Conspiracy Theories

I have always fought shy of conspiracy theories for several reason. Many of them seem far-fetched and the product of eccentrics with bees in their bonnets who home in on only one aspect of the contemporary world. I have also probably been more influenced than I should have been by the sophisticated attitude that loftily sneers at people with tinfoil helmets and knows so much better because we're all rational now, aren't we? Mostly, though, it is because conspiracy theories are normally focused on the political and my interests have always been in the spiritual.

But there are multiple problems with this approach. For one thing, the Bible, especially the New Testament and specifically the Book of Revelation, is one long conspiracy theory. If you are a Christian, a real one, then you are a conspiracy theorist. No two ways about it. We live in a world of spiritual warfare in which demonic powers seek to corrupt God's creation, in particular that most important part of it which is the human race. 

The second reason is of more recent development. The political has seeped over into the spiritual using that word to describe the essential part of what makes human beings human. The dreadful lie, Marxist in origin and now universal in the ideology of the left, that everything is political has taken root everywhere and is believed because the spiritual has been more or less chased off the face of the Earth, certainly insofar as it might have any meaning or real relevance to life. Everything is really spiritual but everything has been made political now. This means that a spiritually concerned person has to take note of what is going on in the world today and cannot retreat to a position of inward detachment.

The third reason I have become drawn to the conspiracy theory point of view is the present time. In all seriousness, how can anyone not look at what has happened to the world over the last few months and fail to see the deep manipulation of human beings that makes them participants in their own enslavement? We are actively encouraged to fear each other, stay away from each other and cover our faces or be shamed. Last night I stood on a station platform waiting for a train in the open air as announcements were made that failure to comply with mandatory mask-wearing in all areas of the station would result in fines of one hundred pounds. This didn't appear to be enforced and a number of people paid no attention but the fact that this authoritarian announcement could be made unchallenged is extraordinary. The only reason I can come up with is that we have been so softened by relentless propaganda over the last 100 years that we are easy pickings unless we have some solid grounding in religion and by that I mean, as far as the West is concerned, Christianity. Other contemporary spiritual approaches will not save us from sin and evil because they can all be accommodated into those things. Only the light of Christ is strong enough to resist them which, by the way, is a very good argument for the truth of Christ.

Who are the most vilified people in the modern world? I'll give you a clue. It's the group who are most likely to resist the corrupt and dehumanising ideology of the modern world. The ones who built the civilisation that is currently being destroyed and who are painted as oppressive and cruel. Many of these people are also among the destroyers because they see some personal advantage to be gained but this group is also the place where you will find the greatest number willing and able to fight for freedom and truth, and that is why they must be undermined and are presented as fundamentally selfish and wicked. Conspiracy theory? Maybe, but I submit it's also true.

In the past I have, for reasons given above, inclined towards the popular view that things go wrong more because of human stupidity and greed than because of some dastardly plot. And if you are looking at the picture from a this worldly, purely human perspective, that may well be so. But you cannot just look at things from that perspective. The real plot is supernatural. The relatively long time span during which all the pieces have been manoeuvred into place proves that even if nothing else does. Plenty else does though. There has been a relentless whittling away at spiritual truths and their replacement with anti-spiritual and, more recently, anti-natural values, if values is even the right word. For they are actually non-values whose only real purpose is to oppose real values. But they have become accepted because we have lost our moorings in transcendent reality so have no grounding in anything real. We can be pushed in any direction because nothing actually means anything. This is always the case when a society loses faith in God. And that means that such a society is destined to go. It will collapse either from external attack or internal decay or both.

In the immortal words of Private Fraser (a terminally pessimistic sitcom character from the 1970s for non-British readers), "We're doomed!". Things will not get better. They will continue to deteriorate. But this is actually a cause for optimism. There is nothing eternal in this world and not meant to be but when outward things are this bad it means, paradoxically, that God is not far away. He is causing us to turn away from the wreckage of this world and towards him, the only place where truth and goodness and real beauty abide everlastingly. As the world descends further into lies and spiritual oppression and most people accept that because it appears to offer them safety and security and they have no faith in anything higher, remember that. When the world turns dark we must hold fast to our inner knowledge of the light that shines just beyond its horizon.