice and equity is the opposite of the biblical definition of justice and equity. Nobody who believes in the scriptures can hold to woke ideology and biblical teaching simultaneously, you will have to accept one and abandon the other. Of course, Christ told us this, we cannot serve two masters.

A Brief History of Philosophy

Philosophy is a long history of humanity attempting to explain all of life without God. It is essentially the history of man’s rebellious thought, and most systems of philosophy either deny God entirely or give credit to man’s reasoning and thought above what scripture has revealed as true. The modern woke ideology is no different and has a history that goes back hundreds of years. While there are philosophers that influenced the thinking of the men we will be going over, we are only going to go back to the most relevant thinkers.

The first philosopher we need to look at is Georg W. F. Hegel (1770 – 1831), who is a German idealist. Hegel, along with other idealists, believed that human thought is inseparable from reality and that the mind comes before reality. In other words, your perception of reality is reality. He was also a rationalist, believing that the human mind is sufficient to reason and understand the world around us. With these philosophical systems Hegel came up with his own system called the dialectic. The problem Hegel was attempting to address is the contradictions that arise from rational thought. For example, how do you define being and non-being? It is difficult to define either without reference to the other. Hegel said that if you back up and view the picture from a greater perspective the apparent contradictions would go away. For example, if you ask several blind men to describe an elephant one man may feel the trunk and describe the elephant like a snake; another man would feel the leg and describe the elephant like a tree trunk. These statements are contradictory, but if you zoom out you see that each man is describing a part of the whole. The same is true in philosophy, according to Hegel. If you zoom out on defining being and non-being you find the relation between them, which is becoming. Hegel defines his dialectic as the process of thinking through these contradictions.

“Like other human activities, knowledge proceeds by trial and error-by questioning what we think we know, in order to reach a higher level of insight. Interpreters commonly identify three stages in Hegel’s dialectical reasoning: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. The thesis is a proposition up for discussion. The antithesis is an assertion that seems to arise from the thesis, but is in fact contrary to it. The synthesis is a view that dismisses the errors of the thesis and the antithesis, but presents a larger picture that affirms what is true in these earlier steps.” – John Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology

The synthesis is then negated, and the cycle continues. Philosophy changes over time becoming better and better through Hegel’s dialectic, and our understanding becomes greater and greater. In other words, our understanding progresses. Hegel did not only apply his dialectic to thought; since he is an idealist his dialectic applies to all of reality, including history. History follows Hegel’s dialectic and all of human history progresses and becomes better over time. Tribes fight and nations are born, nations fight and greater civilizations form. Hegel explains that concepts that seem to be opposite of each other are dependent on one another.

“For example, according to Hegel, slavery and democracy seem to be opposed, but it was slavery that gave leisure to the Greek upper classes to think about and implement democracy. But eventually the contradiction destroyed the slave-leisure society and created a higher kind of civilization, feudalism. But that, too, embodied social tensions, in this case between nobles and serfs.” – John Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology

So for Hegel, all of reality follows the pattern of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, which continues until full knowledge and reality are attained. Hegel believed in God, and attended a seminary in Germany, but he is not an orthodox Christian. He believed that God also followed his dialectic, which places his thought above scripture. He also believed that his dialectic was the final step of progress for philosophy, and no further development could top his insight.

Hegel is then followed by Karl Marx (1818-1883), who believed in Hegel’s dialectic but made changes to it to fit his framework of thought. Unlike Hegel, Marx did not believe in spiritual things. Marx was a materialist and believed Hegel got his philosophy backwards. It is not our minds that shape reality, but reality shapes our mind through natural humanistic processes. Marx was a fan of both Hegel and Charles Darwin and combined Hegel’s philosophy with Darwin’s theories, making the dialectic a natural process caused by material, biological nature. Humanity was not moving on the dialectic path, rather they were determined by their biology to move along the path. Marx understood the primary deterministic mover for the dialectic to be economic forces.

“The attempts of people to achieve material well-being are what motivate the events of history. In his analysis of the production of goods, Marx distinguished between factors of production (food, clothing, shelter, work skills) and relations of production (master-slave, owner worker, etc). It was the relations of production Marx thought to be the more important understanding of historical change.” – John Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology

While most people recognize the technologies and goods being produced move history forward by improving lives, Marx believed that the relations between workers and employers was more important to human history. If we look at the industrial revolution there were new technologies produced that allowed greater production of goods, greater production of food, and therefore greater access to resources for all people. Yet Marx, who lived during this time, did not see those changes as relevant as the class conflicts. He saw the conflict and change in relations as what came before the technologies, and saw history as determined by class conflict. Hegel’s dialectic of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis moved these relations from slave labor to feudal labor to worker labor, and eventually would move personal labor, where each individual owned his own labor. This change was required due to the inevitable warfare between employer and employee.

