Welcome to the Family Business Podcast, where today we again are discussing family matters or at least conversations that we should be having in the family because let's face it, family is everyone's business. And what we're doing at our Family Business Podcast, Alan, is we're sharing information and saying things that we don't have a chance on Sunday to say from the platform. So let me start this particular subject matter today with this comment, okay? And I'm gonna lean on you to help me navigate through the weeds of all of this. Okay. I'm 60, so maybe I'm out of the loop. All right. I'm not, I'm very I'm I'm right behind you in terms of loopness, so I'm gonna I'm gonna do my best. Um I I'm gonna say it right off the tap top. I'm not woke on woke. I I need some some input here. And here's my my open to this. When I started hearing about a woke culture, a woke society, people who are woke, and then the term being used against people that were evidently not in the know of something that they were labeled as not being woke, and almost criticized for it. It caused me trouble from the get-go. I just couldn't buy into the whole woke thing. And I'm usually pretty fair and understanding. I try to be anyway, but with this, I just couldn't get connected with it, not to get on the side of it or get against it, preach against it. I I I was just kind of letting things play out, holding my tongue before something should be said, until I started to see more and more how this whole woke term was being used as a bat against people that did not necessarily agree with what people in leadership or perceive leadership in our country, uh, socially anyhow, and culturally, the Hollywood elites and so forth. If we didn't agree with their thoughts or so so and so, then we were labeled as not being woke. So that's when I felt like wait, we need a little balance here, and everything should be balanced. So what is the whole issue here? Why should I be woke? Or why should I not buy into being woke?
SPEAKER_02Well, Pastor Number One, as I mentioned, I am probably just as unwoke about being woke. I mean, just throwing the term around even already feels weird, you know, because I think one of the issues is once again, the the terms that we use, the words that we use
seldom have the ability to really convey what they mean. Like we throw words around, basically, is what I'm saying. We throw words and we we get words like woke. And then obviously before it was what? It was, you know, social justice. Social justice was the word. And now it's woke, and all these terms get thrown around media and news. And um, I'm like you very much. I find myself like sitting back, like, okay, what let me ask my kids, basically. Let me ask my kids what what what are we talking about again? What's important? Wait, wait, what's this mean? Because the culture is moving so fast, and social media and everything's moving so fast to just give information. You you you alluded to it in another episode. You you said that we're getting knowledge. We're getting some all this knowledge, but is it attached to wisdom? And so the knowledge is there's wokeness. There's I need to stay woke, I need to be woke. And you're trying to catch up on Twitter. Okay, what does that mean now? And then as I start to do my research, because I'm a book guy, you know, I like to read, I like to go back to the source and figure out, okay, what is this? And then you find other people who made the term don't even know for sure what the term means anymore. So I'm gonna do my back, my best background, you know, my low Wikipedia, and um, and and and tell you what I've heard, and then we can kind of convey it. I want to hear your thoughts once you see what it really meant, what it was supposed to mean and how people are using it, whether or not it's really applying it to wisdom, whether it really applies to wisdom in terms of what it really means. So, long story short, the term for from my research comes from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. It was used for by actually it was first from the music for the music. Well, you're talking about the 1930s. Yeah, 30, 40 year olds. No. 1930s. 1930s, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it comes from back then and it was part of the civil rights movement. That's the first thing I wanted to say is that we do recognize that there's words that do have a meaning and a purpose. So back then, it was used for in a couple of songs, protest songs about being woke to the possibility of racial oppression for black people. So that was actually, as far as I can tell, if you know, again, Wikipedia's right, right? That was a legitimate term to say, hey guys, keep your eyes open. This could happen. There's there's oppression, you need to stay woke or be woke. So those terms were not just invented in 2020. Okay, so that's the first thing.
