Conspiracy-thinking

"For thus the Lord spoke to me with mighty power and instructed me not to walk in the way of this people, saying,

'You are not to say, "It is a conspiracy!"
In regard to all that this people call a conspiracy,
And you are not to fear what they fear or be in dread of it.
It is the Lord of hosts whom you should regard as holy.
And He shall be your fear,
And He shall be your dread.' " (Isaiah 8)

It's a very timely word to anyone who seeks to follow God in America these days. My e-mail is continually awash in warnings
of conspiracy: shamefully, most of it from Christians whose thinking has been corrupted by "conservative" politics.

What is "conspiracy" ? It's those people who are plotting (usually secretly) to harm us. Richard Nixon (a master plotter himself) put
the conspiracy-mindset well on one of his secret Watergate tapes: "Make no mistake about it: they are out to get us."

Conspiracy-thinking grows from a partisan worldview: that it all comes down to "us vs. them." Nixon could have been the poster-boy for that worldview. It's clearly widespread among current "conservatives" too, and the Christians who follow them. But like conspiracy-mindedness, partisanship (or "factionalism") is a sure sign we're not walking in the Spirit. (Galatians 5:20)

God put His finger on the matter. People who see the world filled with enemies plotting against them are fear-stricken. People driven by fear tend to be irrational and violent. Inducing fear has always been a powerful tool of unscrupulous politicians (Nixon again comes to mind, as do current "conservatives") for those reasons.

Most of the conspiracy e-mails I see add lying to their sinfulness. (If there's any doubt who's behind the partisanship, fear and irrationality of conspiracy-mindedness, just call to mind who Jesus said is the "father of lies.") You know the e-mails I mean: "they" are going to remove Christian crosses from military cemeteries, take our guns, make our courts recognize Sharia law, take "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and "In God We Trust" off our money, and outlaw Christmas.

The media won't tell us about this grand conspiracy, of course: they're part of it. So (the anonymous e-mails say) is our secretly-Muslim President, the United Nations, the World Council of Churches, the World Monetary Fund, and the Boy Scouts. Make no mistake about it: they are ALL out to get us.

Those who choose to believe lies can always be easily manipulated by Satan. But God's warning doesn't make a distinction between imaginary and real conspiracy. He spoke to Isaiah about a real pact of foreign kings joining to destroy Israel. Similarly, the Communist leaders of the recent past were very candid about their purpose, publicly proclaiming, "we will bury you." But God told Isaiah even a real conspiracy was not to be feared: it was HIS determination that man's plot "will not stand." So he determined about Communism in our time.

Those who feared the real conspiracy of Isaiah's foreign kings, and those who feared Communism, were no different in God's eyes than those who today fear that our human government will make it a crime to say "Merry Christmas." They fear man more than they fear God. They fear conspiracy (a sin which God forbids): and manifest their disbelief that God rules, and that His power is greater than anything evil men and the enemy can do.

The conspiracy-minded show that their real faith is in Satan.