The Great Awakening

on being woke and its implications

People keep hurling the word ‘woke’ at me like it’s an insult. It’s weird. It makes me wonder if we just don’t understand that word or if we just don’t want to?

Morpheus offering Neo a chance to wake up in The Matrix.

I recently watched The Matrix with my kids, and it’s remarkable how well the movie holds up decades later. Its gripping storyline remains a powerful critique of oppression.

At its core, The Matrix tells a classic story: awakening from a false world—a carefully constructed illusion designed to enslave humanity, keeping people asleep and unaware of their true condition. The narrative follows Neo, the "chosen one," as he emerges from his deep slumber, confronts the harsh reality of his existence, reconnects with his real body in the real world, and commits to fighting for change.

Que my favourite line:

Neo on awakening, ‘Why do my eyes hurt?’

Morphius, ‘You’ve never used them before.’

To those who have eyes to see, let them see.

According to Wikipedia, "Woke," an African American English synonym for the General American English word "awake," has been used since the 1930s or earlier to describe awareness of social and political issues affecting African Americans, often in the phrase "stay woke." ¹

The term gained widespread popularity as a way to signal an awakening to injustice and oppression, along with a commitment to fighting for human dignity and freedom. It became so influential that it was added to the dictionary in 2017.

To be woke meant experiencing an awakening—initially, for White Americans, it was about recognizing the realities faced by African Americans. But it was more than just awareness; it signified a willingness to truly see—without looking away—the injustice they had previously ignored. It meant acknowledging the reality of racism, their own complicity in it, and committing to change.

Being woke was a choice to leave the "white matrix"—a system built on exploitation and oppression—and step into the real world, joining the collective fight against the powers that sustain it.

Ah, the great awakening.

Here’s the thing, we owe a great debt to Lead Belly² who coined the term, and those who spread it, because it reminds us of how freedom comes. Every initial move towards freedom starts when we ‘awaken’ from the illusions oppression enslaves us to. This is true of any freedom journey. 

Alcoholics often describe "hitting bottom" as the pivotal moment that awakens them to their condition. They say, “I came to understand that I needed a power greater than myself.” Let the light come.

This awakening is not the end but the beginning—the doorway into a new way of living. The Bible describes a similar spiritual awakening: recognizing the illusion that sin uses to keep us captive. John introduces Jesus with these words: “The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.” (John 1:9).

When Jesus' first disciples asked about him, his response was simple: “Come, and you will see.” (John 1:39). This theme of awakening—of truly seeing—repeats throughout John’s Gospel.

Jesus is the Light.

If you don’t believe me, read it for yourself. John’s account includes almost comical contrasts—people healed from blindness, literally seeing for the first time, while the religious elite refuse to acknowledge the obvious truth, choosing blindness instead. “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light… whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.” (John 3:19, 21).

What happened to the idea of woke?

By 2019, the term woke had been co-opted and twisted into an insult—used by right-wing conservatives to mock anyone who seemed aligned with a left-leaning political agenda. This explains why I’m constantly labeled woke whenever I speak about oppression, injustice, mercy, bullying, or the responsibility to act justly in the way of Jesus—even though I’m not part of any political liberal agenda (and, for that matter, I’m not even American).

What fascinates me most is how a word with such a rich and meaningful origin could be so easily distorted and weaponized against those who are, in truth, awake.

Curious about this shift, I researched it. The intense backlash against woke gained traction in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. The world remembers George Floyd’s murder—his final words, “I can’t breathe,” spoken as a police officer knelt on his neck, suffocating him in broad daylight. The footage, recorded and replayed countless times, became a global witness to the unchecked violence and racial injustice Black people endure—at the hands of the very systems meant to protect them.

I took this photo at the site of George Floyd’s murder in Minnesota, 2021.

Beyond exposing the African American experience, George Floyd’s final cry resonated with oppressed people everywhere. His image became a symbol—a cry, a witness, a lament—for all who have felt the boot of oppression on their necks.

The Black Lives Matter awakening in America was not isolated; it was part of a global stirring. Across the world, those suffering injustice and oppression are weary of being killed, exploited, and silenced. They are demanding systemic change, truth-telling, accountability, and a shift toward a different future.

This unsettles those who benefit most from the system—fear takes hold, and in response, the cycle of oppression deepens.

