Wimpy, Weak, and Woke (Book Review)

“We think that for a general about to fight an enemy, it is important to know an enemy’s numbers, but still more important to know the enemy’s philosophy” (G.K. Chesterton).^[1]

Imagine living in a world of chaos, complete irrationality, and histrionics, a world where reason, history, and reality do not exist or no longer matter. Imagine living in a world where people who claim to be “oppressed” and “powerless” can riot in the streets with impunity and use their “marginalized”[2] status to get you fired or charged with hate crimes and dragged through court for years.

Wait, we do not need to imagine this.

Ever wonder what the heck^[3] is going on in America and the west in the 2020s? A lot of Christians, conservatives, and normal people are asking this question. John L. Cooper, front man for the Christian hard rock band Skillet and Christian political commentator on his Cooperstuff YouTube channel, answers this question for us in Wimpy, Weak, and Woke.

Most have heard names like Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud, but there are several dozen others who laid the foundation for the faulty ideas prevalent in America today.[4] In this book, Cooper digs into the lives and ideas of these people. To begin with, most of them were vehemently anti-Christian. (One can imagine the applause that statement might receive today.) Many of them believed that human beings should be free to do as they please, especially sexually. (The crowd is on their feet.) It seems many believed that once Christianity and societal rules restraining sexuality were removed, the perfect socialist utopia will arise.[5]

Imagine.

For instance, Karl Marx’s adult life was a complete mess. He raged against the wealthy and the bourgeoise but was extremely lazy, sponging off his parent’s wealth. Speaking of sponging: He disliked bathing; but he loved drinking and “loved” his maid enough to father a child by her, but not enough to pay her. On the other hand, his wife (yep), bore him four children, only two of whom lived into adulthood before committing suicide. She seemed to think he was evil as did his father. He loved power, though. And the worldview he gave birth to brought death to tens of millions of people.

“I long to take vengeance on the One who rules from above” (Karl Marx).

Cooper intends to expose the false, lying, and evil philosophies in order to educate Christians. After all, as found in the title, there have been way too many Wimpy, Weak, and Woke Christians (or “Christians”) who have embraced parts of the false philosophies found in the book. Regarding Marxism, for example, he writes, “Do I sound extreme when I say that Marxism and its offshoots are diabolical, demonic, or satanic? Frankly, what I find extreme is how sympathetic modern Christians have become to atheistic worldviews, desperately attempting to find common ground with doctrines of demons.”[6]

“Now the Spirit explicitly says that in the later times some will desert the faith and occupy themselves with deceiving spirits and demonic teachings” (1 Timothy 4:1).

Talk about doctrines of demons: Did you know that for Freud almost everything was about sex? He believed children are sexual beings (with sexual feelings) and the relationship of child to parent is sexual in nature. (Project a lot?) Alfred Kinsey conducted sexual experiments on children and infants. (Read that again.) Yet Hollywood made a movie about him with A-list actors and reviews praised the movie.[7] Have you ever heard of John Money, who could be the father of the trans-movement? He experimented on a set of twins… and they both later committed suicide. The doctrines of demons which contribute to much modern thought comes, in part, from men who liked to have “sex”[8] with young boys, or who sexually abused children, or pedophiles, or men who were sadomasochists, or who ended up insane and/or in prison. One even shot and killed his wife.

“They are filled with every kind of unrighteousness, wickedness, covetousness, malice. They are rife with envy, murder, strife, deceit, hostility…” (Romans 1:29).

These people have been celebrated by Hollywood, music stars, and the elites. College and university professors are indoctrinating children and young people into their worldviews. Naïve Christians need to be informed. Unfortunately, because the onslaught has been so overwhelming in recent years, many Christians have ceded territory, tried to find common ground, or just plain caved. Years back, Francis Schaeffer prophetically warned against “compromise and accommodation” by the churches. Some Christians hear the word “justice” and they foolishly think the godless are using the word the same way the Bible uses it. Some hear the word “love” and naïvely think it is being used the way the Bible defines it. They should not be fooled.

