The Gospel of Unforgiveness

Owen Strachan's bookChristianity and Wokeness. How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel — and the Way to Stop It, has listed seven reasons why wokeness is not only not Christian, but deeply anti-Christian.  In their zeal to jump on the woke bandwagon, some churches have jumped off the deep end and into the fetid realm of racist politics.  Wokeness is absolutely antithetical to the Gospel, and any church that adopts such practices and doctrines is playing with the fires of hell.  Here are Strachan's seven reasons for saying this and why this is important for today's churches.

First, wokeness tweaks the doctrine of humanity, losing sight of the imago Dei as our constituent nature.

The Bible tells Christians that all human beings are made in the image of God (imago Dei) and that there is no distinction among the races in character.  We are either men or women created in God's image.  To racially draw distinctions with one race being "systemically racist" and the other being not racist is to destroy the imago Dei.  It draws the erroneous conclusion that whites cannot be Christians because they are not made in the image of God.  Whites are "demons" and "not human," said one CRT training "expert."

Second, wokeness unhelpfully groups according to "whiteness," a deeply problematic concept.

There is no biblical concept of whiteness being wicked or evil, nor is there character or morality distinction among the various peoples according to skin color.  There is nothing in the Bible that indicates that white people should hate blacks or people of other races.  That puts the lie to the entire "anti-racist" doctrine of woke churches. 

Third, wokeness actually foments the very "sin" it presumes to critique: "racism."

Wokeness looks at white people and tells them they are guilty of racism no matter what they do or say.  There is no biblical reason for any church to state such a clearly racist notion.  No true Christian church or Christian-owned business, for that matter, should be offering this detritus to its employees.

Fourth, wokeness treats people as "oppressors" and "oppressed" due to skin color and power dynamics.

The Christian faith requires we view our human identity as one people, a fallen race of sinners with no one race morally superior to another.  Wokesters turn this upside-down and claim that all white people are oppressing all people of color, often without realizing it, which is egregiously untrue.  No one living today in America is consciously or unconsciously "oppressing" black people, and no white person holds or held slaves.  It is laughable to state such gibberish, given how many successful black people there are in all higher levels of American culture and government.

Any black person who achieves can rise to the top.  No one is oppressing them except perhaps their own.  Ask Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, or other black high achievers.  Black CEOs and black success stories are everywhere.

The poison that calls itself "anti-racism" is a misnomer.  Wokesters are lying when they say that their own actual anti-white racism is "anti-racist."  It is pro-racist; they are pitting black people against white people, claiming historical and systemic oppression.  Today, any "oppression" black people feel is coming from their own unwillingness or inability to get along with other people.  "Anti-racism" is an excuse for underachieving, especially when it is attributed to the "oppressors."  If anything, blacks are oppressing their own people each time they clamp down on any deviation from progressivism, which could conceivably lead them out of the leftist snake pit.  That is slavery of another kind.

Fifth, wokeness traps us in a cycle of anger and victimhood.

Living the Christian life frees us from anger and victimhood; it doesn't promote them, which wokeism does.  In our fallen human state, we are all sinners.  The remedy is repentance, faith, and love, not the promotion of the very things Christ tells us to eschew.  No church worth its salt and light should stir the racial pot, yet some do.

Sixth, wokeness gives approval to evil — both in the public square and in rejecting God's design for the sexes.

Wokesters insist upon the unbiblical view that the sexes and their respective traditional roles in life are malleable.  They hold that it is hostile to women and gays to view the family as a reflection of the godly hierarchy of the Father as the head of created order and the father as the head of the family unit.  BLM has overtly stated in its literature that its people want to disrupt the nuclear family and promote both transgenderism and a "queer-affirming network."  Some churches have built their entire faux spiritual edifice on a queer agenda, something unambiguously forbidden by God in both the Old and New Testaments.

Seventh, wokeness overturns the Gospel's "no condemnation in Christ" proclamation.

CRT, wokeness, "anti-racism," DEI," and every permutation of these noxious ideologies directly go against the Bible's teaching that once a person places his faith in Christ, there is no longer punishment for sins repented of and forgiven by Christ.  The sinner's past sins are gone, wiped away.  But some churches are insisting that the sin of whiteness and "systemic racism" are unforgivable sins, a concept anathema to the Gospel's main message of forgiveness.  In truth, not only does God forgive the Christian of past and present sins, but he is viewed by God as never having sinned.  In wokeness, however, that promise is overturned in favor of conferring upon the white person a sin he can never be forgiven for: whiteness.

As Strachan says: 

The Gospel announces forgiveness and resulting innocence; wokeness announces guilt and unending condemnation. God's good news is the ministry of freedom; wokeness is the ministry of imprisonment. It tells "white" people and those who benefit from "whiteness" that they are indeed guilty of participation, even unwitting participation, in "white supremacy." It calls people back to the altar to confess sins they never knew they committed simply because of the color of their skin. It restores the status of condemned -- "racist" -- to men and women who thought they were justified by faith and not only free of guilt, but innocent in the sight of God.

The Gospel stands alone and requires nothing be added to make it more effective.  This is true especially of a virulent doctrine that insists that white people need something more in order to be worthy of God's salvation.  When a church lapses into the jargon du jour and embraces practices and attitudes that go directly against the Bible's and Christ's message about salvation, they cease to be churches and become avatars of the politicized, racialist zeitgeist.

A goal of the left has always been to destroy Christianity.  Leftists will fail, forgetting history and forgetting that no matter what visible signs of Christianity exist or do not exist, you cannot wipe out the Spirit that infuses the committed Christian.  You cannot destroy an idea, especially if it is encompassed within the greatest story ever told. 

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