Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you so much. This is a particular
Speaker 1: joy for me to come and share with you this morning.
Speaker 1: I always love to bring the word to my wonderful
Speaker 1: church family. But this particular topic is actually near and
Speaker 1: dear to me. Back in January of this year, beginning
Speaker 1: of the year, the new word for me was partnership.
Speaker 1: The Lord gives me a word every year that I
Speaker 1: walk out. And then as part of that, he said,
Speaker 1: I want you to begin to really pray for those
Speaker 1: people in your life and those that you know, family, friends,
Speaker 1: who are woke. I want you to pray for them.
Speaker 1: And so I've been doing that ever since. And then
Speaker 1: when Pastor Dwayne gave me the opportunity, I was like, wow,
Speaker 1: now I know why the Lord wanted me to pray,
Speaker 1: because he wanted to prepare my heart. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't tell you how much I love my woke friends
Speaker 1: and family. And I feel like this is for all
Speaker 1: of us, for God's instruction today, I get my inner
Speaker 1: nerd activated as well as at the same time, you're
Speaker 1: going to get a lot of data thrown at you.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, I feel like it is
Speaker 1: a love letter from the Father to those who are woke,
Speaker 1: particularly his own children, I think we should pray now. Father,
Speaker 1: in Jesus' name, I ask that you would come and
Speaker 1: you would speak to us, that you would not allow
Speaker 1: us to have any walls to what you want to
Speaker 1: say to us. For those of us, whether we're woke
Speaker 1: or not here this morning or online, that we would
Speaker 1: be willing to hear what you might have to say.
Speaker 1: Bless the giving of the word, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen. Now,
Speaker 1: we live in a world today that has clashes constantly
Speaker 1: between worldviews, between ideologies, right? A bill recently passed by
Speaker 1: New York State was a bill that changed all the
Speaker 1: official documents and took out the words mother and father
Speaker 1: and replaced them with gestating and non-gestating parents. That's right.
Speaker 1: Right now, also, many of you know that the US
Speaker 1: Congress is currently involved in a fierce debate regarding bans
Speaker 1: on gender transition for children. So these are the kind
Speaker 1: of things that you can look on the news every
Speaker 1: day and you're going to pick up something else regarding
Speaker 1: this world view and other world views that are happening.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about woke this morning, and woke,
Speaker 1: or sometimes people talk about wokeism, and what it is,
Speaker 1: it's part of the series of messages. I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you more of a global picture. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to dive into any particular element of it, but I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you a wide picture. And my title
Speaker 1: of my sermon this morning is, What is Woke and
Speaker 1: Does It Work?, And maybe you're here thinking, well, I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure what woke is. This is for you.
Speaker 1: If you're here and you're sure what woke is, it's
Speaker 1: for you. Whether or not you're woke or not, this
Speaker 1: is for you. This is for every one of us
Speaker 1: because I believe God has something for all of us
Speaker 1: to learn this morning. So what is woke? Here's a
Speaker 1: definition I found online that I think is pretty appropriate,
Speaker 1: and we'll start there. Woke is a modern social and
Speaker 1: political worldview or ideology that views society through identity groups
Speaker 1: and power dynamics and sees systematic oppression as the root
Speaker 1: to virtually all inequalities. And, of course, it asserts that
Speaker 1: one of the most important truths or all the important
Speaker 1: truths about society can be found in group identities. And
Speaker 1: so whether it's race or gender or sexuality or sexuality.
Speaker 1: Woke originally meant being alerts to social injustice back decades ago,
Speaker 1: especially racism, but then it's broadened and deepened in the
Speaker 1: last decade or so. Over time now, it addresses systematic injustice,
Speaker 1: identity-based inequality, and see it as a moral duty to
Speaker 1: correct injustices. Okay? Okay? So we're challenging different norms like gender, sexuality, family,
Speaker 1: and identity. Those are being challenged by wokeism. And reevaluating,
Speaker 1: of course, historical narratives like slavery, patriarchy, colonialism. So those
Speaker 1: are going on right now as part of the woke vision.
Speaker 1: Wokeism is highly organized and it's very well-funded. And they're
Speaker 1: serious about this. And they're aiming for cultural, institutional, and
Speaker 1: political change. And so they're doing that through laws, through education,
Speaker 1: entertainment industry, through news media, and, of course, social media
Speaker 1: of absolutely every kind. Now, this worldview or identity, ideology,
Speaker 1: is held by many people. And pretty much any age
Speaker 1: group or educational level, places of power and so forth,
Speaker 1: it's strongly held here in the United States and, of course,
Speaker 1: many parts of the world, the Western world, and certainly
Speaker 1: here in Western Washington. We are particularly strong in that
Speaker 1: woke ideology. And for some, to be honest, it is
Speaker 1: a secular religion. It is... It's something that influences people
Speaker 1: as much as any religion might influence them. You and
Speaker 1: I have friends, we have family members, we have co-workers, bosses,
Speaker 1: who consider themselves woke or have some level of woke views.
