How I Am Not Woke
Larry Hart, Curtal Friar

A Confessed Misfit
I am a misfit. This is neither a boast nor a complaint, but it is the truth––the truth that has followed me like a bloodhound all of my life. Politically and religiously I find the terms “conservative” and “liberal” nearly useless, and feel comfortable in being assigned to neither category. They seem like useless terms to me because they both depend on the perspective of the one doing the labeling more than on any objective criteria. Personally, I am more concerned about what kind of a person someone is than whether they are conservative or liberal. I read the other day about a poll which said thirty percent of young people who identify themselves as conservative or Republican, as well as thirty percent of those who consider themselves as liberal or Democrat, thought it would not be possible to be friends with someone from the opposite party––with someone more conservative or liberal than themselves. I find that not only incredibly sad, but contrary to the fundamentals of my Christian faith. I have always found it intriguing that the original Twelve selected by Jesus included Matthew the Tax Collector and Judas the Zealot. I think, Donald Trump is afflicted with a number of serious and severe psychological disorders, as do hundreds of psychiatrists, psychologists, and psychotherapists (Change.org). I have read my Bible (several times), as well as M. Scott Peck’s psychiatric study of evil as a clinical disorder, and I think both psychologically and theologically he is an evil man. However, while I pray constantly that he will be rendered completely impotent, maybe like Osai the Fire Lord in Avatar: The Last Airbender or Wang Lung’s dangerous bandit uncle in Pearl S. Buck’s novel The Good Earth, I pray him no harm. But I digress, so I will just say this is an essay not about why I am not “woke,” but “How I Am Not Woke,” and how I hope after you read it we can still be friends.

Left Is Not Woke
I hope to make it clear that I am not so much “anti-woke,” as I am for something else that has a higher and greater claim on me. In fact, many of the things said and advocated by those who are “woke” are things I am, at least in principle, supportive of––just as I am supportive of many of the values and principles held by humanistic philosophy in general. It would be strange were I not since the principles of humanistic philosophy were derived from centuries of Judeo-Christian teaching. But there are also certain contradictions within “wokeism” which are very likely, in the end, to carry it into places it does not want to go. In some ways, I write as does Susan Nieman, political philosopher, author, and Director of the Einstein Forum, whose book title I am using for the heading of this paragraph. Nieman describes herself as genuinely leftist but not “woke.”

Canceling George and Jane
There are some scientists, I have no idea how many, who are calling for scrapping flora and fauna names based on offensive words or people considered objectional –– criminals, dictators, slave traders and owners. For example, Tim Hammer, a Ph.D. student, discovered while studying a genus of plants commonly known as guinea flowers, the Hibbertia, that its name was the Latinization of the surname “Hibbert.” Apparently, George Hibbert, who died in 1837, was a great benefactor of botany and botanists and so someone, equally obscure in the larger context of world history, decided to honor Hibbert by naming these guinea flowers after him; but here is the great moral problem Hammer encountered. Hibbert, it turns out, was not only a patron of botanical science, but he was also a slave owner. That reminds me of another story in the mainstream news (I never ever watch or listen to Fox except when it comes to football) of a female British Ph.D. student who wanted to do her dissertation at Columbia University on the work of Jane Austin, but was not allowed to do so because Jane Austin may have had family members who owned slaves. Whether that is true, whether Jane Austin had relatives who owned slaves or not, I don’t really know. I do know she also had family who worked to end the British slave trade. Beyond the difficulty of sorting all that out I am just really not much for holding people accountable for the sins of family members––living or dead. If I were to follow the “woke” logic of Columbia University with any consistency at all I wouldn’t be able to use Gerhard Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, one of the very best tools ever devised for researching Christian Scripture, because Kittel was a card-carrying Nazi. To be consistent I would also have to demand the removal of the Lincoln Memorial since while Lincoln opposed slavery and issued the Emancipation Proclamation, he thought African Americans to be an inferior race. I would further suggest, in the interest of consistency, that if we want to start removing all offensive Civil War era statues, and I have nothing against that, we should definitely also remove those of the Union General William Tecumseh Sherman, a world class war criminal if there ever was one. As for renaming all the flora and fauna on the planet I’m okay with that too, I can never remember the names of plants anyways and have to be content with just marveling at their beauty, but I do try to remember what it means to be and to live as a human being.

