The aim of this arti­cle

The assump­tion that con­spir­a­cies are behind var­i­ous events is very wide­spread today, even in reli­gious cir­cles. In our arti­cle, we do not want to engage you in an analy­sis of the truth or false­hood of par­tic­u­lar con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Instead, we want to look at some bib­li­cal prin­ci­ples which can help you find a very dif­fer­ent approach to the labyrinth of con­spir­a­cies. There are, in fact, a num­ber of atti­tudes which the Bible dis­ap­proves of and which are com­mon to all con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. We encour­age every­one who hon­est­ly seeks the truth to find a clear assess­ment of these atti­tudes. Since we are Chris­tians, this arti­cle is main­ly aimed at those who are famil­iar with the Bible. How­ev­er, even if you are not, we hope that our arti­cle, with our com­ments on the bib­li­cal pas­sages quot­ed, will also make sense to you.

1 Introduction—The World of Conspiracies

Our world is very cor­rupt. Many peo­ple pur­sue their self­ish aims. They thirst for mon­ey and pow­er over oth­ers. In busi­ness and pol­i­tics, peo­ple often come to agree­ment on these evil inter­ests. Some­times they try to hide their plans from the pub­lic. Such con­spir­a­cies have occurred many times in world his­to­ry and have great­ly affect­ed its course.¹

How­ev­er, we must care­ful­ly dis­tin­guish between these real, proven con­spir­a­cies and what have come to be known as con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are but spec­u­la­tions about how politi­cians, gov­ern­ments or suc­cess­ful busi­ness­men influ­ence almost every aspect of our dai­ly lives. Many of these the­o­ries are polit­i­cal­ly-relat­ed such as the Sep­tem­ber 11 attacks or Holo­caust denial. Oth­ers ques­tion basic sci­en­tif­ic facts such as the Earth being round. There are also con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries that link sev­er­al spe­cif­ic the­o­ries togeth­er.

Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries cre­ate a world in which

• noth­ing is by chance,
• noth­ing is as it appears and
• every­thing is con­nect­ed.²

It is a world where you can trust no one and noth­ing. It is a world of fear where those in pow­er deter­mine the fate and des­tinies of indi­vid­u­als and even entire coun­tries. It is a world in which you can only rely on your­self. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists sug­gest that you can only pro­tect your­self by pos­sess­ing all the infor­ma­tion you need to see through the dan­gers that lie at every turn.

2 “All the earth is mine”—God, the Master of History

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries ascribe total con­trol to humans over the events in our world. How­ev­er, the Bible repeat­ed­ly empha­sizes that God’s prov­i­dence is con­tin­u­al­ly present here, even after the Fall. Believ­ers found peace and rest in this firm faith, as Psalm 23:1–4 express­es it³:

The Lord is my shep­herd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pas­tures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of right­eous­ness for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk through the val­ley of the shad­ow of death,
I will fear no evil, for you are with me […]

In the eight cen­tu­ry BC, God’s peo­ple in Judah were faced with a con­spir­a­cy that threat­ened their very exis­tence. The neigh­bour­ing king­doms of Israel and Syr­ia want­ed to attack Judah and depose Ahaz, its king. They planned to install their own man as king in Ahaz’s place, who would then sup­port their polit­i­cal aims. In the face of this threat, the peo­ple of Judah “shook as the trees of the for­est shake before the wind” (Isa­iah 7:2). In this des­per­ate hour the prophet Isa­iah addressed the fol­low­ing words of com­fort and warn­ing to his peo­ple:

For the Lord spoke thus to me with his strong hand upon me, and warned me not to walk in the way of this peo­ple, say­ing: “Do not call con­spir­a­cy all that this peo­ple calls con­spir­a­cy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall hon­our as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanc­tu­ary⁴ […] (Isa­iah 8:11–14)

This con­spir­a­cy cer­tain­ly stirred up the peo­ple of Judah. They pan­icked about what would take place. Although it was a real con­spir­a­cy, Isa­iah told them not to call it such, because doing so just increased their fear. Rather, he turned their atten­tion to fear­ing and hon­our­ing God instead of wor­ry­ing about this dan­ger. They should trust God’s good­ness and pro­tec­tion, which would give them inner peace. Thus, God would even­tu­al­ly save them from the hos­tile armies. Peo­ple who do not fear and hon­our God, do not expe­ri­ence his dai­ly care. They eas­i­ly open up for news about dan­gers and fright­en­ing con­spir­a­cies.

