Summary: Bad fruit, bad root, bad witness. Conspiracy theories inspire fixation on disputable matters that distract from the important things. 3 reasons Yeshua’s disciples ought to avoid them.
Should disciples of Jesus be known for helping the poor, or being expert pundits on why the earth is flat?
Did God command us to help widows, orphans, and the oppressed? Or did He tell us to get angry at the Elite Globalists for covering up THE TRUTH about 9/11?
Should we be known for reflecting God’s character: slow to anger, gentle, kind, choosing peace instead of strife, longsuffering, wise and stable-minded? Or should we be like chief conspiracy theorist Alex Jones:
What in the living hell did I just watch? pic.twitter.com/nPq7a1w4Cx
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 10, 2016
I’m going to argue in this post that disciples of Yeshua should do more good works and focus less on conspiracy theories. I argue this because I believe our faith should make us better people.
Bad witness
“Hey there. I can see you’re hurting; going through tough times. I want you to know that I’m here for you, God loves you, and that aliens are here on earth mating with human beings producing the Nephilim.”
ಠ_ಠ
No sane person would make such a statement, but this is the vibe put out when we religious people babble about conspiracy theories.
Paul in the New Testament tells us to “avoid foolish controversies and genealogies and arguments and quarrels”; surely conspiracy theories are the modern equivalent. We hurt the credibility of our message about God and Messiah when we dilute it with worthless matters of dispute.
Why on earth should non-religious people be drawn to our message about God when we’re babbling about how the Pope will be baptizing aliens who come through portals to other worlds opened by the Large Hadron Collider?
Were I overweight and a dietician told me to cut carbs, reduce sugar intake… and to consume the fecal matter of East Zimbabwean lemurs, I would discard everything he said and hope to avoid any future encounter with that crazy dietician.
If I had high blood pressure and a doctor told me to get rest, take blood pressure medication… and to climb Trump Tower before the Anakim have a chance to cover up THE TRUTH about Lee Harvey Oswald, I’d run far away from that quack and rightfully look elsewhere to fix my health problems.
So it is with God’s people who spout foolish conspiracy theories.
People need God and are searching. The world is not short on oppressed people. Injustice, poverty, disease are the norm. The world needs God and needs God’s people.
They come to us, and we tell them about God, the righteous guide to living found in God’s word…and we tell them that FEMA and the NWO Satanists purchased 4 million body bags and built a massive prison complex in preparation for the coming One World Government.
Any reasonable person would look elsewhere for spiritual renewal.
We disqualify ourselves as useful instruments in God’s hand when we waste our time on the Bazaar of Secret Knowledge known as conspiracy theories.
Bad Fruit
Conspiracy theorists are often fixated on their newfound secret knowledge. They want to tell everyone about it. And they feel personally insulted if you humbly question the conspiracy.
I was once good friends with a believer (“Jack”) who had a fixation on conspiracy theories. We were pretty close. I helped him through a tough divorce. I have a distinct memory of Jack literally crying on my shoulder as his family split and he lost his house. I tried to help Jack and be a friend to him in a difficult time.
I often would meet Jack for lunch. I sat down at the table and asked, “Hey Jack, how’s it going?”
“Not good. There’s going to be a big false flag operation going down this Tuesday. Obama’s using it to divert attention away from his meeting with the Elite Cabal. It’s all happening. Just you wait.”
I’d try to redirect the conversation to something more fruitful, but he kept turning it towards conspiracy theories.
This was a regular occurrence.
At a dinner with friends Jack once told us, “These damned Elitistists. They want to take me and my family, they want to take over this country. They want to take you guys. But the sheeple just don’t care.”
When I challenged him, asking who “they” were – asking for names of the people in the mysterious cabal responsible for all the world’s ills – he got flustered. When I pressed further, he retorted, “Well, you’re just ignorant!”
The rest of that night he was angry with me.
At my home some months later, I spoke privately with Jack and told him that we as Yeshua’s disciples must not be fixated with conspiracy theories.
“I’M NOT FIXATED ON THEM!!!”
Thou doth protesteth too much.
Conspiracy theorists tend to have an unhealthy fixation on conspiracies. In Jack’s case, it got to the point he was no longer known as Jack the follower of God and disciple of Messiah, but Jack the Whacky Conspiracy Theorist.
Where was the kindness and joy and peace and self-control that’s supposed to characterize the disciples of Jesus? If it was there in Jack, it was buried. Instead of the fruit of the Spirit, I witnessed from him anger, bitterness, suspicion and paranoia. Anger at those in authority…even in his local congregation! He jumped from one congregation to another as the elders in each congregation supposedly conspired against him.
Why do conspiracy theories tend to cause an unhealthy fixation? It’s a result of a cycle that builds up the conspiracy’s importance in the mind of its adherent:
- Discovery: The truth is being hidden from us by [powerful/rich/elite/government/Illuminati/oligarchy]?!
- Dissemination: Tell everyone about THE TRUTH!
- Defense: Face resistance and skepticism. Dig in my heels further defending THE TRUTH!
- Deception: There’s contention between me and my “friends” because of my stand for THE TRUTH! I’m the righteous remnant; everyone is deceived!
