Stop the Conspiracy Theories about COVID-19 Already!

When my grandmother became increasingly older, she accused my brother and his friends of stealing a bag of coins from her. It made perfect sense. Some of his friends were of that ilk, and they had been in her house. They needed money, and the coins were no longer there. Where else would they have gone? The answer was obvious to any thinking person. Only it wasn't. She had become increasingly paranoid and forgetful in her old age and had forgotten that she merely placed them somewhere else. But for her, before they were found, it was an unmistakable reality rather than a false reality created by senility.

I see a link between my previous post and this odd phenomenon where Christians and Christian pastors are engaging in all sorts of conspiracy theories about the virus. I want to argue that this is creating false realities due to madness rather than careful thought.

The default of our anti-authoritarian culture of radical individualism is to never trust anyone but yourself. The government is out to get you. Authorities are all lying. It's all a big effort to oppress you and take away your "rights." We might say that we belong to the "Help, Help, I'm being oppressed!" culture.

This is all supposedly in the name of thinking for oneself. But is this what "thinking for oneself" looks like? Is this the product of being a thoughtful person, or is it a product of God's judgment and giving the culture and church over so that "everyone does [and thinks] what is right in his own eyes?"

What does “thinking for oneself” look like when one is not an expert in the field, and therefore, does not have sufficient information or understanding of an issue to draw a conclusion?

I’ll tell you what it doesn’t look like. It doesn’t look like people speculating in paranoia that the powers-that-be bogeymen are out to get them, and therefore, should not be trusted. 

It doesn’t look like adopting any conclusion against the status quo because one does not want to be deceived by “the man.”

It doesn’t look like coming to contrarian conclusions that argue with experts when you are without sufficient evidence and understanding.

As someone who consistently has held contrarian views, I can tell you that I do not do it because I just don’t trust what has handed down to me. I don’t do it because I’m paranoid of some conspiracy deceiving me. I don’t hold contrarian opinions because I want to be viewed as a thinking person, or view myself as a thinking person. Indeed, I would consider myself a fool to think in such ways.

Instead, I hold contrarian opinions only on subjects of which I am well informed and am also well informed of my opponent’s arguments as well. If you notice, I don’t discuss issues of which I have no expertise in any definitive way. That’s because a true thinker is not one that holds contrarian views. A true thinker is one who reasonably accepts the opinion of other experts when he is not the expert and/or leaves questions open until he has sufficient information and understanding of a subject to conclude one way or another.

What this looks like, then, is pastors and Christians staying far away from conspiracy nonsense, as it is the pastime of fools. Conspiracies reason without sufficient evidence and expertise. They argue from pieces of information out of context, a context of the larger whole of knowledge that would allow an accurate assessment to be made and right conclusions to be drawn. As such, conspiracy theories rely on the ignorance of the one reasoning, not his vast wisdom and knowledge. 

Everyone is a doctor on the internet. Everyone is an astronaut. Everyone is privy to secret knowledge our government is holding back from us concerning aliens, chemtrails, plagues, etc. Yet, one must ask how this information was obtained, and of course, the answer is through speculation and bits and pieces of information out of the context of having a fuller, more sufficient amount of information. 

We are the generation of sensationalistic documentaries and news stories where anything and everything can be cut and pasted to prove a particular point of view, but what that means is that Christians need to try harder at not reasoning in such ways. We have true knowledge revealed to us, a knowledge that would not have been understood apart from God, the expert, revealing it to us, and that should give us humility and set a pattern for us in understanding that this is the way all knowledge works. When we don’t know ourselves, rather than speculate, we must trust in God and those in authority unless those in authority contradict God in what they tell us.

Until that time, it would be my hope that the conspiracy theorists humble themselves and stop speculating in ignorance as though that somehow was the pastime of a thinking person. And it would also be my hope that no one confuses the contrarian opinions held by experts with the contrarian opinions held by those who are not.

The truth is that if you do not have all of the information that the government does and have expertise in the right disciplines of medical research in order to assess that information correctly so that you would come to a correct conclusion of what is going on, then wisdom dictates that you zip your lip about it, not go off spouting whatever theory "might" be true. Theories turn into beliefs and beliefs turn into reality, and without evidence and expert analysis, they quickly turn into false realities by skipping that step.  

As Christians, we are the people of the truth. We love truth. But this is a far cry from pursuing truth. It is the pursuit of madness instead. Let no one portray the mind of Christ in such ways to world over which he serves as a priest to God.