Woke Capital and Revelation

By Joseph D'Hippolito Published on July 14, 2020

Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy wants white Christians to shine the shoes of black people as a sign of repentance for racism. In November, the chain announced it would discontinue supporting the Salvation Army. They won’t support the Fellowship of Christian Athletes either. Why? Because they oppose same-sex marriage. 

For 74 years, Chick-fil-A dedicated itself to promoting Christian principles. But, in recent months, the company joined the mass surrender to “woke” capitalism.

“Woke” capitalism might seem to be a recent trend. It’s not. It reflects a worldview as ancient as the human race itself. A worldview mentioned in the Book of Revelation.

The More Things Change…

Revelation 18 discusses the fall of Babylon. Babylon is the city that signifies the culmination of humanity’s rejection of God. That rejection involves embracing luxury, vanity and decadence. In that light, the following verses make perfect sense:

The merchants of the world will weep and mourn for her, for there is no one left to buy their goods. She bought great quantities of gold, silver, jewels, and pearls; fine linen, purple, silk, and scarlet cloth; things made of fragrant … wood, ivory goods, and objects made of expensive wood; and bronze, iron, and marble. She also bought cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle, sheep, horses, wagons, and bodies — that is, human slaves.

The merchants who became wealthy by selling her these things will stand at a distance, terrified by her great torment. …And all the captains of the merchant ships and their passengers and sailors and crews will stand at a distance. … And they will weep and throw dust on their heads to show their grief.

The second half of verse 23 applies to our own day all too well:

For your merchants were the greatest in the world, and you deceived the nations with your sorceries.

The Merchants’ Manifest

So what are those “sorceries”? One is the LGBTQ agenda. Every June, Western corporations promote “Pride Month” by participating in LGBTQ parades. They decorate their products with rainbow motifs.  They express public support for the cause.

But the LGBTQ demand for blind acceptance contradicts the divine design for sex. That is, sex is reserved for one man and one woman in marriage. For this reason, states Genesis 2:12, does a man leave his parents and cleave to his wife, so they may become one.

Focus on the Family described the sanctity of sex in marriage like this:

Sex is a holy mystery. It’s a powerful bonding agent that shapes and affects the relationship between a man and a woman as nothing else can.

That’s why Biblical injunctions against non-marital sex are so severe. The Apostle Paul even wrote about the promiscuous who contracted sexually transmitted diseases. They “suffered within themselves the penalty they so richly deserved.”

Embracing LGBTQ sexuality involves espousing another “sorcery,” the all-encompassing doctrine of identity politics. Since George Floyd’s death, corporations immersed themselves in the cascade of supporting Black Lives Matter. Only a racist would deny that black lives matter. But the racists at Black Lives Matter deny that anyone else’s life matters.

In biblical worldview, all are equal before God — regardless of race, gender or class. Everyone is created in God’s image, and everyone is subject to divine condemnation for sin. For the Christian, Jesus provided the ultimate reparation for sin throughout the ages. Those who repent and embrace that reparation become supernaturally adopted sons and daughters of God. That is regardless of race, gender or class.

The Ultimate “Sorcery”

Yet neither Babylon nor her merchants have any interest in the divine plan. All that matters is the here and now. “The fool says in his heart that there is no God.” That rejection is the ultimate “sorcery.” It also provides the ultimate rationale for “woke” capitalism.

“Corporate behavior evinces the dominant beliefs of society,” wrote Matthew Continetti of the American Enterprise Institute. “America’s corporations, forever in search of yield, cannot afford to ignore the reality that young consumers are drifting left.”

By serving “Babylon,” the merchants participate in a protection racket.

Continetti called it a “form of insurance.” “(Corporations) must be relatively unmolested by the heavy hand of government.”

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New York Times’ Ross Douthat, in one of his columns, described what he called the “Peace of Palo Alto.” It’s a reference to Silicon Valley. In that arrangement, Douthat wrote, “a certain kind of virtue signaling … is offered to liberalism and the activist left preemptively in the hopes that having corporate America take their side in the culture wars will blunt effort to tax or regulate our new monopolies too heavily.”

In the process, those tech monopolies, like multinational corporations as a whole, reinforce “woke” totalitarianism.

“These companies also are imperialistic in pushing their social and political views elsewhere, and not being afraid to use threats when challenged,” wrote William L. Anderson. Anderson is a fellow at the Mises Institute.

Perhaps nothing defines the fundamental enmity between “woke” capitalism and biblical values better than the following irony:

Nike pays Colin Kaepernick millions to endorse its footwear while celebrating his views, yet pays its Asian workers a pittance for making that footwear.

 

Joseph D’Hippolito has written commentaries for such outlets as the Jerusalem Post, the American Thinker and Front Page Magazine. He works as a free-lance writer.

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