The mural "I can't breathe" by Syrian artists Aziz Asmar and Anis Hamdoun depicts George Floyd on a bombed-out building in Idlib, Syria. The mural went viral on social media in June 2020

This oppression is being exposed within America but is also on full display in the global reality of systemic racism and imperialism around the world. Jeffrey Sachs recently spoke at the UN Food Systems Pre-Summit and put it like this;

“We’ve just heard from the Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Many point a finger of blame at the DRC and other poor countries for their poverty. Yet we don’t seem to remember, or want to remember, that starting around 1870, King Leopold of Belgium created a slave colony in the Congo that lasted for around 40 years; and then the government of Belgium ran the colony for another 50 years. In 1961, after independence of the DRC, the CIA then assassinated the DRC’s first popular leader, Patrice Lumumba, and installed a US-backed dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, for roughly the next 30 years. And in recent years, Glencore and other multinational companies suck out the DRC’s cobalt without paying a level of royalties and taxes.”³ It’s so much easier to dismiss people suffering from oppression than to recognize our complicity in the systems that oppress them. We do this so naturally that it is an easy step to believe that ‘woke’ means something bad, something threatening, something menacing… and maybe, in some ways, depending on your level of denial and complicity - it is.

If being "woke" means recognizing injustice and taking responsibility for ending it, then it comes with both revelation and responsibility. Perhaps this is why the backlash against awakening has been so fierce?

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Revelation and responsibility

Perhaps the reality of being "woke" is too difficult for some to see—too unsettling to acknowledge, too costly to confront. It forces a reckoning with wealth accumulated at the expense of the poor, yet still proclaimed as evidence of divine "blessings." Generational narratives perpetuate the myth of God-given favor for those who have profited from stolen bodies, confiscated land, and generations of forced labor.

Is it truly a sign of divine favor to be among the wealthiest 1% when that wealth comes from global industries built on exploitation? When did trampling human rights and indenturing the poor become a measure of merited success?

Perhaps it’s easier to dismiss "woke" as a conspiracy threatening your children if acknowledging it risks exposing the myth of your own privilege. Maybe the system itself has such a vested interest in maintaining control that the forces of poverty, racism, patriarchy, and oppression wage war against anyone who dares to pull back the curtain and reveal the illusion that keeps us all in bondage.

Perhaps the belief that human empires and "strongman" leaders bring freedom and prosperity is so deeply ingrained that challenging it invites the system’s wrath. Maybe our position within this structure is so fragile that we dare not rock the boat or burst the illusion, fearing the loss of what little the system provides.

Are we all like the so-called Wizard of Oz—hiding behind a grand facade while, in truth, remaining small, trapped in relentless servitude to pretense, lacking genuine power? Is our instinct to cling to a higher rung on the social ladder—within a framework that pits us all against each other—too entrenched, too familiar, too irresistible to resist?

Drawforgod.com

Ever wonder why Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go? Read those last few paragraphs again.

And while we're at it, why do we always read the Exodus story as if we’re the Israelites—but never Egypt? Why do we see ourselves as the oppressed, but never the oppressor? The answer to our own liberation and salvation are in the scriptures but we will only see them from the right perspective: context is key for our awakening.

Imagine you are Pharaoh, and God is inviting you to awaken to the plight of people oppressed by your production needs, growing military costs, and access to low cost labor to fuel your appetite for more. Would you let God’s people go if it meant the complete re-haul of your own economy?

Isn’t this the story of Jesus?

It’s amazing when the Bible is this spot-on.

Jesus refused to live under the illusion of empire. He lifted the curtain on Rome’s empty promises.

• Peace? Not real peace—just the forced silence of those who dared to challenge injustice.

• Security? A compromise with oppression, bought at the cost of true freedom.

• Privilege? Only if it benefits you while keeping everyone else in bondage.

• Wealth? Maybe—but only in this world, and at the cost of your own soul.

The religious leaders who had compromised with empire were often the most determined to eliminate anyone who challenged it. This is a pattern we see throughout scripture. Jesus even described it as evidence of a blessed life in the middle of his empire-crushing, life-giving Sermon on the Mount:

"God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you because you are my followers. Be happy about it! Be very glad! For a great reward awaits you in heaven. And remember, the ancient prophets were persecuted in the same way." (Matthew 5:11-12)

Today, that same hostility continues. The U.S. federal government just announced the cancellation of Black History Month and the end of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs. So-called evangelical christians are seeing this as a victory against a ‘woke’ agenda?! This seems like the perfect time for this Jesus follower to acknowledge the immense debt I owe the African American prophetic witness that awakened me.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Strength to Love stirred something deep within me, aligning with the scriptural witness of Jesus, who calls us into a collective liberation—for both the oppressed and the oppressor. When I heard Nina Simone sing “Freedom means no fear,” I felt something shift in me. Why had I let fear lead for so long?

