Woke Up

Now that Chick Fil A has caved to the LGBTQ community by withdrawing support for the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, I think we seriously need to examine other companies and organizations with our “woke” sensitivities to sexism, systemic racism, homophobia, police brutality, misogynism and other isms destroying our country. This occurred to me as I was shopping the other morning at Winn Dixie.

The “woke” mentality, BTW, is defined by one online dictionary as “the act of being very pretentious about how much you care about a social issue.” Chick Fil A came under attack from woke people for supporting institutions, like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and the Salvation Army, that objected to abortion which violates Christian teaching. Chick Fil A apparently “woke” up and stopped donating to those two. Conservative– still “asleep?” — fired off at Chick Fil A for abandoning its Christian principles (they remain closed on Sundays for example) and Chick Fil A fired back that they hadn’t.

I haven’t seen the outcome yet of this exchange between Woke abortionists and the purveyors of the famous chicken sandwiches. Personally, I prefer the burrito in a bowl, with sausage instead of chicken, at my weekly visit to Chick Fil A in Northport at the crack of dawn ( 6 a.m. and try not to be too late) to participate in a Bible study led by John Belcher.

Back to Woke issues. I couldn’t believe “Dixie,” the quintessential embodiment of slavery and the Confederacy in the Civil War has survived to this day, used casually in conversation without the slightest blush. We think of Winn Dixie as a place nearby to get groceries but forget that “Dixie” was the battle song of Confederate armies during the Civil War or the War Between the States. It represents everything good about the South, or, conversely, everything bad. It has elements of both of course, just like every other popular symbol in our country, from George Washington to various Greek goddesses.

Woke warriors have simply let Winn Dixie off the hook while pulling down statues to Robert E. Lee and getting after the University of Mississippi for singing that rousing anthem “Dixie” until 2016 when Mississippi banned it, forever, I guess. Forever is a long time though and I suspect Dixie still reminds some of us that not all our ancestors were proud patricians lording it over their slaves on southern plantation homes that looked like Tara in the movie Gone with the Wind. Wow, I bet I dated myself with that reference.

What do we replace Dixie with? The University of Mississippi likes “Hotty Toddy” and UA likes “Rammer Jammer,” and so the past slowly disappears, gone like an old relative, but not forgotten until we also are gone.

But what do “woke” people celebrate that is long lasting? Who do we remember from those who are preserved by the wokes? Is there a George Washington, a George Washington Carver, a George Patton, a Martin Luther King, Jr. that survives among the woke pantheon of heroes? Cop killers don’t rise to the level of a true hero of war, like Audi Murphy. You can look him up.

By the way, Andrew Roberts, the author of a new, and immensely well received biography of Winston Churchill, commented recently that schools don’t teach much about heroes anymore, and that 20% of English students thought Washington in American history was talking about Denzell.

In the woke’s drive to bring the common man, the denigrated race, the child of poverty, the daughter of injustice to the surface of history, have we dumped those who rose above the ordinary, like Winston Churchill, into the trash heap of history? Are all men truly equal as Thomas Jefferson, another dead white man who not only held slaves but had children with his slave mistress Sally Heming, wrote? Is there not a mandate from God’s will expressed in Scripture to work for a living, to live by the rules, to put God before self, to seek out the plan God has for each of us?

No, we are not all equal. Look around you. We are not the same. But as expressed by Jefferson and embraced by our Constitution and traditions we are all endowed by God with the ability and opportunity to rise above our circumstances and compete in the world for our place in the sun.

I am not a troglodyte, forgetting and/or ignoring the reality of the world, with enough examples of injustices and suffering and pride to fill a lot of books.

We are not a perfect people. But we are not all mean-spirited egotists holding on to our money and insensitive to helping each other– from the autistic child to the new immigrant–to rise up based on God’s gifts to us all.

Our rewards do not come from a society, culture, or government that gives us all freebies, from education, to housing, to jobs, to medicine, to you name it. They come from living and working in God’s will. True joy and happiness and a sense of well-being is not just for the slightly dour, self-righteous Christian pointing her finger at the sinful world. Try living in the Word. It will transform you into a grateful and giving human being.

If I were to suggest something to the woke community, it would be to wake up to what God has for you, not what the government or the Party promises to do for you.

Published as “Who is in the “woke” pantheon of heroes?” The Tuscaloosa News, Sunday Feb. 2 2020.