Speaker 1: And you may consider yourself woke today and not hold
Speaker 1: all the views of wokeism, and that's certainly possible. But
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're here, no matter who you are or listening,
Speaker 1: watching online. Again, please listen with an open heart and mind.
Speaker 1: Colossians 2.8 is the center word for this morning. Here's
Speaker 1: what it says. See to it that no one takes
Speaker 1: you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on
Speaker 1: human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world
Speaker 1: rather than Christ. The Apostle Paul here is warning Christians
Speaker 1: in particular to not be led away from Jesus. We
Speaker 1: sang this morning about, we sang only Jesus, all about Jesus.
Speaker 1: And Paul's saying that here when it comes to what
Speaker 1: you believe, what you put your trust in in terms
Speaker 1: of philosophy, ideology. Two sources of truth. Human tradition is
Speaker 1: compared to Jesus Christ, the Son of God, whose revelation
Speaker 1: and foundation is truth. Hollow and deceptive philosophy. Paul is
Speaker 1: talking about teachings that are empty. They look full, but
Speaker 1: they're empty. And they mislead people away from Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: Human tradition. It's the action and belief that people can
Speaker 1: change the world. That we have the power and ability
Speaker 1: in and of ourselves to change the world and without
Speaker 1: God or his word. Elemental spiritual forces of this world,
Speaker 1: these are the systems, the ideologies that have spiritual forces
Speaker 1: behind them. Believe me, they do. Every ideology, every worldview
Speaker 1: has spiritual forces working behind them. And either they are
Speaker 1: good or they're bad. Apostle Paul says, what is good
Speaker 1: is Jesus. So we ought to be careful about what
Speaker 1: ideologies we pick up along the way in our lives.
Speaker 1: Some we do consciously, some we do unconsciously. Some we
Speaker 1: do because culture teaches us that and we pick them up.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of different ways to do that, right?
Speaker 1: But we need to be careful because we can be
Speaker 1: taken captive, Paul says. We can be trapped, we can
Speaker 1: be stopped, and we can be led astray by them.
Speaker 1: So this week I woke up in the middle of
Speaker 1: the night and the Lord often does, wakes me up and,
Speaker 1: and downloads something to me. And I woke up in
Speaker 1: the middle of the night and, uh, immediately the memory
Speaker 1: came to me of something in my childhood when I
Speaker 1: was a young, a young teen, uh, an event that
Speaker 1: happened in my family. And I'm going to share that. Um, and, uh, the,
Speaker 1: it's a story that I call, uh, the mouse in
Speaker 1: the tuba. And, uh, You'll see in a moment why
Speaker 1: I call it that, but that was going to be
Speaker 1: my original title, but my wife Lori said, no, no
Speaker 1: one will know what that means. So stick with the
Speaker 1: woke title. So I did that, and I think that
Speaker 1: was wisdom. But I had a little white mouse. I
Speaker 1: had lots of different animals when I was growing up,
Speaker 1: pets and stuff, but I had this particular white mouse
Speaker 1: that I would take out and out of the little
Speaker 1: cage and play with and everything else I had a
Speaker 1: friend of mine who was over and you know we
Speaker 1: were two teens that had nothing to do we were
Speaker 1: just like had no time to spend yeah alright and
Speaker 1: you know that's a danger that's danger time and we're
Speaker 1: just like sitting about playing with the mouse and he's
Speaker 1: crawling up inside your shirt and we just had a
Speaker 1: great time And one of us had this idea, and
Speaker 1: the guilty party, who it actually was, is lost to history,
Speaker 1: and maybe I blocked it out. But I was still
Speaker 1: responsible because it was my mouse, it was my room
Speaker 1: we were hanging out in, and it was my brother's
Speaker 1: brand new tuba. And one of us had the idea,
Speaker 1: let's put the mouse in the tuba and see what
Speaker 1: he does. This, again, brand new E-flat-based tuba. And it
Speaker 1: seemed like a good idea at the time, right? And
Speaker 1: in retrospect, I understand it wasn't so smart. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking ahead. But we did. We took the mouse, took
Speaker 1: him over, and we put him on the edge of
Speaker 1: the tuba, a nice big opening. And he started crawling in.