“Any increase in the prosperity of the owner is at the expense of the slave, and vice versa. It is a zero-sum relationship. So conflict is an unavoidable consequence. There is no possibility of reconciling the two parties so that they can live together in peace. They can only jostle for position until a full-scale class war breaks out. In time it is inevitable that the conflict will dissolve the whole social order that is dependent on slavery to bring a new economic arrangement into play.” – John Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology

So the Marxist revolution is inevitable, following the dialectic, until the fulfillment of the dialectic comes about in the Marxist utopia. Karl Marx did not believe he was coming up with a new philosophical system, but believed he was reading history and predicting the inevitable future according to the dialectic.

“But Marx does not understand his analysis as an ethical one. It is not based on the unfairness of slavery, but on Marx’s claim to have discovered scientific laws governing history. To him, indeed, there is no objective right or wrong. There is only what is right for the advancement of one’s class. So the ethics of one class will be opposite to the ethics of the rival class.” – John Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology

We see this same ideology today. Some people say there is no absolute right or wrong and that morality is subjective. It appears that we have objective morality because societies have standards of morality, but those standards are held in place by structures of power. This power is set between the people that control the structures and the people that are not part of the hegemony, creating class warfare. If you think there is one good or better standard for society to follow, you are an oppressor and the oppressed will eventually overcome you. So, all of reality is class warfare, or power struggles. It is oppressor versus oppressed. Marx expected class warfare to break out at any moment, but it never did.

One blame that Marx found for why the revolution was not taking place was religion. He called religion the opiate of the masses, and his main issue was with Christianity. In particular, Marx took issue with the well known preacher Charles Spurgeon, who was a contemporary of Marx. Spurgeon’s teachings were directly opposite of Marx’s teachings. While Marx wanted people to see their oppression and revolt, Spurgeon taught Christians to be content with where God had placed them in life. Marx acknowledged that Christianity made positive changes in history over time, but the change was too slow. If we throw off religion entirely we don’t have to worry about morals set from on high to slow down the revolution.

Another problem Marx saw was the structures of society.

“The real problems, he and later Marxists argued, are structural. They cannot be solved until there is a radical change in the very nature of society. The means of production must be taken from the rich capitalists and given to the representatives of the poor.” – John Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology

Eventually, if the revolution takes place, the people will set aside profit motives and think along the motto “to each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” This means that everyone will produce an abundance of goods according to their ability to produce, and nobody will own anything (and they will be happy). Then, each person will take from the abundance of goods only what they need. There will be peace and harmony with no resentment because everyone will live in equity, or equality. Once this comes about there will be no more power struggles, and no force will be necessary. This revolution never took place, and those who followed Marx’s vision of the future had to figure out why.

One group that followed after Marxist thought are the philosophers from a university in Frankfurt, Germany. This group became known as the Frankfurt school, which was made up of many different Marxist philosophers.

“The Institute (now commonly referred to as The Frankfurt School) was formed with the vision of filling in those conceptual gaps through the work of its members. Most notably, these scholars argued, in effect, “Not only was the Social Democratic leadership too wishy-washy and compromising, its voting constituencies among the working classes were themselves clueless about their real needs and their real but masked state of oppression.”[5] By this time, the leading lights of the Institute had agreed that what the Marxists really needed was an aristocracy—a role they could fill. The major result of this work is what is now known as Critical Theory.” – James Lindsay, New Discourses

The Frankfurt School believed the reason the revolution did not take place is because the structures had too much power. The social structures of society were powerful enough to prevent people from seeing their true oppression. What became necessary for the revolution was a group of aristocrats, or philosophers, who could interpret the world for the people and show them their true oppression. If they can’t see it on their own, it must be pointed out to them. They created tools to show people how oppressed they really are, and they are oppressed by everything. One theory created by this group is critical theory.

