Conspiracy in the Church

by Garrett Soucy
 
Therefore, many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.” Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, “You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.” He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. So from that day on they plotted to take his life. (John 11:45-53)
 
When God called me out of sin, and I began to walk with Him, I was still smoking weed and still obsessed with conspiracy theories. Although it would be some time before I was aware of the Lord’s conviction over being high, He was working in me, even then, to draw me away from countless distractions and to the singular Gospel. There is a connection here between marijuana use and conspiracy theories, and it has a hermeneutic of suspicion as the unifying principle . . . but we’ll leave that for another time. One night I had gotten high and was sitting by the fire with a stack of books on the Vatican sex-abuse cover-ups, Jesuit alternative media plants, ancient cryptology, and the connections between Area 51 and Genesis 6. If someone had asked me what I was reading, I would have said, “Theology.” A wave of conviction suddenly came over me, and I was impressed by the reality that I had become a disciple of the darkness. I felt like such a thought wasn’t fair. I was walking with the Lord now. I was arguing for the authority of the Bible. I was letting people in on the truth, the very truth that would set them free. I was being a light in a corrupt world and exposing the deeds of darkness, or so I thought.
 
The truth is, I was a fool who ignored the warnings of Paul to Titus: Titus 3:9 But avoid foolish controversies, genealogies, dissensions, and quarrels about the law, for they are unprofitable and worthless.
 
Addiction to conspiracy theories is one of the most significant problems that has entered the church through the advent of the internet, corrupting countlessly bored and undiscerning Christian men. The first and greatest web-born disease would be pornography, but since conspiracy theories reside in the underbelly of late-night internet, there is shared territory between the two. Both pornography and conspiracy theories feed the fleshly appetite of secret knowledge. The man who is exiting a brothel or a porn-site and the man who is closing out a conspiracy website both leave with the two arrogant feelings: firstly, that they have gone in and known . . . and secondly, that nobody else knows.
 
In the above passage of Scripture, from John 11, we see that the single lesson that needs to be learned in regard to all conspiracies, true or imagined is that they are no match for the sovereignty of God. In the behind-the-scenes plottings of the ruling elites, the Holy Spirit is working the sovereign will of God right into the mouths of the conspirators. This is good news. The nations rage and the people plot, but it is all in vain. God has established his King on Zion, and the conspiracies against Him are humorous to Him. They are not a great threat. There is no need for Christians to be privy to every back-alley deal of world bankers and venture-capitalist occultists. The problem with conspiracies is that they encourage those investigating them to be overly impressed with the wrong characters from Psalm 2. We should be impressed by the power of God who sent His Son to earth in human incarnation. Instead, countless men are impressed by the various kings and kingmakers of the earth who are plotting in vain. Like strong wine, the internet has become a mocker that has made cowering fools of the household of faith.
 
Men who pursue conspiracy theories are men who refuse to avoid foolish controversies. I say this not because there are not dark deals going on behind closed doors. There are. Many of these ruling elites who are plotting and secretly ordering are also shaped by satanic worldviews. That’s not the issue. What makes the obsession with conspiracies a foolish controversy is that all conspiracies are whispered in an echo chamber. There is no end to the possibility of someone else manipulating what appears to be true . . . even to the conspiracy theorist. Have you ever asked a conspiracy theorist how they know their information on any given subject isn’t a false flag distraction aimed at confusing those truly in the know, like themselves?
 
We are to avoid foolish controversies. Keep looking at the verse in Titus because all of these things listed are issues with conspiracy theorists. Every one of them. That is because this is a spiritual issue called sin, and the Scripture is clear in its condemnation of it. These men are not simply interested in strange theories about the moon landing, the flatness of the earth, climate change, and 9/11; they are men who also obsess about the ancestry of UK and Arabic royalty and the genealogical connections to American families who have long-standing relationships with the Council on Foreign Relations and the Federal Reserve. These are men who love to fight about their internet findings and will cause dissension under the guise of “setting people free.” They quarrel about the law, both Biblical and civil and if we follow the Scripture through to its logical conclusion, these men oppose the Scriptures in their thinking that any of this is profitable or of any value. The internet is a mocker.
 