Indeed, I try to remember that by the way I live I am defining what it means to be human. From the time of my infancy my mother, who apparently thought that human hood was achieved rather than biologically inherited, instilled in me a fear of not being human––which I guess would be the fear of being “inhuman.” She would say, with a disapproving tone, of anyone treating others unkindly, anyone who lacked compassion or sympathy, “They are not even a human being.” My problem is not with tearing down Confederate monuments, or renaming flora and fauna, or mountains if their names are truly hurtful to a significant number of people. There is quite enough hurt in this world without unnecessarily adding more. Rather, it seems to me that flora and fauna and statues are rather trivial matters when compared to the blatant and intentional disenfranchisement of black voters or how the economic system is rigged against them. Wokeism, in general as a movement, has an attention span of about that of a Fruit Fly and flits continually between the major and the minor.

Discerning Along a Realistic Continuum
In general, it seems to me, wokeness fails to judge matters along any sort of a realistic continuum, tends to engage in all or none (dichotomous) thinking; that is, it looks at things without context or nuance; or what is known as “appropriateness” in psychotherapeutic practice –– responding in a way that matches the seriousness, or lightness, of the matter at hand. None of us likes to have what is important to us made small by someone, or to have what is small turned into something large or overly serious. This is why people are angered and turned off by the clichéd response: “Our thought and prayers are with you,” when children are gunned down by some psychopath. Wokeness ignores that all ethics, all morality, is situational (See Matthew 12:21-1-21). Love, simple caring, is not just a warm feeling. Love, although it may involve social grace, affability, and being nice is not just about being nice. Just simple caring requires a good deal of wisdom. Love, in its biblical sense, has to do with acting in the best interest of another person or community, and discerning exactly what that may be can require a good deal of wisdom. Love, if it is not merely neurotic, requires the ability to say both “yes” and “no.” If I lack the ability to say “no” my “yes” is meaningless and if I lack the ability to say a generous and gracious “yes” my “no” becomes cruel and arbitrary.

I hasten to add by way of clarification that while God is love (1 John 4:8); love is not God. To reverse the two, to say love is God, is as any theologian, believing or unbelieving, will affirm is just bad theology because it takes one aspect of God’s character and makes it the whole of God. In the end it limits and makes God small. It is, in fact, a form of idolatry. Love is not a narcotic that gives me a high or makes me comfortable when I am in pain, it is a reality, which when I actually practice it rather than merely talk about it, changes me and the hurting world around me.

Moral Hygiene
A paper written in 2014 by the philosopher Steven D. Arcy for The Public Autonomy Project argues there is a tendency in inventing new vocabularies to emphasize the personal over the systemic, so that “moral hygiene” becomes more important than working for actual structural change; that is, progressive politics has come to mean saying the “right” thing. It is as Martin Luther King, Jr. observed in 1966 (after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights legislation had passed) “Negroes have benefited from a limited change that is emotionally satisfying but materially deficient.” Fredrik deBoer says in his book How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement:

What has defined so much of contemporary race politics has been an obsessive focus on using the correct language and using the right symbols. –––––– protesting becomes a language game and the policing of symbols. This is all removed from the practical issues like lack of economic opportunity, lack of health care, housing insecurity, not to mention food insecurity.

The “woke movement” of 2020, for the reasons listed above, produced very little in the way of real social change. Black Lives Matter was pretty much a failure. It took in massive amounts of cash but in the end accomplished little. The media was, for the most part, afraid to critique the movement honestly, and so it was seriously wounded by corruption. Furthermore, Black Lives Matter never had a coherent agenda, and since there were no clear objectives, it had no way to claim victory and exit protests––particularly those that became violent. The cry went up to defund the police as an objective, and while there were cities that for a while reappropriated money from policing to social services, it wasn’t long before even poor neighborhoods were asking for more police help. Despite passing the House and having Biden’s endorsement, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act died in Senate committee. The reason most often given for its failure, with which I agree, is that it was overshadowed by the ridiculous demand not to reform but to “defund the police.” The George Floyd Policing Act failed because a worthwhile and important demand of the people was reduced to an absurd slogan.

