The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2023, Dr. Tamilio

When you were a kid, did you learn the song “Dem Bones”?

Well, your toe bone connected to your foot bone

Your foot bone connected to your heel bone

Your heel bone connected to your ankle bone

Your ankle bone connected to your leg bone…

It goes all the way up to the skull, or the head bone.

The song begins by invoking Ezekiel, who stands before the valley of dry bones and is called by God to witness their assembly into a massive army.

As I reread this passage in preparation for today’s sermon, I kept thinking about society today.  It is filled with dry bones.  People are tired.  They are empty.  They are dry.  There are many reasons why this is the case.  Some people are tired because they are working too hard to make ends meet.  Some people are tired because of the demands that are placed on them from all corners of their lives.  Some people are tired because they have a loved one battling an addiction that he or she can’t seem to kick.  There are lots of people carrying lots of crosses, and they are tired.  They are dry.

This isn’t what I am talking about, though.  I am talking more about something that came up at our Bible Study the other night: political correctness.  Now don’t get nervous.  I am not about to get political and talk about particular candidates or policy issues.  This is more of a cultural observation.

For a long time, people’s values were centered around certain foundations.  The three biggies (in no particular order) were faith, family, and community.  You were born into a particular family situated in a specific community.  You learned certain values: honesty, respect, kindness, equality, being conscientious, and industrious, among others.  These were givens.  They were solid.  You could hang your hat on them.  They were talked about in school and instilled in the home and the Sunday school classroom.  Simple things, such as looking both ways before you cross the street, say please and thank you, and holding the door open for someone who walks behind you.  And then there were complex values: pull yourself up by your bootstraps and strive for excellence; be the best that you can be, and when you get knocked down, get up again.  Respect your elders.  Trust the police.  Listen to what your teacher says.  Treat others the way you want to be treated.

I get that times change and situations change and people change.  I am not being nostalgic for the way things used to be and am not complaining about the evolution of social norms.  I am also not complaining about kids these days and how we were better people (in many way) when we were their age.  That said, I am talking about an ideological change that we see occurring in this country and beyond and how it is no surprise that such changes leave little room for traditional moral institutions like the Church.  In fact, part of the reason why we are in a post-Christian age is because the values that the Church traditionally taught are now seen as either irrelevant or intolerant.  Other values have emerged.  The issue is not that all of these new values are bad, but it is the approach that is used more than anything else that is problematic.

The word I am dancing around here is “woke.”  Being woke.  This is a fairly new concept.  The idea is that those who have (or profess to have) an enlightened sense of right and wrong when it comes to issues such as race, gender, the environment, abortion, gun rights, or any other controversial issue, such people feel as if they know the ultimate truth and the rest of us need to be educated, we need to see the light, we need to be woke, too.  In his latest book Christianity and Wokeness, Owen Strachan describes the movement, saying, “Wokeness is first and foremost a mindset and a posture.  The term itself means that one is ‘awake’ to the true nature of the world when so many are asleep.  In the most specific terms, this means one sees the comprehensive inequity of our social order and strives to highlight power structures in society that stem from racial privilege.”[1]

The other issue that is a big part of political correctness is summarized in the phrase “cancel culture.”  Have you heard of this?  It is a total affront to free speech and freedom of thought.  If those who are woke disagree with your opinion, they will cancel you, meaning that they will seek to silence you by any means necessary.  It is done in many ways and has a variety of results.  It could be that you will be ostracized by various circles or even fired.  For example, if you are a professor and you hold a social or political opinion that is contrary to what political correctness espouses, then the thought police (as George Orwell called them) will seek to make your life a living Hell.  There is no room for debate or agreeing to disagree.  If you do not tow the woke-line, you risk being canceled.  There is no room for cancel culture is a democratic society.  Canceling people is the methodology used by dictators and totalitarian regimes.

Now let me be clear about what I am saying and what I am not saying.  Is racism a problem in the United States?  Absolutely.  Are there gross inequities in our society?  For sure.  Do we need to be more attentive to voices that have been marginalized in our nation historically?  Yes, yes, and yes.  But we do not correct historic injustices by creating new ones.  For example, saying that all white people are inherently racist is not only wrong, but it will not convince people to strive for racial equality.  All it will do is make people act out of guilt, which is not true reconciliation, or it will anger them.  Another example: have women not been treated equally in our society?  They definitely have not been.  Although great strides have been made in the past sixty to seventy years, we are not there yet.  Women still earn less than their male counterparts and woman are not equally represented in certain areas of society.  But we do not right that wrong by using phrases like “toxic masculinity” and claiming that all men are inherently misogynistic.  Again, that will only produce guilt (at best) and resentment (at worst).

Wokeness is not the language of Christianity.  It isn’t.  Jesus definitely reached out and ministered to the socially marginalized in his society, but he did not use language that made those who weren’t marginalized seem as if they were less than.  All people, regardless of what makes us different from one another, are equal in the eyes of God and are equally loved by our God.  No one is more important or more righteous or more favored than anyone else.  You do not resurrect dry bones by substituting them with other ones.  Resurrection is about new life, but it does not come at the cost of desiccating or devaluing other lives.  You do not right the wrongs of social injustices by treating others unjustly.  The Gospel of Jesus Christ puts an end to such an “eye for an eye” mentality.  As we discussed last week, the sins of the father are not visited upon the son.

Wokeness is simply a way for an individual or group to appear superior, smarter, or more righteous than others.  It is the height of arrogance.

Jesus said, “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”  That truth is found in him and his righteousness.  It is this ethos that the Church needs to embrace and share with others.  If anyone was woke, it was him, because he a-woke from the grave.  He rose from the dead to offer our dry bones everlasting life.  No one gets any more than anyone else.  We are to repent from our wrongdoings, of course, and we are to strive for justice always, but we do so by holding fast to God’s Word, not political ideologies or political correctness.

The world is full of dry bones and an arid agenda.  It puts its faith in human institutions to save us.  As Strachan argues, we are alienated from God and one another by sin, but we are made one in Christ — in Christ alone.  Amen.

[1] Owen Strachan, Christianity and Wokeness (Washington: Salem Books, 2021), 8.