To the Christian, navigating America’s Great Awokening

Apologies to my non-Christian readers, this one’s not for you. Following are many references to a deity, a book allegedly written by said deity who allegedly took the form of a human to rectify some things only accessible to a deity. To my Christian friends, I believe all of the above, as you do, and will attempt to make a strong case for the way people like us should show up when the world around us seems to be losing its mind.

The Bible is the best place to start.

If our holy writ is truly the “Word of God,” as we confess, it should have a massive bearing on Christian life and praxis in a world that, 50 years ago, was simply dealing with things like race, divorce and the sexual revolution. Now, there are so many more issues, things that seem preposterous to us.

Regardless of where you land on these issues, the world is more hostile to conservative Christianity than it’s ever been. God doesn’t seem to be doing anything about it, and we don’t want to kowtow to this nonsense like our liberal brothers and sisters. Since “God helps those who help themselves” (not in the Bible) we’ve decided that it’s time to rectify things on our own, to “take American back,” to fight.

The other side – the liberals and/or the non-Christians – seem to want a different world, so we find ourselves in a wrestling match, where both sides have their hands on the wheel, desperately trying to force the boat in opposite directions, resulting in a trajectory that nobody wants.

To all of this, Jesus spoke clearly about the business of a Christian. He said these words to a group of his followers who had sequestered themselves in a small room for fear that the government was coming to get them (it was) and do what it did to their leader.

Their situation was different from ours. They were actually being hunted, on the hit list, days numbered.

Either way, when Jesus spoke his final words (preceded by his death, resurrection, and walking through a wall), he didn’t use hate speech, or try to convince them to supplant his teachings with a religion of self protection.

He began with one word:

“Go.”

This account is typically referred to as the “Great Commission” and appears at the end of Matthew’s gospel. It’s important because, far as ancient Jewish narrative goes, what happens at the end of a story carries the most weight. If this is true, Jesus’ command is of great importance for the Christian trying to show up in any world, under any circumstance. There is nothing that trumps this, no cultural movement or anti-movement that might excuse us.

Specifically, Jesus said:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

We have to be careful to unpack some of these terms, loaded with meaning that gets missed in our not-so ancient, not-so-Jewish world. The first is “Baptism.” You don’t tell first-century Jewish people to go outside the safety of holy, clean, God-fearing Israel and baptize non-jewish people. Baptism was a distinctively Jewish thing, meant to cleanse only the most contrite, humble Jewish person of their sins. Telling these poor folks to extend this holy ritual to the dirtiest, most unqualified people they could imagine would’ve been heresy at best.

But in commanding his disciples to baptize everyone, Jesus was expanding God’s family to the whole world, without condition. Everyone now qualifies. Again, this was something previously unthinkable to the first-century Jewish mind.

Second is the word “disciple,” one that, these days, is primarily used by Christians and, ironically, terrorist groups. Beyond that, you won’t often hear it used. In Jesus’ day, “disciple” simply described someone who devoted themselves to a particular rabbi’s teaching.

That’s what Jesus wanted.

He didn’t command his disciples to proselytize everyone into being good Evangelicals, or Catholics, or whatever. He simply wanted a world full of people who acted like he did.

I want that too. A world full of people like that would change the world like politics and anti-whatever religions could ever hope to.

Instead, we’ve decided to spread our fear and anger as far as we can, trying desperately to convince our comrades that Christianity is in some kind of trouble, that we are victims – holy, clean, and God-fearing – now targeted for destruction.

As a result, we’ve not only disengaged from the business Jesus called us to, we’re acting in defiance of it.

I get it. America’s breakneck cultural revisions are disorienting for me, too. I’m 56, raised in a world much different than this one.

But believing that these things fly in the face of God while ignoring all the ways that we fly in the face of God, while also ignoring the Great Commission, is the biggest way to fly in the face of God I can think of. His commandment was crystal clear, but we’ve invented all kinds of ways to excuse ourselves from it.

We’d do much better to take our anti-woke energy and aim it at ourselves. There are many more targets within our ranks that are much easier to hit. But the contemporary church doesn’t tend to critique itself nearly as much as it critiques everyone else. And we’re not just critiquing, we’re vilifying, declaring the outside world “enemy,” segregating ourselves, forfeiting the power that God has given us, and saying a devout “no” to the change that would come from placing our lives on his altar.

If that sounds like a bunch of malarkey to you, think about the legion of historical episodes when Christian folk really needed to wake up but just couldn’t manage it.

We have a propensity to stay in bed when it’s time to face the day.

We don’t have to agree with America’s many cultural shiftings, or support them, we simply have to get up, get back in the game, and continue to be the hands and feet of the diety who got really angry at the holy, clean, God-fearing, unwoke, segregated, self-righteous people of his day.

Photo by Ahmed Nishaath on Unsplash