In the last three years, there have been numerous articles and studies claiming that Americans are becoming less religious. Especially among millennials, it is claimed that there is a migration from religion to non-religion.
It’s not true.
It IS true that there is a theological diaspora from Bible-based Christianity. That is quite evident as we look at our increasingly Godless culture. But these disaffected people are not leaving religion. They are switching religion, as many of them are joining the religion of Wokeness. With the left’s increasing rejection of Christianity, a new religion has emerged to fill the void.
Let’s compare Christianity with Wokeness.
How do you become a Christian?
You look up toward heaven and say “I need You” and repent of your sinful heart (Isaiah 64:5; Matthew 4:17). You were headed away from God’s house, and now you are headed towards Him (Psalm 27:4). You accept the gift of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, and believe that He is your blessed Hope (Titus 2:13). God writes His Law on your heart (Hebrews 8:10; 10:16), and cleans up (sanctifies) your life with His Holy Spirit (John 17:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:23). Love becomes the animating motivation of your life (1 John 4:7).
How do you become Woke?
The simplest way is to attend government school, or a university that teaches critical theory or cultural Marxism. Or carry unresolved bitterness in your heart. Or you can just slog through life in western culture absorbing the ideals around you like a yellow sponge soaks up red Koolaid. I believe the Bible calls that being in the world and of the world. But I digress.
Critical theory teaches that humanity is split into two different classes of people: The oppressors and the oppressed. And any disparity between groups of people is caused by oppression.
Critical Theory
To understand critical theory, first you need to understand that everyone can be divided into two groups. Those who have power and those who don’t.
Second, those who have power always suppress those who don’t.
How do we know who the oppressed and the oppressors are?
According to critical theory, the category of oppressed or oppressor is based upon the group you belong to. Like race, gender, religion, income etc. Curiously, a person might be part of an oppressed group but also be an oppressor in another way. That’s where the concept of intersectionality comes from.
Intersectionality seeks to measure someone’s oppression depending on how many of these groups they identify with.
For example, a black man, while oppressed, is less oppressed than a black woman, and both are less oppressed than a black lesbian.
The degree to which you are oppressed determines your level of moral authority. The more oppressed you are the more morally right you are, and more worthy of being listened to. The more intersectional categories that you identify with also increases your moral authority..
As a result, the experience and perspective of a gay black woman is more valuable than the perspective of a straight white man, regardless of what they have to say.
This is of course radically opposed to the Bible‘s truth about life. In the Bible God alone is moral and the Law is a transcript of His morality. When God writes His Law on a believer’s heart that brings the moral code of God within the individual, where he is able to walk in a way that pleases God through the power of the Holy Spirit (1 Thessalonians 4:1).
In the same way — and this is important — the more oppressed someone is the less moral responsibility they have for their actions.
Those who aren’t oppressed, gain moral authority by surrendering to those who have it, i.e. the oppressed. This is called being woke. In this system, bitterness and envy become the animating motivation of your life (James 3:14).
Now, some people claim that since Jesus cares about oppression, critical theory and intersectionality should be embraced by Adventist Christians. But critical theory and intersectionality are not in harmony with the Bible and there are three reasons why.
Critical theory offers a different view of humanity than Christianity. Critical theory claims that our identity is rooted in things that differ— like race, gender, and social status. The Bible teaches that every human being is valuable because we are created in God’s image, and thus candidates for eternal life. This is something that every human being shares. Critical theory, however, pits groups of people against each other based on their status as oppressors or oppressed. And this all operates on the high-octane fuel of resentment and envy, two sins that the Bible condemns (James 3:14). The Bible says that we are all equal before God, created in his image. We are created equally valuable, we are equally guilty of sin, and equally deserving of judgment and punishment (Matthew 25:46). We are fully able to find mercy and grace in Jesus, which leads to the second point (John 3:16; Hebrews 4:16).
Critical theory offers a different view of sin. The Bible identifies sin as anything that violates the will of God for His people. It is the transgression of His Law (1 John 3:4). Unjust oppression, lying, moral failure, rebellion, bitterness, hypocrisy, and envy are all sins according to the Bible. But critical theory identifies sin only as oppression. As a result, critical theory sees biblical practices such as discipling, rebuke, and exhortation as evidences of oppression and power if the speaker is among the ‘oppressors.’ And CRT excuses sins like jealousy, anger, hatred and bitterness and envy among the ‘oppressed.’ The Bible says that we are all guilty before God regardless of social status race or economic situation. The Bible condemns oppression as one of, but certainly not the only way that humans rebel against God. Because critical theory gets the problem wrong, it also gets the solution wrong, which leads us to the third point.
Critical theory offers a different view of salvation than the Bible does. According to the Bible because we are all equally guilty of sin, salvation can only be found in Christ through repentance (Acts 4:12). Our hope is being forgiven of sin. Because critical theory teaches that the oppressors are guilty and the oppressed are not, salvation for the oppressed is found not through repentance and trust in Christ, but in social liberation. I repeat, for them, salvation = social liberation. And now their hope is rooted in activism, and social justice, the good works of social liberation. This is a completely different understanding of who we are, what the problem is, and how to fix it, than what is offered in the Bible.
