I had a friend who was, well, it’s hard to describe what she was. She was a lot of things from my perspective. First and foremost, she was a friend. My family loved her. We love her husband and all of her children as a second, (or third), family. But there were many who did not understand her and did not care to understand and, frankly, did not like her.
She was a Christian who hung tenaciously to Christian values. She loved God, trusted God, and willingly and fearlessly told others about the life changing Gospel of Jesus Christ. But like the Apostle Paul, as recorded in Romans 7:14-25, this lady could also say:
“We know that the law is spiritual; but I am nonspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
“So, I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ, our Lord!”
She was horribly conflicted, even tormented by her occasional aberrant behavior.
What I am about to say is not meant to be harsh or critical, but is my experience with this lady, and it was endearing, but it could also be dangerous at times.
She was a quick learner, a talent at almost everything she attempted, yet she could be profoundly socially awkward and tended to make very bad life decisions when it came to handling personal relationships.
She could be fiercely loyal and extremely disloyal at the same time to the same person.
She could be very generous to those in need and withhold from anyone she perceived as unworthy.
She could be gentle and full of joy one minute and insanely angry and out-of-control the next minute.
She demanded honesty, truth, fair treatment and justice from others, but she could be patently dishonest and dangerously untrustworthy when her end would justify her means. It was almost, at times, as if she felt she was due what she was never paid, and she would collect that debt by taking it as an emotional toll on others.
Her private cry was, “If people could just understand where I have come from, what I’ve been put through, how I have been treated, then perhaps others could understand why I am the way I am, and I could be forgiven, justified, and they could like me”.
I think what she was saying is that if people could see the trials and injustices she had suffered while growing up, people would possibly see WHY she feels like she feels and acts how she acts. Then perhaps they could see past her failings and perhaps even come to accept her as she is – and maybe, even like her ‘as she is’.
Later in her life, she was so obsessed with making herself better understood and better known and perhaps as a means of ‘confession’ that she wrote a book. Maybe this was a way to ‘confess her sins’ and to find some kind of forgiveness and perhaps even a sliver of affirmation of her life.
This synopsis by Professor Valery Legasov is associated with this book: We live in a broken world: broken families, homes, marriages, hearts, and relationships. We’re broken, and we stay broken because of one thing, we refuse to speak the truth about ourselves. We are apt to believe the lies we tell ourselves to defend our position, attitude, and actions. The more we are pressed, the more likely we are to double down. We harden our hearts to our own hurt, which extrapolates out and affects every area of our lives. The life you have is the life you built by the lies or the truth you live by. “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”
THIS LADY’S JOURNEY, at least for me, DESCRIBES THE VERY ESSENCE OF the term “WOKE”; not in racial terms, but in terms of social justice and human in very real and very personal terms. What separated her from the consequences of the WOKE movement is God’s grace and her faith in Jesus Christ.
What is WOKE?
Merriam-Webster added the word to its dictionary in 2017, defining it as, “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” The Oxford Dictionary adopted it the same year, defining it as “originally: well-informed, up-to-date. Now chiefly: alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”
“Woke is a slang term that is easing into the mainstream from some varieties of a dialect called African American Vernacular English (sometimes called AAVE),” according to Merriam-Webster. “In AAVE, awake is often rendered as woke, as in, ‘I was sleeping, but now I’m woke.’”
WOKE, in my studied opinion is, besides being very bad grammar, a spreading twisted narcissistic pathology. It says, that ‘I had a hard time growing up’. Most likely you were treated unfairly, perhaps abused in some fashion, and/or denigrated, marginalized, criticized, demonized and cast aside. You felt unloved and mistreated, and you probably were, to some degree, great or small.
Now you are AWAKE to the facts of your hardships and the injustices you suffered, and you are going to get even. You are going to get what you are owed – whatever you decide that might be.
You are going to make others pay. It doesn’t matter that maybe only a few people are responsible for your mistreatment. It doesn’t matter that it was a very long time ago and that most of ‘those people’ are now dead. In your WOKE state of mind, EVERYONE has to pay, now that you are WOKE.
This is what is being passed off as Critical Race Theory, the movement for Reparations for Black Americans. This narcissistic pathology has seeped, or has been force-fed, into the thinking of many everyday Americans. Worse yet, our school children are being indoctrinated, they are having their minds poisoned, by this HATE THOUGHT, and it is in part thanks to the efforts of co-conspirators, the National Teachers Association and Union.
Americans who are just doing their best to be good people by being honest, fair, just, hardworking, kind, generous and faithful are being both unfairly punished and indoctrinated with this Marxists Hate Doctrine by the enemies of our educational systems and of our government.
Who are these people? Oddly enough, they can be traced and found to be an odd mixture of practicing racists, pseudo-intellectuals (with accompanying high-sounding degrees), practicing Marxists, Black Lives Matter acting as their militant arm and members of the Democrat party in America. (Most sources are biased, but, Wikipedia on CRT gives some Leftist insight. An article in The Atlantic also offers some insights.
I offer this short and abbreviated series for more detail and a more complete understanding: “Critical Race Theory – The Threat, Exposed and Simplified”. (Please. This link is a‘must read’ in order to complete this reasoning and explanation of what is happening to our country, government, our schools and churches AND WHAT YOU AND I CAN DO ABOUT IT.)
Your Brother and Friend,
Mike Young
PS: I want to be VERY CLEAR that I do not condemn or criticize those who are snared by the insidious evil of Satan. Being honest about where we are, what afflicts us, is the first step to a long recovery and being made whole as God intended.
So, we are not too quick to judge and condemn, read what afflicts us all in these Last Days:
Matthew 24:4, “And Jesus answered and said to them, “See to it that no one misleads you. Verse 5. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will mislead many people. Verse 6. And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. Verse 7. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. Verse 8. But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pains.
Verse 12. “And because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will become cold.”
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