“Woke Jesus” is a recent term which elevates the humanity of Christ over the divinity of Christ. The woke Jesus “movement” is promoted within progressive and liberal Christian circles and now even widely among non-believer groups on the left who characterize Jesus as a social justice warrior who came to earth to liberate the oppressed. It also serves to further their political positions with selective arguments gleaned from the very biblical doctrines of their believing opponents.
Pointing to the many scriptures and themes of Jesus speaking out against injustice and oppression coupled with clear expressions of His emotion like sadness, joy and anger, “woke Jesus” advocates for the advancement of the human side of Jesus over the divine side of Jesus as if the two are in direct conflict, with the human Jesus being much more palpable and humanly relatable. The fully-human-fully-God inseparability of Jesus as one person is too much to grasp and inconvenient to the politics of some.
Jesus being both God and Man is an inescapable truth but not a mutually exclusive one. Jesus the divine person is one of firm, timeless and unarguable moral absolutes, anathema to many non-believers who would much rather embrace the human Jesus as being more relevant to needs and issues in the world today (as if human needs and issues have become suddenly so disparate over just the past few decades over the entirety of history.) For them, a “woke Jesus” provides inspiration, guidance, compassion and a broader, more welcoming greyscale on the continuum of moral black and white. In other words, denial of many attributes of an absolute God made personal in Christ which are clearly biblical is one of purely personal and political convenience.
