Simple way out of current chaos: follow Jesus.
Forget social media. Forget blogs. Forget the barrage of “information.” (Never has there been so much false information.) Forget the constant “spin” and diatribe. Forget the real fake news (more on that in a moment). Follow Jesus. Not bloggers. Not candidates. Not self-appointed gurus. Just Him.
Simple way to do that: Communion.
Simple way also: read the Bible every time you are daunted by the swirl of venom and upheaval that has erupted around us, causing mass befuddlement plus misdirection. Translation: we are duped, unless our eyes are unswervingly on Jesus.
When you think, ask Jesus if there is truth in what you are thinking. When you read, ask Christ what it is you should read. When you speak, ask yourself if it is in a way and tone that imitates the Man from Galilee. Believe nothing without consulting the Holy Spirit (sincerely).
Interesting time. Hurricanes! Fires!
As far as the upheaval — the maelstroms — in our culture:
Have you noticed how these days everything is a controversy, everything is an argument, everything is a “hot-button” issue, everything is make-or-break (“you are either totally in agreement with me or the enemy”) and yet, at the same time, how arguing never convinces anyone of anything?
Everything is a conspiracy.
Oh, there are underhanded plots, and always have been. The JFK, Martin Luther King, and RFK assassinations reeked of something nefarious below the surface, in this case truly “deep state.” That we readily concede. There are many other things that could be labeled as potential plots.
Yes, though diminished, there have been Masons. Yes, there are globalists — overhanded and underhanded. Yes, there is human trafficking (truly, truly appalling), just as there is drug trafficking. Yes, there are certain elites who would like to reduce the population. Ted Turner, founder of CNN, has publicly said the ideal global population would be 250 million, about 95 percent less than at present. Prince Philip, another population-control proponent, said if there is reincarnation he’d like to come back as a virus (be careful, Your Royal Highness, that this doesn’t come back to haunt your country). Ironically, there are those who believe Ted Turner was involved in the mysterious “Georgia Guidestones,” those monuments east of Atlanta that resemble Stonehenge and have messages for the future in languages from Hebrew to Swahili and Sanskrit. Among the messages is that the global population should be 500 million — in the ballpark of what Turner expressed, which is ironic in that Ted is from Atlanta.
Are those monuments — the designers still a closely guarded secret — a formidable conspiratorial cabal or small group if Rosicrucian-like eccentrics?
At this point there is no real evidence tying all the various nefarious plots together, at least not as one big overarching human conspiracy. That’s giving humans a bit too much credit — Rothschilds or Rockefellers or Gates or whomever.
No group of humans could conceivably orchestrate everything they are credited with orchestrating, and since the beginning of the 19th century. (One wonders why an elite would earnestly work toward a certain global end knowing they would never live to see, much less benefit from, it.)
There is and always has been, however, an overall satanic conspiracy, a movement in the spirit uniting otherwise disparate and inexplicably separate cabals from Bohemia Grove to the Bilderberg Group into a common cause often with no real overt lines with each other. This is in the realm not of worldly conspiracy but supernaturality.
We error when we don’t address the asomatous nature of certain evil trends, which play both sides and ends against each other. Remember this: the devil is a spirit of antagonism. The devil is a spirit of rage and division. The devil is a spirit of blindness and dark fantasy and extremes.
Conspiracies? One group goes so far as to claim that Michelle Obama is actually a man, John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death (in a crash in the 1990s) so he could go “deep state” (on a spying mission), and that a Pittsburgh man named Vincent Fusca is Kennedy in disguise and would be Trump’s 2020 running mate (which doesn’t seem to be bearing out).
The vice president of the U.S., Michael Pence, last week spoke out against this group, warning that their conspiracies are not credible or acceptable.
Some attended 2019 Independence Day celebrations in Washington expecting Kennedy to appear.
While there are often bits of valid concerns in overwrought theories (we don’t discount all conspiracies; that’s for certain!), one major evangelical, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler Jr., in a major conservative Christian news site, the Christian Post, this week compared some conspiracy theories “in general to the early church heresy of Gnosticism.”
To quote him directly (for your discernment): “Gnosticism is the belief that only a few, an elite, a privileged few are able to see, have inside information. The ancient Gnostics believed in one way or another that this particular secret knowledge was the key to salvation or illumination, or whatever would be the promise of this particular information.”
“Christianity has nothing to do with the secret truth. It has everything to do with a public Gospel,” the theologian added. “Christians don’t have secret beliefs we hide from the world. We’re not saved because we have come to some secret knowledge.”
Yes, there have been and are certain conspiracies. And we must be on guard. The Bohemian Grove and Bilderberg meetings are troubling. So can be a growing list of multi-billionaires. Let us make sure, however, that we are not darkly fanciful — and not reveling in the besmirching of others.
You might recall that all the popes have taught against this. You might recall that the Church teaches it is wrong. You might recall that this is not Christian. You might also recall that however much you disagree with someone, you are called to unconditionally love and pray for that person. Never slander. Never gossip. Never follow dark speculations. There are many kinds of sin. Stand up for the truth, yes. “Fight” the fight where it really is and where it really will be won or lost: on the spiritual battleground. But don’t charge ahead incoherently. If there are anger and hatred in you, expel that before you do anything else. Only then will you find peace and truth and a trajectory toward Heaven.