Some con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are cir­cu­lat­ed by reli­gious groups, who con­nect them with faith. But con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries gen­er­al­ly do not count on God’s prov­i­dence. Though the Bible does not play down the pow­er of evil, it upholds that evil can nev­er be stronger than God. God is the Cre­ator and Sus­tain­er of the world. Scrip­ture con­sis­tent­ly describes him as the mas­ter of his­to­ry, who is above all influ­en­tial rulers:

Blessed be the name of God for­ev­er and ever, to whom belong wis­dom and might. He changes times and sea­sons; he removes kings and sets up kings […] (Daniel 2:20–21)

So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have author­i­ty to release you and author­i­ty to cru­ci­fy you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no author­i­ty over me at all unless it had been giv­en you from above. […]” (John 19:10–11)

God is not indif­fer­ent to what is going on with his crea­tures here below. It was always his aim to reveal his lov­ing being to humankind and save us. There­fore, he takes part in our his­to­ry to lead it to a good end, even if it be through many dif­fi­cul­ties: he made a peo­ple for him­self, led them into the Land of Promise and pre­served them through­out the stormy events of the first mil­len­ni­um before Christ. Final­ly, in due time, in Jesus, God lit­er­al­ly entered his­to­ry.

Jesus was opposed by many and those in pow­er con­spired against him to put him out of the way (Acts 4:24–28). How­ev­er, he con­front­ed their evil plans with his love, humil­i­ty and self-sur­ren­der. Jesus’ solu­tion was not to flee from evil, but to respond to it out of deep trust in his Father for whom “all things are pos­si­ble” (Mark 14:36). That was his way of fight­ing against evil. Though they killed him, they could not stop God from work­ing out his plan of sal­va­tion. Jesus rose and he is here with us:

And Jesus came and said to them, “All author­i­ty in heav­en and on earth has been giv­en to me. […] And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18, 20)

Peo­ple who believe will expe­ri­ence God’s pres­ence and pow­er in their lives. But those who often dwell on the pow­er of evil and rely on their knowl­edge to pre­vail against it, lose sight of God.

3 “Overcome Evil with Good”—Setting the Right Priorities

Scrip­ture encour­ages believ­ers to set the right pri­or­i­ties. They ought to use their short, pre­cious time here for work­ing for good, and for mak­ing God’s love known to oth­ers. Instead of spend­ing your time find­ing out about sup­posed evil, do good and love oth­ers. Look after their needs rather than feed­ing your curios­i­ty and desire for dubi­ous knowl­edge.

And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due sea­son we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have oppor­tu­ni­ty, let us do good to every­one, and espe­cial­ly to those who are of the house­hold of faith. (Gala­tians 6:9–10)

Final­ly, broth­ers, what­ev­er is true, what­ev­er is hon­ourable, what­ev­er is just, what­ev­er is pure, what­ev­er is love­ly, what­ev­er is com­mend­able, if there is any excel­lence, if there is any­thing wor­thy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practise these things, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philip­pi­ans 4:8–9)

Being filled with God’s word and peace, and being equipped with his wis­dom and good­ness is the only way to rec­og­nize and over­come evil.

[…] over­come evil with good. (Romans 12:21)

Deal­ing with some the­o­ret­i­cal evil out­side of you, dis­tracts you from notic­ing a more dan­ger­ous evil: the evil hid­den inside you.