SPEAKER_01And the word woke, by the way, would be uh connected or similar to being awake to something that maybe you've been snoozing on.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Stay as well. Keep your eyes open, be awake, don't be, don't sleep, right? Don't be asleep to these factors or things around you. So the term obviously makes sense. Yes, it does. It makes sense that you want you nobody wants to be asleep and not paying attention. Like we all want to be awake and paying attention. So that was the idea for African Americans. Again, when I did the research, it seemed like a pretty good idea, especially given what was happening in that day and age. However, we all can all fast forward now to 2015, 14, 16, the Black Lives Matter movement. And that's when it started popping up in Twitter again. And here's where it gets problematic, I think. And this is where I would love again, as you as you being my pastor and me wanting wisdom, not just to be swayed by whatever the last social media hashtag was. Thank you. Because we start using, and I'm I've I've been a big, you know, this this scares me a lot when the hashtag pops up and then it's like, oh, everybody else, everybody else is using the hashtag. I should use the hashtag. And I want to, I want to be, I want to be in the in-crowd. I'm a I'm an older guy, I don't want to be left out. So if I want to be hip and pay attention to what's going on and be socially, you know, consistent, I need to start using this term. And then by that time, the term means something totally different, right? So now I think what Woke really is trying to refer to is an ideology or an understanding that this is the way the social construct should work. This is how people should see injustice, everything that's happened in the past, the people were canceling, the people who are not canceling, the people that have been uh uh uh guilty of certain sins and crimes in the past, and how the systemic injustices have infiltrated our system. I'm using all these words just to kind of like throw everything in the pot because that's what it is now. Yeah. So that being said, it means so many different things now that it, like you said, it's become like a badge. It's like I wear this badge, and if I wear this badge of being woke, I therefore have some type of like leg up, some kind of understanding of the world. I've been awakened to what's really happening. And that's why it's problematic. Because, number one, who woke you up? What are you awake to? And why, and what exactly are you seeing? There's so many applications to this, but I think the first thing is to be admit to the audience and to each other that we're trying to define a term that means whatever what people want it to mean. Yeah. Which means as long as I I'm in charge of this mentality or this ideology, I get to change the rules whenever I want. And as soon as I come around and say, Well, I don't really agree with that, you can just say, Well, no, it means this now and you're wrong because I'm on the right side of this, because I can change whatever it means to mean what I want it to mean. And if it means that you're wrong and I'm right, well then I win. Yeah. I win. I'm woke and I win. So it's like a way to win an argument before you even get a chance to understand what the argument's about.
That is so true. And I think, AP, that's why I I struggled with it. Because it just didn't hit my spirit the right way. Uh as a as a man that that chooses to live by biblical principles, yeah. Um, I'm aware that those principles that are within me are always they're they're keeping me on the straight and narrow to the best of my ability. At the same time, they warn me uh through discernment when something's coming on the scene that just isn't right. Yeah. There's there's some good about it, but even as a believer, even though all things now in God under grace are permissible to us, are they profitable to us? Yeah. Scripture speaks about that. That yeah, you can you can have now eat any animal. You can eat all meat in scripture, but is what you're eating, it's permissible, but is it profitable? Yeah. How much should pork should you be eating? How how all of these things? And it's the same with that. As a person that's trying to walk in a godly way, we can't just buy into this whole woke culture that even as you shared with me earlier in one of the articles, has become a religion. Yeah. It's a person's religious affiliation, which is why in my heart, I just don't see that I should be connecting with that whole woke culture. Portions of it run contrary to the kingdom culture.
SPEAKER_02That's where I wanted to see and hear you say it out loud because I think so many young people are looking for that identity. Again, they're looking for where do I land on this thing? I'm hearing all this news about racial injustice. And again, I wanted to put this in, I put this in my notes. Justice is God's idea. Okay, the first the first problem we have with the world. Justice is God's idea. You can't have justice without a judge. Yeah. And we so many times in culture are going about what we think is right. And that's why I'm so careful. I hear young people like in my ear right now as I'm saying this. But what about the true injustices? And yes, we should be fighting. You should be passionate, you should be woke to fighting injustices. But how do you figure out what injustice is? How do you figure out where the line is? When is the time to, like the Bible says, there's a time to speak and there's a time to refrain from speaking in Ecclesiastes? That's a principle that's still true in 2021.
SPEAKER_01There you go.
SPEAKER_02So if I'm supposed to be passionate about injustice and fixing rights, and the Bible talks about that, so when do I step up? And when do I need to refrain from speaking and listen and pay attention and say, wait, maybe I shouldn't just go off the cliff with the rest of the lemmings and just run to the first thing that says, wait, we need to stay woke. We need to be against this and against that. And I think the key is again, you you talked about this, you mentioned this in your note that you sent to me about being spiritually illiterate. If you don't know what your foundation is, as a believer, as a Christian, someone that again might believe very strongly that we need to protect the orphans and the widows, and we need to look after those who are poor, and we need to look after people who can't fend for themselves. Again, that's biblical. Yep. That woke culture didn't invent that. God invented that. So I think it's so important, Pastor, that we look, number one, like we said, justice is God's idea. Number two, that we need to know is this woke culture really profitable, as you said again. Is it really leading our culture toward fixing the problems? Or is it more setting up little gods? Little, I know everything's I can put you down. And that's one of the funniest, funniest things, Pastor. I see this culture war thing in Twitter. I don't try to pay attention to Twitter because it drives me crazy. But you do see this kind of like instant judges rising up. So I tweet something and immediately everyone can jump on that, or something that happened in the past. Um, I didn't want to bring this up, but I'm gonna bring it up because it kind of goes right to this thing. I recently, just this couple, just two days ago, heard a story about Dr. Seuss. Dr. Seuss apparently had some problematic writings in the past, so he's next on the list.