“Everything in our world is power. Systems and structures are created to maintain and build upon that power. Governments, organizations, businesses, and even hobby clubs exist solely to maintain and build power. Critical Theory’s goal is to intellectually emancipate society from oppression. Critical Theory is “…practical in a distinctively moral (rather than instrumental) sense.”[4] In other words, “critical” arguments are formed and founded in rhetoric—only. You cannot test their claims with any instrument of measurement. This is Critical Theory in a nutshell. So, if you can’t test its claims, how can anyone know whether its claims are true or not? This requires faith or ‘suspension of disbelief,’ whichever you prefer. What value does it really have to anyone? So far, it’s been a very effective method of creating additional faculty jobs at universities. It has the added benefit of creating for its proponents social protections that are granted to ‘allies of the oppressed.’” – James Lindsay, New Discourses

Critical theory is meant to destroy any topic that it touches. Anything that lays between the C and the T is broken down, not by facts, but by rhetoric. This rhetoric is not meant to correspond to real facts, absolutes don’t exist and reality is only a projection of the current power structures. The arguments that arise from any critical theory are unquestionable arguments, and you cannot declare them to be true or false. They are simply a lens to interpret reality. A modern example of critical theory rhetoric can be seen in critical history theory. The 1619 project is a perfect example of critical history. The 1619 project attempts to frame the founding of the United States as 1619, when the first slave arrived on the continent and not in 1776. This is an important framing because you can say that everything that has happened in the history of the United States has been done to keep the 1619 founding going. In other words, all of United States history is meant to keep African American slavery going. This project was published by the New York Times in 2019, and received heavy criticism from historians since much of it was not historical. The author came out and said it was not meant to be historical, it was meant to be narrative. It is simply one way to “view” the history of the United States. The work is a narrative, not a history. Why should anyone accept this narrative? In the mind of the critical theorist, it is a narrative that is not grounded in the structure of power, and is therefore an “antithesis” to the “thesis” of history. Using this lens we can then come to a better “synthesis” between the real history and the perceived narrative of those who are oppressed.

Postmodernism and Post-Postmodernism

After these philosophies form, we then get to postmodern thought. Modern thought is an attempt to reason without God, and create an atheistic worldview. Modernism attempts to hold to absolute truths and morals without appealing to God. We can reason on our own and be good. Postmodernism takes modernism to its logical conclusion: there is no absolute morality or truth, and everything is subjective. Postmodernism acknowledges that God is dead as Nietzsche declared, and then reasons from the lack of anything divine. This reasoning leads to the thought that nobody can perceive reality fully, but only in part. Each person has their own perspective, their own truth, their own morality, their own narrative. Societies then create shared perspectives and narratives to push their version of reality on others. Marxism naturally fell into this category of thought, and postmodern philosophers expanded ways to think about cultural oppression.

The twentieth century saw many philosophers that combined Marxism with modern philosophy. One major influence was Jacques Derrida (1930 – 2004). Derrida is the father of deconstruction philosophy. While his understanding of deconstruction had a focus on literature, deconstruction has also been applied to all reality.

“Deconstruction in its purest form was a practice of reading in order to pick apart the binary oppositions by which we understand our world—fact and fiction, science and art, male and female—to be radically skeptical of categories on principle, and to doubt that words could ever refer straightforwardly to things in the real world or convey stable meaning. It relied on the assumptions of structuralism, which says that cultures are reliant upon structures of meaning largely maintained through language and, less well, through symbolism, and of social constructivism, which holds that societies construct reality with the way they understand it and talk about it (see also, poststructuralism). To practice deconstruction is to pick at these categories and words and attempt to show them to be inherently flawed, problematic, or absurd.” – James Lindsay, New Discourses

Deconstructions relies on the concept of structuralism, which states that cultures build structures in society to uphold the cultural norms for future generations. These structures are not based on absolutes but on subjective cultural ideals. Deconstruction then attempts to tear apart the language of these structures in order to free people from the oppression of those structures. Cultural structures create binaries or locked categories of thought, and this is one reason people don’t realize their oppression. They don’t have the language to express their unique perspective and are forced by the structures to conform. When you come upon cultural structures you are to deconstruct them to rid yourself of these false binaries. We see this with the modern view of gender, which states that two genders is a social construct that oppresses people’s true gender expression. Gender must be deconstructed to free people to express themselves as they see themselves. This also takes place with faith, and there are many videos online of people “deconstructing” their faith. This is where the individual looks at the Christian faith as one of those oppressive structures, and they are challenged to compare their Christian belief with what they feel is true. Oftentimes you will see those who deconstruct their faith deconstruct the concept of love, and find that the bible doesn’t line up with their understanding of love. So, they deconstruct their faith and either become atheist, agnostic, or adopt a woke form of Christianity that rejects scripture as authoritative.

Another postmodern philosopher that has influenced our modern woke thought is Michel Foucault (1926 – 1984).Foucault stated that knowledge is power. You may have heard this phrase before, but I doubt you have understood its full meaning. Foucault taught that those who control language and knowledge are the ones that get to control society. The current cultural structures stand by defining words in a way that benefits them. 