A Critical Dumbing Down
I love words, I love language. I am not particularly adept in its usage, but I greatly appreciate those who are. That’s why I find the ever shrinking (except in technology and science) vocabulary of the English language, along with its general dumbing down, and with the increasing use of abstract terms, and initialisms (I wonder if someday we will just return to the use of hieroglyphics or pictographs?) and vague phrases to say what should be stated simply, directly, and concretely disturbing. I think if I hear one more time that global warming represents an “existential threat” I may vomit. That it is an “existential threat” means, of course, that there is a danger that climate change will kill us all, other than maybe the billionaires who are trying to figure out how to construct plastic greenhouse bubbles. So why not just say that in altering the climate and destroying the eco system we are murdering the planet and committing suicide. But I digress yet again (cognitive decline I am sure), my point is that while the whole planet is swirling around the drain, Kamala Harris sits around discussing the use of preferred pronouns. Children are shot to death in their school rooms and on the streets, there is a humanitarian crisis on our southern border, the U.S. is involved in fifteen proxy wars, domestic violence is epidemic, but let’s talk about preferred pronouns, or dance naked on the White House Lawn, or ride bicycles totally exposed in the Portland LGBTQ parade. Is “naked” a better word?

J. K. Rowling, as I understand it, was severely criticized because while she was quite supportive of transgender rights, she was not willing to replace the term “menstruating women” with “people who menstruate.” In short, while she thought the “correct” thing (that the basic human rights of transgender persons ought to be respected and legally protected) she did not say the right thing as determined by the “woke” police. In somewhat the same vein, when 6’2″ 200 lb. heavy equipment operator Eric, whom I recognized from a sister congregation in a town forty miles away, showed up in the church I pastored, as Erica in a nicely tailored women’s suit, and speaking several octaves higher, I treated her as I try to treat everyone (although I sometimes fail) with courtesy, respect, and love. The names “Eric” and “Erica” are, of course, pseudonyms, but her appearance, several times, at a church I pastored thirty and more year’s ago is very real, as are other similar experiences through the years. I have no desire to offend anyone, to speak in any way that is hurtful to anyone, or to demean anyone, or to make life more difficult than it already is for anyone. But I am not going to use plural pronouns like “they,” “their,” or “them” in way that reduces language to a level of confusion not known since the Tower of Babel; and, neither am I going to succumb to the irrational notion that how I or anyone self-identifies makes that “self-identification” a reality. Doing the polite thing, the kind thing, the gentle thing in any given situation does not change the concrete reality of the situation.

“Woke” activists, it seems to me, frequently reduce positive aspirations, higher human values, and worthwhile ideas and goals to absurdities––all white Americans are characterized as racists if for no other reason than that they enjoy a place of privilege, all male sexual and romantic interests in women is misogynistic, gender self-identification must be validated even if it means people with the genetic, the muscular frame, size, body type, and intact anatomy of a male are allowed to compete in women’s sports or hang out in sorority houses (by court order) in an obviously state of sexual arousal. Reductio ad absurdum.

Acceptance is not acceptance if there are no personal standards at all, in that case it is merely nihilism, or perhaps just mushy sentimentalism. When I was working on my Masters in Counseling Psychology at the University of Santa Clara another student came up to me during a class break and asked, “Aren’t you a pastor?” When I affirmed that I was a pastor she probed a little further in a more accusing rather than questioning tone: “And you believe some things are right and some things are wrong. How, then, since the practice of psychotherapy requires the complete acceptance of the client can you possibly become a therapist?” With that she turned and walked away. A few moments later when the class had reassembled the professor announced we were going to do a role play. The woman who had confronted me volunteered to play the role of the therapist. Two other students offered to play a husband and wife in conflict over the wife wanting to go to work and the husband wanting her to stay at home. This was all during the height of the battle over the proposed Equal Rights Amendment for Women. In less than a minute the woman who had dismissed the possibility of my becoming a therapist because I believed in right and wrong, was screaming angrily at the poor guy role playing the husband. My point, which you have likely already surmised, is that like many of those among the “woke,” she did not really understand the meaning of acceptance. She had confused acceptance with an absence of conviction, and misunderstood it as something said or done rather than what one is. Certainly, she had not understood acceptance as an unwillingness to imposes one’s personal values on another.

