There's Woke and There's "Woke": The Pharisee "Woke" Evangelicals

When I talk to other people here in the San Francisco Bay Area, I sometimes ask if they will explain what they believe.  For instance, if Buddhism is true and helpful, perhaps a Buddhist could explain it for my benefit.  I'd like to know why I should become one.  Along the same line, if being woke is the best thinking and behavior, could the woke people help me understand in order to become woke?

The awakening of wokeness relates to social consciousness.  Before you weren't, but now you're conscious of white privilege, racial inequality, and economic injustice.  Now you're apparently no longer asleep to those.  Consciousness doesn't need to offer any real solutions, just display consciousness of their existence.  Don't deny it.  Admit it.  Does that help?  It doesn't help anyone, but it appears to care.

The Pharisees became masters of what today would be a photo opportunity, to be seen of men.  Jesus described it in Matthew 6:5:

And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.

Being "woke" means touting your own consciousness.  You are conscious.  You've sniffed of the progressive smelling salts.  You've taken the whole jar of blue pills.  You aren't actually helping anyone.  You do not good for racial inequality and you do almost nothing for people that need food.

"Woke" gets credit for being with the cause by wearing your oversized flat billed baseball cap.  Nothing says consciousness like using urban dialect or having the secret handshake.  The Pharisees not only wore fringes on their garments, as directed in the Law, but also lengthened the fringes so that they were more conspicuous.

An ancient baraita, a tradition in the Jewish oral law not incorporated in the Mishnah, the regular Jewish oral tradition, enumerates "seven classes of Pharisees, of which five consist of either eccentric fools or hypocrites, the third being 'the bruised Pharisee,' who in order to avoid looking at a woman runs against the wall so as to bruise himself and bleed."  The goal here was to leave an impression that promotes your self.  Being "woke" means being a part of an exclusive coalition of proud hypocrites more interested in the guise of selflessness.

Woke, differing than "woke," does what is best for other people, actually loves them.  1 Corinthians 13, one of the love chapters of the Bible presents fifteen actions of love.  They are all verbs.  Love does this and does this and does this and this and this. That's what love looks like when it occurs.  "Woke" isn't action.  Instead it is "activism," which ironically isn't action and, therefore, isn't love.

The Lord Jesus Christ didn't come to "raise visibility" in order to bring "social change."  His life wasn't a show.  It changed people in the most profound way possible, getting them ready for all eternity.  Activism doesn't change anyone.  It might succeed at shaking someone down, but it doesn't succeed at real reconciliation between people or help the poor. Christianity changes lives, transforming people, using the gospel.  It answers the only need that men have or will every have.  Jesus would often say, "See thou tell no man" (Matt 8:4).  That was Jesus.  Activism wants everyone to know -- "look at me out on the street with my poster," "watch me dump a bucket of cold water over my head," or "hashtag whatever."

The Pharisees woke up to the impossibility of living the actual life of God, the acquiescence of those submissive to the Messiah.  When Christ came, they wouldn't give in or give up.  They preferred the ease of the symbolic, the right length of fringes on the garment and dropping their loud offerings into a metal container to be noticed of others.  They reduced actual care to symbolic care, which required the equivalent of yelling over a speaker phone and chanting.  Today the activism is easier than ever over social media, sending out a selfie taken on a mobile device, portraying the care for all to see.  It portrays a caring life that is only "woke."  These are repulsed by actual wokeness, taking the yoke of Jesus upon them.  It's not about a future kingdom under Jesus, but a present one under self.

I'm quite sure that woke arose from a perversion of an actual Christian truth of awaking out of sleep.  Paul wrote in Romans 13:11, "now is the high time to awake out of sleep:  for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."  Then in 1 Corinthians 15:34 he wrote:  "Awake to righteousness, and sin not."  This is being really woke, rather than "woke."  "Woke" is a cheap imitation, that is today very popular with the world.   The world hates being woke, but it loves being "woke."  No one really wakes up with "woke."

"Woke" is against what Jesus taught, labors for meat that perishes.  The world is interested in the temporal bread, the actual temporal bread of feeding people and the figurative bread of race.  Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he had to give it to the poor.  That is the commitment that Jesus desires.  It's not a commitment that on the one hand purchases an eight hundred thousand house and on the other promotes giving to a homeless shelter.  Why haven't the homeless moved into the spare bedrooms?  The dedication is more about appearance, like the bruised Pharisee -- that's what being "woke" is all about.  Man doesn't live by bread alone, but woke activism is bread alone.  It is meat that perisheth.

Galatians 6:10 says that if we have the opportunity that we should do good to all men, especially those of the household of faith.  That would include seeking justice in a society through the scriptural means, seek right and honest things, and speaking the truth of God against an unjust, unrighteous society like John the Baptist did with Herod.  None of that will continue without the transforming change in men's souls through Jesus Christ.  That is woke, not "woke."