A Woke Jesus is a Better Jesus
Introduction
I have many wishes: a million dollars, a one-day workweek, and free steak just to name a few things. But we know these are ridiculous wishes. I also wish that politics was religion-free. Especially politics that are free of evangelicalism/fundamentalism.
In the United States, religion has always played a part in politics. Sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a bad way. A simple example is that during the 19th century, you would have clergy using the Bible to denounce and support slavery. In fact, you also had clergy using the Bible in the 20th century to denounce or support lynching and segregation. Thus, the morality of the Bible is questionable when you consider that the same book can be used to advocate freedom and suppression.
Still, in the 21st Century, the Bible is used to humanize (more of the progressive side) and dehumanize (the MAGA side) people. Politically, the Republican Party seems to have no ideas or platform unless it involves taking away the rights of women with draconian anti-abortion laws or attacking the LGBTQ community in the variety of laws that have been passed to ban Drag Shows or even challenging marriage via Obergefell v Hodges.
Most of these laws and rhetoric are based on personal “religious beliefs.” This might be seen as admirable, but as I’ve come to learn, “religious beliefs” is really, “here’s my opinion, and I’ll cherry-pick the Bible to prove I’m right.”
Reverand Benjamin Cremer says it best -
“What is meant by this phrase [the Bible is very clear] means I have reduced the Word of God exclusively to my own particular interpretation of an English translation of the Bible and I’m so certain that I have nothing more to learn about it that I can now use it as a weapon.”
So it’s time for my main point.
The GOP is trying to gain power by the only weak thread they have, which is social issues. Furthermore, these social issues are often couched in religious rhetoric. Such as, “biblical marriage is between a man and a woman.” Or, that the “Bible condemns abortion.” Both of these are wrong, of course, which is also my point.
Appeals to conservative Christians are the only way the GOP can win elections. This reveals two problems: 1) it shows Christian hypocrisy; 2) it shows a misunderstanding of who Jesus was/is.
This gets to the question …
What is Woke? What is Christian Hypocrisy?
Before we get into this, there is a lot to unpack. The first is, what does “woke” even mean? Just like Critical Race Theory, when you ask people who hate either of these things, what it actually means, they have no idea.
Here is a little history of the term before getting into definitions. First, “woke” became a concept in the African American community as far back as the 1920s “around the idea of Black consciousness ‘waking up’ to a new reality or activist framework and dates back to the early 20th century.”
Here is a good history of it from Vox. Read this if you really want to understand this.
Here are definitions of “woke,” from a Christian, anti-woke perspective. The first definition from Marc LiVecche in this article is, “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.” He adds, that any good Christian should be aware of this today. But then he begins spinning the subject part of wokeness. So things get off to a good start.
Then, LiVecche describes “woke” from the anti-woke perspective-
To be woke signifies the angry, noisy, and unrelenting calling out — both off and online — of any who question or oppose the radical left’s volatile beliefs about racism, white privilege, homosexuality, transgenderism, the environment, or any of its other ideological projects. The woke don’t engage the opposition. They claim the right to discriminate in order to fight discrimination, cancel opponents, push them out of social and professional circles, and crush dissent. It is this self-arrogated, bullying intellectual superiority that most Christians stand against when they stand against “woke.”
I think this sums it up best for the Christian anti-woke, the Christian conservative. I’ll even agree with LiVecche that some people can be this way when they see or perceive an injustice. Anyone can go overboard, but that doesn’t diminish the concept as a whole. Just as Christian Nationalists don’t speak for all of Christendom.
Second, it doesn’t take being a Christian Nationalist to become “angry,” “noisy,” “self-arrogated,” and a bully. I’ve seen many Christians embracing all these adjectives to promote their specific belief system. They often do this to condemn anti-racism, the concept of white privilege, homosexuality, and/or transgenderism.
Basically, the conservative Christian definition of woke is “I don’t like when you do it, but it’s fine when we do.”