“The term Foucauldian refers to ideas that were produced by or that derive from the thinking of the French postmodern philosopher Michel Foucault. Foucault’s thinking, particularly his thoughts about the nature of knowledge, power, discourses, and the relationships between these, has been incredibly influential on the development of the Theory of Critical Social Justice. Indeed, many of Foucault’s ideas lie at the very core of the “Woke” worldview of Critical Social Justice. The starting place for the Foucauldian view of knowledge, power, and discourses is that knowledge is socially constructed and has been defined in the service of power, so knowledge and power (politics) are the same thing, and what we consider knowledge may have little or nothing to do with reality outside of its political (mis)applications.” – James Lindsay, New Discourses

If you can control the definition of words you can control the populace. Since no absolutes exist, words only have the meaning we give to them. Language is not a tool to communicate our ideas to one another, but a tool for political power. I am certain you have come across words that have been redefined recently. Last week we talked about the redefinition of the word racism. It is no longer prejudice, but is now prejudice plus power. Whites can be racist because they have structural power, while minorities cannot be racist. This new definition takes advantage of the old understanding of racist. Nobody wants to be racist, but now you can be called one based on the color of your skin. If you don’t want to be a racist, listen to the person calling you a racist to discover how you can overcome your racism. The philosophy is obvious in how language is now being used to manipulate people.

These previous philosophies all combine to bring about our current woke ideologies. Critical theory has evolved into many different critical theories, taking full advantage of the entire range of previous teachings. The most well known critical theory is critical race theory, or CRT. CRT was created by Derrick Bell (1930-2011) who was a tenured Harvard law professor. CRT’s goal was to examine whether or not the civil rights movement was successful in benefiting blacks in America. The answer is: no. More work is necessary to achieve racial equity as we see it defined in Marxist thought. A problem then arises when we get these various critical theories and Marxist movements. There is no unity in the revolution, which slows progress. Intersectionality is the next concept that attempts to bring the required unity.

Our experiences of the social world are shaped by our ethnicity, race, social class, gender identity, sexual orientation, and numerous other facets of social stratification. Some social locations afford privilege (e.g., being white) while others are oppressive (e.g., being poor). These various aspects of social inequality do not operate independently of each other; they interact to create interrelated systems of oppression and domination. The concept of intersectionality refers to how these various aspects of social location “intersect” to mutually constitute individuals’ lived experiences. The term itself was introduced by Kimberle Crenshaw in 1989, although intersectional understandings of the social world precede her work. – James Lindsay, New Discourses

Under intersectionality you are to look at your intersections of oppression. If you are black and female you are oppressed as a black person and as a female. You then have a common goal with all women and all black people to end your oppression, and you have more experience to speak of oppression for both groups. This unites the different groups of oppressed people into one movement. Notice the angle of this teaching. Why not look at the intersections where you are not oppressed? The goal is to teach you to identify yourself as a victim of oppression in order to bring about the Marxist revolution. The philosophers need you to see your oppression and “rise up.” Every voice must be “lifted up.” If you do not fall into any of the intersections of oppression, or you only fall into one or two, you are not left out. You can become an ally to those who are oppressed. Becoming an ally means that you acknowledge your privilege and begin to do the work of helping others overcome their oppression. This process often involves you following the instructions of those who are oppressed since you as the oppressor have no way to relate to their oppression and therefore cannot know the real solutions. An ally is to enslave themselves to the oppressed.

I want to cover one other philosophy, even though it is not directly related to woke ideology. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905 – 1980) is the father of existentialism. While he was not the only existentialist, he is the most well known. Our society, in this post-postmodern era, is combining woke ideologies with existentialism, even though they stand in contradiction to one another. Using the dialectic, this contradiction should eventually work its way out. Existentialism is an atheistic philosophy, and since there is no God, we as humans have no designer or determinism. Marx taught that we are determined by the dialectic, Sartre believed that nothing determines humanity’s actions.

“Rather, says Sartre, we simply appeared on the scene, without definition, without purpose. So we have no essence that we need to live up to. We have only existence. Existence is simply our daily sequence of choices and decisions. At the end of life, it will be possible for people to evaluate those decisions and thereby to describe what kind of person we have been. We may call that essence. So essence comes at the end of life, not the beginning. Existence precedes essence…” – John Frame, A History of Western Philosophy and Theology

Life is existence, and you get to choose what you are in every moment. Sartre said that we are meant to live our lives authentically, which means that we don’t let anything get in the way of us being who we truly are. Since you have no designer or determiner, you are a blank slate. You live your life to define who you are, so that after you die and people look back on who you were they will discover your true essence. If you want to be known as the person that wore pajamas everywhere, then wear pajamas everywhere. This is the authentic you. Sartre explained that the reason people feel like life is determined in some way is because others don’t want you to live life authentically. They give you the stare, which is the look of disapproval for your choices. Well, there is no absolute right or wrong, there is no absolute truth, there is no absolute morality, so you make your choices and ignore what others say.