And he said, “What comes out of a per­son is what defiles him. For from with­in, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, theft, mur­der, adul­tery, cov­et­ing, wicked­ness, deceit, sen­su­al­i­ty, envy, slan­der, pride, fool­ish­ness. All these evil things come from with­in, and they defile a per­son.” (Mark 7:20–23)

By liv­ing in sin you your­self become a slave to sin and a par­tak­er of the evil you mean to crit­i­cize. We can become free through know­ing the Truth. We can get to know this truth by keep­ing Jesus’ words. This truth is lib­er­at­ing. It sets us free to enjoy the eter­nal fel­low­ship with God and remain in his house for­ev­er:

“If you abide in my word, you are tru­ly my dis­ci­ples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” They answered him, “We are off­spring of Abra­ham and have nev­er been enslaved to any­one. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” Jesus answered them, “Tru­ly, tru­ly, I say to you, every­one who com­mits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not remain in the house for­ev­er; the son remains for­ev­er. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:31–36)

Peo­ple usu­al­ly do not like to think of them­selves as slaves to sin. They do not want their sins to be uncov­ered. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries focus on exter­nal ene­mies and in this way dis­tract you from the real­i­ty about your­self.

And this is the judge­ment: the light has come into the world, and peo­ple loved the dark­ness rather than the light because their works were evil. For every­one who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. (John 3:19–20)

Analysing bad things sug­gest­ed by con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries can­not bring about any sig­nif­i­cant spir­i­tu­al improve­ment in one’s life. Doesn’t wast­ing time on con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries show that some­one does not active­ly strive to do what is best?

Apart from con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries there are many oth­er things out there that seem to be inter­est­ing or even use­ful to deal with. How­ev­er, we ought to ask God whether it is real­ly that “one nec­es­sary thing” which remains for ever, as Mary did:

Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a vil­lage. And a woman named Martha wel­comed him into her house. And she had a sis­ter called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and lis­tened to his teach­ing. But Martha was dis­tract­ed with much serv­ing. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sis­ter has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anx­ious and trou­bled about many things, but one thing is nec­es­sary. Mary has cho­sen the good por­tion, which will not be tak­en away from her.” (Luke 10:38–42)

4 “You shall not bear false witness”—Responsibility for Your Views

Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries tend to make far-reach­ing claims. How­ev­er, far-reach­ing claims require equal­ly sol­id and ver­i­fi­able evi­dence. Char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly, the evi­dence con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries offer is con­tro­ver­sial and built on speculation.In con­trast, the Bible teach­es us to care­ful­ly weigh what is true. The apos­tle Paul says that we ought to test every­thing and hold fast only to what is good (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 5:21). God holds every­one respon­si­ble for what they think, do and say. Jesus taught the peo­ple this way:

I tell you, on the day of judge­ment peo­ple will give account for every care­less word they speak, for by your words you will be jus­ti­fied, and by your words you will be con­demned. (Matthew 12:36–37)

Jesus said these words in response to being pub­licly accused of dri­ving out demons with the help of Satan (see vers­es 22–35 in the same chap­ter). Some Jews want­ed to turn the crowd against Jesus by slan­der­ing him this way. Pass­ing on false infor­ma­tion, even if you believe it is true, may influ­ence oth­ers and have severe con­se­quences for many, as the fol­low­ing pas­sage illus­trates:

After this the king of the Ammonites died, and Hanun his son reigned in his place. And David said, “I will deal loy­al­ly with Hanun the son of Nahash, as his father dealt loy­al­ly with me.” So David sent his ser­vants to con­sole him con­cern­ing his father. And David’s ser­vants came into the land of the Ammonites. But the princes of the Ammonites said to Hanun their lord, “Do you think, because David has sent com­forters to you, that he is hon­our­ing your father? Has not David sent his ser­vants to you to search the city and to spy it out and to over­throw it?” So Hanun took David’s ser­vants and shaved off half the beard of each and cut off their gar­ments in the mid­dle, at their hips, and sent them away. (2 Samuel 10:1–4)

Ill-treat­ing David’s ser­vants based on the false sup­po­si­tion of the princes result­ed in wars with many casu­al­ties and suf­fer­ing. You are respon­si­ble for check­ing the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion you intend to share, because it may trig­ger a series of events that will affect the lives of oth­ers.⁵ That is why Scrip­ture is very stern on spread­ing news and accu­sa­tions that are not based on thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion.