Cooper writes, “The Church is called to be a prophetic voice to the culture, to expose lies, to preach the truth, and to call the world to repentance. But instead, much of the church has embraced the lies [and] attacked those who preached the truth…. We have become (1) weak: theologically and philosophically…. We have become (2) wimpy, by constantly apologizing for God’s character and His Word and trying to make peace with the world’s philosophies. And we have become (3) woke, by replacing biblical justice with critical social justice…”^[9] In other words, a Christian cannot ride-share (philosophically) with the atheist, the Marxist, or the unbeliever.

Read Psalm 1.

Cooper points out the death of George Floyd, the rise of BLM, riots throughout major cities, the rise of the militant LGBT, the election of Donald Trump, Covid, and even the overturning of Roe, were all major quakes in American Culture, bringing the battle to the forefront. Suddenly, some Christians (or “Christians”) decided they did not want to be “on the wrong side of history” as defined by the godless; they wanted to float easily downstream, especially since the mobs were so angry. Many seemed to say, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” “Go along to get along.” After all, who wants to be persecuted?[10] We can be better witnesses if the unbelievers don’t see our beliefs as in opposition to theirs. This is the unbiblical idea that first we must get them to like us before we tell them the truth.

Unfortunately, during the upheaval, people we knew as Christians began allying themselves with the godless and assuming the worlds’ viewpoint on some issues. This has happened before. Long ago, many churches departed from talking about sin, the incarnation, the atonement, and the physical resurrection of Christ from the dead. Instead, they exchanged the truth of God for the lies of Marxism and/or Critical Theory or Critical Race Theory (CRT). They became the churches that preach “social justice,” “economic justice,” Liberation Theology, etc. Cooper writes, “if pastors… [remain] focused on victimhood and grievance rather that victory through the cross, then we will not progress but regress. Either the power of the Spirit will make us victors, or the power of bitterness will make us victims.”^[11] Today some have fallen for the new mantras: “Cops are systematically murdering people of color.” “All white people are complicit.” (Voddie Baucham wrote extensively about these things in his book Fault Lines—Proverbs 18:17.) Don’t get me started on “open and affirming.” Did you know that some who call themselves Christians, actually rebuked Christians celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade?[12]

“To fear the LORD is to hate evil” (Proverbs 8:13).

“[There] is one path that we must not take,” Cooper writes. “Agreeing to join hands with the world in whatever endeavor they desire because ‘we ultimately want the same thing’ is folly. We do not want the same thing.”^[13] Unfortunately, the wimpy, weak, and woke Christians, while giving the unbelievers, rioters, etc., the benefit of the doubt, also began impugning the motives of traditional, historic, orthodox Christians, lecturing us that we need to stop preaching, telling people what the Bible says about morality, and calling people to repentance. They seem to believe we can never tell anyone anything about God’s Law or repentance unless we are sinless ourselves, the hypocrite or “Pharisee” charge. (Interesting that Peter, John, and Paul were still sinners but were allowed to preach the whole gamut of Scripture.)

They tell us we must change how we think. Do we not share the same Bible? Is it not our guide, our only rule for faith and practice? But when their interpretation is more aligned with the secularist’s idea of Jesus’ life and teaching, we come to an impasse. It is as though they never read how Jesus rebuked people (not only the religious), how He called the crowds children of the devil, how He called people to repent and told sinners to stop sinning. Jesus never told us we had to walk a mile in the shoes of the unbeliever. He did not assume the poor and marginalized were innocent. These moderns might remember Jesus saying, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” but forget that He said, “teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20). If they do remember the latter part, they think Jesus only went around saying “All you need is love” like the Beatles’ did. Do they forget the Son of God was on Sinai giving the Law to Moses?

