The term, “woke,” was originally intended to help people better understand the ways in which racism negatively contributes to social systems and human relationships. The “woke” person had awakened from their moral slumber and was willing to admit wrong-doing and identify the ways in which their “white privilege” (meaning majority-culture status in the western context) had hindered the flourishing of minorities in positions of poverty, oppression, and weakness.
More recently, the term “woke” has taken on a decisively disdainful and pejorative connotation, referring to those who have been taken in by a “progressive” view of the world that sees almost everything through the lens of critical race theory, interpreting society through postmodern Marxist and racial categories.
A lot could be said about the original meaning of this term as well as the ways it has been changed into one of ridicule and derision. But regardless of whether you want to disparage or defend the term, something I have observed with those who consider themselves to be “woke” in the positive sense is that they tend to demand a level of sensitivity in public and interpersonal communication that borders on the absurd.
In short, for many, a passionate commitment to the principles of woke culture tends to destroy open communication. Every conversation, if not perfectly crafted, becomes a minefield of potential triggers for producing pain, anger, and even outrage. The problem is, very few conversations are perfectly crafted, and spontaneous conversations in particular are virtually never carefully constructed.
In the end, what was intended to create safe communication and better human relationships has created significant barriers to them instead. Genuine intimacy requires communication, and communication often results in misunderstanding and hurt feelings. But without communication and without a willingness to take the risk of being offended or offending someone else, friendships—at least in any meaningful form—become virtually impossible. Given enough time and enough talk, someone is bound to offend and be offended. Rather than joyous and sometime spirited exchange, communication becomes an endless string of trivial politically correct statements, polite critiques, and mutual virtue signaling.
Making “non-offense” the goal of relationships is essentially pushing communication to a level of nothing more than cliché, insignificance, and banality. If you don’t want to offend or be offended in friendships in particular and conversations in general, my advice is simple: stop talking and stop listening to others. It’s your safest bet. But it’s also the surest path to isolating dehumanization and closing yourself off from the people and things you were created for and need the most. You will be unable to love or be loved by anyone, God included, who, in His infinite holiness, has the potential to be the ultimate interpersonal offender.
As C. S. Lewis so wisely reminds us in The Four Loves, “To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
When applied to our relationship with God, if He is genuinely righteous and loving (He is), He will frequently say offensive things to the hearts and minds of sinners. And as sinners, we need to be offended if we are to escape the ever-present and destructive dangers of our sin and pride. Avoiding offense in a sin-stained world such as ours is to invite greater, not lesser, damage along the way.
We were created to be in relationship, to communicate and to listen to others as they communicate with us. But in the midst of that need, we take the risk not only of being hurt and offended, but also of hurting and offending others. It requires the hard work of granting and receiving forgiveness, but if we are willing to risk going deeper, sometimes offending and sometimes being offended along the way, then—and only then—can we enjoy the precious privilege of loving and being loved by God and one another. And that’s always a risk worth taking.
In this context of communication, God is simultaneously the ultimate offender and the ultimate consoler, the one who comes alongside us in our shame and our pain and calls us into personally challenging but infinitely loving and healing fellowship with Him. As Hosea 6:1 reminds us: “Come, let us return to the Lord. He has torn us to pieces, but he will heal us; he has injured us, but he will bind up our wounds.”
lewinkler 