Fettered by “Identitarianism“
I keep thinking about something the German philosopher Hegel (1770-1831) pointed out. Hegel saw freedom as concrete and practical, and noted that its existence is possible only under certain conditions. Freedom, if I correctly understand his political philosophy, exists not when we are able to speak and do as we please with no restraints whatsoever, but when we live in a society which places reasonable boundaries around the exercise of the will of the individual person or of individual groups within society. I see no other way a pluralistic society can exist; of course, the right does not want a pluralistic society. It wants a “cookie cutter” society. Be that as it may, those who refused to wear masks during the height of the Covid crisis were incorrect. They were not free to invade shops and markets without wearing masks. It’s just that government was not able to stop their violent behavior. I say they were not free to do so because it robbed shop owners and the majority citizenry of their rightful expectation of reasonable protection from disease. Freedom in the absolute sense of being able to exercise unrestrained will does not exist unless one lives alone on a desert island or maybe with one other person in a sadomasochistic relationship.

I remember a college course I took in writing my freshman year. For a term paper we were to write an expository essay on “Prayer in the Public Schools”––a hot national topic at the time. We were to report objectively every argument for and against prayer in the public schools we could find, and then only at the end state our own personal conclusion. I started my research on the topic as a conservative Christian all for prayer in public schools. But my conclusion was “no,” I did not think it a good idea, for the simple reason that I saw it as oppressive that the child of a Buddhist, Hindu, Moslem, or atheist should have Christian prayer imposed on them, and I certainly wouldn’t want another religious faith, or atheism, imposed on my child. In fact, as I thought about it, and all the squirrely teachers I had suffered in my own education, I didn’t want the school system tinkering with my children’s faith at all. In the years since that has expanded so that I don’t think teachers tampering with my child’s faith, morals, sexuality, or politics appropriate. If they teach academics well, they will have fulfilled their calling. That within itself is a difficult task, which is why I vote “yes” on every school bond that appears on my ballot. But that’s another topic. My point here is that freedom is not, and cannot be, the absence of all restraint––that is anarchy, not freedom.

Human rights’ are a fine thing, but how can we make ourselves sure that our rights do not expand at the expense of the rights of others. A society with unlimited rights is incapable of standing to adversity. If we do not wish to be ruled by a coercive authority, then each of us must rein himself in. . . A stable society is achieved not by balancing opposing forces but by conscious self-limitation: by the principle that we are always duty-bound to defer to the sense of moral justice” (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Rebuilding Russia: Reflections and Tentative Proposals).

Susan Nieman argues that the intellectual roots of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for 200 years, and without a continued commitment to principles which recognize a distinction between justice and power, “The woke will continue to undermine their own goals and drift inexorably towards the right, in the long run they risk becoming what they despise.” As a philosopher who herself is used to speaking with some precision, Nieman sees little difference between the tribalism practiced by the MAGA crowd and the “identitarianism” of the ‘woke”––the ludicrous notion that the identity of any individual or group can be reduced to one or, at most, two dimensions. Both tribalism and identitarianism, she says, “describe the kind of breakdown that occurs when people, of whatever kind, see the fundamental human difference as between our kind and everyone else.”

Identitarianism reduces the mystery of our identity primarily to two things, physical appearance, and claims of suffering oppression and injustice as providing a certain status; and, so we have whites attempting to pass as blacks, and Jews who never saw a death camp other than as tourists claiming to be holocaust survivors. Nieman writes in regard to “this rash of contemporaries inventing worse histories than they experienced:”

Where painful origins and persecution were once acknowledged, as in Frederick Douglas’s narratives, the pain was a prelude to overcoming it. Prevailing over victimhood as Douglas did, could be a source of pride, victimhood itself was not. . . . If victims’ stories have claims on our attention, they have claims on our sympathies and systems of justice.

The injustice and cruelty suffered by individuals and groups must be recognized, not to do so would be, as Nieman notes, “to kill them twice.” But merely sitting around imagining how awful things were or are for African Americans, while it may make us feel better is not the same thing as doing them justice. It is rather like the alcoholic who feels so good thinking about getting into recovery that he or she never does get sober.