Speaker 1: This was very inviting to him. It's darker. The more
Speaker 1: he went in, the darker it got. Mice like little
Speaker 1: dark holes to crawl in, right? So, you know, unfamiliar with,
Speaker 1: you know, tuba geometry and mouthpiece size, it didn't apparently
Speaker 1: occur to this mouse that he was going in a
Speaker 1: dangerous direction. A dead-end path, if you will, because the
Speaker 1: mouthpiece is smaller than the mouse. And so you get it.
Speaker 1: He kept going and going. He liked it so much,
Speaker 1: it was so attractive to him that he kept going
Speaker 1: until he got wedged in the tuba, towards the end
Speaker 1: of the tuba, towards the mouthpiece. He was probably looking out,
Speaker 1: seeing the end of the tunnel, but not being able
Speaker 1: to get there. we knew that he was stuck when
Speaker 1: we tried to blow into the tuba and we could
Speaker 1: get no air into it. And so we started shaking it,
Speaker 1: turning it, kind of bouncing it, trying to get him out.
Speaker 1: And everything we tried, nothing happened. We could not get
Speaker 1: him out of that tuba. This mouse was truly stuck. Now,
Speaker 1: this picture right here I want to give you is
Speaker 1: a picture that I think God wants to give you
Speaker 1: of what happens when we begin to follow the wrong ideology. OK?
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the end of the story
Speaker 1: at the end. So if you're irritated with me in
Speaker 1: the beginning, you'll probably still stick around to hear, because
Speaker 1: you want to hear the end of the mouse and
Speaker 1: the tuba story. But Colossians 2.8 says, be careful not
Speaker 1: to get captive, right? Proverbs 14, 12 hits us even harder.
Speaker 1: There is a way that appears to be right, but
Speaker 1: the end leads to death. Now, you can apply this
Speaker 1: verse to a mouse in a tuba, right? Or you
Speaker 1: can apply it to you. God is applying it to
Speaker 1: each one of us. He's saying, he's giving us a
Speaker 1: warning here. There is a way, it appears right, it
Speaker 1: appears good, but it leads to death. So about woke,
Speaker 1: does it work? I have five key questions. They're both
Speaker 1: biblical questions and logical questions. They're kind of Charlie Kirk
Speaker 1: style questions. but they're the ones that I believe the
Speaker 1: Lord has given me to share with you. And there
Speaker 1: are ways to evaluate any ideology, but we're going to
Speaker 1: evaluate wokeism. Okay? Can you put up the chart? The
Speaker 1: five criteria for evaluating social ideology. Here they are. The
Speaker 1: view of human nature. Real world outcomes. The openness to
Speaker 1: debate and correction. View of the individual and relationship to truth.
Speaker 1: We're going to apply those criteria with questions, each one
Speaker 1: of those, to wokeism. First, the view of human nature.
Speaker 1: The question, does this ideology have a realistic understanding of
Speaker 1: human nature? The woke view of the world, in that view,
Speaker 1: people are basically good. Well, in particular, people who are
Speaker 1: on the fringes, people who are vulnerable, people who are poor,
Speaker 1: people who are not in the center of power, people
Speaker 1: who are victims of victimizers. Those people are morally good. Now,
Speaker 1: the victimizers are not. The oppressors are not. They're the
Speaker 1: evil ones. But everybody else... is morally good. If you're
Speaker 1: poor or underprivileged or an immigrant or an ethnic person,
Speaker 1: you know, in woke's view, you are good. And pretty
Speaker 1: much most anything you do is okay. Bible's pretty clear.
Speaker 1: Jeremiah 17, 9. The heart is deceitful above all things
Speaker 1: and beyond cure. Who can understand it? We are all sinners.
Speaker 1: None of us are good. There's not a good person
Speaker 1: in this room or online right now without the goodness
Speaker 1: being imputed to us by Jesus Christ. Mark 7, 21
Speaker 1: to 23. For it is from within and out of
Speaker 1: a person's heart that evil thoughts come. It's from within.
Speaker 1: And he mentions all these different things there. You can
Speaker 1: read it. All these evils, verse 23, come from inside
Speaker 1: and defile a person. There it is. That is biblical ideology.
Speaker 1: That is biblical theology right there. See, wokeism misdiagnoses the
Speaker 1: root human problem and replaces sin with social oppression. Social
Speaker 1: oppression is really the only bad sin. You can go
Speaker 1: and do anything else. You can live your lifestyle any
Speaker 1: way you want. You can treat people any way you
Speaker 1: want as long as you don't socially oppress. That is true.
Speaker 1: So sin becomes privilege. It becomes bias. It becomes inequity.
