In a world of real injustice, woke justice falls short

Scott and I have a regular ongoing weather dispute. I look out the window and tell him that it looks sunny, and he takes out his phone and says, “No, sorry, the weather network says something different.”

I know he’s mostly teasing me, but I tend to believe that somewhere deep inside there is a part of him that really takes the phone’s side. I think it’s a guy thing. It can’t be sunny if the phone says rain.

I know that weather predictions have always been an unreliable thing, but something that really confuses me is the modern invention “Real Feel.” So I pull up the weather report to see how cold it is outside –  if it’s warm enough to check my beehive, for example. The weather will read 12 degrees, but underneath there is the disclaimer: Real Feel 9 degrees. What does it mean!?

Is the temperature 12 degrees or not? How can 12 degrees feel like anything other than 12 degrees? And who says it feels like 10 degrees? The weatherman? An old lady’s joints? My bees? Was there a democratic vote with mail-in ballots? Or, more likely, did the weather god send a legal notice to say that even though, technically, the instruments we humans created and imposed upon him tell us what he is, he himself actually feels differently. He doesn’t feel like a 12, he feels like a 10, and we do not have a right to call him something other than what he feels: Real Feel weather. There you are, even the weather has gone woke.

For those of you who don’t know, the term woke refers to the popular self-satisfying awareness to social injustice. It might be described by some as “informed” or “up to date.”

For example, I had an online conversation with an old friend who was calling on people everywhere to send enough letters of complaint to a small theatre company in England, so that it would shut down forever. The theatre company was putting on Aladdin, but their entire cast was white. So, my friend was woke enough to put forth a call to justice and shut down that youth theatre company in shame. 

When I asked him if he knew that the county had a population of 12,000, and only 128 were not “white” (yes, this kind of information is surprisingly available online), he said that it was too bad for them. Only Arabians had the right to do this play, otherwise it was racist.

When I asked him if it was racist for a school made up mostly of Asians to put on a version of West Side Story because they weren’t Puerto Ricans, he told me that he “understood where I was coming from,” that he “used to be just like me,” ignorant, but now he had been woken to reality. He would no longer engage in the conversation with me.

He had no problems publicly shaming complete strangers on another continent and deliberately wanting to destroy their production because they lived in a town of white people, but his feelings had no time for logic, or the facts. He then went on to take the role of Santa Claus although he is neither Greek nor a Catholic. Woke.

There is no doubt in my mind that the world is full of social injustice. People’s homes are stolen from them, their children taken by the state, women are treated as objects, men are derided as animals, babies are torn apart in their mother’s wombs, religious freedoms and the right to differing opinions are left vulnerable. Where is justice, I ask? Where is humanity? 

My eldest son, Andrew, and I were talking about pre-Christian Scandinavia, and the plights and fears of ancient mankind. He commented that it is Christianity that is actually the most “modern” of beliefs when it comes to justice – the most woke, I suppose. While the world looks at us with patronizing sighs and accuses us of being misogynistic, unfair, and unkind, it is Christianity (perhaps not always Christians themselves) that offers freedom and life to people in real bondage. 

In the pagan world, often believing that they held to justice, women were treated as objects, traded as goods, used for pleasure, bought, and discarded. Conquered peoples were enslaved, sacrificed, dehumanized. Sexuality was often perverse, animalistic, unnatural, so that other humans were seen as a means to an end. Unwanted babies were left to die. Revenge was a synonym for honour. Sound familiar?

I’ve heard it said that the more atheistic a nation becomes, the more pagan it inevitably becomes. And a pagan nation is one that first worships itself as woke and godlike and then goes on to destroy itself.

But Christ and his Church, entrusted with truth, offer mercy, freedom, and authentic dignity to the people lost in themselves. Who we are, what we are, is revealed in the shocking idea that man is made in the image of God, made to share in his glory, to love and be loved. This truth is grander and more dignified than any humanitarian attempt at modern justice, but it comes with the cost of laying aside our feelings when they contradict God.

Our feelings are a gift from God; they can guide us, protect us, and lead us. But if our feelings cannot change the weather, they certainly cannot change who we are made to be (holy sons and daughters of God), and what we are called to do (know, love, and serve him). They only serve us well when they lead us to this truth.