Sartre was a proponent of Marxism, but saw that there were contradictions in how Marxists said on one hand that there was no absolute moral framework, yet attempted to thrust a moral framework on others. Marxists made truth claims and moral claims about oppression, morality, and so on. How can you have such claims in an existential framework? He could not work out the differences, and never fully endorsed communism. Yet today we see people combining this blank slate ideology to define themselves. The “stare” that Sartre described is the oppression of the social structures. Now, Marxism is also a cultural system to allow people to live their authentic lives, and not a claim about real justice. Rather, justice is achieved when authentic lives are lived.

All of these philosophies have shaped our society today. Even when people haven’t heard of these philosophies or the philosophers who came up with them, they have adopted their ways of thinking. There is no single coherent worldview from these philosophies, but postmodernism does not require consistency. People want to live in their own way with no boundaries and these philosophies give them the groundwork to do so. Oddly, they tell everyone to live authentically to themselves, yet complain about the way others live. If this way of thinking continues on, we are going to see worse and worse consequences from it. An atheistic worldview where God is dead demands no morality, and we will get no morality.

Issues with Anthropology

There are many issues with the philosophies listed above, however the contradictions we see aren’t the biggest issue with them. The largest problem is they all leave out God. We know God has spoken in His word and revealed himself to us, so Christians are to live according to His standard, not our own. God not only reveals His nature in scripture, He reveals our nature as well. Humans are sinful by nature, but we like to think of ourselves as good. God gave to us His law to reveal our sinful actions and to show our need for salvation. Nobody in humanity is exempt from a fallen nature, we are all in Adam.

Romans 5:12-14

12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— 13 for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. 14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

Since we are all in Adam, we are all in sin and we cannot escape this on our own. Our every action is tainted by our sin nature. We are all affected by the fall, and we all seek our own way to get around it. One way we attempt to get around our sin nature is by defining philosophies that attempt to deny God and His word. If God does not exist, then there is no standard to show us we are sinful. If all things are relative to the individual, then there is no accountability for our actions, and each person comes up with their own standard. These thoughts ease our guilt of sin, and allow us to adopt worldviews that contradict scripture. What most people don’t realize is that they aren’t discovering a great truth, but they are deceiving themselves to make an excuse for their evil heart.

Jeremiah 17:9-10

9 “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can understand it? 10 “I, the LORD, search the heart, I test the mind, Even to give to each man according to his ways, According to the results of his deeds.

This is the state of the human heart; it is deceitful and wicked. This is why God must take out our heart of stone and give to us a heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36). The problem for us is not only that we are evil and wicked, but that our hearts deceive us into believing that we are good! We cannot recognize how sinful we are without God. This is evident when we look at people’s response to the question, “are you a good person?” Everyone, even if they hesitate at first, will say they are basically good. They will compare themselves to someone worse than themselves, or appeal to their good deeds, to show that they are good people. They will also adopt philosophies like the ones we have discussed to fully distance themselves from any guilt of wrongdoing, they are just living authentically to themselves. This does not mean that we cannot do good deeds, but our good deeds are themselves sinful before a holy God. God calls our good deeds filthy rags (Isaiah 64), they are unrighteous and tainted by sin. We desire to glorify ourselves or others rather than glorifying God. Since we are wicked at heart we naturally reject God.

Romans 1:18-23

18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures.

Mankind naturally suppresses the truth of God and exchanges that truth for a lie. We worship creatures rather than the creator, and we adopt worldviews that support our decisions rather than conforming to Christ. We call good evil and evil good (Isaiah 5) and become wise in our own eyes. This false wisdom is displayed in the history of philosophy as philosophers attempt to define the world around us without God, thinking their thoughts to be great. Since we naturally reject God by suppressing truth, we are left without an excuse and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 3:9-12

9 What then? Are we better than they? Not at all; for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin; 10 as it is written, “THERE IS NONE RIGHTEOUS, NOT EVEN ONE; 11 THERE IS NONE WHO UNDERSTANDS, THERE IS NONE WHO SEEKS FOR GOD; 12 ALL HAVE TURNED ASIDE, TOGETHER THEY HAVE BECOME USELESS; THERE IS NONE WHO DOES GOOD, THERE IS NOT EVEN ONE.”