If a mali­cious wit­ness takes the stand to accuse some­one of a crime, the two peo­ple involved in the dis­pute must stand in the pres­ence of the Lord before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. The judges must make a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion, and if the wit­ness proves to be a liar, giv­ing false tes­ti­mo­ny against a fel­low Israelite, then do to the false wit­ness as that wit­ness intend­ed to do to the oth­er par­ty. You must purge the evil from among you. The rest of the peo­ple will hear of this and be afraid, and nev­er again will such an evil thing be done among you. (Deuteron­o­my 19:16–20)

Worst of all, false infor­ma­tion may cost lives:

You shall do no injus­tice in court. […] You shall not go around as a slan­der­er among your peo­ple, and you shall not stand up against the life of your neigh­bour: I am the Lord. (Leviti­cus 19:15–16)

It has nev­er been as easy as nowa­days in our dig­i­tal world to share false or unev­i­denced infor­ma­tion with thou­sands of peo­ple with just a click. But have you ever weighed the far-reach­ing con­se­quences that a sin­gle click may have? Take the exam­ple of the COVID-19 epi­dem­ic: in some coun­tries, spread­ing dis­in­for­ma­tion result­ed in the col­lapse of the local health-care sys­tems and even vio­lence against utter­ly over­bur­dened med­ical staff who risked their own lives to save oth­ers.⁶ Coro­na left many dead, and chil­dren orphaned⁷ in its wake. Whether or not the report­ed death toll is inflat­ed, many of our fel­low humans are not with us any­more. You may have been just one of the thou­sands who “liked” and “shared” a post con­tain­ing a COVID-relat­ed idea, but that does not lessen your respon­si­bil­i­ty for its con­se­quences.

God is holy and true through and through. We can be near him only if we fol­low him in these things.

O Lord, who shall sojourn in your tent?
Who shall dwell on your holy hill?
He who walks blame­less­ly and does what is right
and speaks truth in his heart;
who does not slan­der with his tongue
and does no evil to his neigh­bour,
nor takes up a reproach against his friend; […] (Psalm 15:1–3)

What you spread about oth­ers often reveals who you real­ly are. Peo­ple like to appear as fight­ers for some­thing good and right­eous. Blam­ing oth­ers gives them this oppor­tu­ni­ty. This atti­tude is an ancient evil that has brought much suf­fer­ing and alien­ation into our world so far.

5 “Honour the king”—Respecting the Authorities

Through dis­in­for­ma­tion, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries spread dis­trust in pub­lic insti­tu­tions, and in those who are in charge of mak­ing impor­tant deci­sions in pol­i­tics, econ­o­my, health care and the like. Even­tu­al­ly, this leads to social unrest, anar­chy, and it fuels hate crimes.

The Bible presents a real­is­tic view of the fre­quent hypocrisy, ego­tism and wicked­ness of politi­cians and gov­ern­ments. At the same time, how­ev­er, it does acknowl­edge and appre­ci­ate the use­ful func­tion of polit­i­cal author­i­ties in main­tain­ing order, cer­tain morals, peace and well-being.

Let every­one be sub­ject to the gov­ern­ing author­i­ties, for there is no author­i­ty except that which God has estab­lished. The author­i­ties that exist have been estab­lished by God. Con­se­quent­ly, who­ev­er rebels against the author­i­ty is rebelling against what God has insti­tut­ed, and those who do so will bring judg­ment on them­selves… There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to sub­mit to the author­i­ties, not only because of pos­si­ble pun­ish­ment but also as a mat­ter of con­science. This is also why you pay tax­es, for the author­i­ties are God’s ser­vants, who give their full time to gov­ern­ing. Give to every­one what you owe them: if you owe tax­es, pay tax­es; if rev­enue, then rev­enue; if respect, then respect; if hon­our, then hon­our. (Romans 13:1–2, 5–7 NIVUK)

These words were not meant to be absolute. Sub­mis­sion here refers to spe­cif­ic aspects such as pay­ing tax­es. Yet sev­er­al exam­ples in the Bible teach us that “we should obey God more than peo­ple” (Acts 5:29) even at the cost of trou­ble or death. The strong tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en by ear­ly Chris­tians who bore fierce per­se­cu­tion was not that of pro­test­ers, whistle­blow­ers and rebels. They were hum­ble, lov­ing and clear about the truth, as Jesus was.

