Awakened > Woke
It is better to be "awakened" than "woke."
I say this having spent the last ten months researching and writing a book on the spiritual Awakening that centered on Wales in 1904-5, while also touching other parts of the world.
I was amazed at the social impacts of the Welsh Revival. Evan Roberts, a young coal miner, was regarded by many as the leader, but gender was not an issue. Women like Florrie Evans played major roles, speaking in churches across the land led by male pastors and elders. Coal-mining unions came to support the Awakening because of the positive impact on both labor and management. Judges wore white gloves, signifying empty dockets. Families were saved from poverty as men turned away from drinking and carousing. Even animals, like the pit ponies that hauled coal wagons from the depths of mines, were treated more humanely.
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All those positive social outcomes resulted from people spiritually "awakened." Even with the inevitable excesses and mistakes brought on by finite human nature, what happened in early twentieth century Wales showed that "awakened" is far better than "woke," the current designation that passionate advocates for our moment's political correctness give themselves.
Cultural, intellectual, religious, economic, and political elites in every era seem to believe they are the first to hold their particular beliefs, and the last word on everything. They see themselves as the creators of a new world, bravely storming the bastions of old ideas that die way too hard. Some of those old concepts do need to pass on, but it is the "awakened" who have the potential for bringing the truly fresh.
"There is nothing new under the sun," says Ecclesiastes, and the existence of the "woke" proves it. We have had the "Enlightened," the "Cognoscenti," the "Philosophes," the "Brights," the "Gnostics" (the "knowing" elite), the "Illuminati," the "Aware," the "Aryans" (also known as the "Master Race"), the "Brahmins," the "Puritans," and the "Oracles" (to name a few).
And now we have the "woke" as the latest manifestation of the monotony of elitism.
Rather than truly solving anything, the avant-garde ultimately create thought-prisons, legalisms, and iron-clad institutions posing as dynamic break-through movements.
One thing is for certain: The "woke" of today will be caught napping as their causes stultify, revolutions freeze into icebergs, and fiery proclamations harden into dogma.
This is among the reasons that "awakened" is better than "woke."
Here are more:
- "Awakened," in the highest sense, is to be "born from above" to eternal values, while "woke" is to be aroused merely by the concern of the moment.
- "Awakened" is to have fresh insight from the transcendent perspective, while "woke" sees only from the earth-bound view of the temporal and immanent.
- "Awakened" is to become alive to the everlasting Logos, while "woke" is merely the awareness of the latest cultural narrative.
- The "awakened" can bring the qualitatively new, while the "woke" tend to produce up-to-the-minute change. New Testament Greek is careful to distinguish between the merely novel ("neos") and the qualitatively new ("kainos").
- The "woke" have much factual knowledge. The "awakened" have much discerning wisdom.
Not only is all this evident in the Welsh Revival, but also in other historical epochs.
William Wilberforce was "awakened" rather than merely "woke" because he saw slavery from the transcendent level. Thomas Jefferson was "woke" to the nature of political liberty, but he was not "awakened" to the transcendent perspective regarding slavery (until later in life when he fretted about judgment to come because of the wicked institution) and thus he continued to hold human beings as chattel even as he wrote about the equality of all persons.
Martin Luther King Jr. was "awakened," and showed the true meaning of the Cross, even while militant racists were burning it for the sake of terrorizing.
Margaret Sanger, giver of the "Negro Project" and other infamies, might have been described as "woke" had the label existed in her day. Eugenicists, social-gospellers, and others seeking to engineer a Darwinian Millennium, were celebrating her (as do many "wokes" today). In their opinion, Sanger was nobly trying to raise the human gene-pool by ridding the race of those she tagged as inferior — or at least their ability to procreate. Even now, some "wokes" endorse aborting Downs Syndrome babies. However, the mothers of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman were "awakened," and nourished their slave-born female infants into women whose legacies still grace civilization.
The "woke" may touch a moment, but the "awakened" are the rare ones who really do transform history for the good of all.