Speaker 1: It becomes power imbalance in the woke ideology. But the
Speaker 1: Bible teaches that sin is rebellion against God. That's what
Speaker 1: it is. It's universal. It's personal. It's moral. It's social.
Speaker 1: It's not sociological. Now, systems can be unjust, but they're
Speaker 1: unjust because people are unjust. So after this first question
Speaker 1: in regards to the woke's view of human nature, I
Speaker 1: don't give them a very good big grade. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: give it. You can decide. Let's go to number two,
Speaker 1: real-world outcomes. The key question here is, does this ideology
Speaker 1: produce good outcomes when it is applied, especially for the vulnerable?
Speaker 1: A good sociological ideology would have good outcomes when applied,
Speaker 1: and it'd be especially helpful for the vulnerable, the ones
Speaker 1: that are trying to help. Intentions are not good enough.
Speaker 1: And I assume, you know, I've learned to assume, I
Speaker 1: believe it's the Lord's heart that we assume good intentions
Speaker 1: of people. Right? Because we don't know their hearts. God does.
Speaker 1: And so I go in assuming good intentions for woke ideology.
Speaker 1: Good intentions for people who have them. Okay? I assume that.
Speaker 1: But outcomes are the real test. Does ideology, does it
Speaker 1: produce justice and peace and flourishing or something else? This
Speaker 1: is what the Bible calls fruit. Right? The Bible calls fruit.
Speaker 1: Is fruit consistent with goodness and righteousness? James 3, 17
Speaker 1: and 18. The wisdom that comes from heaven is, first
Speaker 1: of all, pure and peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy
Speaker 1: and good fruit. impartial, and sincere. In Matthew 7, 16,
Speaker 1: by their fruit, you will recognize them. Do people pick
Speaker 1: grapes from thorn bushes or figs or from thistles? By
Speaker 1: their fruit. And so this is a great number two
Speaker 1: question here. It's a great one. And so woke ideology
Speaker 1: gets something right, something very right. That is deeply biblical,
Speaker 1: Isaiah 117. Learn to do right. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed.
Speaker 1: Take up the cause of the fatherless. Plead the case
Speaker 1: of the widow. That is the right intention. That is justice.
Speaker 1: is right from the Lord's heart. It's in God's word.
Speaker 1: Micah 6.8. He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.
Speaker 1: And what does the Lord require of you? To act
Speaker 1: justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with
Speaker 1: your God. This is right. This is to do right.
Speaker 1: This is right. We know that. And social injustice is
Speaker 1: not right. But it is the method you use to
Speaker 1: attain a goal. It's not just having a particular goal
Speaker 1: that happens to be good. And that is the critical thing.
Speaker 1: Good intentions do not prevent bad results. Now, you might
Speaker 1: be surprised about, you know, if you take the good
Speaker 1: intentions of people who are woke, I found something very surprising.
Speaker 1: It turns out, and studies have shown this very clearly,
Speaker 1: it turns out that a woke person's on average, I'm
Speaker 1: not saying you or somebody you know, but on average,
Speaker 1: a woke person is less charitable, they give less, they
Speaker 1: volunteer less, they help the poor less than and they
Speaker 1: are less civically engaged other than online activism than the
Speaker 1: average person in America. So intentions alone aren't enough. Actions.
Speaker 1: So if we look at the actual behavior, does the
Speaker 1: ideology produce good fruit, good outcomes in life? Next chart.
Speaker 1: And now when I looked at this chart, this is
Speaker 1: the first half of two parts, I was surprised at
Speaker 1: how many key, not just minor, but key woke policies
Speaker 1: produce outcomes that have harmed many, many people. And maybe
Speaker 1: you just don't hear that in the news or you
Speaker 1: don't see a lot, but you can read it for yourself.
Speaker 1: Transgender policy in women's sports, we know how that has
Speaker 1: hurt women, girls. Youth gender transitions, we know how many now,
Speaker 1: it's how much is coming out of the hurt that's happened.
Speaker 1: It's just heartbreaking. Immigration and border policy, we know how
Speaker 1: much that's hurt our nation in the terms of... All
Speaker 1: the killings that have happened and all the crime that's
Speaker 1: happened and allowing groups in that have done... I could
Speaker 1: go on. I won't. Woke education and campus speech. This
Speaker 1: has affected academia. It's affected universities. It's affected our elementary schools.
