Dealing with wokeness & its effects
A household is a miniature world. It is a micro-cosmos. Every household is one atom in the substance of God’s kingdom. And it is through man’s powerful sex drive that these households are built.
Then, through households, societies are established.
Culture begins and emanates from the household. It is where the next generation of men is shaped and trained, until they leave their father and mother, join themselves to a wife, and start the process anew.
It is through households that dominion is exercised.
One man alone achieves very little. A man and wife achieve more. A man, his wife, and their grown children are a force to be reckoned with—especially as those children in turn build households that fit together into his, establishing an extended house of considerable power.
As households multiply like this, cities are formed. Soon the relationships of this network of households must be managed and protected, and so the natural role of the patriarch is extended into the office of the magistrate; civil government is established.
Cities form alliances with other cities and form states. States covenant with other states and form nations. Thus it is that commonwealths, kingdoms, and even great empires spring forth from the natural, God-endowed sex drives of men.
Sex is the engine of God’s dominion: the means by which he designed man to establish heaven on earth. And that is why Satan hates sex.
This is a preview from an early chapter in our forthcoming book. But it is also something to ponder right now.
Modern people are like…
Stay at home dad = “you are so brave”
Stay at home mom = “you are wasting your life”
It’s not that they’re hypocrites. It’s that they are sons of their father the devil, taken captive to do his will. Thus they love to subvert God’s design.
William Ross Wallace wrote that the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. Reading him in context, he is right. The influence of mothers reverberates through society.
So consider what happens when mothers outsource the “rocking of the cradle” to paid help.
Chaos happens.
Now happens.
But it’s not just bad mothers who are discovering that their children are flinging themselves into the maelstrom. There seems to be a trend of solid, godly parents in their 40s-60s waking up to the dangers of the times, because of a grown child going woke.
We asked Pastor Rich Lusk, who has written for us before, why this is happening to so many grown children—even though they came from healthy Christian homes. What follows is his commentary.
I get asked regularly why I address “woke” issues so much from the pulpit.
This is my answer:— it’s especially for the sake of the kids, to inoculate them against the garbage that’s out there.
But it will continue to be a problem, no matter what we do. Even if we preach on these things, even if we get our kids into solid Christian educational environments, etc., it will still be an issue for us, because wokeness is the spirit of the age.
There will always be people who rebel against the truth because they’d rather fit in and go with the flow.
Worldliness is what it is, and some in the church will always be led astray. Face it:
To be woke is to be cool and virtuous in the eyes of the world.
To attack wokeness is always going to look mean, bigoted, and intolerant, no matter how sweet and winsome we try to be.
Wokeness has infiltrated most evangelical and Reformed denominations, most campus and parachurch ministries (including some we would have pointed our kids and congregants to just 5 years ago), just about every major educational institution, Hollywood, the major news networks, etc.
Plus it’s the dominant trend on social media.
You cannot escape it.
Culture moves faster than most parents can track, so it’s hard to even know what influences your kids are encountering.
Wokeness is like so many other trends and fads that have so fully swallowed up the culture, that they have simply become the culture.
It is similar to the sexual revolution—only far more sinister, because wokeness easily cloaks itself in biblical language and pious-sounding phrases. Like an angel of light, wokeness can look like it’s truly Christian.
Thus, once it gets its hook in someone, getting it out again can be very hard.
I imagine parents today feel the same way about the woke revolution that parents in the 1960s felt (or should have felt, if they were paying attention) about the sexual and pop culture revolutions that were seducing their kids.
Those parents were asking, “How do I keep my kids chaste? How do I keep them from being influenced by Mick Jagger?”
Today, parents are asking, “How do I keep my kids from becoming critical race theorists? How do I keep them from reading Kendi and voting Democrat?”
My counsel: Trust God with your kid.
Parent by faith, claiming His covenant promises.
Pray covenantally for your kids.
Prioritize church and Christian community.
Give them a Christian education, and constantly vet the curriculum for woke influences.