Through­out his min­istry the apos­tle Paul expe­ri­enced ill-treat­ment from offi­cials and author­i­ties. In spite of this, Paul encour­ages his broth­ers and sis­ters to con­sid­er the val­ue of author­i­ties as a whole, and not on the lev­el of indi­vid­u­als. Inas­much as the author­i­ties do not demand sub­mis­sion in mat­ters that com­pro­mise jus­tice, moral­i­ty, faith and obe­di­ence to God, we owe them respect and sub­mis­sion. Peter writes in a sim­i­lar way:

Sub­mit your­selves for the Lord’s sake to every human insti­tu­tion, whether to a king as the one in author­i­ty, or to gov­er­nors as sent by him for the pun­ish­ment of evil­do­ers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God, that by doing right you silence the igno­rance of fool­ish peo­ple. Act as free peo­ple, and do not use your free­dom as a cov­er­ing for evil, but use it as bond-ser­vants of God. Hon­or all peo­ple, love the broth­er­hood, fear God, hon­or the king. (1 Peter 2:13–17, NASB)

It is for the “Lord’s sake” that we are to sub­mit. By doing so, we do not lose our free­dom. True free­dom is not achieved by protest and oppo­si­tion, but by shun­ning evil and liv­ing holy lives. Giv­ing this tes­ti­mo­ny is the way Chris­tians chal­lenge oth­ers.

A Chris­t­ian, just as every mem­ber of soci­ety, depends on the deci­sions of those who are in high posi­tions. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, author­i­ties do a lot to pro­vide the basic neces­si­ties of their par­tic­u­lar coun­try. Keep­ing health­care, the econ­o­my, trans­port, secu­ri­ty, the courts, etc. run­ning, requires a great amount of admin­is­tra­tion and organ­i­sa­tion. Although gov­ern­ments also make many bad deci­sions, Scrip­ture urges Chris­tians to give thanks to God for the sta­bil­i­ty that comes from the ser­vice of deci­sion-mak­ers, and to pray for the con­tin­u­a­tion of that sta­bil­i­ty:

First of all, then, I urge that sup­pli­ca­tions, prayers, inter­ces­sions, and thanks­giv­ings be made for all peo­ple, for kings and all who are in high posi­tions, that we may lead a peace­ful and qui­et life, god­ly and dig­ni­fied in every way. This is good, and it is pleas­ing in the sight of God our Sav­iour, who desires all peo­ple to be saved and to come to the knowl­edge of the truth. (1 Tim­o­thy 2:1–4)

This atti­tude stands in strong con­trast to the rebel­lious, ungrate­ful and dis­trust­ful approach that under­lies con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

Before leav­ing this pas­sage, we would like to men­tion two things:

First­ly, the prayer in this pas­sage is not made for the con­ver­sion of pagan rulers. If it were, the state­ment “for all who are in high posi­tions” would mean that Chris­tians ought to pray for the con­ver­sion of all author­i­ties with­out excep­tion. This can­not be the case, as Chris­tians were sober-mind­ed and under no illu­sions that author­i­ties like Pon­tius Pilate or Emper­or Nero (who ini­ti­at­ed the first, bar­barous per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians) would ever embrace the Chris­t­ian faith. Rather, the aim of inter­ces­sion here is that God may give wis­dom and con­sid­er­a­tion to the author­i­ties in their deci­sions, thus enabling us to live under peace­ful con­di­tions that pro­mote the spread­ing of the Gospel (Proverbs 8:15–16, Jere­mi­ah 29:7).

Sec­ond­ly, we can­not take this pas­sage as an absolute guide­line for all sit­u­a­tions. The sup­pli­ca­tions and thanks­giv­ings pre­sup­pose basic good inten­tions and the open­ness of the author­i­ties to gov­ern respon­si­bly. There­fore, Paul’s entreaty in the pas­sage above can­not refer to open­ly oppres­sive, inhu­mane and inva­sive gov­ern­ments. Chris­tians, just like any­one else of good moral stan­dards, would dis­agree and resist sub­mis­sion to evil laws. For exam­ple, Chris­tians would nev­er hail Adolf Hitler⁸ or hand over Jew­ish fugi­tives for exe­cu­tion.

Jesus did not want his dis­ci­ples to stir up social unrest or to protest using vio­lence. These are not God’s means.

