Intro:
Would you like to know how to both incite violence and call for the overthrow of the current constitutional system while simultaneously crying foul when anyone ever says you have anything to do with the violence done, or states that you actually are attempting to radically alter our form of government? Would you like to know how to push ludicrous social agendas and then scream that people are bigots when they point out that the logic used to promote said social agendas lead to far more horrendous consequences because there is no logical end-point? Or, perhaps you’d like to know how to rally your friends and bait your opponents? Maybe you’d like to get all the useful idiots on your side so they can shout down any opposition at all? Maybe you just loving hearing the sheep switch from “TWO FEET GOOD! FOUR FEET BAD!” to “TWO FEET GOOD! FOUR FEET BETTER!” I mean, I can’t imagine why you would want to know how to accomplish those things unless you were a deeply immoral person…or I guess if you wanted to understand the times. The answer, whatever your motivation in discovering the wherewithal to do the above, is Sloganeering.
First, let it be known, that I hate slogans. I hate chanting. I hate people blithely mouthing nostrums and shouting pabulum in stereo because they think repeating inanities ad infinitum is tantamount to a reasoned argument. More than that I hate that those who compose the mainstream maxims KNOW that slogans are not reasoned or even reasonable bases for policy – they’re simply trying to get the little people to make noise and silence dissent…in Brown Shirt fashion, since, you know, it’s oh so au courant to call everyone Nazis… well, ya know, the Nazis did march a lot and yell a lot and riot a lot.
So, I hate slogans. Now, I want to pause and differentiate slogans from very brief explanations. There are two kinds of oversimplifications. There are useful oversimplification and harmful oversimplifications. A useful oversimplification is teaching kids the standard proton-neutron-electron model you learn in 5th grade. It’s wildly inaccurate. It shows a proton and neutron cramped together and an electron revolving in very predictable orbits. It’s not an accurate model so it’s not merely a simplification – but an oversimplification. But it IS useful. It’s useful insofar as it allows kids to begin to understand atomic structure in its most basic form. It’s inadequate for advanced studies in chemistry or atomic physics, but that’s OK. You can correct those errors later.
A harmful oversimplification, however, would be for a pastor, to tell people that “God wants you to be happy”. OK, I mean, God wants a lot more for people than that, so it isn’t just a simplification, but an OVERSIMPLIFICATION. And it’s harmful, because the term “happy” goes undefined. And this is why sloganeering is so dangerous.
A Little Linguistics:
You see, the danger of slogans is that the content (or meaning) of the terms is undefined – or nonexistent. What do I mean? What I mean is, to use the above example. If I tells someone “God wants you to be happy” but make no effort whatsoever to explicate that the biblical idea of happiness, particularly the New Testament idea, expressed by the word μακαριος (Makarios). Instead, they dude who only tells you “God wants you to be happy” wants you to fill in the content of the word “happy”. And what’s worse is that he knows what he’s doing.
This is what frauds and hucksters and schills and charlatans do. And it gets some cover from the current trends in linguistic (semiotic) theory which say that meaning is entirely receptor dominated. It doesn’t matter what I write, as the author, only what you take it to mean.
Now, the postmoderns were right to say that reception matters, it isn’t only intention – when we study texts we need to understand audience. And, I agree, that because people are fallible and ultimately mysteries to ourselves, authors can be wrong about the characters they write. Now, I know this is making me sound like I’m on the postmodern side, but hear me out. How do we criticize badly written characters? We often say that they behave “out of character”. But, if we ONLY consider authorial intent, we have no justification in saying so. If I invent a person then what I do is exactly what they should do because I say so. But that’s not how it works and we all know it.
So, contemporary language theory makes good points worth considering. But many of them took the argument too far. The author isn’t dead but he isn’t the only part of the story. And that’s well to know. Because when intelligent people speak they’re speaking to audiences. And very cunning and clever, if not smart, people know how to craft their words so that they can speak to multiple groups simultaneously, and how they can rile up people’s affections, knowing how words work in context.
Sloganeering capitalizes (even communists can capitalize) on people’s natural desire to hear what they expect and hear what they want. More than that, because slogans are harmful oversimplifications, they eliminate nuance and are designed – they are deliberately designed – to silence debate.
Why Cowards Use Them:
Over the Summer of Love 2.0, I often attempted to talk to people rationally about several issues that were being promoted, primarily with slogans. Let me give you a summary of those conversations:
Luke: Hey, when you say, “[insert: love is love; no justice; no peace; defund the police]” you’re actually promoting an argument that’s destructive and has horrendous philosophical, logical, and real world consequences.
Smug Wokeist: Dude, what are you 5? it’s kind of hard to chant an entire public policy position…lolz…it’s not meant to be nuanced.