So the next time someone tells you that Christians should embrace critical theory and social justice because Jesus also cares about the oppressed, remember these three things.
1. Critical theory has a different view of humanity. Our True identity is found as image bearers of God, not in our race, gender, immigrant status or economic situation.
2. Critical theory offers a different view of sin. Oppression is wrong but it is a symptom, not a disease. By coming up with the wrong problem, critical race theory offers the wrong solution.
3. Critical theory offers a different view of salvation. We cannot solve our biggest problem, Jesus can. Our hope is not in our circumstances on earth, but upon our destiny in eternity.
In the aftermath of the George Floyd death and the rioting and looting that resulted, many people turned to critical theory as a solution. That leads us to Black Lives Matter (or BLM).
BLM
BLM is an outgrowth of applying Critical Theory to race (the technical term is Critical Race Theory). Of course black lives matter too but the organization (BLM) doesn’t mean what people think it does.
Consider the term pro-choice. By itself we know what the term means, but in reality we know what the term is really saying (pro-abortion).
For instance, the BLM founder in Toronto said that white people are subhuman, because they lack melanin. When she was asked by the Toronto press to clarify the statement and possibly apologize for it, she refused to do so.
Black lives matter is obsessed with supporting abortion. They are also aligned against the nuclear family, which causes more abortion as families break down and you have more illegitimate and unwanted pregnancies. BLM is very much anti-Christian and anti-family and pro LBGTQ.
The Bible has better words for affirming life than the words of a group that hates the Bible and the nuclear family.
We don’t live in a bubble, we live in a culture where words matter and every hashtag for BLM by a Christian strengthens an unbiblical organization. You begin by mouthing the phrase and end by adopting the worldview. In other words, you don a mask and your face grows to fit it.
Competing Worldviews
The reason that BLM and critical theory are injurious to people is because they believe in a number of unbiblical things which ultimately harms people. For instance, the destruction of a nuclear family does great injury to human lives and the cause of Christ. And so these ideologies—the reason we can’t accept them—is because they are a worldview. Critical theory is a worldview and you cannot have two competing worldviews at the same time. Why? Because a worldview answers the fundamental questions of life. You cannot have two worldviews at the same time. It is one or the other.
One example of this is the gender binary. Critical theory says that the gender binary is oppressive and must therefore be eradicated. A biblical worldview says “No, the gender binary is a byproduct of a Creator God who created male and female distinct from each other in a complementary, loving way.”
Another aspect of worldview—there is a huge difference between reforming the police and defunding the police. The difference is a worldview. Critical theory (lawlessness) sees the police as enforcers of oppression instead of enforcing the rule of law. (By the way, when you accept critical theory, the ultimate end is revolution. And that’s why they want to defund the police.)
The Theology of The Bible
The Bible‘s goals are different from the religion of wokeness. Let’s address the problem of bad theology first.
Number one, we are all created by God in his image. Acts 17, “God has made of one blood all nations of men and has determined the boundaries of their dwelling place.” The Bible unites people under the banner of Jesus Christ. There is a unity woven amongst all people that transcends intersectionality and wokeness.
Number two is to resolve guilt through the atoning forgiveness of Jesus Christ. We have all sinned against our Creator. Paul spends the bulk of the first three chapters of his epistle to Rome elaborating on how all have sinned (Romans 3:9, 23).. He emphatically declares in that letter that there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
Number three, it is God’s will that people would choose to demonstrate compassion for one another. Social justice results in forced compulsive equality. This is not biblical; and this is not compassion.
Number four, expose and oppose critical theory and these ideologies (even if it is an ‘evangelist’ who has repeatedly been on 3ABN). We must have this as our starting point. We have to keep law and gospel in order.
Number five, one of the things about this new religion is that it is immensely legalistic. You have to do the work of anti-racism until you die. There is no forgiveness.
The Bible is clear that no matter what happens to me I am called to think clearly of people. It is wrong for a Christian to look at disparities between groups and automatically conclude that that is because of systemic racism.
The whole premise for disparity in black groups today is assumed to be systemic racism, and there are huge problems in that culture that never get addressed because it’s easier to just blame racism.
Disparities on their own do not prove discrimination. When God gave the Mosaic Law to the children of Israel, there was no provision in it for ending disparities. So if we are saying that disparity is evidence of systemic racism, then we must also be prepared to say that God’s Law is systemically racist.
In the parable of the talents, Jesus does not suggest that the disparity in the talents is wrong, but rather that he who did more received more. There can be disparity between children raised in the same family. That has nothing to do of course with systemic racism.
Adventists
Many Adventist church leaders & pastors have bought into wokeness as an effort to meet the needs that they perceive, and once they have bought into the theory, they begin to use secular materials to address it. True, there are some Adventist pastors who are attempting to use the Bible to validate social justice, but ultimately they begin to use secular material and in time they begin to shift towards godless humanism. Watch for it.
