In the Eyes of the Woke Beholder
I know some folks who believe that the earth is flat. Although others consider their views a joke, they consider themselves woke.
So, too, academy-awarded actors who proclaim their enlightenment from their platform. They clasp the golden man and parrot the current political narratives. They would say they’re woke.
As do the many politicians who prove their woke-ness by publishing their pronouns and making progressive promises. And the news anchors weighing in with their opinions while claiming to be without bias. Even some ball players play the game with their broadcasted slogans and postures of woke-ness.
In his book, Waking Up, Sam Harris teaches mindfulness and meditation as remedies for sleepwalking through life. He and other enlightened gurus might say, ‘we’re woke.’
I think I’m woke. From God to politics, my eyes are certainly wide open.
We all think we’re seeing things as they really are. So we preach it, share it, tweet, and retweet it. We blog our truths and post our outrage, signaling to skeptics and fellow-believers alike: we, too, are woke.
Awake in the Matrix: Are there elephants in the room?
But how can we all be so sure? Perhaps some of our woke is myopia.
An atheist may be seeing just the tip of an elephant’s trunk. A philosopher’s view may encompass only the animal’s flank. A scientist, Hindu, or Muslim merely touches the tail. A Christian believes she sees the entire beast. Until it stomps on her from a place she wasn’t looking.
Admitting I may be near-sighted stirs up fear in me. Cognitive dissonance is quite uncomfortable. Do I double my efforts to prove my truth? Or do I make room for a shift in my views?
In The Matrix movie, Neo chose the red pill and awakened to a shocking reality. At some level, we are also seeking reality when we hunger for woke-ness. Some of us are suspicious that we haven’t yet tasted or touched the truth in its fullness. How can I be sure that my flavorful steak isn’t a convenient illusion?
Living With Tensions, Not Without Questions
Competing ideas have been around forever. Some are more dangerous than others. There is a place for fighting for what we know. Without One True Truth, we risk being left with nothingness. Without certainty, truth can become relative and meaningless.
You can’t go on “seeing through” things forever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. To “see through” all things is the same as not to see. ― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
The Believer in Anything seeks to see through lies, abuses, and delusions to get to the truth. We’re certain that we’ve encountered the entire pachyderm when the shape of the thing makes sense to us. Believers in God and in a bigger story have found great solace and happiness in their assertions of ultimate truth.
But some people neglect nuance and think simplistically. Others latch onto ideologies that match their bent. Extreme ideas can tempt any of us. Like a parasite of the mind, a system of belief can take command of our rationality and run its own agenda through our bodies and emotions. Millions upon millions died in Stalin’s gulags, Hitler’s holocaust, and Mao’s cultural revolution because dangerous ideologies took root in ordinary humans. Let’s not forget the many who have died at the hands of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and other ideological zealots. Too many people have become mindless, spineless, and ferocious perpetrators of atrocity.
A Plea for Humility: Can we all keep talking, please?
Humans will always have disagreements. Unlike some postmoderns, I do believe in ultimate truth. I just can’t say I’ve touched every corner of the beast. Or cornered the market on what it means to be woke. The question is, what will we do with the conflict and the friction? Maybe we can humbly agree on these:
- Each of us has biases and blindnesses. Can we acknowledge the weakness of our woke-isms?
- Each of us can learn more about other perspectives. If the extent of our argument is an echo in our own head, we’ll never hear what others are saying — or seeing or feeling.
- Each of us could hold our beliefs with a solid but relaxed grip. I haven’t the hubris to cancel your opinions. Nor would I try to silence the truths you hold dear. But I will risk asking you to listen. And ask you to reconsider.
- Each of us should listen and learn from other points of view. When our arrivals appear to be black and white, remember the elephant — or whatever this thing is that we’re all arguing about — is gray.
Let’s continue the discussion, keep our eyes and ears wide open to the best in all of us. Then woke can be just another word for hope.
Read more about Finding Our Blind Spots.
I love this so much, Christine. One of my core values has become “I will embrace learning and discovery.” I’m finding that often means I’ll be eating humble soup with most of my meal. As I get deeper into my adulthood, I’m finding blindness in areas I once felt so knowledgeable in. And occasionally months go by where I’m existing in an unstable moment of my faith. But this has also freed me up to more surrender and I find myself able to accept people right where they are. I regret that I ever worked so hard at having all the answers and therefore judged the hearts around me on a regular basis. Lord, help me not to fall into that pattern ever again.
Wow, Brigitte, so well said! I am relieved to be in a place of having fewer answers and therefore fewer judgments of others. Thanks for your honesty. ( :
I love that Truth is a Person; and that Person is full of so much complexity and nuance that none of us individually can ever fully comprehend. “Woke” falls woefully short of True knowledge of this Person, and I believe this is what will make eternity a true ecstasy! 🙂
Well said, Bill!
Yes!
You give the most elegant words to express exactly how I feel and think about this topic. A wonderful pastor who also speaks so well into this is Nashville Pastor, Scott Sauls. He wrote, “Jesus Outside the Lines”. I detest that our culture demands we chose sides or draw lines. Christ calls us to be peacemakers…and we can’t make peace by being in one corner with cotton in our ears. Love you sister and love your heart.
Thank you, Diana. I want to be a peace maker!
“Too many people have become mindless, spineless, and ferocious perpetrators of atrocity.” Love this line.
I agree with you. Life is better when one is open to learning and understanding, and most of all, owning our own feelings and letting others own theirs. Until people are willing to look at themselves and work through their feelings instead of heaping them on society, we won’t make progress towards coming together.