I mean, I know. I know that it’s hard to chant an entire policy position: that’s why you shouldn’t try to! But here’s why it matters; it matters because the slogans affect people’s positions and actually affect change.
“Love is Love” is the most inane and vacuous tautology imaginable – and it was highly effective on shaping public opinion on gay marriage. Frankly, friends, if inane and vacuous arguments are effective in changing your opinion that must make you………………But here’s where it gets worse. Years ago when “Love is Love” was all the rage and all the cool kids were putting “equals” stickers on their bumpers and bike helmets, some of us were saying – umm what about polygamy (or polyandry), incest, or pedophilia, or bestiality? Can’t this argument be used to support them. And of course, the logical, well considered answer was, “SHUT UP YOU BIGOT!”
Well, well, well, surprise, surprise, just a few years later and we have a brand-new batch of perverts who want us all to decriminalize their debauched and evil impulses and inclinations, and applaud them, and give state-sanction. Some of use said that when you eliminate an objective moral system on sexual ethics and replace it with “Love is Love” you were bound to run into the problem of all tautologies – they’re meaningless because you have to insert the content of the words yourself so it means whatever the audience (or chanter) wants it to mean.
It’s On Purpose:
But some might rush to the defense of those who proclaimed, “love is love” and say that they meant something totally different – they never meant to give cover for pederasts or…people who engage in the behavior that the Lannister Twins find appealing. Sure, probably most didn’t. But they mouthed empty words and the damage was done.
Those who concoct slogans get all the social change they want from advocating ludicrous and unsustainable ethical and political positions, but never take any responsibility for the harm done by the logical conclusions of their arguments. They get to hit you with the chair and run out of the ring. And that’s cowardly. And deceptive.
Those who supported the riots over the summer thought they sounded really cool when they said, “No Justice; No Peace” and found all kinds of ways to justify the ransacking and burning of those citadels of white supremacy: Target stores (aka Red Walmart). When people on their side riot, it’s just people fighting injustice. And I’m against it because I’m against rioting. And I said, “No Justice; No Peace” is a stupid policy that justifies atrocious and evil behavior. And, naturally, I was rightly shouted down, because I’m White – which is a very well-thought-out argument…no logical fallacies, here folks, mope, no siree, no racism either, nopers, nothin’ to see, nothin’ to see…move along, sir.
But when riots happen from people on the right (I was initially considering that the Capitol Invasion was a false flag, but it looks like it wasn’t that) then this is terrorism. Well, I mean, “No Justice; No Peace” is pretty much the mantra of every terrorist ever…sooooo, what? Turnabout isn’t fair-play anymore? See, I actually am not a grotesque hypocrite, because I was against rioting from the start – so when I condemn the Capitol Riots, I’m not flippidy flopping.
But the News-Industrial Complex, they have no leg to stand on. They have promoted violence for a long time. And here’s the thing – when they openly promote violence, they’re hardly ever called to account, and when they are, they simply say something like “well obviously I didn’t mean physical violence…” Obviously? Obvious to whom? As the Ancient Babylonians used to say, “I don’t know your life, bruh!” They also used to deridingly ask people if they even lifted…but that’s a whole ‘nother story. But the open calls for violence only evidence the content they intend their minions to hear in the slogans they invent.
For all the Wokeists love to cry and moan about dog-whistles, they’re the ones trying to linguistically eat their cake and have it too. They use slogans to get what they want and then run under cover of the linguistic ambiguity so they never have to accept the consequences of what they’ve done. Slogans are created to influence people with no moral compass, with limited mental competence, and those too cowardly to have an actual debate – the kind of people who think disrupting a campus speech is the same as being intelligent or a useful human being. They simultaneously act as buckler and sword for the fight.
How To Fight Back:
Look, the Woke-Left is Middle-America’s abusive boyfriend. When they lie to us, they don’t even lie to convince us – they lie to prove that they can lie and that we can’t do anything about it – furthering our sense of isolation and shame and smallness. The Woke Left has conquered all (or nearly all) major institutions in this country and we feel like the abused girlfriend who wants out, but the cops are all drinking buddies on our boyfriend’s softball team, and our parents don’t believe us because, I mean, look at his smile and how polite he is…maybe if we just were nicer, and stopped being so selfish we wouldn’t have this problem. Meanwhile we’re having numbers deleted off our phones, our car keys taken, and we keep having to invent stories of where we get all these bruises to our friends.