This means that we are all in our sin continually, and are separated from God. In our sin we cannot live morally according to God’s standard, we need God to save us from ourselves. God does this for us with Christ on the cross. Our punishment for sin is placed upon Him on the cross, and His righteousness is given to us when we have faith in Him. We are then justified by this faith, which is a gift from God.

Romans 5:1-2

1 Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God.

Through Christ we are now justified, and we are brought into the household of God. This means that God cleanses us from our sins, He gives to us a new heart, He gives to us the Holy Spirit, and he sanctifies us. This sanctification is why we can now live in obedience to God’s law and act in ways that are pleasing to God. Only after we have recognized our sin nature and our need for Christ to bring us out of that sin can we then recognize that our ways are foolish. God opens our eyes to see how foolishly we have thought and acted in this world. Without our eyes being opened and our suppression of truth ending we are not going to be able to see the world around us in truth. We will follow foolish philosophies devised by man that just pull us deeper and deeper into sin. We are called not to be wise in our own eyes, but to see the truth of scripture.

While God calls Christians out of worldly ways of thinking, we are not immune to the sways of human philosophy. These woke philosophies have entered into the church through several means. Some churches that come from more liberal traditions tend to reflect the culture around them rather than reflecting Christ. Stepping into a liberal church feels like stepping onto a college campus with religious language blanketed over it. These churches affirm homosexuality, transgenderism, woke ideology, and whatever else the prevailing cultural ideology says. This has come about in liberal churches because the common thread is the denial of Sola Scriptura. The teaching of Sola Scriptura teaches that scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith for the Christian. Once you reject this the teachings of scripture become optional and the faith of the liberal Christian becomes a personal and subjective truth. Oftentimes you will see these churches say they agree with the teaching of Jesus but not of Paul. Since scripture is not divinely inspired in their view the authors were prone to errors and writing down their own opinions. Paul then becomes a false teacher who contradicts Christ.

This teaching is foolish, and is not supported by scripture. God has divinely inspired the writing of the scriptures so that we can know what He has revealed about himself. Peter tells us in his second letter that God moved the men who wrote scripture to write as they did.

2 Peter 1:19-21

19 So we have the prophetic word made more sure, to which you do well to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star arises in your hearts. 20 But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, 21 for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God.

Since the men who wrote it were moved by the Holy Spirit and did not write according to their own will, we can now trust the scriptures we have been passed down to be a genuine reflection of what God has spoken. This is true of both the old testament prophets, of which Peter is making a direct reference to, and of the new testament which is the accounting of events after Christ by those who walked with Him. When you abandon this teaching you are going to allow people to craft their own understanding of who God is based on their own desires.

Another way woke ideology has entered the church is through racial issues. There are many churches that know racism is wrong, which we discussed in our last article, and are then pulled into CRT teachings on addressing race. There are many who want to do what is right before God, but are deceived by teachers who have smuggled in false teachings. One such teacher, Eric Mason, even wrote a book on woke ideology in the church called Woke Church. Mason attempts to address racial issues in the church and teaches that Christians should be the most woke people in society. He bases his statement on Ephesian 5:14 which states, “For this reason it says, ‘Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’” Mason admits to repurposing this phrase from culture, and that it does not come directly from scripture. He pulls this phrase from the black conscience movement, which is in line with CRT. This movement despiritualizes Christianity and makes it a teaching of earthly liberation. Proponents of this teaching say they relate more to the old testament Israelites in Egypt then with the new testament believers. Unfortunately, they have not understood the earthly liberation of the old testament was a foreshadowing of the spiritual liberation in Christ. Mason attempts to marry orthodox Christianity with the woke liberation theology to make Christians more woke. 

While I agree that Christians should desire to end oppression wherever it exists, Mason adopts the Marxist understanding of oppression and causes issues where none exist. He also makes the same complaint as Marx, the church moves too slow. There will be change for the better by the power of the Holy Spirit changing hearts, not by a humanistic approach to reconciliation. This humanistic approach declares that races need to reconcile to one another rather than declaring that we are to be reconciled to Christ. Changing culture is not the primary goal of the gospel, bringing saving faith is. The culture changes gradually as hearts and minds change, so the way we fix issues of the past is by preaching the gospel and teaching obedience to God’s word. Mason and his book opens the door for more orthodox Christian believers to adopt woke ideology into their churches with Christian terminology scraped over the top of it. We have to understand from a biblical framework how to identify and address these philosophies so we are not pulled by their sway.

A Biblical Response to Woke Ideology

Since we combat ideologies that are attempting to redefine words, we have to cling to a scriptural definition of terminology. If we want to fight for justice, as the social justice crowd claims to do, then we have to ask ourselves what the word justice means. If we do not know the definition then our actions are all going to be shots in the dark in an attempt to achieve justice. Christians do not believe that we are responsible for defining all concepts, but rather that God defines them for us. God’s justice should be the justice we aim for.

