Ending the Rampaging Twitter Mob

Many Christians and disaffected liberals hate the post-modern woke culture we see all around us. The culture of death is continually foisted upon us by an intellectual and corporate elite interested only in protecting their own interests.

The main issue Christians face as we live and proclaim the gospel in our culture is that we don’t understand the problem. The problem we face is that the culture has defined religion out of the public square, whilst forcing a state religion upon us all.

Elites have gotten away with this by not using the old language of religion whilst continually using its theological concepts and categories. They do this even as they deny that is what they are doing. The cultural elite and intellectuals of our society play god, use religious categories, and force the masses to worship the things they love, whilst virtue-signalling with the words, ‘NO Theocracy!’ And we let them get away with this. How?

In a recent conversation between Ally-Beth Starkey and Victor Davis Hansen, they identified post-modern philosophy as the problem besetting Western culture. But this conversation highlights the problems Christians face. In framing the issues in philosophical terms, they allow the elites to perpetuate the lie that they are not being religious. Allowing our opponents to frame the debate as philosophical instead of theological takes God’s Word, a Christian’s greatest weapon out of our hands.

The deceit at the heart of woke philosophy is not post-modernity, it is that they claim to be god. Many Christians think the answer to post-modernity is to return to modernity. But modernity was rejected because it had intellectually failed. Both philosophical modernity and post-modernity are children of the enlightenment and assume the place of god.

As modernity recedes in time and the consequences of the post-modern project makes itself more apparent – political liberals are banding together with conservatives to fight the dictatorial and evil impulses of the woke left. But they are doing so by returning to a failed philosophical modernity, which ultimately will not work against the post-modern project.

The reason postmodernity became so popular is that it saw through the lies of modernity. A lot of the issues woke postmodernity identifies as problems, not all, but a great deal are true. What the woke fail to see is that their solutions will perpetuate the problems. And in some cases makes them far worse.

The woke left are every bit the racist, intolerant, uneducated, bigoted, fascist dictators they say they are fighting. Looking at history shows how similar they are too religious groups of the past that rose to dominate their society – they have just changed religions.

Every age has had its public floggings – cancel culture and the Twitter mob. Every age has had its Spanish inquisitions – Human Rights Commissions and International Law Courts. Every age has had its blasphemy laws – hate speech. These religious activities and institutions have existed in every society. But what allows the woke to get away with their religious lies is that when people call them out – they simply say ‘we are not religious, you are!’

The woke left are every bit a fundamentalist religious cult, but they get away with so much because everyone else is claiming not to be religious. Christians pretending not to use theology as the other side does, will fail. God has given Christians huge resources to fight this battle in His word. But we are leaving it on the shelf in order to appease the woke lie that they are not using religion.

The answer for Christians is not to run back to philosophical modernity in order to appeal to disaffected liberals. Christians must call out the massive failure of the modernity/post-modernity paradigm encapsulated in the enlightenment project. The answer to the twitter mob needs to be – ‘You are not God and we will not worship You!’ Will we have the guts to do that? Only God can give us the strength. If we don’t, the woke mob will consume us before it inevitably turns on itself.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, just as it is written: The righteous will live by faith.” (Romans 1:16–17 CSB17)