A recent editorial cartoon by John Darkow (Columbia Missourian) pictures Jesus speaking to a crowd. One bystander says to another, “He seems too woke for me.” At the heart of wokeness is compassion. And compassion, writes Christian scholar Marcus Borg, is “the central moral quality of a life centered in God.” Compassion calls the 400 years of oppression and dehumanization of Black people in this country as an outrageous injustice not to be swept under the rug, especially because racism is still very much alive. It sees the banning of books about race and the whitewashing of racial history as the latest chapter in a long history of keeping Black people in their place: slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration (Read “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander), and well-documented institutional racism.
Compassion also calls us to honor the journeys of trans youths. Who are we to judge the identity struggles they are experiencing? Their suffering (and that of their supportive parents) has been amplified by politicians who have dehumanized them to score points in a culture war. The trans youths I know are gentle souls who have shown great courage in the face of intolerance. As children of God, they are worthy of our respect and love. There is much fear of “the Other” in this country. Yet the Bible repeatedly preaches, Be not afraid. As writer Marilynne Robinson puts it, “fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” So yes, Jesus is woke and so am I. Proud of it.
Allan MacDonald
New London