Love your kids well, so you will have a close and trusting relationship with them. Discipline them consistently, teach them a work ethic and the value of a buck, have lots of dinner-table conversations about the crazy events of each day, model compassion and hospitality for them so they don’t think caring for the poor is a liberal thing, and teach them the Scriptures comprehensively so they can apply the Bible to all of life.
One more thought, especially for parents of kids who have already gone woke:
Mark Twain is reputed to have said, “If you are not a liberal at age 20, you don’t have a heart. If you are not a conservative at age 40, you don’t have a brain.” Or something like that.
I think Twain was on to something.
Wokeness is a fantasy, a kind of fairy tale.
It appeals to a shallow sense of empathy; to those who want to be kind and compassionate, but are clueless about how the world actually works.
Wokeness takes advantage of the naïveté of the young and ignorant.
So one way to push back against wokeness in your kids is to show that actually, its various manifestations hurt the very people it claims to be helping.
The LGBTQ movement actually hurts these folks because it furthers them in their sexual delusions. Feminism is bad for women and children. CRT infantilizes blacks and makes real racial reconciliation impossible. Defunding the police will actually make poor neighborhoods more dangerous. Etc.
Wokeness is like trying to be kind to an anorexic person who is about to starve to death, by affirming them. “Yes, you really are fat, you shouldn’t eat any more." Real kindness doesn’t look like that, but when you’re young and ignorant, it’s easy to get confused.
If you are a parent, and your 20 year old finds some things in the social justice movement appealing, I would tell you to not panic. It does not mean all is lost.
Many people have pulled back from this brink without apostatizing.
What should you do?
Commit to having peaceful and slow-moving conversations about the topics. If you have not taught your kids the real beauty of God’s sexual design, or how a biblically ordered economy works for the good of all, or how real racial harmony can be achieved, have those discussions. Show them the wisdom of God’s ways, and that you really believe Scripture is sufficient to completely equip us for living rightly in every way (2 Timothy 3:17).
But getting angry at your “woke” 20 year old is just going to make things worse. You will, in their eyes, fulfill all those stereotypes of what conservative parents are supposedly like. It makes you look afraid of wokeness, like you can’t refute it—instead of treating it like it deserves: as a foolish allurement.
Again, I would tell a parent in this situation to recognize that wokeness’ deceptiveness may mean your kid has an instinct towards compassion that is good. It just needs to be directed into better channels. He (or more likely she in this case) is just naïve, and needs to learn more about how the works actually works.
That can happen through age and experience, and through constructive discussions and gentle but firm pushback without overreaction.
In the end, wokeness cannot win because wokeness is at odds with the most fundamental realities of how God made the world. As a parent, you have truth and reality on your side.
You just need to be patient and prayerful as you diligently fight back against the influence of the spirit of the age.
From Tyrannus Hall #
Woke bees https://www.livescience.com/bee-creates-perfect-clone-army.html.
invades a healthy hive
produces only carbon copies of itself
tricks the hive into paying for it
contributes nothing
kills the hive
We’re not quite ready to unveil our new community website (Bnonn is behind schedule; a flogging for him). However, we can tell you what the tier structure will look like once it goes live, and Patreon is retired (each tier builds on the last):
$5: access to Notes on Manhood Telegram*
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* Notes on Manhood Telegram is a Telegram group where we post voicemessages a few times a week, to share thoughts on some issue. It is like an extended, more personal version of this newsletter, full of quick ideas (2-5 minutes usually). It is not a community in the sense of back-and-forth; if you want to ask questions, you have to be in Tyrannus Hall.
If you are currently supporting us on Patreon, you will continue to receive whatever rewards were promised for your tier. We are simply retiring Patreon for new supporters in favor of a more streamlined system that we control.
Notable: #
“Protestant evangelicalism today is more in need of revival and Reformation than Roman Catholicism was at its lowest moral ebb in the dark ages.” —Phil Johnson
Breaking! Pastor Tim Stephens Released from Prison. All The Canadian Pastors are Out - Protestia
Talk again next week,
Bnonn & Michael