Speaker 1: I mean, this... They've hurt the youth and children. And
Speaker 1: then part two... anti-Semitism on campus, victim of pressure framework,
Speaker 1: you can read it, progressive economic policies, defunding or restricting
Speaker 1: the police. These have hurt the people that they've wanted
Speaker 1: to help the most. The people in big cities, the
Speaker 1: people that are struggling with poverty, the people that need
Speaker 1: police in their neighborhoods. DEI programs, those have mostly generally
Speaker 1: failed in business. Mental health impacts on youth. There's higher anxiety,
Speaker 1: identity confusion, fragility. It used to be that youth grew
Speaker 1: up kind of tough. Today, we are training our children
Speaker 1: to be weak because we're making sure that nobody says
Speaker 1: anything bad to them making sure that they're safe in
Speaker 1: every possible way. And then, of course, culture and national identity,
Speaker 1: how that's divided us. This is sad. This is heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: I know this wasn't intended, but look how much damage.
Speaker 1: But what saddens me the most, what saddens me the
Speaker 1: most is that those who have been harmed the most,
Speaker 1: the group of people who have been harmed the most
Speaker 1: Next chart. These are the people who are the focus
Speaker 1: of woke ideology to help. These are the ones they say,
Speaker 1: these are the most important people and we want to
Speaker 1: help them. Their intention is to help these people. These
Speaker 1: are the people who have been harmed the most. Children, youth, women,
Speaker 1: the poor, ethnic minorities, immigrants with conservative values, and students
Speaker 1: in vulnerable environments. These are the ones that hurt the most,
Speaker 1: the one they want to help the most. So when
Speaker 1: you're doing something that your intention is to do it
Speaker 1: and to help these people, and you're putting your heart
Speaker 1: and soul into that, and instead those same people are
Speaker 1: hurt the most, something's wrong. Something's desperately wrong. So I
Speaker 1: wouldn't give them a very high score and good outcomes. Okay,
Speaker 1: third question has to do with openness to debate and correction.
Speaker 1: The key question is, can this ideology be questioned, debated,
Speaker 1: or corrected? Healthy ideologies welcome scrutiny. Unhealthy ones suppress disagreement
Speaker 1: and alternative views. Woke ideology supports things like speech codes,
Speaker 1: It encourages and been the prime mover behind cancel culture.
Speaker 1: Dissent has been punished. If you speak out at your
Speaker 1: job in the past, now the administration has changed that,
Speaker 1: but not long ago, you speak out at your job,
Speaker 1: you'd be let go. If there's against in any way,
Speaker 1: the DEI or against, believe me, and we all know that,
Speaker 1: I won't spend a lot, but I'll go on. Universities
Speaker 1: have been narrowed down and dumbed down because of limiting
Speaker 1: what can be taught, what can be studied, what the
Speaker 1: science is actually. Believe me, real science has been squished
Speaker 1: into one corner so that the full science has been
Speaker 1: pushed down. Okay, I don't have to go much further
Speaker 1: than that. Silence about unfairness. So if you're silent about unfairness,
Speaker 1: you're considered complicit in social injustice. Okay, it goes that far.
Speaker 1: And if you're neutral, you're siding with the oppressor. So
Speaker 1: I would say the dissent, debate, and correction is not
Speaker 1: very good. Proverbs 27, 17, iron sharpens iron, so one
Speaker 1: person sharpens another. We hold each other accountable, right? And
Speaker 1: that's how we help each other grow. Proverbs 10, 17,
Speaker 1: whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever
Speaker 1: ignores correction leads others astray down the tuba. Proverbs 8.2,
Speaker 1: I added that. That's not God's word. Proverbs 18.2, a
Speaker 1: fool has no delight in understanding. They only want to
Speaker 1: express their own opinions. See, the wise ideology seeks the truth.
Speaker 1: welcomes correction, values honest debate. You know, Charlie Kirk debate,
Speaker 1: values those kind of things. A foolish ideology rejects correction,
Speaker 1: trusts only in its opinion, is unteachable, and leads blind
Speaker 1: people towards destruction or the small end of the tuba.
Speaker 1: An ideology that does these things undermines itself and its followers.
Speaker 1: So I would give that a low score. Openness to debate. Okay,
Speaker 1: number four, a view of the individual. Does the ideology
Speaker 1: treat people as individuals or reduce them to groups? Major
Speaker 1: dividing line between healthy and unhealthy worldviews. The ones that
Speaker 1: put them in groups. You could add Marxism, fascism, racial supremacy.
Speaker 1: Those put people in groups. Those are not healthy ideologies.