And a large cross-section of normally rational Adventists are almost wetting themselves out of fear of being called racist, so they willingly comply with the new leftist orthodoxy. Many naïve Adventists joined BLM marches in Berrien Springs and other areas, unaware that they were strengthening an unbiblical organization. I guess they weren’t as awake as they thought…
As John McWhorter (himself a black man) said,
Woke white people get a sense of validation out of agreeing with systemic racism. It makes them feel better. Black people discover that there is a benefit to exaggerating racism in their own experience; it makes them more interesting, validated, people in the eyes of their peers (both white and black). Social media made it easier to see the instances of police brutality on blacks, and thus accelerated the new woke social justice movement into overdrive. I repeat, social justice is fed high-octane rocket fuel by social media. People who go online more often are more likely to see race relations as negative, according to a study.
Critical theory and wokeness are not neutral tools that an Adventist can employ to understand the world in reality. They are inevitably foreign to the Word of God and opposed to scriptural realities. They have principles embedded within them that are antithetical to the Word of God and destructive to the Christian faith.
Many Adventist leaders have been hesitant to address these things and warn people against them, some of them are even complicit in furthering this ideology.
Wokeness is Anti-Forgiveness
When we tell people of any skin color that holding on to wrath and bitterness is OK, we are not helping them we are actually cursing them. And that’s not love—that is hatred.
By contrast, Ephesians talks about letting go of wrath, malice, anger and clamor (4:31). Unless we let go of those things, it crushes us and prevents us from living a life that honors God and blesses other people.
If you are told that you belong to a particular group through intersectionality, then your behavior in hating or pushing back against an oppressor group is justified. That holds true for women who are told that patriarchy is the great enemy of mankind, and so they can push back against ‘mansplaining’ and ‘toxic masculinity’ with great impunity and be justified. It is a gospel of grievance, and the gospel of grievance doesn’t do anything to liberate you. It dishonors God and can only enslave you further.
Critical theory and social justice actually say that it is OK to repay evil for evil, or evil for perceived evil. The Bible forbids this (Romans 12:17; 1 Thess. 5:15; 1 Peter 3:9).
That is all the social justice movements of the left have to offer us. They campaign against racism with more racism. A toxic mix of narcissistic self-pity, angry insecurity and entitled greed lurks under their pseudo-intellectual identity politics. The men who founded America were not perfect, but they believed in being better than they were. The leftists riding the nuclear bomb of identity politics down through the clouds to a radioactive utopia of utter misery believe only in making it worse.
Religious Aspects Of Wokeness
Original sin — white privilege, born male
Born again — woke
Sanctification — SJW activism
Repentance — publicly acknowledging your systemic racism and privilege
Orthodoxy — political correctness
Good works—sacrificing the reputations and livelihoods of others
Tithe — taxes and bigger government
Salvation—leftist utopia on earth through socialism or communism
Stewardship—managing the resources that the government gives you
The indwelling of the Holy Spirit—groupthink
Fellowship—intersectionality
Sacraments—abortion etc
Saints—George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, John Lewis
Clergy—Saul Alinsky, Robin DiAngelo, Patrice Cullors, Greta Thunberg
Church discipline — public shaming, canceling, blocking you on Twitter, outrage mobs etc.
The Bible and truth = ethnic gnosticism and SJW books (White Fragility etc)
In the Bible the proof of your love is obedience to God’s Law. In 2020 the proof of your love is wearing a mask.
Summary
Our identity is found in God. First as creatures, then as rebels, and then united into the family of God as brothers and sisters in Christ.
The new woke religion sped up in the last 10 years; it was weaponized in the last five years.
One of the best things we can do to combat critical theory and wokeness is to engage in a dialogue. Because critical theory is by design a monologue—they control the cultural narrative and you must listen.
Wokeness is causing a Civil War in the church, but it’s not really about racism, it’s about creating a new path to salvation where the parishioner becomes good through his good works.
The more oppressed someone is, the less moral responsibility they have for their actions.
It is wrong for a Christian to look at disparities between groups and automatically conclude that that is because of systemic racism. For us, the metanarrative is creation, the fall, redemption and glorification. For them, the critical race theory metanarrative is whiteness, white fragility, and white supremacy.
It doesn’t matter who you’ve been, how honestly you have lived your life in harmony with the principles of God, if you slip up one time there is no penance that can save you. You are now branded in the social justice paradigm as irredeemable. So the new religion of wokeness has as one of its founding principles, the complete elimination of forgiveness for white people, offering only the withered olive branch of unending penance for the rest of your life.
The world is not becoming less religious, it is becoming more religious (with pagan elements). And it is a cult, a religious cult. Run away from it.
You are going to be persecuted if you stand up for biblical truth. You will be canceled. And I say blessed are those who are canceled for Christ’s sake.
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