But there’s a danger to anti-wokeness that Christians don’t see. As they fight against drag shows, grooming, and anything that challenges Evangelical hegemony. The danger isn’t in drag queens or homosexuals, the danger is the grooming and sexual assault that happens within the church. Every year, 1000s of children are abused by church leaders. The real predators are in the pews.
In case you don’t believe it: Catholics, Baptists, Evangelicals. Check out #churchtoo.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. — Matthew 7:3–5
Was Jesus Woke?
Jesus has been called a lot of things. He’s also been called a Zealot, a traditionalist, an Apocalyptic Prophet, a Republican, communist, and a superstar. Obviously, we have some concerns with this. Some of these are very well-researched and others are tongue-in-cheek. The main concern with this, however, is does anyone really know who Jesus is? I say this because I know that saying Jesus is woke will draw criticism (fine) but that’s sort of my point.
It seems like there’s a consensus between the 1000 different Christian denominations, a consensus that was argued by men in the 300s — 400s rather than a definitive red-letter statement. After the Council of Nicaea and Chalcedo, those with diverse views of Jesus were pretty much hunted down as heretics. In my head, they did this wearing white hoods and robes.
So I do tread lightly in giving Jesus a label. Actually, the best description I read was “Jesus was a straight line in a crooked world.” But it seems like people have been labeling Jesus for 1000s of years, often contradictory labels, so one more won’t matter.
I might sound flippant (the history isn’t), but I do take this seriously. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are calling the 2024 election a battle for the soul of our nation.
The Evangelicals are doing this and using anti-woke vocabulary to do so. They don’t realize the wokeness in their own history, thus hypocrisy. They are constantly on the wrong side of history and are using their theology to not only hurt people but gain votes.
This is why a Woke Jesus is so important.
Evangelicals today are a result of their own wokeism and they don’t even know it. Ask an Evangelical today if they support slavery, lynching, or segregation. Obviously, they would say no. But ask them in the 1850s, 1920s, and 1960s, they’d say YES. They hated divorce decades ago, but have support groups for divorce now. Tattoos? Yeah, no big deal now. Do you want to read a version of the Bible that’s not King James, go ahead!
So the Christian agreed-upon definition of woke is, “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”
Let’s dig in. My favorite Bible verse is-
He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
TO DO JUSTICE.
Woke isn’t just an adjective or noun. It’s also a verb.
Jesus wants action, Matthew 22:37–39-
He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
I take “love” as an action, that you are doing acts of love.
Of course, since Christians can’t make up their mind about anything, e.g., works versus faith, you see in James 2:26 the command to do things-
For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
There are at least two parts of being woke. The first, as mentioned, is being “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.” To be alert to this means knowing who the dispossessed are in a community. Jesus has a pretty good list of this in the Sermon on the Mount, mentioning the: poor, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger for righteousness, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. In Matthew, Jesus also talks about those who needed clothes, were sick, and were in prison.
And in Galatians 3:28, Paul writes -
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
All.
I’m well aware that conservative readers of the Bible will point out different verses for their side of the argument . . . if one exists about being mean to people. You don’t have to argue about salvation or heaven to at least know that Jesus wanted all people to help other people. That’s pretty basic. This type of help can be perfunctory, I suppose, but having empathy is the best reason to help.
I’m sure there are those who choose who to show empathy for, but a true Christian will have empathy for anyone, especially those who are often the victim of others.
Conclusion
Honest readers of the Bible will have to admit there are many versions of Jesus and theology. But breaking it down to the minimum, least disputed aspect, is a Jesus who had empathy toward those who needed it the most, and he acted on it. To be an anti-woke Christian is to hate this version of Jesus and create your own, man-made version of a reflective Jesus.
Was Jesus woke in a 2023 way? I think you can argue that. Would he be an anti-woke Christian? No. Only Republican Jesus is.