And when those who were around him saw what would fol­low, they said, “Lord, shall we strike with the sword?” And one of them struck the ser­vant of the high priest and cut off his right ear. But Jesus said, “No more of this!” And he touched his ear and healed him. (Luke 22:49–51)

My king­dom is not of this world. If my king­dom were of this world, my ser­vants would have been fight­ing, that I might not be deliv­ered over to the Jews. But my king­dom is not from the world. (John 18:36)

For Chris­tians, dis­sat­is­fac­tion, vio­lent oppo­si­tion and rebel­lion are not the solu­tion to the prob­lems in this world. How­ev­er, this does not mean being indif­fer­ent: Chris­tians are respon­si­ble for the peo­ple around them. The dif­fer­ence in approach is that, while Chris­tians strive to ful­fil their duties in soci­ety, they are aware of a much high­er aim. Although they try to make the world a more right­eous and bet­ter place to live, they know that there is an after­life. This fun­da­men­tal­ly affects their means of fight­ing against oppres­sion and oth­er evils. Just like their Lord, they oppose evil by their readi­ness to bear it patient­ly, to suf­fer and love oth­ers and even to be ready to die. They know that the present world will always fall short of per­fec­tion and of God’s glo­ry, and so it is not their final home. How­ev­er, accord­ing to God’s promise they are wait­ing “for new heav­ens and a new earth in which right­eous­ness dwells” (2 Peter 3:13).

Here it is worth quot­ing a sec­ond-cen­tu­ry Chris­t­ian writ­ing that gives a brief insight into Chris­t­ian con­duct and atti­tudes:

They pass their days on earth, but they are cit­i­zens of heav­en. They obey the pre­scribed laws, and at the same time sur­pass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are per­se­cut­ed by all. They are unknown and con­demned; they are put to death, and restored to life. (For the con­text of this quote click here: [details more=“The Epis­tle of Math­etes to Dio­gne­tus 5:1–12” hide=“The Epis­tle of Math­etes to Dio­gne­tus 5:1–12”]For the Chris­tians are dis­tin­guished from oth­er men nei­ther by coun­try, nor lan­guage, nor the cus­toms which they observe. For they nei­ther inhab­it cities of their own, nor employ a pecu­liar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any sin­gu­lar­i­ty. The course of con­duct which they fol­low has not been devised by any spec­u­la­tion or delib­er­a­tion of inquis­i­tive men; nor do they, like some, pro­claim them­selves the advo­cates of any mere­ly human doc­trines. But, inhab­it­ing Greek as well as bar­bar­ian cities, accord­ing as the lot of each of them has deter­mined, and fol­low­ing the cus­toms of the natives in respect to cloth­ing, food, and the rest of their ordi­nary con­duct, they dis­play to us their won­der­ful and con­fess­ed­ly strik­ing method of life. They dwell in their own coun­tries, but sim­ply as sojourn­ers. As cit­i­zens, they share in all things with oth­ers, and yet endure all things as if for­eign­ers. Every for­eign land is to them as their native coun­try, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They mar­ry, as do all [oth­ers]; they beget chil­dren; but they do not destroy their off­spring. They have a com­mon table, but not a com­mon bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are cit­i­zens of heav­en. They obey the pre­scribed laws, and at the same time sur­pass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are per­se­cut­ed by all. They are unknown and con­demned; they are put to death, and restored to life.[/details])

6 “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

God loves those who have a hum­ble heart. He is near to those who acknowl­edge their need­i­ness, their lim­i­ta­tions and low­li­ness. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, you sel­dom meet peo­ple like that. We often pre­fer rather to appear strong and to be bet­ter than oth­ers, not just to be one among many, but to be spe­cial. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries strong­ly feed these desires.

Our world is immense­ly com­plex. There is a lot of infor­ma­tion to process. If you believe in con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries, you assume that you have the overview; you see through and assess the events of today and the past. You feel you know the “real” rea­sons behind what is going on.

The wish to be wise and to be able on one’s own to decide what is good and evil destroyed the rela­tion­ship between God and man. This is vis­i­ble in the sto­ry of the Fall.

