The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness. Salem Books. 214 pages. 2021
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If you are tired of all of the wokeness in our culture, this hilarious new book from the folks at The Babylon Bee is for you. On the other hand, if you want to be woke, and thus be on the right side of history, this book is also be for you.
I’ve been a fan of the Christian satire site The Babylon Bee for several years. The book is creative and extremely funny as it looks at wokeness in America (and it doesn’t even touch on our military (perhaps in volume 2), and uses stick figure illustrations throughout.
To give you a flavor of the book, here is their definition of what being woke means:
“Realizing the problems in your life are not your fault. In fact, when you really think about it, nothing is your fault. Blame everyone else for your problems. This is the first step to being woke.”

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BOOK NEWS ~ Links to Interesting Articles
BOOK CLUB ~ Providence by John Piper
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The authors begin by stating “Let’s start things out here by getting one important thing out of the way: You are a racist, misogynist, patriarchal, and bigoted oppressor.” Some of the topics the book addresses are rioting (sorry, peaceful protesting in the name of justice), intersectionality (don’t worry, there is a glossary at the end of the book), tweets for white people to sound less racist, religion, race (one of the most important keys to being woke is to think about race at all times), feminism, the LGBTQ+ movement, pronouns (guides are provided to help you pick and display on social media the best pronouns for yourself), the true story of American history, how to be offended about everything, microaggressions (remember, there is a glossary), how to guide your church on its woke journey, SCIENCE, climate change, Black Lives Matter, a guide to rioting (what to wear and bring), fighting the culture war, entertainment, how to use social media, education, and raising woke children and teens.
The Babylon Bee Guide to Wokeness is a hilarious and creative look at wokeness in America. The book is certainly not for everyone, and is guaranteed to offend some.
Below are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

• Intersectionality is a concept wherein you can add oppression points to yourself for every oppressed identity you can even remotely identify with. Even if it’s a stretch. The game, then, here in Wokeland is to find as many of these identities as possible and apply these labels to yourself so you can feel righteous—and so you can get more money from the government and blame everyone else for your problems.
• It’s important to remember that your problems are not your fault. They are the fault of the oppressor class. Your parents? Oppressors. Your teachers? Oppressors. People with a different skin color than you? Oppressors. Anyone who disagrees with your woke worldview? You guessed it. Oppressors.
• Any religion is acceptable except Christianity. Yes, we prefer if you’re an atheist who simply bows to the whims of the state—but any religion that’s OK with social justice is useful for us woke folks. The main thing is that your religion must conform to every demand of wokeness.
• If you’re a white Christian American male, you’ve got a real problem, because your entire existence is basically a plague upon the earth. You need to spend all your days online apologizing to people from superior countries for the place you’re ashamed to call home.
• Race is a social construct created by white people to excuse their oppression of black and brown bodies. It’s also the most important thing about you.
• One of the most important keys to being woke is to think about race at all times. Every time you meet people, you should be thinking primarily of their skin color, because it’s their single most defining characteristic.
• To see race from a woke perspective, you must understand that there are really only two races: white people and the oppressed.
• If you really care about the oppressed minorities of the world, you will make every effort to be less white.
• No matter what gender you identify as, you MUST be a feminist if you want to be part of the woke movement.
• In order to understand trans reality, you must accept the idea that gender is no longer a biological reality, but rather a social construct used to—yes, that’s right—OPPRESS PEOPLE.
• Pronouns are everything. They are your badge—the identifying marker that will separate you from the outsiders, the science deniers, and the unbelievers. Pronouns are your mark that identify you as being on the right side of history. They are how everyone will know you’re woke!
• Every little thing that happens in life must reinforce the idea that everyone around us is an oppressor and we are innocent, oppressed victims.
• Microaggressions are like attacks on your person, except your attacker doesn’t even know they’re attacking you.
• One of the easiest ways to tell woke people from non-woke people is how much systemic oppression you can see in everyday life. If you’re woke, you will see oppression in everything, even if it’s not there.
• Make sure to preach long sermons on the collective guilt of whiteness until your church members feel totally rotten about all the bad things other white people did in the past.
• Hundreds of years ago, people followed religion. Today, we follow SCIENCE, which is smarter and far superior to religion and must replace religion in every corner of society.
• As a follower of wokeness, you must train yourself to have the discernment to tell good SCIENCE from bad “science.” Simply put, if it doesn’t advance the woke agenda, the “science” is false and should be rejected.
• You must vote for candidates who are on the right side of history. This means Democrats. No matter how immoral they are, you must vote for them if you want to go down in the history books as a Very Good Person.
• You can also fight the culture war by buying the right products and supporting companies that virtue-signal that they believe the right things (which is basically all of them).
• According to woke doctrine, the main purpose of entertainment is actually to beat you over the head with relentless woke messaging while constantly reminding you of injustice that happens all around you.
• The number one rule of education is this: Parents are the worst. They must be treated as an adversary and obstacle to your students’ woke enlightenment.
• Modern public-school teachers have spent years studying the art of indoctrination, so it’s best to leave most of the teen-raising to them. Where else will your kids learn porn literacy and intersectional anti-capitalist activism?
• College will take your kid across the woke finish line. These people are true masters. Usually within one semester, your kid will be hating his conservative relatives, throwing bricks, and burning businesses in Minneapolis.
  