Speaker 1: Not ones you want to follow. The biblical standard says
Speaker 1: We're all in God's image, Genesis 127. So God created
Speaker 1: humankind in his own image. In the image of God,
Speaker 1: he created them. Male and female, he created them. We're
Speaker 1: all created equal. God shows no favoritism. Each person is
Speaker 1: accountable for their own sin, Romans 14, 12. So then,
Speaker 1: each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
Speaker 1: That means God sees you as a unique moral agent
Speaker 1: with personal responsibility and dignity. Each one of you. Nobody
Speaker 1: gets off the hook in this thing. Woke world view
Speaker 1: has no place for the individual this came out of
Speaker 1: roots with critical theory and critical race theory where they
Speaker 1: put everything in groups based on race class gender and
Speaker 1: so forth group based moral judgment it leads to injustice
Speaker 1: it leads to resentment and division And so what happens
Speaker 1: is you get oppressor versus oppressed, victim versus victimizer, race
Speaker 1: versus race, class versus class, identity versus identity. And it
Speaker 1: inevitably produces resentment, polarization, tribalism, breakdown of society. So I
Speaker 1: don't think that one does it very well either. Number five.
Speaker 1: This has to do with relationship to the truth. The
Speaker 1: key question is does this ideology align with objective truth
Speaker 1: or does it redefine truth based on its ideology? Or
Speaker 1: I would add emotions or feelings. The biblical standard of
Speaker 1: walking in truth is that's the mark of genuine faith, right?
Speaker 1: 3 John 4, John says, I have no greater joy
Speaker 1: to hear my children are walking in the truth. And
Speaker 1: that is God speaking through him. I want my children
Speaker 1: to walk in the truth. And this is truth that
Speaker 1: not just believe, but I want to walk them out.
Speaker 1: I want them to live the truth. So we're talking
Speaker 1: about living the truth here, not only believing it. Ephesians 4, 25,
Speaker 1: and he's speaking to believers here, Paul is. Therefore, each
Speaker 1: one of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully
Speaker 1: to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body.
Speaker 1: So this is about walking in truth, living in truth,
Speaker 1: speaking the truth, even when it's hard. Even when it's hard.
Speaker 1: This is so critical. We need that. And so we
Speaker 1: don't want truth to be determined by emotion or the
Speaker 1: majority opinion or political pressure. But we want to ask,
Speaker 1: does the ideology follow the facts? Or does it redefine
Speaker 1: the truth based on feelings? Does it acknowledge objective, moral,
Speaker 1: and scientific realities? Any ideology that rejects truth will eventually
Speaker 1: harm people and harm the people you're trying to help. Postmodern,
Speaker 1: we're in postmodern world now and woke ideology is rooted
Speaker 1: in that. It denies objective truth and a universal morality.
Speaker 1: It denies those things and says truth is socially constructed
Speaker 1: and shaped by power. And different for each identity group too,
Speaker 1: by the way. So truth is subjective and identity-based, and
Speaker 1: that leads to the kind of things we've talked about here,
Speaker 1: including speech codes and emotional reasoning and fragility for those
Speaker 1: who are emotionally overprotected. Proverbs 27.6 says, Wounds from a
Speaker 1: friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses. You know,
Speaker 1: that's wounds from a friend. I mean, this is to
Speaker 1: speak up. is a loving thing to do. And to
Speaker 1: be able to receive what somebody is saying that you
Speaker 1: don't agree with or don't feel good about, but to
Speaker 1: receive that and to listen. I always say that all
Speaker 1: feedback's a gift. Because it is. Even if it's harsh,
Speaker 1: at least now you know how that person feels and
Speaker 1: you can dialogue about it. So wokeism is like a
Speaker 1: very compassionate physician who misdiagnoses the disease, gets out the treatment,
Speaker 1: and applies it to the patient, and then kills the patient.
Speaker 1: Woke I... A wokeism is like a very compassionate physician, right,
Speaker 1: who missed this diagnosis of the disease. So it gets
Speaker 1: the disease wrong, right? And then gives a cure to
Speaker 1: the patient and it kills them because he got the
Speaker 1: diagnosis wrong. That's what's happening here. Whereas the biblical worldview
Speaker 1: gives a true diagnosis, true identity for us, and true
Speaker 1: justice is spoken and given to us impartial, righteous, and
Speaker 1: based on what God has spoken. Amen? All right. So
Speaker 1: number five, wokeism didn't do that well either, right? Okay.
Speaker 1: To help make things clearer for us, I put on my, again,
Speaker 1: I let my nerd side out a little bit. And
Speaker 1: I said, okay, I'm going to score these. I'm going
Speaker 1: to give a numerical score. And I like that score
Speaker 1: to be between one and five. I'm going to score
Speaker 1: each of those five. And I can use this to
Speaker 1: score other ideologies as well. And so that's what I did.