- Denial: Isolate myself from those former friends. Acquire new friends who won’t be as blind and ignorant as my last “friends”!
Repeat.
This vicious cycle repeats, and with each cycle the conviction about the conspiracy grows stronger.
Eventually, the person is defined by, characterized by, obsessed with, and fixated on, the conspiracy theory.
In my 30 years of faithfulness to God through Messiah, I have yet to see any good fruit come from conspiracy theories. Have you? I see anger, I see bitterness, I see distrust and paranoia. But I don’t see good fruit.
A man at our local congregation was a conspiracy theorist. I told him I’ve never seen good fruit from conspiracy theories. He replied that he had come to knowledge of Torah through some 9/11 conspiracy theory material (?), and thus, conspiracy theories produced good fruit in him.
I had no answer.
But a few months later, we discovered the man had been abusing his wife. In retrospect, I wish he had never known the Torah, because his actions diminished God’s reputation. In retrospect, a faith discovered through conspiracy theories isn’t a firm foundation of salvation. In retrospect, this “good” fruit was in fact rotten.
Bad root
The bad fruit of conspiracy theories emanates from a bad root: they often originate in anti-Semitism.
Conspiracy theories almost invariably share a common trait: the rich and powerful are hiding truth from the common man.
But who are the “rich and powerful”? Why, Jews of course! In classic anti-Semitic fashion, conspiracy theories often claim it’s the powerful Jews of the world who are the ones conspiring to keep THE TRUTH from the common man.
Take the silly but innocuous-sounding Flat Earth conspiracy theory. The idea is world governments, space agencies, and private commercial space organizations across several decades have lied in perfect unison about the geometric shape of the earth. That means photos, recordings, and even live video footage are doctored (on-the-fly live Photoshopping - impressive!) to hide the “reality” of a flat earth.
SpaceX, the private commercial space exploration company, recently launched the first re-usable rocket, set to make space travel as cheap as air travel. Since SpaceX live streams footage from their rockets, Flat Earth conspiracy theorists like the one in the above video have to explain away the globe earth clearly visible in the live footage.
A critical mind will ask, “Why would all these governments and space organizations and private companies lie about the shape of the earth?”
The answer can be found on the various Flat Earth Facebook groups: it’s because the Jews control all of them.
Here’s a snippet I just took from one prominent Flat Earth group’s Facebook page, blaming Jews for “the globe earth lie”:
Get it? All the world governments and space agencies and private companies are lying about the flat earth because they’re controlled by Jewish kabbalists (mystics) who are trying to hide God from the common man.
From a Flat Earth Facebook group page:
“Satanic Freemason Kabbalistic Paganism.” ಠ_ಠ
I’m not quite sure I understand their reasoning. Kabbalists, the Jewish religious mystics who believe in God and devote their lives to prayer and Scripture have conspired to hide the reality of a flat earth in order to…deceive people into thinking there’s no God? There is no logic to these statements.
Why would kabbalists – religious Jews who believe in God – do such a thing? According to the Flat Earth conspiracy, it’s because they’re Jewish Kabbalistic Pagan Satanists…who believe in God yet try to hide God from the world? And how is lying about the shape of the earth hiding God?
This makes so little sense, I suspect the people writing this Flat Earth propaganda have never actually met a Jewish person in real life, let alone a Jewish kabbalist.
The Flat Earth conspiracy theory at its root blames Jews for creating the lie of a globe earth. It is one of many conspiracy theories functioning as vehicles for anti-Semitism.
Not all Flat Earthers realize its anti-Semitic root, of course. If that’s you, if you’ve never heard of the anti-Jewish root of the Flat Earth conspiracy theory, I humbly suggest you re-evaluate the theory. Find out who is being blamed for keeping the truth from you. And if you find that Jews are being blamed, have the courage to do the right thing and move beyond it. Disciples of the Jewish Messiah ought to have nothing to do with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Conclusion
Don’t waste your time on conspiracy theories. Instead, be known for doing the things God told us to do: caring for the widow and orphan, feeding the hungry, standing with oppressed people.
Real Torah observance: Animated by Torah, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (right) stood against the oppression of blacks in 1950s America. Despite being a white Jew, he marched with a Torah scroll alongside black Christians holding crosses. Be like Heschel; be remembered for good works.
In my 3 decades as a Messianic believer, I’ve never seen good fruit come from conspiracy theories. “That guy who always talks about conspiracy theories” tends to be a bitter, obsessed, paranoid person. Don’t be that guy. God has called you to something higher.
Be known for doing good. Let your faith in Messiah make you a better person.
- When you’re dead, who will fondly remember your diatribes about how vaccines cause autism?
- When you’re dead, who will talk about your powerful Flat Earth arguments at your eulogy?
- When you’re dead, will God say, “Well done, good and faithful servant who exposed the Elite Kabbalistic Pagan Satanists who hid THE TRUTH about 9/11 from you”?
When you’re dead, conspiracy theories don’t matter.
You know what matters when you’re dead? The impact you had on the world, on your family and friends, and what you did for God. Did you feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help people in need? Yeah, they’ll talk about that at your eulogy. You’ll be remembered for what you did. God will reward you for those things, too.
That’s a life worth living. That’s worthy service to God. That’s what we should focus on, fine Kineti readers.
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