There have been many cultural and counter-culture movements over the past several decades. The latest one is known as wokeness or wokism. It always helps to have a good name for one’s movement. The word “woke” has an appealing sound to it. It is certainly good to be awake to the truth about important issues. Even the Bible speaks of a certain type of wokeness. It commands us to to “awake out of sleep…,” and to “awake to righteousness, and sin not…” (Romans 13:11; 1 Corinthians 15:34). Being awake is a good thing if it is in the right way and towards the right things. The problem with the current woke movement is that it sinawakes people, not to righteousness, but to lies and sinful practices.
Wokeness is typically defined as being aware of social injustices, especially racism, and a willingness to oppose these injustices. This opposition includes the censuring of those who say or do anything that violates the “woke” paradigm. In order to be considered woke one must support things like transgenderism (including the right of biological males to compete in women’s sporting events), homosexuality and gay marriage, abortion, man-caused climate change, soft-on-crime (excessive criminal rights), socialism…etc.
Members of the woke movement also speak much of racial equality, but the term “racial equality” does not fit their definition. What they actually support is the preferential treatment of certain minority groups. An example of this is the city of Palm Springs recently approving a universal basic income of $900 per month only for people identifying as “transgender or non-binary.” The policy actually discriminates against “binary” (normal) people but it is not considered “woke” to mention this form of discrimination. Another example is the taking over of the “Black Lives Matter” movement by avowed marxists who call for discrimination and even violence against whites. Every right-thinking person knows that black lives absolutely do matter! However, black lives matter because every human life matters. Bible believers already knew and believed this long before the advent of the “woke” movement. Galatians 3:28 and Acts 17:26 affirm the intrinsic equality of all human beings, regardless of race, color or gender.
A Lesson From Eve About “Wokeness”
The first “woke” human was Eve. She became woke by eating the fruit of the forbidden tree. God placed Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden to “dress it and keep it.” He told them, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:15-17). The devil later tempted Eve by appealing to her sense of wokeness. He told her that she would “not surely die” and that “God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5). Sadly, the devil’s approach was effective. The next two verses say, “So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.”
What Eve awoke to was a new standard of ethics and morality — the standard of herself. She awoke to a new and different moral perspective — her own. Satan had convinced her that eating the forbidden fruit would “open” her eyes to knowing for herself what was “good” from “evil.” He appealed to her pride and convinced her that she would become woke, as it were, and she succumbed to his temptation.
Modern “wokism” is not as modern as some might think. It is the same tired old serpentine doctrine of subjectivism and moral relativism that one reads about in Genesis 3 and it has been repackaged many times throughout the centuries since then. Being “woke” may seem fashionable and cool but it is really just anti-God. The woke person visualizes himself as his own god, which is precisely what satan told Eve she would be. Wokeness is a socially acceptable label for sin acceptance. It may be considered “woke” to accept transgenderism but transgenderism defies the divine design of males and females (Genesis 1:28). It dishonors women to allow biological males to compete against them in sporting events. It is nothing less than cheating and the so-called victories of males against females in these events are illegitimate. This begs the question… how can it be considered “woke” to so mistreat and dishonor women?
It is considered “woke” to praise, encourage and practice homosexuality. However, homosexuality defies the natural and God-given roles of males and females in sexual relations (Romans 1:26-27). The people of Sodom and Gomorrah were very “woke” until God incinerated them for their sin of sodomy (Genesis 19). Abortion is the murder of an innocent human being. Being “woke” does not change the definition of what constitutes human life.
Conclusion
The notion that we can be our own god is a lie of the devil. Good and evil are still defined by God, not by the woke movement. Eve (and Adam and their progeny) learned this the hard way (Genesis 3:15-24). Adam and Even died spiritually as a result of their sin but these verses discuss the physical consequences of their sin. Society suffers as a result of the foolish and dangerous ideas propagated and popularized by such movements. Wokism is destroying many of the cultural foundations of our present society, including the traditional family. And while a crumbling culture is bad, it is not nearly as bad as the spiritual punishment that awaits those who sin against God (Revelation 21:8). It is our hope and prayer that people will experience the wokeness prescribed by God in 1 Corinthians 15:34 (awake to righteousness, and sin not) and that they will meet the soul-saving conditions of God’s grace.
—Tim Haile