SPEAKER_01Okay, he's laughing because this is literally coming up first. I'm laughing because I was gonna use one of Dr. Seuss's poems at the reception for Christopher. It's a good thing I didn't. You wouldn't have known. You weren't woke. You weren't more woke.
SPEAKER_02So that's the problem. And I'm not saying again, uh even when you say it, you feel this myth. I feel this judge in the back of my head saying, but you don't know. That man might have hurt somebody in the past. Something he wrote might have hurt them, and you're not. So now you got this little, you know, voice in your head all the time saying, you know, be careful, you know, you're not aware. And then when the Bible talks about your eyes being open to truth, I think we need to start trusting the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to that truth when we need to be revealed to something that, hey, don't go there, don't say this. Yeah. We're that's the Holy Spirit's job to bring that revelation as believers. It's not the culture's job to show us what and when and how to speak and what needs to be, we need to be aware of and the injustices of the past. And that's where I think we get off.
It's because we think we can just accumulate all this knowledge and oh, I'll just know which way to go. Um, I wrote this down from our scripture. Um, that was the first ascent, the first sin. What did Satan come to Eve with? He said, Oh, you know, Eve, you're just here by yourself and you and Adam, and everything's perfect, but you're not aware of something. And what he said, scripture, Genesis 3 and 5, for God knows that when you eat of it, the fruit, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. Wow. To me, that's what woke culture promises.
SPEAKER_01You'll be like God. And that's a little g. Yeah. How sad is that kind of God? Oh my goodness. Anytime man thinks they can be a God, it's a little g and that doesn't get him too far at all. Yeah. Well, speak about scripture and uh a spiritual uh need to be woke. I wish more people were biblically woke to the truths of scripture. If they're gonna be woke to anything, let it be a truth that sustains an individual over the course of their lifetime, not something that's gonna shift and change every few years with now what is popular. What they call woke today used to be um someone just kind of wanting to agree with the person ahead of them so they would be, they would be, they'd fit in. Yeah, it was important to be popular, to dress this way, or have this kind of car, or to to say these kind of things. It was it was always trying to live up to some form of acceptance by other people so you can be in the know or you could be cool. Yeah. Woke is nothing more than that. And it's really sad that people have to go to those kinds of extremes to try to push on you a value system that's forever changing, and you'll buy into it, even believers. Yep. I see I see believers doing it. Uh believers, meaning Christians, perceived Christians, saying, you gotta be woke to this. We we gotta change our stance in the church on homosexuality or on gender issues or on um whatever it is that that we know in scripture has been a foundational truth from the beginning that does not change. They're trying to force us to change also that we can be woke to a culture. And what's scary about that is we would rather be woke to a culture of people we don't know instead of being woke to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, who didn't just talk about laying his life down for someone, he laid his life down for us. Why wouldn't we go with his script, his words that help us live a life that's going to exceed some of the unqualified voices today? Yeah. And and one thing I always tried to live my life on was never let an unqualified voice speak into my life. Unqualified mean they really don't know what they're talking about because they haven't been through that thing yet. You can't let somebody unqualified that's the boogeyman on social media try to force you to buy into something all that you feel like you are woke when you can completely, while trying to be woke, be asleep at the wheel of your life. Absolutely. And only look back over your shoulder 10 years down the road, and all you're gonna have is regrets.
