What does ‘Woke’ mean?
How would one define it?
Woke has become the buzzword of our time.
From Ron DeSantis and his STOP WOKE act in Florida, to every conservative commentator who wants to lament the state of our country, this word has become a pejorative.
But what does it mean? How should it be defined?
This came to the fore recently when a conservative author could not define what “wokeness” meant to her in an interview.
Bear in mind that this author has an entire chapter in her book dedicated to “wokeness”, yet could not define it.
Maybe it was a moment of forgetfulness, or maybe it’s because many conservatives see this as a nebulous term. They use this term as a catch all for anything they don’t like.
When Matt Walsh and Marjorie Taylor Green lament the singing of ‘Lift Every Voice and Sing’ before the Super Bowl, that’s because they see that as Woke.
Yet, the term originated in the sixties from the black liberation movement. The original intent of the word was to show that black people were hip to the “so-called” structural racism in America.
In order words, would be revolutionary Marxists wanted to paint America as irredeemably racist and flawed. This is where the ushering in of critical theory and other Marxist ideologies began to infiltrate our institutions of higher learning.
So what should that word encompass today?
I argue that instead of using the word Woke, we as believers must acknowledge exactly what we are addressing when using this word.
I define Woke as the normalization of sinful, destructive behavior that will lead to the demise of an individual and a society. It includes the affirmation and advocacy of policies that reinforce this behavior.
In essence, to be Woke is to be anti-God, anti-American, and anti-human.
As Christians, we must ensure we are not so awoke to the culture that we sleep on God and His Word.