Following the Science
In the last decade there has been a surge in the number of teenage girls presenting with gender dysphoria complaints. The question is, what is behind this dramatic rise in female adolescent reports of gender related distress without any previous history of a problem¬¬––Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria. One theory proposed by social scientists, which though not proven is certainly reasonable, is that the increase reflects a socially contagious syndrome. By “social contagion” sociologist simply mean the spread of behaviors, attitudes, and affect through groups of people from one person to another. Adolescents are particularly prone to social contagion because they are generally so susceptible to peer influence and social media. My point is that it is a serious scientific question that needs more than a transgender activist or “woke” answer. The “woke,” in fact, need to take their own very good advice and follow the science.

In June 2023 Britain’s National Health Service limited the prescription of gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogues, commonly known as “puberty blockers,” to research settings only. The National Health Service made this move after a major lawsuit by a minor, now an adult, who regretted having been treated with puberty blockers––a story told with increasing frequency. There was also an independent review of these drugs in the UK led by Hilary Cass, former President of the Royal Academy of Pediatrics and Child Health, which found the claims that gonadotrophin-releasing hormone analogues are safe and effective were unfounded. In 2015 staff from the National Health Services’ gender youth clinic testified that their treatment protocols were safe and followed the guidelines established by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, however, leaked files have revealed that the World Association for Transgender Health’s own doctors themselves have expressed a good deal of doubt regarding the ability of young patients to provide informed consent, and uncertainty as to the drugs’ long-term negative effects on patient health.

Along with the scientific questions there are at least two other more philosophical and spiritual questions that need to be raised. The one is: “Should we do something just because we can?” In C.S. Lewis’s science fiction novel Out of the Silent Planet there are three species. One of them, the Pfifltriggi can make anything they are asked to make, but they will only make something if it is necessary. The human species is great at asking how something can be done and then doing it, but not so good at asking if it is necessary, if it should be done at all. Many of the world’s problems can be traced to the inability to ask: “Why not?” The second question, perhaps a corollary to this first one, is asked in the Tao Te Ching: “Can you allow the mud to settle? Can you wait for the moment of right action to emerge?” Humanity has run way ahead of itself technologically and scientifically and does not yet know what the consequences of that haste will be, other than that we have, for the most part, lost the profundity of simplicity .

Ultimate Concern, Conscience, and Wokeism
The term “woke” had its birth in the black community as an encouragement to stay alert to the threats of racism, bigotry, and injustice but quickly became a “thing,” a cool word by which whites could display the status they felt at being “progressive.” Actually, it’s usefulness to the media, politicians, and hip liberals now seems to be waning. But having begun in the Black community being “woke” became a “thing.” It is a “thing” with its own norms, values, and attitudes. I share in many of its values and aspirations. It is not a “thing” I oppose or am against, it’s just that there is something else which, has not merely a greater or higher claim, but a total claim on my heart, mind, soul, and strength. To appropriate the words of the famous theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich, neither wokeism, nor any good thoughts or values it espouses, is my “ultimate concern.” My “Ultimate Concern” is God––at least it is God that, as I seek to resist the temptation to self-idolatry each day, I want to want more than anything.

Tillich observed that we all have many concerns, some of passing importance and others that are heavier and more pressing, concerns regarding health, finances, friends, family, politics. I would suggest you read C.S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce which is about a group of people who take a bus trip from hell to heaven, where they can stay if they want, but to stay they must be willing to give up their lesser concerns for the genuinely ultimate. Most are unwilling to do so and return to hell––the grey town. The knob on our screen door has become exasperatingly difficult to turn. That is a concern––it obviously matters to me, or I wouldn’t find it annoying. Surely, my life would be better if that knob just turned the way knobs are meant to turn. As I write I look over at Jack, our Cattle Dog-Catahoula mix, lying on his bed. His breathing is loud and heavy. Jack is old. He has now lived past his life expectancy. Walking is more and more difficult for him, and he frequently stumbles. Jack’s age and health are a concern, matter, to me, and the loss of his companionship looming on the horizon matters to me––matters a good deal more to me than the screen door knob that is hard to turn. But anything, large or small, can become a concern, and can come to matter to us more than anything else, can become supremely important to us––a drug, a person, an idea, a political party an ideology, money, status, sex, power, success––anything or anyone can become not just our concern, but can be elevated to the place of ultimate concern. We not only have many concerns of varied shapes and colors, but they vary greatly in regard to how much they really matter to us.

