Don’t Bite the Book that Feeds You, Part II:
Go Woke, Wind Up Spiritually Broke
The profundities of scripture are unlikely to be unlocked through the lens of 21st century wokeness. Examining scripture in light of woke sensibilities tends to result in finger-wagging at God and concluding that He falls miserably short of one’s own superior moral standards. 
Consider that for all your great learning and insight, the truth is, you emerged from the womb less than a nanosecond ago relative to eternity, or even as compared to evolutionary biology’s purported timeline. Moreover, judging God and scripture based on 21st century standards ignores major social and political advances — significantly driven by biblical ethics and committed Christians, we’d argue — since the pre-modern world of antiquity. Of course, Christians have failed badly at times throughout history, but the overall impact of Christianity is overwhelmingly positive.
Indeed, even agnostic historians recognize this. In his article, “Atheists in Praise of Christianity,” Jonathan Van Maren observes that unbelieving scholars are acknowledging that Christianity contributed mightily to liberal Western ethics. In discussing the recent book by British historian and atheist Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, Van Maren observes:
While studying the ancient world, Holland writes, he realized something. Simply, the ancients were cruel, and their values utterly foreign to him. The Spartans routinely murdered “imperfect” children. The bodies of slaves were treated like outlets for the physical pleasure of those with power. Infanticide was common. The poor and the weak had no rights.
How did we get from there to here? It was Christianity, Holland writes. Christianity revolutionized sex and marriage, demanding that men control themselves and prohibiting all forms of rape. Christianity confined sexuality within monogamy. (It is ironic, Holland notes, that these are now the very standards for which Christianity is derided.) Christianity elevated women. In short, Christianity utterly transformed the world.
In fact, Holland points out that without Christianity, the Western world would not exist. Even the claims of the social justice warriors who despise the faith of their ancestors rest on a foundation of Judeo-Christian values. Those who make arguments based on love, tolerance, and compassion are borrowing fundamentally Christian arguments. If the West had not become Christian, Holland writes, “no one would have gotten woke¹.”
Today’s woke leaders seem blissfully unaware that scripture has been a powerful impetus for positive social change. The failure to see that our current views of human rights didn’t just emerge from the ether, but are deeply indebted to Judeo-Christian morality, should make woke-sters pause before banning scripture and devout Christians from the public sphere.
The Example of Slavery
For instance, the slavery that is condoned but strictly regulated in the Old Testament is radically different than the racialized chattel slavery associated with the African slave trade and the evil practices of American slavery. In the bible, kidnapping (“man-stealing”) and trafficking in slaves are capital offenses. African slave-traders would rightly have been stoned to death in ancient Israel. (Exodus 21:16.)
Israelite slavery primarily is a kind of temporary (limited in duration to six years) indentured servitude, by which debts could be repaid; a kind of safety net for indigent persons well before the advent of the welfare state. Israeli slaves were never owned by their masters and were protected by law against physical abuse. While foreign slaves in Israel did not automatically become free after six years, given their inability to purchase land in Israel apart from conversion, the general laws protecting all slaves and the mandate that they were to be loved by all Israelites — including their masters — still held true. (Leviticus 19:33-34) Moreover, runaway slaves were guaranteed safe harbor — the law forbade anyone from returning a slave to a master he or she had run away from. (Dt. 23:15-16)
In short, no other religion has been remotely as concerned, if at all, about the rights and dignity of slaves as Judaism and Christianity. And, given the bible’s insistence on human dignity, efforts to abolish the despicable practices of chattel slavery in the U.S. and England were spearheaded by Christians. Similarly, the rights and equality of women have been chiefly championed and advanced by Christians and in Christian-dominated cultures.
God demands righteousness of his creation, and so makes provision for the weakest in ancient times — the poor and women — by demanding dignity and fair treatment when human frailty and sin produced servitude and divorce. He places the responsibility for injustice fully on us, and yet still calls us into relationship and invites us to join Him in redeeming and transforming the hearts of people – and in turn families and cultures — in our radically fallen world.
At bottom, historical ignorance and wokeness blocks our apprehension of God. The bible advises that we drop the gavel and dispense with the judicial robes as we contemplate the words of scripture. We are advised to, “Trust in the Lord with all of our hearts, and to lean not on our own understanding.” (Proverbs 3:5) It should go without saying that if God is the all-wise creator, we should expect to be offended at times by scripture. If all our views were perfectly in sync with scripture, God would be no greater or holier than us, and the bible would be superfluous.
End of Part II; Next up — Part III: “Don’t Let the Exclusivity Bugaboo Bite You”
Footnotes:
¹Van Maren, Jonathon, “Atheists in Praise of Christianity?” May 19, 2020. Published in the online magazine, The Stream, available at https://stream.org/atheists-in-praise-of-christianity/
²Keller, Tim, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, p. 75. (Riverhead Books: New York, N.Y.): 2008. This is a terrific apologetic resource that we’ll be drawing upon as we address common objections to biblical Christianity. In addition to The Reason for God, the following online resources were consulted in preparing this article: https://www.pursuegod.org/bible-condone-slavery-2/; https://evidenceforchristianity.org/why-does-god-allow-slavery-in-the-old-testamentr/; https://christian-apologist.com/2017/11/15/nine-points-about-biblical-slavery-and-skeptics-condemnation-of-the-bible/; https://www.bible-bridge.com/old-testament-slavery/; https://www.gotquestions.org/beating-slaves.html.