We know the slogans are lies. We know in the culture wars and the political wrangling and societal unrest the slogans ginned up by the Wokesters are all meant to effect permanent public opinion shifts and policy changes with plausible deniability. We know “Love is Love” and “No Justice; No Peace” are idiotic and dangerous slogans that will lead to more destruction. We know it. And we call it out…an nobody believes us. It isn’t even gaslighting any more because nobody is trying to convince us we’re crazy – I mean it WAS gaslighting for a while – no it’s just braze bald-faced lying. And we know they lie, and they know we know, and we know they know we know!
So where does this leave us? I don’t really know. But here’s what I do know. I know that the truth will set us free. I know that it is our duty, as Christians, to stand for truth and not settle for slogans. I know that as Christians we need to engage with and create culture – not all of us need to have podcasts, but all of us have a duty to use our influence within our own sphere of influence. I know that if we retract from the cultural conversations we will only isolate ourselves more.
I also know that lies cannot last forever – they can last a LONG time – but not forever. Sooner or later evil is always hoisted by its own petard. The Mensheviks of today will be liquidated by the Bolsheviks of tomorrow – and most of them will be disappeared and unpersoned before it’s all over. Robespierre will be denounced and guillotined. Sooner or later all the Safety Committees and thought-police get theirs. And sometimes not in this word. In fact, this world is an exceedingly unjust place. Torturers and war criminals die peacefully in their sleep. But eventually they edifices and empires they build collapse. The Ozymandii all get lost in the desert sands of antique lands. And it happens because lies always, eventually, fail.
And we may or may not see that failure. It might take 5 years of 500. But for the Christian, we don’t oppose lies and stand for truth because it will redound to immediate benefits and creature comforts. We oppose lies and stand for truth because it’s what God commands us to do. He forbids us to run away from society and live as hermits. He also forbids us to despair. And He also forbids us to forget that we struggle not against flesh and blood.
These issues I’m talking about that are part of the Woke agenda: sexual immorality; and political violence – these are issues that come from a particular religious view of the world. The religion of Wokeism does not look like previous challenges to the faith (at least not in this country). It pretends it’s not a religion. But it is. And Christians have an obligation, to the extent they are able, to tear down strongholds and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. We don’t all have to be culture-warriors for God, but be do have to be God’s warriors in the culture. We need to get the gospel out in a life-size form.
Just telling people that Jesus died for your sins, means nothing to the Wokeist, because they fill those categories with the sins of whiteness and maleness and heterosexuality and cisgenderedness and privilege. Responding to the Wokeist with “Jesus Saves” is no different than them shouting “Love is Love” sure “Jesus Saves” has a whole worldview compacted within it for someone who already knows and believes the worldview – to an outsider it’s just so much sloganeering.
Christianity, and primarily Evengelicalism, needs to stop playing footsie with the Devil and come to terms with a few hard realities. Wokeism is NOT compatible with Christianity. The Progressivist Left will never stop before they achieve total capitulation from Christians. Trying to find common ground with Wokeism is just another step forwards towards Christianity’s irrelevance. Not dealing with the cultural implications of this false religion, is to essentially, promote religious pluralism – sure you can worship idols AND worship Jesus.
A Few Final Thoughts:
Here’s the thing. I hate talking politics. I’d love to spend all my time writing about Systematic Theology and Exegesis – working on ideas about human flourishing and anthropology and reading and translating Greek and Hebrew and giving you guys nuggets of knowledge from the original text.
But that ain’t the world we live in. I don’t believe Christians broadly, or pastor-theologians specifically, are allowed to simply not engage. Surely there are wrong ways to engage – to forget that we’re not struggling against flesh and blood, for instance. But not engaging in the war for human souls is wrong. Just because it doesn’t look like handing out gospel-tracts doesn’t mean that what’s going on now is not a profoundly, and primarily religious struggle.
I just pray that Christian thought-leaders and laypeople will recognize this and seek to make an impact on human souls before it’s too late. This is essentially apologetical work. We have to tear down the whitewashed walls of Wokeism before we can prevail against the Gates of Hades.
The great theological battle of our day is not going to exist in the old categories – it’s going to be cultural. And if we keep thinking that we’re fighting the Reformation battle or rehashing the Calvinism Arminianism debate then we’re going to lose and lose hard and lose fast. The great theological battle of our day is not going to be in books and lecture halls, but in twitter posts and youtube videos and talking about public policy and preaching about culture from the pulpit. It’s gonna look different. And many will say that those engaged in this new era of theological war are forgetting the gospel – and maybe we sometimes will – but we’ll have a far greater impact on the world for the gospel than those who twiddle their thumbs preaching and arguing the same things that have been irrelevant for 40 years.
What should we do? We should have hope! We should make Jesus the center of everything! We should make Jesus the center of our politics and culture and make sure that Jesus is a part of our culture and political discourse. More on this over the coming months and years.