Speaker 1: But I went to my AI co-pilot. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Well,
Speaker 1: I knew that co-pilot would at least be not as
Speaker 1: biased as I would be towards Christianity. So I said, okay,
Speaker 1: I asked to be completely unbiased and based just on
Speaker 1: that information alone of the five and the results that
Speaker 1: were all gathered, again, from information that was available to me.
Speaker 1: And so... Human nature, outcomes, descent, individuals, and the truth.
Speaker 1: All those things. Scale from 1 to 5. And so
Speaker 1: you could get up a score up to 25 if
Speaker 1: they all got 5, right? And down to 5 if
Speaker 1: they all just got 1. So here are the results.
Speaker 1: Woke ideology. Here are the results. This is totally objective.
Speaker 1: This is not... My co-pilot AI is not a Christian.
Speaker 1: And these are the scores, 2, 2, 1, 1, 2.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, that's about what I would have
Speaker 1: scored it. But this makes it a little more objective. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: anything under 10, according to AI, is a high risk
Speaker 1: of harmful outcomes. Under five, it's like this ideology is dangerous.
Speaker 1: Run from it. I mean, really. So does woke work?
Speaker 1: You can judge for yourself. So let's compare that to,
Speaker 1: I ran the biblical worldview through it as well. Again, unbiased.
Speaker 1: I just gave them what the Bible said. I gave
Speaker 1: them the verses. I said, here, tell me what you
Speaker 1: think about this ideology. The scores for ideology, the scores
Speaker 1: for biblical worldview. 25 out of 25. Do you believe that?
Speaker 1: You know, God's pretty smart, and he knows what he's doing.
Speaker 1: You know, his word is absolutely amazing. It is powerful.
Speaker 1: It is supernatural. It is truth. It is perfect truth.
Speaker 1: And it is his gift to us. When this result
Speaker 1: came out, it just blew my mind just how amazing. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: so you run through another AI and you would have
Speaker 1: got 24 maybe. Who knows? I don't know. But the
Speaker 1: high score here, it just speaks to the blessing that
Speaker 1: you and I have been given in the word of God.
Speaker 1: An amazing and beautiful gift. And so, again, my inner nerd,
Speaker 1: even though I wasn't talking on this, I looked at socialism.
Speaker 1: 10 out of 25. I looked at communism. 5 out
Speaker 1: of 25. If you have any ideologies you want to evaluate,
Speaker 1: let me know and I'll run it through. But you
Speaker 1: get the point. Nothing compares to what we believe and
Speaker 1: what we live. Nothing compares. Not even close. One more
Speaker 1: question I have. What about those who are woke? How
Speaker 1: does having wokeism help you? Does woke work for the woke?
Speaker 1: I'm going to summarize what George Barna, Pew Research, Harvard University,
Speaker 1: Duke University, Gallup, all these other evaluators did for both
Speaker 1: woke and Christianity. I asked them to do it for both.
Speaker 1: And to give me the results compared to the general population,
Speaker 1: the well-being of people who hold to these ideals. And
Speaker 1: I understand there's some overlap. I don't think there should be,
Speaker 1: but there's overlap. There are... Christians, many Christians who are woke.
Speaker 1: I understand that. I just divided those two. You can
Speaker 1: kind of average if you want. Impact of worldview on
Speaker 1: well-being chart. If you are woke, on average, every individual
Speaker 1: is different, but on average, you are more depressed, you
Speaker 1: have more anxiety, more loneliness, less life satisfaction, and and
Speaker 1: greater suicide risk relative to the average person in America.
Speaker 1: If you're a devoted Christian, you can see how amazing,
Speaker 1: blessed we are. You can see it right there. For
Speaker 1: the sake of time, I'm going to move quickly. I
Speaker 1: will say this. One of my closest friends, many of
Speaker 1: my closest friends who are woke, And whom I love deeply,
Speaker 1: I see these things. I see anxiety. I see stress.
Speaker 1: I see things in them that frustration. I see anger.
Speaker 1: Several of them, many of the ones that I know
Speaker 1: and I love very much, they're online all the time.
Speaker 1: And angry statements against people they see as oppressors. Angry
Speaker 1: statements against Christians. They're stuck. They're stuck near the end
Speaker 1: of the tuba So when it comes to bitterness, the
Speaker 1: Bible talks about that. I don't know if I'm going
Speaker 1: to jump through. I won't use the scripture there. But
Speaker 1: we do know in Matthew 18, Jesus talks about the
Speaker 1: unforgiving servant and how he's given over to the torturers.