Reading The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates and entering Harriet Tubman's supernatural world awakened in me a deep desire to follow the Light—prioritizing others' freedom over my own safety. How do you even explain the soul-stirring depth of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme? James Cone’s The Cross and the Lynching Tree reshaped my understanding of scripture. Maya Angelo and her wise deep words of life spoke to my soul. Cornel West offered me the Black Prophetic Fire with prophetic fire! Bell Hooks’ The Love Trilogy still moves me to tears. Even the surviving B-footage of Aretha Franklin’s original gospel recordings is nothing short of spellbinding.

The prophets have spoken, sung, preached, painted, suffered, bled, and died to keep the Word alive. “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you!” (Ephesians 5:14). They are a blessed company—persecuted, insulted, and, in today’s language, dismissed as "woke."⁴

The Cost of Awakening

But awakening is about more than just acknowledging the truth—it demands responsibility. It means following the Light, being responsive and responsible for what it reveals.

Lisa Sharon Harper addresses this in her book Fortune, where she traces how America was built on systems that blessed some and cursed others—allowing European Americans to prosper through colonization, genocide, enslavement, and exploitation. Her work sheds light on how and when the world broke, but also on how we can move toward redemption.⁵

The point of being woke is not just to suffer through the pain of truth—it’s to move toward our collective liberation, together.

Lisa’s book reminds me of Paul’s letter to Philemon. It’s personal, yet revolutionary. Paul doesn’t just urge his friend to be kind to his former slave—he invites him to recognize a new reality in Christ that fundamentally transforms their relationship in real life, challenging the social conventions that kept them stuck in oppressive systems. The Light leads us to an entirely new way of being human.

Paul is inviting Philemon to wake up.

Jesus’ invitation is an awakening. He calls us to get woke, be woke, and stay woke.

Because the truth is—we all suffer from spiritual/social blindness. It separates us from our sacred selves, from one another, and from God. Paul’s own story is one of awakening. He went from being complicit in violence and oppression, convinced he was acting in religious zeal, to recognizing his desperate need for mercy, healing, and grace.

And here’s the proof of his awakening—it wasn’t just his words; it was his life. He became a Gentile-loving, peace-making, enemy-loving, 

women-affirming, barrier-breaking messenger of reconciliation and grace. Even the Jesus following Jews in Jerusalem struggled with how radically open his faith had become (see Acts 21). They urged him to tone it down. But Paul refused.

Paul was as woke as they come.

The core message of the Gospel is this: Wake up. Jesus invites us into a new way of seeing—a new way of being human. His vision was so radically different from the status quo that it was hard to believe. Walter Wink puts it this way:

"Jesus went beyond revolution. His struggle was against the basic presuppositions and structures of oppression—against the Domination System itself."⁶

And this truth is inextinguishable. Wink continues:

"If Jesus had never lived, we would not have been able to invent him. The world, and even the church, had no categories for such fundamental change. It is no wonder that the radicality of Jesus was soon watered down by the church. But his truth has proved to be inextinguishable. Whatever we call the coming new order of God, we know that however long it takes to become reality on earth, the values Jesus articulated will be the values it exemplifies."

The prophets have been calling us to wake up for generations. Jesus is still calling us to wake up now. The only question is—will we?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American_English

2. Black American folk singer-songwriter Huddie Ledbetter, a.k.a. Lead Belly, used the phrase "stay woke" as part of a spoken afterword to a 1938 recording of his song "Scottsboro Boys", which tells the story of nine black teenagers and young men falsely accused of raping two white women in Alabama in 1931.

3. you can watch it here: https://www.jeffsachs.org/recorded-lectures/5jf86pp5lxch35e6z3nct6xnmb8zy5

4. I could go on and on and on. I haven’t even mentioned James Baldwin, Howard Thurman, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, and the contemporary faithful witnesses like Esau McCaulley, Lisa Sharon Harper, Latasha Morrison, Bernice King, Otis Moss III, Micah Bournes, Victory Boyd, Jamar Tisby (read The Spirit of Justice for more prophets to help awaken you!), Danielle Coke, William J. Barber, Ashley Eiland, Natasha Sistruck Robinson, or Jacqui Lewis to NAME A FEW!

5. https://lisasharonharper.com/fortune/

6. Walter Wink. The Powers that Be: A Theology for A new Millennium