Great article, Christine
I agree! Thanks for weighing in ( :
As I was reading I kept thinking that humility is the key and then, boom, there it is in your last paragraph. I think it’s okay to say, “God, I don’t really understand this.” We don’t need to have all the answers. When it comes to current political, social, and religious tensions, I think there is room to examine ourselves and see if our thoughts and actions are not only grounded in the teachings of our faith, but also in love and compassion that extends the world covered by common grace.
I also think it’s important that we don’t attempt to be woke for acceptance or to be considered one of the “good guys.” If a particular view is counter to what our faith, beliefs, or convictions are, I don’t think we necessarily need to embrace it. Nor reject it. Kinda foolish to ignore it though, we might just learn something.
Yes, we might just learn something! thank you ( :
Christine,
Thank you, once again, for giving me an opportunity to slow down, re-open my heart & mind, and make space for listening to and hearing the heart cries of those all around me. I’m finding in my advancing age, that knowing and holding onto the person of Truth is pretty much my only lasting answer.
Harry, thanks for the good reminder to make the space to listen!
Humility. Difficult to find, whether within or without, and it’s a daily discipline to loosen my grip on my own “bright ideas” that eclipse a humbler way.
Words are weak. Most of my efforts to explain the above lead to word traps, conceptual traps, and misunderstandings. Stronger than words is an encounter with the truly humble, and stronger than that is to encounter the ultimate humility that, by all appearance has lost, failed, and been conquered–and yet hasn’t. That is the victory of the slain lamb. Lamb (utterly weak and humble). Slain (fail). Victory? Yea, for real. I don’t get it either.
In the face of this, how can I be other than humble? (answer: long, bad habit, and fear)
Thank you, Christine.
And I love the songs on Femme Jazz. Superlative!
Sean, I really like this: “Stronger than words is an encounter with the truly humble.”
thanks for weighing in.
This started off well. But, wow, why are you acting like all views are the same or equal?
“Let’s not forget the many who have died at the hands of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and other ideological zealots. Too many people have become mindless, spineless, and ferocious perpetrators of atrocity.”
Why are you lumping in your fellow believers in Christ with the rest? And even putting fellow Christians first, as though we’re the worst. Where are followers of Christ committing atrocities because the Bible commands it or because the biblical worldview they hold to either sanctions or allows for that? There are no such commands and there aren’t genuine, regenerate Christians doing that or defending that. That’s the accusation of the godless world. And it’s false. Why would a Christian be repeating it?
The Bible is not gray. It has the answer to the cultural chaos we see today. It’s clear that treating anyone negatively OR positively based on the color of their skin is sin. It’s clear that justice must be impartial. It’s clear that accusations (such as “racism” or “white supremacy” or “police brutality” must have evidence behind them. It’s clear that murdering unborn babies is sin. It’s clear that God made male and female. It’s clear “nonbinary” is incoherence. It’s clear that “trans” is rebellion against biology and the God who designed it. It’s clear that mutilation of children via hormones and butchery in the attempt to subvert biology is wickedness and will be judged. It’s clear that all the letters in the Alphabet Abbreviation and symbolized by the flag(s) are sin.
As to the old, “blind men and elephant”, story as metaphor for understanding truth or God, it always felt off to me. But I could never pinpoint why. Then someone, somewhere, pointed out that the reason the narrator of the story is able to explain it is because he claims to see the entire elephant! The blind men could only feel a part of the elephant. But the omniscient narrator sees the full animal, and therefore the full story. There are, objectively, blind men. There is, objectively, an elephant.
So this idea that there’s no objective truth because we all only ever have part of the truth is, in itself, an objective statement of truth. Therefore, the story is self defeating.
The message of the Bible is that there IS objective truth because there IS an objective God who designed and created this universe. Therefore, He sets the rules for how we must live. That’s the answer to the cultural insanity in which we find ourselves.
Mo, I appreciate your digging in to this and asking the questions.
I do find Truth confusing because we all have our diverse views and yet I believe there is objective truth.
The elephant story is self-defeating. That’s part of my frustration. When we claim to know objective truth, we put ourselves in the position of the all-seeing narrator.
I wrote my article as a call for humility because even those claiming to be Christians (now and throughout history) have made egregious errors while BELIEVING they were on the right side. Can we admit that what I believe the Bible says may not be exactly what you believe the Bible says? And so we get our countless denominations and sects and cults and opinions. I’m not sure it is enough to say that doing bad things in the name of Christ means they weren’t real, regenerate Christians.
Standing in this gray area is quite uncomfortable for me. I like black and white thinking. I am constantly seeking the truth.
In light of current cultural confusion and craziness, it’s obvious to us whose views are wrong and whose are right. If I sense them correctly, your anger and frustration with what’s wrong in our society mirrors mine.
But when we lack curiosity and humility about our truth claims, we are, in a way, acting just like those who might call us racists, bigots and haters.
Do we have all the answers to this confusion? Can we hold our Truth up to scrutiny?
I guess we will have to live with the tension of the questions.
Thanks again for weighing in and continuing the discussion!
Brilliantly stated.
Amen sister! Your words, yet again, resonate. I know that I for one, especially in my younger years, didn’t listen well to others with differing views on almost anything..I tried to keep the gray areas far away thinking I truly understood the black from the white and in the process I mowed over the people who didn’t “understand” I’m learning it was mainly fueled by fear.. and ultimately pride.. I thought I comprehended God’s word/commands well and in fact more often than not, I completely mishandled and misrepresented the word of God and worse, the God of the Word.. And I missed GRACE completely.. I am still a work in progress but I’m learning that only God can understand and fully navigate the black and white of His word.. I’m stuck in a lot of gray and have so much more to learn than i truly understand.. So, I pray I can be truly woke to the mysteries of navigating this planet with others fueled by wonder, grace, humility and respect towards my fellow travelers asking the Holy Spirit to transform as He sees fit..
Well-said, Val, thank you!