Cooper does a great job pointing out the endless contradictions. (And all false worldviews bring contradictions.) For instance, “Secular social justice uses unlawful and unrighteous means to achieve what it sees as righteous ends.”^[14] Social justice is unjust. I have pointed out before that the “Hate has no home here” people hate a lot of people. The people who say all white people are lower on the moral evolutionary scale, are themselves racist.[15] And we all know the “tolerance” people are intolerant. That last one originates from a guy named Marcuse, whom Cooper discusses; he came up with the Left’s version of intolerant tolerance: “Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”^[16] You have probably met these people, the ones who do not play by the rules they want to enforce on you. Dictators and totalitarians do that.

Besides allowing themselves special dispensation, how do they solve their contradictions? Changing word meanings is part of their repertoire. Also, their philosophers tell them contradictions and nonsense can be embraced and that questioning their premises or conclusions, proves the questioner ignorant, complicit, racist, etc. One must be “woke”[17] to be able to see the subjective or relativistic “truth,” which is in itself a contradiction. (This is why they label things like logic, reason, and math oppressive and/or racist.)  Cooper writes, “Have you ever noticed that in the 2020s, some of the most judgmental, intolerant social justice warriors cannot express their beliefs reasonably?”^[18] He also writes, “Here’s the big secret: all this academic mumbo-jumbo is really just politically Leftist socialism wrapped in abstract, academic language…. Do you know how hard it is to convince people that what they see with their eyes [the consistent and evident failures of their worldview] is not real? It takes hours upon hours of pouring over postmodern literature to even understand what they are saying. This is because it is so absurd that it’s only possible to make people believe it by confusing everyone.”^[19] They live in cognitive dissonance, in unreality.

By the way, what is wokeness? Cooper says, “It’s a way of seeing the world through the primacy of victimhood and the demand for equity—everyone has the same outcomes—that ultimately redefines what justice is.” He continues, “It seldom makes lives better. In fact, it usually makes things worse. It’s not constructive because it’s usually rooted in bitterness at something that cannot be changed: the human condition. The cult of victimhood says, ‘We’re mad the world is the way it is, and we want it to change. We don’t know what we want it to be, or how to get there, but this must change now!’ Modern social justice does not know how to build a society because its tenets and origin story reject objective truth. On the contrary, the Bible tells us that there is absolute truth, which is the foundation for understanding how to live justly!”^[20] Later he writes, “We are living in the hyperreal,^[21] and so the demands of justice are unjust because they are disassociated from the truth.”^[22]

But a tension arises when people disconnect from truth and the real world. Failure becomes inevitable. One way to cure this is to promote ways for people to lose themselves or numb themselves. So, let people have their marijuana, provide other drug addicts with needles. Remove societal restraints on any kind of sexuality. (I am reminded of when Andrew Klavan said, “The Left wants you to be free, but they only want you to be free to do things that will enslave you.”) On the other hand, it is good to have a bunch of angry dissatisfied people on hand whom you can “gin up” to rage, riot, and destroy when it is needed. Blame their unhappiness on the traditionalists, the conservatives, the Christians. Their hopelessness and suicidal feelings are not because conservatives or Christians talk of standards, laws, and morality, it is because their own conscience is testifying against them or their worldview is untenable. Their utopia is not rising because their ways are towards disorder and death, but send in the community organizers to stoke the grievances.^[23]

Don’t get Cooper started on Critical Theory where, once again, we find hatred of Christianity, morality, and rationality. In CT, everything is oppression, including social norms, the traditional family, heteronormativity,^[24] traditional laws and policing policies, even climate change. Oh, yes, and you can make everything racist, too, just by adding the letter R (CRT). Remember the anti-logic, anti-math people? Critical Theory is anti-science unless the “science” furthers its philosophical aims. Instead of simply letting science “speak”[25] now it must be considered whether the science will oppress or marginalize certain groups. With CT, there is no objective truth, everything is from a person’s standpoint (standpoint epistemology). But if you are white, male, and heterosexual, your standpoint does not matter, oppressor! (This is completely opposite the biblical worldview. We must ask why anyone who calls themselves a Christian would partner with it?)

