Woke or Awakened?
“ I can’t breathe!”
As I watched and listened to the video footage of George Floyds final moments, I was overcome by the weight of injustice and inhumane behaviour demonstrated by the police officers involved. It’s extremely difficult to try to make sense of it all. I do believe that most police officers are people who take their job seriously and value the protection of human life and property, so there must have been something else that would’ve caused this type of response from the police. But there wasn’t. Just several minutes of a handcuffed man gasping for breath, calling for his mother, while four police officers drive their legs into his lower body, back and neck. Senseless.
The hours and days that followed were filled with more heartbreaking scenes as cities felt the anger and confusion from this injustice. In Minneapolis, businesses (many ironically having African American owners) were looted, burned and destroyed to the shouts of “black lives matter!” Unfortunately, there were those who took the vulnerable condition of these cities as an opportunity for their own greed and overshadowed those who were peacefully protesting this tragic death.
As not only a pastor, but also a Christian, I’ve begun to consider what is next and how I can be a part of a real solution that makes real change. In this consideration and prayer I had a sense that God asked me a question. I have learned over the years that when God asks me a question it is not because He is looking for information. He’s wanting to tell me something.
He asked, “Do you want to be woke, or do you want awakening?”
As I have taken time to reflect I feel even more motivated that the real answer to many of the problems we are facing in this hour is the gospel of Jesus Christ. I am all for police reform and stronger vetting processes to ensure that those who step into these areas of authority will do so with integrity and value for all life. I am for new legislation that ensures the value and protection of humanity - black, brown, white, or otherwise.
But here is the problem I have - social justice and judicial reform doesn’t change the heart. Sure it may inspire some to speak differently and behave differently, but it doesn’t change the sinful and selfish nature of the human heart. Only the power of the Holy Spirit can do that. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to push for justice for those who are oppressed. But for those who are followers of Christ, we can’t believe that social justice alone is the answer.
I’ve been thinking lately how the concept of “social justice” relates to the Genesis account of the Tower of Babel. This took place in Mesopotamia roughly around 2242 BC, according to chronologist Archbishop James Ussher. There is so much history and details in this, but I just want to highlight one key point.
We see in Genesis 11:4 this declaration made by the masses. “They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven…”
I find this one statement to be quite profound in relation to what we are facing as a culture today.
It is my confident belief that humanity can sense that the way things are in the world are not the way they should be. The Bible shows this to be true. In the beginning God made humanity to be in fellowship with Him. He created this place in which the Bible calls The Garden of Eden. This was a place in which heaven met earth, and where the Creator met the created. It was a place where two “worlds” overlapped each other. There was no sickness, no death or decay. Only life and peace in close friendship with God.
Unfortunately, this atmosphere and relating to God did not last long for the first humans, Adam & Eve. The Bible speaks of how Eve was lied to about the character of God, and deceived by Satan into eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She then also gave the fruit of the tree to her husband Adam who had compromised the instruction of God by not confronting the lie and squashing the deception, therefore committing the sin of passivity.
In the very moment that they ate the fruit their intellect, perspective, and connection to God changed. These two realties of heaven and earth, the Creator and the created, were now separate. Life and peace were now substituted with shame, confusion, accusation and guilt. Whether or not you have this framework as part of your worldview, you are actually trying to get back to the way things were in the beginning. I’d say we all are.
We were made in the image of God and are trying to find our way back home. Sadly, our efforts are compared to blind person hoping to be able to see by flipping on the right light switch. We try Buddhism, meditation, self-help, yoga, and a whole list of different things hoping that if we could just flip the switch we can get back to this place where all is made right again. I would suggest that social justice is just one more of those switches.
As a culture we hope that if we can only educate more, or pass more laws, or use the proper language, hashtags, etc. we can build our tower that will get us back to where heaven and earth meet. Yet after all our Ted talks, seminars, and protests we are still blind people who have touched more light switches.
I am confident that God has a better way. Looking back at the Garden we see that it was God who came looking for humanity.
Their shame had driven them into a place of hiding and had convinced them that they could make the necessary coverings to hide their nakedness. As we read the text, we see that God does something totally un-woke. He kills an animal, in Adam and Eve’s presence, in order to make coverings for them. This is a prophetic expression of what God would do several thousand years later in Jesus, symbolically named the Lamb of God, dying a public death before and on behalf of humanity. He took death on Himself so that He could give life and light to us all. When this took place, the veil in the temple that acted as a separation from unholy humanity and the presence of the Holy Creator was split from top to bottom.
While on the cross, Jesus cried out, ”It is finished!” What is finished? The way back to the garden.
Jesus’s life, death, burial and resurrection were the key elements of God’s redemptive plan for humanity.
This miraculous process in an individual’s heart brings about more than just being woke to politically correct verbiage and socially acceptable practices, but an awakening to the powerful love that sees God and fellow humanity more clearly.
This is what justice looks like. Hearts and lives being made new and made right before God, being expressed in righteousness between humanity. We won’t see humanity with honour and dignity until we’ve seen and experienced the honour and dignity placed on us through Jesus. You and I cannot afford to forget the great lengths that God has gone to in order for the kingdom to take up residence in our hearts. It is what He died for. This is why I won’t settle for woke when He is offering awakening.