Again, it is important to note that much of what we are discussing that should be avoided by the man of God is being passed off as investigative journalism. Indeed, in our day of celebrity bloggers and YouTube superstars, much of this has the aesthetic appeal of legitimate journalism. There is no website that you can send parishioners to in order to vet information for them. It is not an issue of mainstream media or independent journalism. It is an issue of spiritual discernment. A competent reader should be suspicious of mainstream conglomerated news sources. This is not a condemnation of independent journalism. It’s a condemnation of spiritual darkness and blatant ignoring of very clear Scriptures.
 
Deuteronomy 29 tells us that the secret things belong to God. They do not belong to us. When God brings things into the light, they should be dealt with in a Biblically just manner. The government is a servant of God, and if they tolerate evil inner-workings, God will expose them and bring them down. He always has. Always.
 
Here is the litmus test: does your diet of information gathering bolster your faith in God’s sovereignty or increase your suspicion of anyone who is in a position of power? It doesn’t matter if your primary source is Fox News or The Midnight Messenger. Are you gathering knowledge and growing in faith, or are you gathering knowledge and losing your Gospel constitution? If you believe yourself to be the former, but your loved ones accuse you of being the latter, return to Titus 3:9.
 
In addition, one of the primary religious errors that is housed by the world of conspiracy theory is that it breeds Gnostic and Marxist tendencies. This is a strange statement to make seeing that many of those who would fit the bill of a conspiracy theorist tout themselves as being conservatives and Christians. In short, Gnosticism advocates that everything material is bad and gets in the way of the truth which is hidden, secretive, and spiritual in nature. A Marxist critique of culture emphasizes the idea that if someone has power, then they got it immorally and therefore are to be rejected as evil. This is the conspiracy theorist. It doesn’t matter who the person is, from Billy Graham to Mother Theresa to John MacArthur. If they have power, they are corrupt. In this, we see that all conspiracy theorists are Marxists.
 
Listen to the words of Rousas Rushdoony: Many people, who believe that they represent true righteousness, are still Satanists, because they firmly believe that the past, present, and future are controlled by a secret cabal of Jews, Germans, international bankers, secret societies, or other similar groups of conspirators. To recognize the existence of some conspiracies is one thing. To ascribe to conspiracies the power to determine history is another thing: it is blasphemy. The Biblical faith is that man’s conspiracies are a “vain thing” because God absolutely predestines and governs all history . . . All history, including its conspiracies, move entirely in terms of God’s purposes.
 
So, we stand corrected. It’s not that all conspiracy theory is Marxism, no, according to Rushdoony, it’s all satanism.
 
Olivier Ouvry and others have worked on the connection between conspiracy theories and porn addiction in men and equate it to perpetual adolescence. While the psychologist can recognize a perpetual unwillingness to grow up in the “fake sex” with girls of pornography and the immature assumption that all authority is evil of conspiracy, the Christian should see it not only as a lack of maturation but a lack of faith.
 
What is one to do? Our churches are filled with grandpas and teenage boys who are angry and seething at anyone who has ever been edified by a Billy Graham sermon because they don’t know “the truth.” What is the church to do? The church is to do what it has always done. It is to preach the Word of God in the fulness of its counsel. It is to practice church discipline and to make disciples by teaching people to obey the Word of God, including passages like Titus 3:9. Rather than grabbing for the fruit of power that is offered in the esoteric knowledge of conspiracies, exhort these men to trust in the sovereignty of God. Rather than obsessing over the evil that is not being punished in high places, encourage these men to prepare their own hearts to stand in front of God. Encourage these men to repent of believing the lie, that they themselves are the few whose eyes are opened, perched atop the pyramid over all the other sheep who simply do what they’re told. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. This is grace and mercy that is given out to corrupt kings, to gullible servants, to occultists, to neighborly grandmas, and to conspiracy theorists. We were all once darkness, but now we are light.