Proverbs 24:19-25

19 Do not fret because of evildoers Or be envious of the wicked; 20 For there will be no future for the evil man; The lamp of the wicked will be put out. 21 My son, fear the LORD and the king; Do not associate with those who are given to change, 22 For their calamity will rise suddenly, And who knows the ruin that comes from both of them? 23 These also are sayings of the wise. To show partiality in judgment is not good. 24 He who says to the wicked, “You are righteous,” Peoples will curse him, nations will abhor him; 25 But to those who rebuke the wicked will be delight, And a good blessing will come upon them.

We see that when God does justice he shows no partiality. God calls us to not delight in evil ways, which are defined in His law. Neither are we to be envious of those who do evil. If we see someone getting away with evil and think to ourselves, “why do they get away with it? I should be able to get away with it as well!” we justify our own sin. Not only should we reject evil, but we should also not associate with those who do evil. Christians that align themselves with woke ideology and teach it have joined evildoers in spreading evil philosophies. Since God shows no partiality, we are also to show no partiality in our judgment. Once again woke ideology calls for the opposite and wants us to view people through a lens of oppressor and oppressed. The world can’t help but to be partial. Without God, true partiality is impossible. Our own ideas of justice will go against God’s law in some way or another and we will show partiality.

Scripture is clear that partiality is sinful. Over and over again it is repeated to us to not show partiality to anyone, no matter what the circumstance is. Everyone gets justice, everyone gets their due.

Leviticus 19:15-16

15 ‘You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly. 16 ‘You shall not go about as a slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor; I am the LORD.

We cannot defer to the great or the poor. When someone does something wrong we don’t consider who they are, we consider what they have done. The punishment should be impartial across the board, and all of our laws should reflect this. When we begin to treat people differently based on who they are we have done injustice. Woke ideology teaches the exact opposite, two people could act in hatred towards someone based on race, but only the person that has more “structural power” has done something wrong and is racist. We cannot do this, nor should we define words that exclude people from wrongdoing based on race or any other characteristic. We must have equal weights and measures when dealing with all people.

Leviticus 19:35-37

35 ‘You shall do no wrong in judgment, in measurement of weight, or capacity. 36 ‘You shall have just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin; I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt. 37 ‘You shall thus observe all My statutes and all My ordinances and do them; I am the LORD.’”

When people say we must treat people differently to get an equal outcome they are asking us to break God’s law and use a different weight and measure per person. We do this with things like affirmative action, which treats people on a different scale depending on their ethnicity. This is done to bring “equity” in college admittance, but in reality is sinful partiality.

Often woke ideology will declare that it is only fair to treat people partially to gain equal outcome. Their idea of fairness is that everyone is equal in outcome, rather than people being treated equally. Wherever disparities exist, they see injustice that needs to be addressed. Scripture does not teach us that disparity means there is wrongdoing or injustice. Fairness is equal treatment, not equal outcome.

Psalm 9:7-8

7 But the LORD abides forever; He has established His throne for judgment, 8 And He will judge the world in righteousness; He will execute judgment for the peoples with equity.

We see God’s fairness displayed by his judgment with equity. The confusion comes from the modern use of equity which requires equal outcome. Fairness is receiving your due, not receiving imbalanced weights and measures. R.C. Sproul gave this analogy for equity:

(rough transliteration) It is my responsibility to grade that exam and give to each student a fair and equitable or a just grade, to give them their due. So that if someone performs in an excellent fashion and they are worthy of a high grade, I give to them an A. If somebody didn’t even bother to study and showed up and just scribbled a couple of lines on their test paper then they have earned for themselves an F or at best a D…Now equality would be if I gave the test and then I said all right I’m going to make sure everybody gets the same grade so I’m going to give you all an A not a whole lot of complaints from students when I say them because now that’s equality it’s not equity but it is equality. View the full statement

If fairness is not defined by equal outcome but by equal weight and measure, what do we do with disparity and privilege? The woke ideology requires us to see disparities and privileges as signs of injustice. Scripture does not teach this at all. In fact, it teaches that God has given to each of us differently, and differently is not a bad thing. There is a parable where three men receive different amounts of talent, one receives five, another receives two, and the last receives one. The parable does not go on to say that the one with five needed to acknowledge his privilege to the other two, and it is the servant with one talent that does nothing but hide it that is reprimanded by the master. When we focus on disparity and privilege as an evil, what we are doing is showing that we have fallen to the sin of coveting our neighbor’s belongings. Covetousness is sinful and we are told in the ten commandments to not covet what our neighbor has.

