A word or two on the word “#woke”:
For those who follow the way of Jesus, the idea of being awakened to things of which you were heretofore unaware is at the very heart of the gospel you profess to proclaim. The old King James had a word for it - “quickened”.
Ephesians 2:5 refers to being dead/sleep in our sins - meaning completely unaware of or uninterested in their disastrous impacts personally and corporately. It then mentions being quickened/made alive/roused/awakened to those sins and their impacts.
To assuage any “Pearl clutching” at the very mention of the word “woke” and whatever that subjectively connotes, consider this history:
1850s/60s - The term “Wide Awakes” was used to describe those in Lincoln’s Republican Party (no relation) that opposed the spread of slavery
Using terms related to “awake” was prevalent in Black vernacular in the early 1900s when the Black folk singer Lead Belly wrote the song, “Scottsboro Boys” recounting the story of two Black teenagers falsely accused of raping two white women. Where some of the lyrics said
“I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there - best stay woke, keep their eyes open”
Terms like woke were regularly used to describe both de jour and de facto systemic racism.
In 1940, a Black United Mine Workers union official was interviewed while protesting labor injustices facing Blacks in the south and said “Let me tell you buddy, waking up is damn harder then going to sleep, but we’ll stay woke up longer.”
The idea of being dead or asleep to our own sin against God and others, and God rousing us out of our slumbering apathy and/or willful ignorance shouldn’t be foreign. “Get up, sleeper and rise up from the dead and Christ will shine on you” Ephesians 5:14
When things are not as they should be, we should want to be awakened to that. If “woke” gets u worked up, it likely not the idea of being awakened that troubles you. It’s the idea of being awakened to certain issues through which you’ve become accustomed to sleeping. #wakeup
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