Now the ser­pent was more crafty than any oth­er beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actu­al­ly say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the gar­den’?” And the woman said to the ser­pent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the gar­den, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the gar­den, nei­ther shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” But the ser­pent said to the woman, “You will not sure­ly die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, know­ing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her hus­band who was with her, and he ate. (Gen­e­sis 3:1–6)

Man did not want God to lead him and show him what was best for him. He over­es­ti­mat­ed him­self and crossed the bor­ders God set him.

Peo­ple make many wrong deci­sions in their lives because they do not ask God but fol­low their own ideas. Man does not even have clar­i­ty about his own life. How can he think that he has the overview of what is hap­pen­ing in the world? Isn’t it very arro­gant to think that you know it bet­ter than the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple? Can all the sci­en­tif­ic research, his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments and expe­ri­ence gath­ered inde­pen­dent­ly through­out cen­turies all over the globe, and a lot of com­mon sense be out­weighed by what you read in a book or found on the inter­net? Though the source of this infor­ma­tion may claim to be author­i­ta­tive, the “knowl­edge” you have gained is most­ly not the result of thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion. Fear, excite­ment or seek­ing con­fir­ma­tion for their views make peo­ple sus­cep­ti­ble to accept­ing sen­sa­tion­al the­o­ries with­out weigh­ing the argu­ments for both sides in an unbi­ased way. Instead, they decide from the out­set what is true and what is not because their own opin­ion has become the stan­dard of right and wrong.

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put dark­ness for light and light for dark­ness, who put bit­ter for sweet and sweet for bit­ter! Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes, and shrewd in their own sight! (Isa­iah 5:20–21)

Be not wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord, and turn away from evil. (Proverbs 3:7)

Often con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists think that they are seek­ing the truth, which makes their actions and motives seem noble. Their atti­tude towards oth­ers, how­ev­er, reveals a dif­fer­ent aim. This “knowl­edge” they think they have, inevitably leads them, though per­haps unaware, to look down on the “unin­formed”, the “sheeple“⁹ who are just blind­ly fol­low­ing the main­stream. It is the wish to be spe­cial and to pos­sess spe­cial knowl­edge that dri­ves them and makes them dis­re­spect­ful and unlov­ing.

But knowl­edge puffs up while love builds up. (1 Corinthi­ans 8:1, NIV)

Who is wise and under­stand­ing among you? By his good con­duct let him show his works in the meek­ness of wis­dom. But if you have bit­ter jeal­ousy and self­ish ambi­tion in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. This is not the wis­dom that comes down from above, but is earth­ly, unspir­i­tu­al, demon­ic. For where jeal­ousy and self­ish ambi­tion exist, there will be dis­or­der and every vile prac­tice. But the wis­dom from above is first pure, then peace­able, gen­tle, open to rea­son, full of mer­cy and good fruits, impar­tial and sin­cere. (James 3:13–17)

By nature, con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are crit­i­cal of main­stream ideas. They are pop­u­lar among those who con­sid­er them­selves “free­thinkers”, who like to be inde­pen­dent and not to sub­mit to any­one. This free­dom in think­ing, how­ev­er, is one-sided because while look­ing for things to be scep­ti­cal about, they are not scep­ti­cal about them­selves. They are so busy look­ing for the evil in the world that they don’t see the evil inside them­selves. This, how­ev­er, is the pre­req­ui­site for find­ing the real truth. Only when we are ready to see and admit who we real­ly are in the eyes of God in our need­i­ness, our lim­i­ta­tions and low­li­ness can we real­ly be free.

O Lord, my heart is not lift­ed up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occu­py myself with things
too great and too mar­vel­lous for me.
But I have calmed and qui­etened my soul,
like a weaned child with its moth­er;
like a weaned child is my soul with­in me. (Psalm 131:1–2)

7 Postscript

Now that we have come to the end of our arti­cle, we would like to leave you with some ques­tions and encour­age­ments to con­sid­er.

Per­haps you spent a lot of time and effort get­ting informed about a con­spir­a­cy. You may feel that you have obtained some impor­tant insight and know more than most. How­ev­er, what have you real­ly gained, and how does your find­ing prof­it oth­ers?

Did it give you strength to love oth­ers, even your ene­mies?

Did it give you rest and increase your trust in God?

Did it help you grow in humil­i­ty?

Did it help you uncov­er and over­come your own sins?

… and most impor­tant­ly: did you get clos­er to God?