“Do not become partners with those who do not believe, for what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship does light have with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).

Cooper underscores that these philosophies and worldviews have never produced, are not producing, and will never produce heaven on earth or utopia. “It would bring clarity to Christians if we understood that God’s commands are not only moral in themselves but that they correlate with the world that God created,” he writes. “God created a moral universe that coincides with His moral laws so that obedience to God leads to human flourishing.”^[26] This would be of benefit even to the unbeliever in this world (though not in eternity). Read the book of Proverbs. Therefore, while ungodly worldviews promise flourishing, they bring about the opposite, chaos, degeneration, division, crime, and death. Watch the news, look around you, go on social media; the evidence is everywhere.

Riots, rage, destruction, threats, censoring, doxxing, de-platforming, lying, and using lawfare against anyone who disagrees with them or gets in the way of utopia is their praxis.[27] It is Nietzsche’s will to power. Again, I ask: How is it they call themselves “oppressed” when they can say and do as they please”? Meanwhile, the Christians or conservatives or normal people are supposed to grovel and cower before them at the risk of losing jobs or being confronted by the legal system if they do not bow. Which side truly has the power? “If you have to lower your voice and scan your surroundings to express any opinion at all—you have already lost freedom.”[28]

“When the wicked rise to power, people go into hiding; but when the wicked perish, the righteous thrive” (Proverbs 28:28).

But like Abbot and Costello constantly returning to “First base!” the Left constantly returns to sexuality. In Marcuse’s perfect world, human beings would work less and less, allowing more and more time for sexual gratification, whatever your preference. (And that literally means, whatever your preference.) Remember way back when, in the 1990s, when certain groups just wanted “equal treatment”? They told us it wasn’t fair they could not visit their “partner” in a hospital room or have inheritance rights? That is long gone. Now they demand conformity. “Rights” for “transgenders” followed immediately on the heels of Obergefell. (“Trans ideology is nihilism disguised as liberation,” Cooper rightly says.^[29]) Now we are beginning to see the push for pedophilia. Remember, Marcuse said the Left should be tolerated but not the right. So they criticize sexual scandals among the clergy or conservatives, especially pedophile scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, while they themselves promote sexual anarchy, NAMBLA, and access to children. As has been said, “It is easy to be a hypocrite when you have standards, but a belief without standards will produce no hypocrites.”

Cooper calls their idea of the ideal sexual-future society Orgtopia.

“Understand that the sexual revolution is the tip of the spear for tearing down Christianity.”^[30] Of William Reich, the father of the sexual revolution, Cooper writes, “This is not an overstatement. [Reich] believed that good orgasms could change the world, heal cancer, give one long life, etc.”^[31] Cooper continues: “He believed and taught that ‘a satisfactory genital sex life’ would lead to absolute liberation, not just for the individual but also for society.” Yes, if everyone had genital freedom, so to speak, other societal problems such as rape, sex crime, and even murder, etc., would vanish. (Does anyone think this theory corresponds to reality?) Romans 1 tells us different. Proverbs tells us different. People today are following Reich’s ideas without even knowing it.

“And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what should not be done” (Romans 1:28).

Pay no attention to the STDs, to AIDS, the depression, the high suicide rates, etc. Pay no attention to the mountains of dead babies. But enough about the dead babies. According to Cooper, Reich believed that sexually unsatisfied married people should seek sex elsewhere, that teenagers should be indulging themselves, and (sorry to say), that even children and toddlers should be having orgasms. Reich, we are told, promoted the “genital rights of children” and “encouraged parents to involve children in sex.”^[32]

They are “God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil” (Romans 1:30).