Exodus 20:17

17 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

Yet, woke ideology is based on coveting. Others have more and it is oppressive to me. Others have privilege and that privilege oppresses me. They need to give me their money, their power, they need to abandon their cultural norms, or give up their {fill in the blank} for me. Woke ideology functions because people are sinful and covet others. This covetousness attempts to justify itself by calling privilege a bad thing, when throughout history Christians have been thankful to God for any good gift he has given them. It is in this great privilege that we receive from God that we then go on to bless others as we can with generous hearts. Woke ideology teaches those that are without to covet and desire what others have, rather than attempting to teach generosity and contentment. This envy that is taught is the root of social justice, which redefines terms and comes up with new terms and ideologies to justify their envy.

All of these ideologies are the exact opposite of what Christ came to accomplish in us. The solution to all of this envy and strife between people is not woke ideology, it is the gospel. Christ died for our sins, and He died for all of them. Christ can cover the sin of coveting and following vain philosophy. We need Christ’s redemptive work in this world, and there is no other gospel that saves.

Romans 5:6-9

6 For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die. 8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him.

This is the goodness of our God, while we were sinners Christ died for us. We don’t need to search for salvation, it has been given to us! Christ died to justify us and save us from the wrath of God that is to come. It is because of this good news that we go out and walk in obedience to Christ. When Christ redeemed us, He called us to abandon our sinful ways and to walk in obedience to Him.

Colossians 3:5-11

5 Therefore consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amounts to idolatry. 6 For it is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience, 7 and in them you also once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you also, put them all aside: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. 9 Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, 10 and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge according to the image of the One who created him— 11 a renewal in which there is no distinction between Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman, but Christ is all, and in all.

We are to leave behind our sinful desires, our anger, our wrath, malice and slander, and we are to cling instead to Christ and His ways. Woke ideology is the embodiment of anger, malice, slander and abusive speech. No Christian can be a woke Christian. To be a woke Christian is to walk in your old ways, meaning you are either not a believer or you are a believer in desperate need of correction. In Christ we are all made one, Christ is reconciling us all to himself. This is the reconciliation we all need!

Christ taught us to preach the gospel to all of the nations and to teach them obedience to all of His commands (Matthew 28). This is how change is made in this world that lasts. Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and the obedience of the nations has been given to Him. God uses us to spread the good news of the gospel and to create disciples so that all of creation will worship God. To this end we have done this censored series, attempting to bring light to the darkness of modern thought. We desire for all people to be obedient to Christ, but so many have fallen to the vain philosophies of the day. We are called to be transformed by the renewing of our minds and not to be conformed to the world (Romans 12). We are warned against the vain philosophies of this world.

Colossians 2:8

8 See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

We cannot be taken captive by these ideologies that are prevalent in our society, they are anti-christ. Christians need to seek first the kingdom of God, and when we do this we will be content and satisfied. Christ gives to us a peace that passes all understanding. If you have become sold out to woke ideology, know that there is salvation from the false guilt and shame of its teachings. Christ is the savior of the world, not man, we cannot bring peace on our own, but only through Christ and His righteousness. If we attempt to devise our own ways to solve our problems we will only compound sin with sin. Our sin nature of envy, wrath, anger, and sinful desire will overtake our thinking. Be content with Christ’s solutions for our world.

Conclusion

For generations Christians have internalized the gospel to a personal faith, only addressing personal spiritual topics and matters inside the church. Like the Amish, we have become a closed society. Christians have misunderstood what it means to not be of this world and have neglected to teach all of God’s holy council to their congregations. Christ is not only king of your heart, nor did you make Christ Lord over you. Christ is King and Lord, whether or not you acknowledge Him as such. He is not only ruler over the church, He is ruler over the government and the public square. In fact, there is no area of existence that Christ does not already rule over. Christians need to preach the gospel everywhere, in public, to the civil magistrate, to the society. When we take Christ out of the courtroom, the school, and the government building, we should not be shocked when secular thought takes its place. Society has not been taken over by the secular world, Christians gave it all to them. Christians have abandoned their posts, we have become the servants that are not ready when the master returns. Christian: stand your ground, honor God in all of life, and acknowledge His Lordship over all of life. This means that your work, your voting, your government, your every interaction is meant to glorify God. Woke Ideology cannot endure because it is a man-made philosophy, so while it is the prevalent ideology of the day, it will not last. God gives to us endurance to persevere through this world so that we can bring Him glory. Love your church, love your family, and proclaim the gospel boldly wherever you are.