Some politicians, celebrities, bishops, bureaucrats and professors got Covid, but many more of them fell victim to a strange alien sickness called Wokeness. This originated in California and is a contagious condition whereby the mind of a person who is financially secure, and has nothing to worry about, is infiltrated by a fixed belief, that men and women over fifty and of European descent are intolerant, complacent, selfish, insular and riddled with a host of terrible phobic ‘isms’. Wokeists are not themselves intolerant only everybody else. Infected Wokes therefore feel no sense of guilt when they wilfully, traduce, and then publicly ostracise (cancel) a miscreant. Any dead white male with a statue is especially vulnerable to vituperative abuse without right of reply.
This Californian infection also causes Wokes to believe that everyone except themselves is full of a substance called Bias, and that this malignancy can be expunged only by Unconscious Bias Training. Consequently, many large employers have been persuaded to employ woke priests. These priests are paid to expose unconscious bias existing in employees; a bias they themselves didn’t know they had. After discovery, redemption can be obtained only by contrite confession before the altars of Facebook and Twitter.
With this thought in mind, I’d better confess that I too have leanings, tendencies, and bias. However, unlike today’s crop of pupils, the discovery of my frailties was not exposed by expensive Californian psychobabble. I found it out all by myself.
I do however, wonder if Wokeists realise that they selectively take a phrase of text or an incident in a person’s life and then pass judgement as though it were the totality of that life. Surely there is more to each of us than just the few bits they choose. They must know that a person’s life is a glorious mixture of the good and the bad, the downright saintly and the despicably selfish. That life is lived on a scale stretching from Paradise to Hell, but with the majority of it lived somewhere in between.
Can it be that secular Wokes and those Bishops who sing from the same hymn sheet, believe only in secular redemption? Surely, they must have read the New Testament phrase to the Woman’s Accused! “Let him without sin cast first stone,” and the follow-up phrase to the Sinner, “Go ye and sin no more.”
Charitable readers however will have sympathy for Wokes. After all, Wokeness is a horrible condition. Just imagine having to spend ones’ entire life exposing the sins of other people and then having to soberly hold back the inevitable surge of self-righteousness as the endorphins of success flood into the cerebral cortex.
Mercifully, not being a Woke, I do not worship at the shrine of Secular Wokeness. And so my confessions are heard by the one who deals with the individual. He will judge the totality of my life, not just the bits that excite the noisy fashionistas of the day.
I want to close this somewhat burlesque look at Wokeness, by saying that behind some of it lies honestly expressed injustices. I am however sure that answers to these iniquities lie within the power of the individual to change him or herself. The answer is not in the gift of the State to legislate perfection of the human soul.
Legislation can be helpful in limiting the power of government, councils and committees, but reliance on utopian ‘social’ systems has never been a historical solution. Racism and all the other ‘isms’ are a natural way in which the brain classifies and categorises the world of our senses. Black, Red, White, Blue eyes, Brown Eyes, High Cheeks, Wavy Hair are what we see and classify. What really mattered to St Paul and, is obvious to any student of the |New Testament, was put into words by the hymn writer William A. Dunkerley (1852-1941), for the Pageant of Darkness and Light at the London Missionary Society’s exhibition “The Orient in London”. It was first published in 1908.
In Christ there is no East or West,
In Him no South or North;
But one great fellowship of love
Throughout the whole wide earth.
In Him shall true hearts everywhere
Their high communion find;
His service is the golden cord,
Close binding humankind.
Join hands, then, members of the faith,
Whatever your race may be!
Who serves my Father as His child
Is surely kin to me.
In Christ now meet both East and West,
In Him meet North and South;
All Christly souls are one in Him
Throughout the whole wide earth.
Recently we went to see my wife‘s sister Celia. Her dementia means she cannot now care for herself, but her natural disposition has always been cheerful, and she remains so. You would not notice anything amiss so long as the conversation stayed in the moment.
On the long drive home, we stopped at a Welcome Break where I fancied something more than a biscuit. I chose a hot Starbucks sausage sandwich and bottle of water.
My sandwich contained four thin cylindrical objects covered by brown sauce. As my teeth sliced the bread roll and through the cylinders, I sensed a scintilla of shredded shoe leather with maybe a pinch of plimsol. However, the texture and flavour was overwhelmingly that of hot soggy Conti-Board.
To cleanse my palate, I read the words 100% recycled plastic as I opened the bottle of “Smart Water.” The first sip convinced me the words referred to the contents not the bottle.
On resuming the journey, I muttered that:
“They may have taken my Bucks, but I didn’t give them a Star”.
View from the Pew 