Then we come to the sixties’ influencers known as the Beatniks, who were little more than alternative-lifestyle, drug abusing, pedophiles. Not all will know who William Burroughs was, but he was an “influencer” of the sixties culture. When he died, the Village Voice (not a conservative paper by any means) categorized him as an “Addict, killer, pederast.” The more well-known Allan Ginsberg, famously said, “We’ll get you through your children.” Now you know why they want to teach LGBT to kindergarten and grade school children. Now you know why the drag queens want to read books to children in libraries. Do you now see whom this society is mimicking? Can we borrow the words of Christ here?

“You people are from your father the devil, and you want to do what your father desires” (John 8:44).

It is a battle of worldviews and too much ground has been ceded. Thus, throughout the book Cooper gives some personal proverbs, his Cooperstuff Rules for Life, such as my personal favorite: “Never listen to ‘wisdom’ from a pastor who has his pronouns listed.”^[33] But more important than his own rules, are the Bible-Binaries he presents: Proverbs 8:35-36 precedes “Any philosophy, authority, or system of government that rejects the wisdom of God in His Word will not only fail, but will also promote death”^[34] Hebrews 13:8 precedes “Any philosophy… built upon the concept of truth in motion will fail.”^[35] 1 Corinthians 14:33 is followed by, “Any philosophy… that rejects God’s Law which leads to order will fail.”^[36] And Psalm 89:14 precedes “Any philosophy… that denies God’s eternal standards and/or believes in an evolving standard of righteousness and justice will fail.”^[37]

“God is not a God of disorder” (1 Corinthians 14:33).

He writes, “God celebrated and rejoiced at the magnificence of His creation—its borders, limitations, and framework, and the beauty of His design. He looked upon His creation and said that His world was good. It was good in the sense that it was created for purpose, and each part fulfills its intended function. It works together to succeed, to thrive, to produce. His creation corresponds to His character…. He made the world in such a way that when you obey Him, you thrive in it because you are conforming to His good world…. Following God’s commands leads to life and blessing—positive results that are abundant and overflowing. Rejecting God’s commands leads to death and cursing—negative results that are abundant and overflowing.”[38] He continues, “The utopians would destroy all the plans of the Architect,” he writes. “Utopian ideas lead to failure, poverty, and create anti-producing and anti-flourishing societies.”[39]

“If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:23).

On the other hand, Christians have “the liberating power of the Holy Spirit; and this causes people to see the irrationality of these behaviors and addictions. Our minds become clear and sane because the ways of Christ work, but the ways of the not-Christ are anti-meaning, and anti-civilizational.”[40]

Let me string a few of his statements together:

“Some think that following Christ means that we’ll be better off when we die but worse off while we live. This is a complete inversion of the truth! We are far better off on earth with Christ than without Him. When we obey God, not only do we please Him, but we are also moving in the flow of the good world that He created.”[41]

“God created a physical world that is real, so the Christian must learn how God wants us to live in it. This is not only a moral statement, but a practical one. It brings glory to God when we choose His world over false reality. Secondly, we can only flourish in the real world because false reality is a lie.”[42]

“And because God’s moral commands coincide with the world He created, the more I become like Christ, the more I am in the flow of the Kingdom. Being in the flow of the Kingdom leads to life, producing and flourishing.”[43]

Woke Christians are just plain wrong.

Christianity has a different origins story. We have a different worldview, beginning, middle, and end.[44] In every generation we must discard the world’s way of thinking (Romans 12:1-3). We have His Spirit. We have His Word. We must conform to God’s truth, the “true truth” as Francis Schaeffer used to call it.  “Christians need reminding,” Os Guinness once wrote, “that they will not prove relevant unless they prove orthodox.” Cooper says, “We cannot employ secular worldviews in some Machiavellian ‘the ends justifies the means’ way. The blessings of obeying Christ will become apparent in a world of delusional people.”[45] In our thinking and our actions, we must conform to God’s Word. In our definitions of love and justice, in our sexuality, marriages, and families, in what we teach our children and allow them to be taught. “Return to training up your children in the faith.”[46]

Everything aligned with the truth.

