‘Perhaps you are far enough removed from what it is to be “woke” that you don’t know what it is.  It might sound familiar, because it echoes religious connotations, as very often a counterfeit does.  Scripture uses “awakening” to speak of true spiritual enlightenment.  The Bible calls on unbelievers to wake up, which would mean being saved, and also admonishes believers to wake up in order to stir them from some degree of apathy.  In this case, however, being woke means that you have the special knowledge to see what others can’t see.  You “spot” white privilege and systemic racism everywhere with x-ray style vision that others miss.

How does someone become woke?  Expertise or specialization in critical theory.  How does one get this knowledge?  Honestly, it is something closer to competence in the use of the divining rod for locating water.  It is the the bizarre knowledge of the Gnostic, moved by something extraordinary in the realm of an ecstatic experience.  The more fantastical the claim the greater possibility of correctness.  The Apostle Paul describes something like it among the Corinthians out of Babylonian mysticism (cf. 1 Corinthians 12:1-3).

If I were to walk up to just any white person and call him a racist, he asks, why?  I answer, it’s obvious, but it’s something that you are inherently blinded to.  You are not woke to its reality in you.  BLM adherents have gone around doing something similar, asking random white people to admit their racism and privilege at the threat of violence.  It’s like the Salem witch trials.  If they don’t confess they are a witch, they are drowned.  The blindness, characterized by an unwillingness to admit racism, apparently comes through a social construction imposed upon the country.  All whites are so immersed in systemic racism, that they don’t know they’re all racists.

In part one, I focused on the individuality of Trumpism compared to the judgment of wokeness.  I want to explore the relations of wokeness to the gospel, partly to reveal its destructiveness in nature.  Woke evangelicals preach repentance of group sins in line with Marxist group identity.  A whole group, white people, is guilty of systemic racism.  Reparations is a legal remedy for group sin.  You might say that you aren’t racist and that you’ve never harmed another race.  You say that, but you don’t “know” that because you aren’t trained to see it. You aren’t woke.  You haven’t swallowed the blue pill.

The undermining of the gospel comes through a collective sin that brings group guilt. The group that sinneth, it shall die, which is just the opposite of what Ezekiel and Jeremiah and everywhere else in the Bible taught related to sin and guilt.   It would then require group repentance.  White people are guilty.  Men are guilty.  Straight people are guilty.  Even if a white person becomes woke, he must still be named in the class action suit.  Part of wokeness is admission of group guilt.  This is the only way to forgiveness.

This spiritual collectivism contradicts scripture.  Jesus Christ came to save individuals, not groups.  A single person is awakened to his own sin and his own need of repentance.  He enters the kingdom as an individual.  He stands before God as an individual.  The soul that sinneth, it shall die (Ezekiel 18:4).  A man must examine himself for what he has done, not his group.

The transformation of wokeness is for the collective.  The change is group change.  A living sacrifice submerges himself in and for the group and the expense of his individuality.  This is their Jesus, another Jesus, bringing in their imagination of the kingdom.

How are people awakened to their guilt of racism, sexism, transgenderism, and perhaps Trumpism?  It’s a specialized knowledge, so you can either become a practitioner of critical theory, which is akin to learning divination or you can listen to the preaching of the theorist.  He’s cherry picking scripture into which he can force his theory without historical precedent.  No one had ever found in the Bible what he says he has found.  He goes a looking to bring critical theory into God’s Word.  It’s a reinvention of Christianity as detected through a seer stone.

The individuality of Trumpism matches the gospel and is a repudiation of the collectivism of evangelical wokeness.  Wokeness undermines the gospel.  It is in fact a different gospel.  It requires group accession and group repentance.  This is adding to the gospel, which makes it legalism.  The requirement is conforming to the group.

I’m not saying that Trump himself is converted, that he is saved or that President Donald Trump has believed the gospel.  I don’t believe so.   I’m sure that some Trump supporters think he is.  They’ve heard reports of private evangelism of Trump followed by a profession of faith.  I don’t see a changed individual life of Donald Trump.  By the abundance of his heart, he speaks, and I hear corrupt speech, bitter waters proceeding from a bitter fountain.

Others, which might be seen as adherents to Trumpism, take the position that Trump is a blunt instrument of change, ordained by a sovereign God.  One analogy, I’ve read, is that he is chemotherapy to cancer, a painful methodology for a necessary cure or at least greater postponement of death.  Advocates of the chemo acknowledge the cancer.  The body is cancerous.  It needs chemotherapy and Trump is it.  The cessation of Trump, they diagnose, bolsters the cancer.

An irony to the lack of conversion of Donald Trump by judging him as an individual, however, is that I hear the same as bad or worse corrupt speech from woke evangelicals.   Trump just doesn’t receive the gospel.  He’s responsible.  They see themselves as covered by their group identity.  They are woke, so they are absolved of group guilt, their filthy language and lascivious lifestyles notwithstanding.  It is a form of left wing legalism.  Their sins are covered by their “good works.”

Many white people, who aren’t woke, believe the truth about race, that it is an arbitrary distinction, not backed by scripture.  The Bible doesn’t recognize race.  It does acknowledge a covenantal distinction between Jew and Gentile.  These white people want a color blind society.  They want equal treatment, vis-a-vis James chapter two.  They also eliminate covenantal distinctions in the church age.  They want to be free to judge according to scripture.

Park on the last part of that last sentence of that last paragraph:  “to be free to judge according to scripture.”  That is true freedom, ordained by God.  It also gives someone the freedom to be released as an individual from the charge of racism.  Someone can actually be saved, truly converted. He’s not a racist anymore.

The movement aligned with David French, Beth Moore, and Rod Dreher distorts the gospel.  Its righteousness is one of virtue signaling.  It constructs modern phylacteries.  They signal to everyone how righteous, actually woke, they are.  The toll levied for leftist acceptance produces a false gospel.  They can talk about Jesus, what He can really do, but He becomes of no affect, because He doesn’t remove the group guilt of which “Trumpists” are not woke.  They won’t allow for individual redemption through their group or community sin and guilt.  The Apostle Paul says concerning them, if they will add anything to the true gospel, let them be accursed.’https://kentbrandenburg.blogspot.com/2020/12/what-is-trumpism-part-two-gospel.html