Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to
see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the
world.
--1 John 4:1 NRSV
I was a relatively new minister serving in a church in
New York still reeling from the 9-11 attacks which had happened only months
earlier when it happened. I met with a
church member who was eager to talk with me about something important. I had expected to talk about some personal
struggle or perhaps the collective trauma of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Instead, the church member launched into a
long explanation of the research they had been doing online which revealed a
conspiracy secretly running the world.
The church member handed me a binder full of
information printed off the internet with charts connecting the Illuminati to
the United Nations to the New World Order.
I was stunned, to say the least, that this well-educated successful
suburbanite was invested so deeply in the conspiracy theories they presented
me. I tried to steer the conversation
towards the person’s own internal struggles, but it was apparent they were
disappointed I didn’t buy into the secret knowledge they possessed.
This encounter happened when the Worldwide Web was
still relatively new, before social media and smartphones, but it is a
phenomenon that is far older than the internet and it has been common in American Christianity for centuries (witch
hunts, vampire scares, Jewish cabals, Catholic plots, Freemasons, etc.). For that matter, conspiracy theories and
claims of “secret knowledge” have been a part of Christianity from its
beginning. Maybe they have been a part
of religion since humanity first began walking upright? The allure of being among the chosen few who
know what lurks behind the veil of reality as perceived by the masses is addictive.
My attention was drawn today to an editorial at Religion
News Service titled “QAnon: The Alternative Religion That’s Coming to Your Church.” The author is a former editor
at Christianity Today, not exactly a liberal alarmist publication, yet
she clearly laid out the dangers of this online conspiracy movement for local
congregations—especially conservative evangelical ones.
If you’re not familiar with QAnon, be careful when you google it. You’ll quickly go down a rabbit hole of conspiracies that has no end. (This article in The Atlantic provides a good explainer.) In general, this conspiracy theory began on a site known for racist and far right content called 4chan. An anonymous user named “Q” began posting claims of inside knowledge about high level Democrats running a child sex ring and elements in the Trump administration working to stop it. In cryptic language that is often religious in nature, the posts implicate the media, Hollywood movers and shakers, and Democrats. Sharing QAnon-related conspiracies has grown exponentially in the age of COVID-19; one study showed posts sharing QAnon conspiracies increased by 71% on Twitter and 651% on Facebook since March of this year.
Once upon a time, conspiracy theories were only things
your “crazy uncle” spouted at family gatherings or college students shared in late night dorm
room discussions. Yet, now they are
common and rampant among White Evangelical Protestant Christians who generally
distrust the media and question scientific consensus on things like evolution
and climate change. Of course, left-wing
conspiracies exist too, just look at the so called "anti-vaxxers," people opposed to vaccinations. What they all have in common is the promise
of granting a select few the satisfaction of knowing the “truth.”
Scholars generally credit the appeal of conspiracy
theories to the need for people to cope with a disorienting world where
ordinary people are buffeted by complex forces lacking easy explanations. It’s easier to believe COVID-19 is a plot by
evil left-wing industrialists than it is to accept that there is a fatal
disease that doesn’t seem to affect some people but kills others. It’s easier to believe a pedophile ring is
killing the job market than it is to make sense of an impersonal global economy
that ships jobs overseas. In the same
way, it was easier for the Puritans to kill witches when illness struck villagers
in the 18th century than to believe in things like germs, hereditary
and sanitation.
Katelyn Beaty, the author of today’s Religious News Service editorial, along
with the great religion journalist Jeff Sharlett and others have equated the
recent QAnon conspiracies with the early Christian heresy Gnosticism. Like QAnon, it had cryptic texts that
promised enlightenment to its adherents.
Christians combated the heresy by turning back to scripture and
pointing to the incarnation of Christ, who was not an esoteric spiritual being
but an actual human being who demonstrated love of neighbor, caring for the
least in society and a message based on concrete examples of lost sheep, parents
and children, day laborers and landlords.
Jesus taught a Gospel of love
that was difficult for the masses to accept, because of its demands of
self-sacrifice. The promises of
Gnosticism offered the exultation of humans through secret knowledge, while the
Gospel of Jesus offered the exultation of God through easy to understand acts
of every day love.
The author of the First Letter of John told their
readers to “test the spirits,” and urged them to believe that
Jesus Christ had come in the flesh. Why
this emphasis upon the incarnation?
Because Jesus was not just a ghost passing through this material plane,
but a human being who knew what it is to suffer and gave his life for the sake
of others. The author of the letter goes
on to offer some of the most beautiful language about God ever written: “God is love, and
those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” In other words, the way to test a belief
system is to ask, “where is the love?”
Whether
the conspiracy theory is QAnon, the Illuminati, the Freemasons or ancient
Gnosticism, a simple way to “test the spirits” is to ask where is love in this
system of belief? Does this worldview
result in people forsaking their own ego to show love to others around them or
does it exalt the ego by declaring its adherents are superior to others because
they alone know what is really going on?
QAnon may be the latest false religion to invade Christianity, but it’s
the same song different verse. It’s just
another selfish attempt to declare some are better and more spiritual than
others. Jesus didn’t have much patience
for religious know-it-alls. We shouldn’t
either.
Grace
and Peace,
Chase
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