Observations About Christians with Conspiracy Theories
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
John 14:27
It isn’t overly common, but I have had dealings more than once with Conspiracy Theorist in past years. I once had to counsel someone who believed the earth was flat, “Big-brother” was listening, 9/11 was perpetrated by aliens, that the book of Enoch was legitimate and that the world would end in 2018 (Surprise. Still here.). Snarkiness aside, it grieved me to see someone so troubled when a Christian is meant to have peace and joy.
Here are some of the things I have observed, and then I’ll add some information from a good book on the subject.
1) Conspiracy theorists never believe just one conspiracy.
The biggest factor in determining if a person will believe a conspiracy theory is whether or not they believe in other Conspiracy Theories. The likelihood of believing one has less to do with the “evidence” they see but rather with the tendency of the person to believe conspiracies.
The reason they do this is that they find fallen sinful nature in the world to be dissatisfying as an explanation for things alone. A conspiracy is a more interesting way to explain problems. They need an explanation and they hate randomness. They find “causes” of things comforting and the cause of “sin nature” just doesn’t satisfy them because there is no tangible solution to that problem while on this earth. Conspiracy Theories provide them a possible cause and thus a hopeful resolution, something to defeat and thus win. It’s more comforting to them to be angry about a conspiracy involving group or person X than to be fearful of an unsolvable problem with no visible cause. As a Christian, if you really want to know the “why” behind many things, I’m afraid you’re just going to have to be patient and wait to ask the Lord Himself when you meet Him.
2) Ultimately, everyone is involved in the cover-up and the goalposts keep moving.
If you can provide evidence to a Conspiracy Theorist that a certain person or group is NOT involved in the conspiracy, then they immediately suspect the group you got your evidence from of being involved too. If you subsequently can disprove their involvement, the goalposts move again until ultimately everyone, including you, is involved in the conspiracy (except of course the Conspiracy Theorist).
Saying a piece of evidence is not real is a bottomless pit argument. Every successive piece of evidence then also becomes declared “not real” and then the next and the next. Because fake evidence is always theoretically possible, there is no end to what a Conspiracy Theorist can call fake no matter how much or how compelling the evidence. They simply don’t care about your evidence.
3) Conspiracy Theorists seed their theories from real events.
According to Jonathan Kay who wrote the book, "Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground”, the advent of Ultrasound saw an increased prevalence in reports of UFO’s where the aliens looked like babies in utero with big eyes and bulbous heads and used devices that looked like Ultrasound probes.
Kay also noted that when the CIA was first beginning to report corrupt officials publicly, there was an increased prevalence in people reporting that radios were implanted in their teeth by the CIA.
Conspiracy Theories become a mixture of a person’s delusions with legitimate anxieties about things in the world. For example, terrorism is a real threat, but specific theories about it can be delusional. Because the conspiracy is tied to a real event or two, then virtually anything they claim “could be possible” in theory. It then becomes a neverending conversation of “suppose this…” or “suppose that…”. Lots of supposing.
4) Conspiracy Theorists don’t like “Big” things. (“Big business”, “Big tech”, “Big pharma”, etc.)
Now, I’m not a lover of all those things either, to be clear. But just because something is “Big” does not necessarily make it corrupt. Likewise, small business isn’t guaranteed to be clean as the driven snow either.
It is usually not recommended to argue with a conspiracy theorist about these things, but Kay suggests that if you must, go small. Small and local is better than big and national in presenting evidence to them. You’re better off getting them to hear their local family doctor on a matter than the Surgeon General report or an article from the Mayo Clinic.
The authority needs to be small not big to persuade the conspiracy theorist. That seems counter-intuitive. It is. They do often consider the quality of research to be sufficient in big organizations, but what they are first questioning are the intentions of the big organizations, and thus the quality becomes suspect in their thinking.
For example, they might see Big Medicine as all evil, but not often because of the treatments alone. Rather they see it all as a money-making scheme and that then delegitimizes Big Medicine treatments in their mind because if a business is a money-making scheme, then how can the treatments possibly be good for you? They’ll probably make you more sick to guarantee future business, right? Instead, the Conspiracy Theorist might join something like a pyramid scheme involving non-FDA approved vitamins (because the FDA is big and thus bad). Ironically, such supplement industries are also large, multi-billion dollar industries that recommend life-long use of their products for best results. Certainly, your health is all the supplement industries are concerned with, right?
How should we respond when confronted with Conspiracy Theorists?
Kay recommends that when someone presents you with their Conspiracy Theory, to ask, “When did you start believing this?”. They will often immediately go to a time in their life when they stopped trusting authority figures in their life (usually a tragedy or betrayal). Combine that with the desire for explanations instead of random and unsatisfying resolutions to bad things that happen, and you have a prime growing environment for conspiracy theories. You’re still unlikely to ever convince them. It’s perhaps better to not try but rather just seek to understand them in some sense.
As a Christian, I would go further than Kay, however. If a Christian has an obvious Conspiracy Theory, they need to be reminded of the sovereignty of God. I would ask, “Do you believe that God is still in control”?
Two final thoughts: 1) Everyone wants to know why bad things happen. And 2) we also have a tendency to distrust authority figures because of our nature.
These two elements mean that every natural person has the elements in them to become a Conspiracy Theorist, unfortunately. But the Bible offers an explanation of why bad things happen- we live in a fallen world. Sin’s effects run far and wide. The Bible also teaches us how to understand and handle authorities like government, employers, etc.
The Bible can give us real wisdom to understand life and God better. He is the Sovereign of the universe. So, the Christian should be the most rational person, immune to conspiracy theories, and more clear-headed than any other. The Word of God teaches us that we have a God who is all-wise and all-powerful. I can take comfort in an explanation like that.