Speaker 1: And I think there's a spiritual element that tortures people
Speaker 1: who are bitter, unforgiving, and judgmental. And if you've got bitterness, unforgiveness,
Speaker 1: or judgmentalness in you, get it out. Impact of world... Okay,
Speaker 1: generosity and civic engagement. I already talked about how if
Speaker 1: you're woke, you're much less likely to be generous and giving,
Speaker 1: so we'll pass that chart up. Other outcomes you can see. Longevity,
Speaker 1: hope for the future, community strength, isolation, divorce rates, marital satisfaction.
Speaker 1: They're all worse than the average... the average person in America.
Speaker 1: And you can see how much further blessed we are
Speaker 1: with these. Yeah, look at that, right? Look at that.
Speaker 1: So we began with Colossians 2.8. I'll come back to it.
Speaker 1: See to it. No one takes you captive to a
Speaker 1: hollow deception philosophy which depends on human tradition, the elemental spirits,
Speaker 1: spiritual forces of this world rather than Christ. See to it.
Speaker 1: finished the mouse tuba story after all attempts to unlock
Speaker 1: and set free our entrenched mouse. And we had no
Speaker 1: good idea at how long that mouse in the tuba
Speaker 1: would last. But we knew at some point we had
Speaker 1: to go talk to our dad and fess up in
Speaker 1: what we did. And so we did do that. And
Speaker 1: we went to our father. There's a prophetic message there.
Speaker 1: And said, help us. Help us, dad. Our mouse is stuck.
Speaker 1: And so he got us in the car, got the
Speaker 1: tuba and the mouse in the car, and we drove
Speaker 1: to the gas station. And he went over to the
Speaker 1: refill hose, the air hose. And he put it in
Speaker 1: the mouth of the tuba and boom. The mouse was freed.
Speaker 1: He wasn't out yet, but he was freed. And dad
Speaker 1: could blow into the tuba. And oh, OK, we got
Speaker 1: some freedom here. But it still took shaking. OK, this
Speaker 1: is also prophetic, by the way. Shaking and turning and
Speaker 1: knocking it down on the ground. Clank, clank, clank to
Speaker 1: get him knocked around. And unfortunately, my brother John, his
Speaker 1: brand new tuba was dented up. And so there are
Speaker 1: costs to pay. But he got that mouse out. That
Speaker 1: little mouse came out. He had lost an eye. Probably
Speaker 1: the air, who knows? Or being jostled, I don't know.
Speaker 1: But he lost an eye. But other than that, he
Speaker 1: was perfectly fine. And he lived many years longer. End
Speaker 1: of the story. Please all stand. Wow. Wow. Thank you
Speaker 1: for listening this morning. You know, if you're here and
Speaker 1: you've been listening and you have considered yourself woke or
Speaker 1: have some woke world views, I ask you to reconsider. This,
Speaker 1: in a way, has been the Lord's love gift to
Speaker 1: you to be able to reconsider. Okay? And for all
Speaker 1: of us who have friends and family we have a
Speaker 1: burden for, you've been thinking about them all through the sermon, right?
Speaker 1: The things that we ought to be doing, you know them.
Speaker 1: First of all, we ought to be loving them just
Speaker 1: for who they are. It doesn't matter if you agree
Speaker 1: with them or not. So ask God for love. Pray
Speaker 1: for them. Pray for them. Prayer for my woke friends
Speaker 1: has changed my heart. You pray for them, right? And then...
Speaker 1: Besides doing those things, there's one other point I wanted
Speaker 1: to make, but that's all that matters. Well, in conversations,
Speaker 1: ask God for conversations with them and assume best intentions.
Speaker 1: If you do that, that brings the wall down. When
Speaker 1: you approach somebody with, oh, look at what you're doing,
Speaker 1: this or that or this or whatever, that never works.
Speaker 1: Assume best intentions. Come in with grace. All right? Let's
Speaker 1: pray for them now. Father, in the name of Jesus,
Speaker 1: We lift up all our woke friends and family and
Speaker 1: coworkers to you. And Lord, we say that in your
Speaker 1: love that you would reach out to them. You would
Speaker 1: blow on them your Holy Spirit, high power air. Blow
Speaker 1: on them, Lord, and set them free. And that you
Speaker 1: would work in their hearts and lives and whatever you
Speaker 1: need to do to get them out, Lord, of where
Speaker 1: they're in. We pray that you'd do that. You'd open
Speaker 1: up the hearts and lives of our nation, of our state,
Speaker 1: our leaders, and ourselves. So we give ourselves to you.
Speaker 1: We thank you for the gracious gift of Jesus Christ,
Speaker 1: who is above all ideologies and all worldviews. And we
Speaker 1: acknowledge him today. And in his name we pray. Amen.