Thoughts on Satire, woke-ism, and the necessity for Common Sense
by Pastor Eric Anderson
Why is the Babylon Bee so popular? Better yet, why are the articles and posts by the Bee so close to reality one would think they are almost pulled from a CNN headline? Why is there a market for a spin-off “not the bee,” which is dedicated to actual news headlines which you might think are satire?
‘Satire’ (Websters 1828 Dictionary)
1. A discourse or poem in which wickedness or folly is exposed with severity. It differs from lampoon and pasquinade, in being general rather than personal.
2. Severity of remark. It differs from sarcasm, in not expressing contempt or scorn.
Satire is necessary where common Sense has been deliberately denied, re-written, and therefore, lost.
I say “deliberately” because one has to be educated and proselytized into the childish thinking, generated outrage and denial of natural/creational reality
When we say common sense, we do not deny the realities of original sin and total depravity. Two things are true at once: Mankind is born unable to seek God on his own, and Mankind still has faculties that are able to acknowledge creation ally-given realities. Marriage, laws against murder, and theft, in fact, almost all commandments 5-10 are recognized by human cultures as common to man, common sense as necessary to have culture.
So a child needs to be taught about their sinfulness and the need for God’s mercy yet, even so, all children can recognize they are boys or girls, they are different from animals, they can create, etc. This is how societies function. Until they are taught, indoctrinated by the elites to turn from Common Sense. When mankind worships and trusts in people and the new ideas to such an extent that they deny creational reality, common sense is lost. This is why United Airlines can promote a new “diversity goal” for Pilates with never a thought of the potential liability. This is why the MLB can sign a deal with communist China and then the next day accuse Georgia of racism for normal voting procured and take 100 million of income away from lower-class workers in their new “righteous” protest. This is why a person can be socially distanced in an airport line and it’s deemed safe to ride shoulder-to-shoulder in a plane, feeling safe, because you are wearing a mask. This is not merely childish behavior, it is something worse. It is non-sense.
You have to be educated about this type of stupidity. I use this word (stupidity) deliberately. I say this with a type of sorrowful seething when I think of some former students who we catechized into the convictions and confidence from good theological thinking and worship, only to regress, to be worse off after attending so-called ‘Christian colleges and seminaries. Why? The schools had gone woke and to go woke is to deny reality.
Think of the term itself as “woke.” Does it not conjure up the idea of being introduced and taking on a new paradigm, to be awakened? It is a completely different lens of the world. What is one awakened (a-wokened) to? The Twin paradigms of personal identity: first, by psychologized individuality, where you are to be all you can be and make your own rules/values or find them. Second, by the parallel group think—that you either an oppressor or are oppressed. You get a new moral start, a new moral high ground, according to the latest, evolving ideas and values. You also get increased and un-ending conflicts with others and more, the increasing denial of created, biological, physically given reality at the feet of those who know better.
To get “woke” to create guilt where none exists. The result of this conversion into the “social justice paradigm” is both fear and self-absorbed loathing while lamenting that I must be racist for supporting clear or white-colored band-aids and such. It is a world where Derek Chauvin must be guilty of deliberate, hate-filled racism and murder even when the cross-examination would indicate another story of mounting evidence. It is to judge everything Donald Trump did as wrong because of his tone and language, and yet give a pass to the actual evil, destruction, and injustice of President Biden’s policies because he sounds nice. It is to feel and declare yourself and others automatically guilty of being “unloving” because a gay person, in rebellion to God’s standards and their own biological reality, declares that you made them feel bad. To deny reality is to be defeated and paralyzed, to live in conflict avoidance, and worse, to further injustice by placing the functional standards of justice into the arms of the media, the elite, the experts, and the most, rebellious, reality-denying people. You cannot just see things as they are. You must see them through the eyes of the oppressed, the victims.
It is indeed a shameless mindset. It is both laughable and angering. It is pitiable.
Enter Satire: Satire is a gift. It is a tool to remind us that we aren’t crazy, that laughter at stupidity is actually an acknowledgment that we have a collective standard of truth, of that of wise and foolish. Satire presumes Biological and creational categories: that which we can see and actually prove: Men and men and not women, etc. Satire was a tool by Elijah on Mt. Carmel when he mocks the false gods to shame the people and bring them to repentance. Satire (or sarcasm) was Paul’s language when he told the Galatians to “emasculate” themselves. It says in Psalm 2, God even laughs in derision at the foolish rebellious re-creationism of mankind. Satire treats people as capable of reason, yet foolish for denying reason.
One must-see reality in order to recognize the law, my sin, and God’s offer of real, total forgiveness (body and soul) of me as a person, and real, creational purposed for us as humans. Satire, therefore, is a reminder that to think and discern and the judge is both human and good. Satire can serve as a warning, a wake-up call to seek the face of the giver of lawful standards, of reality and, finding Grace and mercy, a reunion with reality through Jesus Christ, a reunion with common sense.