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• Study, Savor and Share Scripture: Becoming What We Behold. My wife Tammy has published a book about HOW to study the Bible. The book is available on Amazon in both a Kindle and paperback edition. She writes “Maybe you’ve read the Bible but want to dig deeper and know God and know yourself better. Throughout the book I use the analogy of making a quilt to show how the Bible is telling one big story about what God is doing in the world through Christ. Quilting takes much patience and precision, just like studying the Bible, but the end result is well worth it.”
• My Book Reviews. Here are more than 400 of my book reviews on Goodreads.

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BOOK CLUB – Won’t you read along with us?

Providence by John Piper

The providence of God is his purposeful sovereignty by which he will be completely successful in the achievement of his ultimate goal for the universe. God’s providence carries his plans into action, guides all things toward his ultimate goal, and leads to the final consummation.
John Piper draws on a lifetime of theological reflection, biblical study, and practical ministry to lead readers on a stunning tour of the sightings of God’s providence—from Genesis to Revelation—to discover the all-encompassing reality of God’s purposeful sovereignty over all of creation and all of history.
Exploring the goal, nature, and extent of God’s purposes for the world, Piper offers an invitation to know the God who holds all things in his hands yet remains intimately involved in the lives of his people.
You can download the PDF of the book free from Desiring God.
Watch this six-minute video as John Piper talks about the book, and this interview with Dr. Joe Rigney of Bethlehem College & Seminary.
This week we look at Chapter 26: Natural Human Willing and Acting. Here are a few quotes from the chapter:

• He can and will turn the hearts of our adversaries from animosity to peace when he pleases. The disposition of the heart and the behavior of the mouth and hand are in the sway of God’s providence.
• God holds the right and power to bring about emotions in human hearts that have the effect of creating behaviors that serve God’s purposes,
• Proverbs 21:1 is part of a larger theme in Scripture that inclines us to see God’s heart-turning power as unrestricted: the king’s heart is always in the hand of the Lord, and he always turns it wherever he will.
• Human willing and doing are not finally decisive in determining the way God’s mercy is shown. God, in his absolute freedom—rooted in his being as God—is finally decisive, not human willing or doing.
• Suffering will come—especially for those committed to doing good and to loving their enemies. But take heart. God is sovereign. No suffering befalls you apart from the merciful providence of God.
• If we rest in the wise and good providence of God in all our plans, we will be confident people, and peaceful. Because we will know that whatever details of our plan don’t happen, God’s merciful providence holds sway.
• The pervasiveness of God’s providence is not limited by human willing, but our willing is encompassed within that providence.
• God’s providence extends not only to the processes of decision making about what we will do, but also to the circumstances that determine if our decisions will succeed or not.
• The providence of God is pervasive. It encompasses, in its sway, all human willing and doing, from kings to paupers. And it superintends all circumstances that give that willing and doing success or not. It works all things according to the counsel of God’s will (Eph. 1:11).
  

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