Before becom­ing Chris­tians, some of us were entan­gled in the myr­i­ad of con­spir­a­cy-ideas. You may not be aware of it, but it is tru­ly an impris­on­ment. Being “up-to-date” and “pre­pared” for all the appar­ent dan­gers robs you of the very essen­tial things God would like to present you with: his pres­ence, love, peace, rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and gen­uine ful­fil­ment. All these are things indis­pens­able for Chris­t­ian life. It is not by know­ing things that God wants to give you self-esteem, nour­ish­ment and sta­bil­i­ty, but by “being known by him”:

[…] if I have prophet­ic pow­ers, and under­stand all mys­ter­ies and all knowl­edge […] but have not love, I am noth­ing. (1 Corinthi­ans 13:2)

If any­one imag­ines that he knows some­thing, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if any­one loves God, he is known by God. (1 Corinthi­ans 8:2–3)

If you would like to think more about cer­tain aspects men­tioned in this arti­cle, or if you have ques­tions and would like to under­stand things deep­er, feel free to write to us. We would be glad to hear from you and think about God’s view togeth­er.

1. Some exam­ples: the assas­si­na­tion of Julius Cae­sar which even­tu­al­ly led to the estab­lish­ment of Roman emper­or­ship (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Julius_Caesar–retrieved on 28. 12. 2022) or the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact whose secret pro­to­col was revealed only after World War II (see Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pact  (retrieved on 28. 12. 2022)  ↩
2. Sum­ma­ry accord­ing to Michael Barkun, an Amer­i­can aca­d­e­m­ic who serves as Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus of polit­i­cal sci­ence; in “Sep­tem­ber 11th through Con­spir­acists’ Eyes”, page 2—https://med.virginia.edu/ciag/wp-content/uploads/sites/313/2015/12/report_barkun.pdf (retrieved on 18. 02. 2022)  ↩
3. Sim­i­lar­ly, in Matthew 10:29–31, Jesus encour­aged his dis­ci­ples not to be afraid of their per­se­cu­tors, but to trust the Father who cares even for the least of his crea­tures. ↩
4. Accord­ing to the Ampli­fied Bible expla­na­tion the sanc­tu­ary is “a sacred, inde­struc­tible shel­ter for those who fear and trust Him” ↩
5. An exam­ple of this is the arson attacks on mobile tow­ers and the abuse of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion work­ers based on beliefs that 5G mobile net­works spread the coro­n­avirus:  https://apnews.com/article/health-ap-top-news-wireless-technology-international-news-virus-outbreak-4ac3679b6f39e8bd2561c1c8eeafd855 (retrieved on 18. 02. 2022). See also on CNET: https://www.cnet.com/health/5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-sees-77-mobile-towers-burned-report-says/ (retrieved on 18. 02. 2022)  ↩
6. Some sources of this among many oth­ers: The Guardian—https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jun/07/they-stormed-the-icu-and-beat-the-doctor-health-workers-under-attack (retrieved on 18. 02. 2022) and BBC News—https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-humber-59696352 (retrieved on 18. 02. 2022)  ↩
7. https://imperialcollegelondon.github.io/orphanhood_calculator/#/country/Global (retrieved on 20. 06. 2022), https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/indonesia-more-25000-children-orphaned-due-covid-19-start-pandemic (retrieved on 20. 06. 2022), https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2021/p1007-covid-19-orphaned-children.html (retrieved on 20. 06. 2022)  ↩
8. Adolf Hitler, a Ger­man chan­cel­lor (1933–1945) and the leader of the Nazi (Nation­al-Social­ist) Par­ty; respon­si­ble for World War II. His nation­al­ist ide­ol­o­gy led to the Holo­caust, the geno­cide of about six mil­lion Jews and mil­lions of oth­er vic­tims. Hail­ing refers to the greet­ing ges­ture of rais­ing your hand to show loy­al­ty to Hitler, which had become com­pul­so­ry for all Ger­mans. ↩
9. Cam­bridge Dic­tio­nary defines this word as: peo­ple who copy what oth­er peo­ple do or believe what they are told and do not think for them­selves. Sheeple is a com­bi­na­tion of the words sheep and peo­ple. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/sheeple)  ↩