SPEAKER_02Another, another scripture immediately passed when you said that that you want to you live your life in a way that you are opening yourself up to the truth of God's word and how he sees things, not how you see things or the voice, that unqualified voice. The Bible talks about that, right? The people will have itching ears, looking for anything to kind of feed their their mentality in the way that the world sees, the world system, the carnal system of the world, will always have this shifting sand, this sandcastle philosophy that we've been talking about. Yeah, it will always be moving and will never have a target. I I remember when we talked about this back when the um the original um onset of the racial divide in 2020 about how what do you even call African Americans anymore? Are we black? Are we black Americans? It keeps shifting, it keeps moving, and now the target shifted, and I don't know where to aim at. And those voices that are trying to tell us the rules keep changing the rules. Changing the rules. So I know that that's a frustrating thing, number one. And then I love to go back to this when you said looking at the way God sees things. Your principles are based on God's word, not on these other voices. Psalm 139, 23, and 24. Who gets to decide? And the Bible says, Search me, O God, and know my heart, try me and know my thoughts. We're looking for God to search us. We're looking for God to pay attention and say, hey, this needs to be adjusted. This needs to be adjusted. And then God sends godly people into our lives that confirm that word and confirm when there does need to be adjustment. But the idea that somebody, again, social media, the newest guru, the newest uh book. I've had so many books, apparently I'm supposed to have read by now. And I'm a very big reader, and I haven't read these books. And again, you look at this stack, it's like, well, you should have read all these books by now. And I can't keep up. And I'm a I read five or six books a month. And I'm like, this is not part of my, it's not what's feeding me now. If God wants me to be fed, I know I will go find the information. You're talking to a you know, a huge nerve right now, you're listening to one right now. I am not the guy that's ignoring stuff. I will be as woke as I need to be, yeah, but not beyond what God has called me to be. I've been called to be, as you said, woke to the kingdom, woke to the understanding of God's word, woke to the principles that never falter. I'm not called to be woke to the latest fad or even the latest assumption of injustice. Because there is somebody that tells me a lot better than you can. And that's that's what I hear when you say that.
SPEAKER_01And the people that are trying to lead this charge, a lot
of it comes from Hollywood. And what's so scary about that is half of these um stars and and they're actors now. You can't call them actors and actresses. Yes, yes. They're actors. We think we know their name, but their Hollywood name is not even their real name. It's true. Exactly. They're they're they're not woke to their own. They're not woke to their own identity. They don't even know who they are. Right, right. And how do they know who they are? They constantly are changing with the roles that they play. And those are the individuals that are gonna tell us about how many times we should be married to where we feel like, my gosh, we, you know, I'm married 30 some odd years now. Oh, I'm so old-fashioned. You're not woke, Steve. You're not woke to the today, today. It's gotta be happy. Yeah, you gotta be happy. You know, right there, that in itself, you gotta be happy. That that's such a lie. You deserve to be happy. Yeah, that's a lie, Alan. You don't deserve to be happy. Nobody deserves to be happy. You deserve to be healthy. Wow, yeah. That's what you deserve to be. Is you deserve to be healthy. And healthy will then bring you to a place where you're happy. But you can try. Try to put on a face like you're happy. Yeah. But if you're not healthy, you're never really happy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And you know where that comes from? The healthiness? This comes from that inner health of knowing who you are and being and being solid. Yeah. And we we we I I'll go back to something you said earlier about how we are we're just searching for the next person to tell us, oh, you know, follow this fad and follow this fad. And if I'm connected to this person, then everything's okay. Because if I can just like follow him and follow this lady or follow this media person or whatever. And then now I have this sense of, okay, now I'll be happy because they're giving me this sense of identity coming from them, versus knowing that that comes from God. And then as long as you're searching for that happiness, the whole feelings thing, I think you just touched on it. I know this is gonna be too deep for us to even go into. We could spend 10 podcasts on this. The fact is that this is a mentality. It is a it is a world system that is attempting to infiltrate both the kingdom of God and people who are on the fence. Let's just put it that way. There's people that are already bought in, they're not going anywhere, unfortunately. But the people who are on the fence are like, okay, well, which voice should I follow? You know, and the Bible talks about whether you turn on the right or to the left, you will hear a voice saying, walk, this is the way, walk in it, right? If we don't start turning more people in the body of Christ who we're speaking to, to that way, to avoid these other voices that are saying, oh, go this way, go that way, they're they're gonna they're gonna find themselves in just so much more trouble than they have to be. And they're gonna have to reprogram themselves all over again. You know, hopefully it's not too late for that. You know what I mean? I think there's a point where you just you've you've been too in, you I guess indoctrinated is the right word.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, I I would say I made a statement earlier. Don't let unqualified voices speak into your life. Right. Let me kind of back that up a little bit here. We buy into so many, so much of what people are saying today that we judge them based on what they say, and then we allow them into our life because of what they said. Yeah. And so they could be saying the greatest things out there. They can write the book on it. But if a person hasn't done it before saying it, they're not qualified to tell you about it. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Yeah, okay. Don't tell me how to have a happy marriage if you've been married three or four times. You don't you're not qualified. I'm sorry. I mean, you're not qualified. It could be great information. Put the information out there, but and I know some people saying, oh, you're so judgmental. No, this is truth, man. You you can't sit there and just on information alone live your life because the information is going to constantly change. Yeah. Now, qualified people are the people who have done it, then they can tell you about it. Exactly. Okay? Married all these years to my wife, I could tell you how to have a happy marriage. I can also tell you how to mess them up because I've gone through both of those experiences while I realized when I was doing things that were wrong that caused stress in my marriage. I wasn't happy in that marriage. She wasn't happy in that marriage. But then I changed some things and we learned some things. And praise God, we're where we're at today because of those principles. And somebody says, Well, it's only the goodness of God. Let me tell you, it's the goodness of God and the principles that God has given us. Yes. So I had to correct my wife the other day. She goes, Oh, we're so blessed. God has been so good to us with our family and our marriage. I said, True. But God says to us that we are to abide by his principles and God will bless us. He's not looking for all the glory for all that. He's saying, I want, here's where I get glory, Steve. I get glory when you walk out my principles and you then see the fruit and the harvest of it. That's it. Okay? Do you know how this is interesting? Twelve tribes of Israel in the Old Testament. Moses is having a problem with an insurrection because unqualified voices were trying to speak and saying, Moses and Aaron aren't the ones who have the word. They're not the ones that get the truth. We're the ones that have the truth. And so God says to Moses, we're going to fix this thing once and for all. He says, You get every tribe, one leader of every tribe of the tribe of Israel, and you get their staff and you bring them in to the tent of meeting. Leave them there overnight. Now these staffs were evidently made of some kind of wood. Because the next day when they went back, only one of those staffs were budding. They budded with beautiful flowers. They even had vines on them that had fruit. Eleven of those staffs, staff that they would walk with were bare. Only one produced fruit. God says the one that produces fruit is the one you listen to. And I would say to
people listening to this family broadcast, family business broadcast right now, you better listen to the people that have fruit in their lives. You look on their lives, and if there's no fruit, they're unqualified to speak to you. Whether they want you to think they're woke or not, the information alone does not give you fruit on your life. If you don't walk it out and apply it, then you're going to end up bare. And there's too many bare lives. Lives that are out there still wanting more. So you know what they do? They keep buying into this, they keep buying into that. And none of it brings them real fulfillment and real value.
SPEAKER_02And you shall know them by their fruit. Come on. That is like, that is such a again, why I almost feel weird when I start talking like this and we're talking like this. Because I feel like it should be common sense. Yes. I feel like this should be like, yeah. Of course, you're going to check and vet the people that speak into your life, the deepest parts of your life, whether you're going to get married or not, whether this person is the right spouse or not, whether I should follow this principle of culture or this principle of culture, whether I should buy into this, buy into that. Why wouldn't you? Thank God I had a father and a mother who believed that and I can see the fruit of their lives 50 years for them, 54, I think now, 54 years of marriage. I can look at them and say, okay, Dad, I think I need to listen to what they're doing. You gotta listen to you. I gotta pay attention. I gotta pay attention to Pastor Steve, and now I'm going on my 25. Like I'm I'm the same thing. The fruit is there. It doesn't mean I did everything perfect, but you're right. I made the right choices to correct the things that were wrong. Yeah. And the only reason I corrected those things in the right way is because I listened to the right voice. Had I listened to the wrong voice, I would have made the wrong mistakes, I would have made even more mistakes. Yeah. Trying to correct what was already wrong, which is what I think is happening with the woke culture. They are trying to apply the wrong principle to fix something, and they're going to end up with the same mistake.
SPEAKER_01Even worse. Even worse than before. Because the enemy loves that. Yep. Right voices helps us make right choices. Wrong voices causes us to make wrong choices. Well, today, you really helped me understand what woke is. Did my best. And I refuse to be woke to the things of this world. I want to be woke to the things of the kingdom. Hope you were encouraged today by our Family Business Podcast. Amen.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for listening to the Family Business Podcast with the Lessis. We appreciate you listening and learning with us as we just shared more about the Family Business. You know, I bet there's someone you know who could use this kind of advice and encouragement. So make sure to share this episode with them and their family because let's face it, family is everyone's business. If you want to be a part of our family, subscribe to the show right now on your favorite app and make sure to download the episodes so you can hear them at any time. Oh, and one more thing one of the best ways to help us spread the word about the family business with the Alesssies is by reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app. So help us out, write a review, and join us next time at the Family Business Podcast with the Alesi.