Lesson 2: Religion is Woke
All the great world religions could be said to be “woke” in the sense that awareness is a basic teaching. They all claim to discern reality. That might be described as facing the truth, providing a healthy way of life, bringing us into harmony with the grain of the universe, or doing God’s will.
In Eastern religions, awareness provides enlightenment that overcomes ignorance. Western religions go further, claiming to also provide cleansing from sin.
Most religions support the order of a society by nourishing its spiritual life, but they also speak out and act against its abuses. These countercultural aspects focus on repentance that features rethinking and turning around what we are doing. It involves forgiveness that absolves sins but also redirects in the proper direction.
This prophetic function is certainly “woke.” Its goal is to wake people up to what they are doing and what they should be doing. It exposes the sins of individuals so they can be forgiven, and also the errors of society so they can be corrected or stamped out.
None of this is disloyalty or antipatriotic. Its goal is to heal, not destroy. It is true some preachers try to incite repentance by convincing people how lousy they are, but they miss the point. The idea is to restore a broken relationship and show the way to a better future where peace, justice, and love prevail. Woke religion offers hope, not despair.
This kind of awareness is so important that many Western religions have weekly confession of sins and some like Lutherans call for daily repentance.
It is pretty easy to find all sorts of instances where Christianity has brought about a change in society or calls for repentance in the present. I’d like to examine ways the church has to be woke about its own history. I think that will help us understand the positive nature of woke.
Frontline Study is an online discussion of the scriptures, inviting you to share your comments and your reflections on each weekly topic. Simply click on the "Add Reply" text at the top of each post to see what others have posted and to add your thoughts.
I can’t help but think they mixed up assess and access in the graphic.
Based on a Google lens search it appears the above graphic might come from a radio station, and has been used by a number of others online, often in posts explaining what woke is.
Maybe they somehow mean access? But if not it might highlight how new the term is in wide use, and the nature of information spreading in the internet.