If a concern claims ultimacy it requires the total surrender of the one accepting the claim. Tillich, therefore, wrote:

The content of this concern is the God of justice, who because he represents justice for everybody and every nation is called the universal God, the God of the universe. He is the ultimate concern of every pious Jew, and therefore in his name the great command is given: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5). This is what ultimate concern means and from these words the term “ultimate concern” is derived.

Making something, or someone, that is less than ultimate our ultimate concern is the very essence of what Jewish and Christians thinkers and Scripture scholars alike have meant by “idolatrous religion.” Idolatry is not just the worship of a piece of stone, or carved wood, or metal image designed and forged by an ancient artist, it is rather the elevation of a concern that is finite, limited, conditional, transitory to the place of ultimacy, of immeasurability, of infinitude, of unconditionality. The wisdom of the Old Testament consistently bears witness to the disastrous consequences in which idolatry ends. Tillich, who was the first non-Jewish professor in Germany to be removed and exiled, wrote in 1952 when the brutality of Hitler and the catastrophe of World War II was still very fresh in everyone’s memory, and the terror of Stalin and the Soviet Union a living reality:

If a national group makes the life and growth of the nation its ultimate concern, it demands all other concerns, economic wellbeing, health and life, family, aesthetic, and cognitive truth, justice, and humanity be sacrificed, the extreme nationalisms of our century are laboratories for what ultimate concern means in all aspects of human existence, including the smallest concerns of one’s daily life. Everything is centered in the nation –– a god who certainly proves to be a demon, but who shows clearly the unconditional character of an ultimate concern.

Wokeism is an ideology–– a set of political, economic, philosophical, and theological ideas, values, and attitudes. Admittedly, it is a rather difficult ideology to define, but that’s not in any way odd. There is a certain vagueness and ambiguity to all ideologies, including fundamentalism and nationalism, because so much of any ideology has to do with attitude, with a particular perspective on everything, with a certain way of thinking that is difficult for anyone who has not adopted it to understand. I have tried to note some of its characteristics above, including identitarianism whose dynamics involve a kind of pledge of faithfulness. Like all ideologies wokeism lays claim to our loyalty. I would even say it lays claim to our ultimate concern. Now if that overstates the case, I will say that at the least wokeism calls for a level of loyalty I cannot give. There can be only one Ultimate Concern, if it were not so it would not be ultimate. At my best it determines everything about me, when I am restive, I am not at my best.

In the Final Analysis
I have been using Paul Tillich’s depiction of faith as ultimate concern as a way of explaining “How I Am Not Woke.” I have done so because Tillich, writing from a philosophical perspective is sometimes helpful to contemporary men and women who are more comfortable with philosophical concepts than with spiritual principles, and who understand them more readily than they do religious ideas. But Saint Paul put my aim in the simpler and more direct terms I prefer:

Let every detail in your lives – words, actions, whatever – be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way (Colossians 3:17 MSG).

The phrase “in the name of” has several implications. It means one has been given the right and task of speaking or acting by the authority and power of the one named. It means that what is being done or said is the will of the higher power or authority named. In Colossians it means living in harmony with the will and character of Christ. Tillich was right, it determines everything about me––what I do with the twenty-four hours of each day, whether I live as a victim or with a sense of gratitude that at the center of everything is an Ultimate Reality that is good and trustworthy, it determines what I love, who I love, and how I love. The “Name,” as used in Old Testament Judaism and in the New Testament by Jesus and Saint Paul, and even today by serious Jewish and Christian believers, is what remain after all ideologies, all governments, all political systems and their every struggle for power and control have passed into oblivion.

Postscript
As a postscript to understanding my meaning in this little essay I offer this: If you can discern the difference between the song “Can You Hear the People Sing” as it is sung the first two times in the musical Les Misérables, and then as it is sung in the finale, you will get the gist of my meaning very well.