Most Seventh-day Adventist Churches are places where truth is held in high esteem. And not just any truth, but external absolute truth revealed by God Himself in His Word.
We believe that this truth is a Person, embodied in the gospel of salvation. We also believe He is the central Figure in the final moments of earth’s history, the Issuer of a divine trio of warnings and promises (Revelation 14:6-10).
But Wokeness
Our culture on the other hand has adopted a rival religion called ‘Wokeness.’
Wokeness means taking up the ‘cause’. What cause? Quite simply, every far-left radical Marxist cause we can think of. It means you replace biblical doctrine with lefty politics. Kinda like Loma Linda and Andrews and La Sierra and Oakwood and the North American Division leadership and etcetera are doing.
Now, Wokeness isn’t a private religion you can keep to yourself. Once you adopt it, you will have a burden to share your new beliefs with others. If you are a multi-generational church member who has grown bored with the mighty Adventist Message here’s how to help your church be more woke:
Get Woke
Loudly proclaim that all your problems in life are not your fault. Blame everyone else for your troubles. That’s a good start.
Never be grateful or satisfied. Constantly complain about everything (some hyper-conservatives do this too). We call them Grumpventists.
Find racism and sexism and hatred in everything. It’s everywhere and you can find it if you work at it and believe in yourself.
Find your identity in your feelings, instead of objective truth. In the past, people anchored their identity in external objective truth like biology, family and most of all the Bible. But woke people know better, they can now choose a subjective identity that makes them feel good.
Renounce the organized religion of Christianity and accept the political religion of wokeness (in other words—mindlessly following the left). (The right isn’t much better though.)
Recognizing that humanity is fallen, you can become an advocate for Mother Earth. Issue silly statements about global warming and environmentalism, and even support population control—which never includes you or anyone you like.
Support rioting— ehem—I mean, peaceful protesting. All in the name of justice. With some social justice sanctification you can even support looting as peaceful shopping.
Speaking of social justice, integrate social justice into your current religion; encourage woke millennial scholars to reinterpret your religion as arising from social justice, then switch from pseudo-biblical social justice to lefty political justice.
Get corpulent division leaders to state that “Social justice IS the gospel!!” This will reproduce wokeness in your members, especially young people, expanding the church of wokeness.
Reinterpret scriptures about Jesus Christ. Make Him the original activist for food justice, feeding the people bread and fish, instead of climate-change-causing red meat. It is widely understood that Jesus hung out with tax collectors to get them to repent of their thievery. Reinterpret His hanging out with tax collectors as an endorsement of their redistributing wealth through social justice services. Reinterpret His interaction with the rich young ruler as His endorsement of tax-the-rich social justice socialism.
Reinterpret Satan as rebelling against patriarchy (he was). Eve was his first student, and she founded the feminist movement. Ain’t no one gonna tell her what to do. You go girl!
Reinterpret Pharoah as setting up the first compassionate family planning healthcare facilities to deal with unwanted pregnancies (Exodus 1:16).
Interpret Jezebel as hunting down people who were spreading fake news. She was also an awesome feminist who would have supported WO.
Interpret the robbers who beat up the traveler in the story of the Good Samaritan as peaceful protestors reacting to oppression, and seeking reparations.
In spite of the fact that our woke culture says God doesn’t exist and the Bible is an irrelevant document, we should reinterpret the Bible to tell us how to be woke. So you can please the culture, of course. Simple.
If your church is new at this, just start with social justice. Then upgrade to political and racial wokeness. Leave gender and queer theory aside for now, but definitely pick it up later! Then you can be sexually woke.
This one is important. Replace as many white male pastors as possible with women, both black and white. After all, the gospel can only be attained by hearing from the lived experiences of diversity and the divine feminine. Theology doesn’t matter when it comes to church of wokeness leadership. What does matter is diverse safe spaces and a community of radical socialists. Remember, if you try to correct a woman or person of color (POC) that is an ungodly imposition of power. It’s just you being oppressive, again. Your white Christianity is systemically oppressive. So stop that.
If you hire a marginalized POC and they don’t like liberation theology, critical race theory, or political social justice, they are fake marginalized people who have assimilated into whiteness. They should not be trusted.
Remember the goal is to be like ‘Jesus’ (Matthew 24:5, 23-24; Mark 13:6, 21; Luke 21:8) and turn your church into a communist or socialist indoctrination center. That’s what wokeness is all about!
Are you white? Did God take away your shame and guilt? Well, get it back! Guilt and shame are important tools to keep your congregation silent while you impose these wokeness changes on your church. Preach lengthy sermons on the collective guilt of whiteness until all your members feel rotten about any bad things other white people did in the past. The great thing about collective guilt is that it can’t be forgiven without collective action. Unlike individual sins that people confess to God, collective (or systemic/intrinsic) sins can only be forgiven by gathering together as a collective political movement to correct perceived power imbalances.
Transition (popular term, nowadays) away from the Bible to more relevant wisdom like modern sociology books. Books like White Fragility and How to be an Antiracist can put you on the right side of history!
Another thing. Being woke is a long game. Be patient. And separate parents from children, especially two-parent households. Parents are oppressive, a stubborn vestige of past patriarchy. Godly parents are an obstacle to educating the children in the ways of woke enlightenment. Plus, parents have more power than children and that’s oppressive and unfair. Just ask BLM. They are experts on parenting and wokeness (well, wokeness anyway). If young people in the church have a mother and father who love each other, chances are their children are oppressed. And fighting oppression is your highest honor.
Now that your church is WOKE it’s time to let everyone know. Religious people love to virtue signal, right? Here’s some suggestions to proclaim your new religious wokeness:
o Place BLM on your church signage
o Preach an entire sermon while taking a knee. Hey, Billy Sunday did it once (for different reasons though).
o Replace your church logo on social media with a black square. They’ll know what it means!
o Have a drag queen Sabbath School. (This is for advanced wokeness only, so don’t be discouraged if your church isn’t ready yet. True wokeness takes time.)
o Replace the cross in your church with a raised fist. That sends virtue signaling vibes in all directions.
o Ask the worship team to lead the congregation in the John Lennon song Imagine. It makes a great closing song, and will help members carry wokeness into the week.
Your church is totally cool, now, and coolness is next to godliness in our woke culture. Converts will come flowing in to your church. Or not. It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you are now fully woke. You are a Wokeventist.
However
However, if you stubbornly cling to the notion that truth is external, absolute and knowable; If you are determined to follow the Lord Jesus Christ wherever He goes; if you are convinced that the Advent Message is relevant, righteous and biblical; if you believe that God will have a people in the Time of the End who keep His Commandments and have the Spirit of prophecy among them, I have a suggestion for you.
Don’t do any of the above things.
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“He who follows righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honor” (Proverbs 21:21).