Expose the lies.

John L. Cooper warns that we will be despised for it. 

“Do not be partners with them” (Ephesians 5:7).

I conclude with the words that appear at the very end of every single chapter in his book: “There is no such thing as utopia. It is a lie. It denies the sinful nature of man, the existence of a transcendent God, and it denies God’s created order. We must burn utopia to save the world.”

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[1] From an essay entitled Heretics.

[2] Blah, blah, blah is what I hear when one of the special Lefty words gets used.  

[3] I could have used the word “hell” and it would have been completely appropriate.

[4] Two other very interesting books could be recommended as well: R.C. Sproul’s The Consequences of Ideas and Dave Breese’s book 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave.

[5] Not even atheist Richard Dawkins seems to like that idea. Though he does not believe in Christianity, he sees any alternative as “truly dreadful.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mJj8xeGmw4

[6] Page 90 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[7] Because they agree with the sexual worldview that Kinsey espoused.

[8] Christians need to stop using the word “sex” for something that is not male-female.

[9] Page 18 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[10] I personally had a disagreement with a Christian brother who said that Jesus did not promise persecution. He emphasized the word “if” in John 15:18: “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first.” “IF” he pointed out, “IF.” I pointed to Jesus’ words just a few verses later: “If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20) and to Paul’s similarly unambiguous words: “In fact all who want to live godly lives in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12).

[11] Page 191 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[12] I am reminded of a quote I read elsewhere: “We do not hate our neighbors in opposing evil…. We oppose evil in order to love our neighbors [and God]” (Owen Strachan).

[13] Page 329 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[14] Ibid, page 324.

[15] In a Jordan Peterson YouTube speech, he says (this is edited): “Let’s get it clear what actually constitutes racism. It’s the attribution of a set of attributes to [an individual] based on their skin color. And so, to say that because you’re white that you’re somehow characterized by privilege and that privilege is associated with guilt for historical crimes: THAT’s racism. To attribute to the individual the characteristics of one of the groups to which they happen to belong, that’s the thing we’re supposed to be fighting. To talk about ‘white privilege’ is just that; it’s racist. Period. Obviously. Self-evidently. Because, it’s based on race. There are so many differences between people. You can’t pull someone out and say that well, ‘You’re the member of this homogeneous category system and I can ignore all your [other qualities and characteristics] and I can attribute to you this set of properties, including your, ‘Class Guilt.’”

[16] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Marcuse#The_New_Left_and_radical_politics

[17] Their version of born again.

[18] Page 258 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[19] Ibid, page 273

[20] Ibid, page 245.

[21] Hyperreal, he tells us, is a postmodern concept that since reality can no longer be known, we create counterfeit versions of reality that, when repeated enough, seem more real than reality.

[22] Page 293 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[23] I am reminded of a quote by Thomas Sowell: “Community activists have every incentive to exacerbate the problem(s) to the fullest… Calm would be the end of their job.”

[24] Another one of their stupid buzz words.

[25] We do not mean Anthony Fauci.

[26] Pages 28-29 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[27] Defined as “Activism plus practice.”

[28] Forgive me but, since I usually read five or more books at a time, I am not sure if I wrote this quote down from Cooper’s book or another book like

[29] Page 27 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.  

[30] Ibid, page 334.

[31] Ibid, page 226.

[32] Ibid, page 229.

[33] Ibid, page 30.

[34] Ibid, page 39.

[35] Ibid, page 73.

[36] Ibid, page 113.

[37] Ibid, page 183.

[38] Ibid, page 309.

[39] Ibid, pages 314-315.

[40] Ibid, page 328.

[41] Ibid, page 310.

[42] Ibid, page 141.

[43] Ibid, page 319.

[44] Read Gregory Koukl’s book The Story of Reality.

[45] Page 327 of Wimpy, Weak, and Woke, copyright 2023, John L. Cooper.

[46] Ibid, pages 333-335.