Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
Click to get our FREE MOBILE APP and stay connected
| PentecostalTheology.com
Do not go about spreading slander among your people. Do not do anything that
endangers your neighbor’s life. I am the Lord. – Leviticus 19:16
But I tell you that for every careless word that people speak, they will give an
account of it on the Day of Judgment. – Matthew 12:36 (NASB)
“Do not spread false reports. Do not help a guilty person by being a
malicious witness. – Exodus 23:1
Whoever conceals hatred with lying lips
and spreads slander is a fool.
Sin is not ended by multiplying words,
but the prudent hold their tongues. – Proverbs 10:18-19
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.
For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication,
theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with
unwashed hands does not defile.” – Matthew 15: 18-20
“You are not to say, ‘It is a conspiracy!’ Regarding everything that this people
call a conspiracy, And you are not to fear what they fear or
be in dread of it. – Isaiah 8:12 (NIV)
The Bible does not use the specific term “conspiracy theory,” but it has a lot to say about the sins of the tongue, such as slander and gossiping. It also says much about the need to verify any negative information about others before believing it. In fact, the sin of slander and evil speaking is denounced in the Bible more often than any other single sin. [1] From Leviticus to the Epistles, multiple times in the Book of Proverbs (16:28, 17:9, 18: and 26:20 & 22) and the New Testament. In the biblical sense, present day CTs are gossiping and slandering writ large through the enhanced power of the social media. James, the brother of the Lord wrote passionately about taming one’s tongue (James 3: 1-7). I imagine he would have mentioned taming the use of the keyboard or smart phone had he lived in the current age. He warned:
Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it.
(v. 11)
Perhaps most telling of all is Jesus’ words:
But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles. For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, slander. These are what defile a person, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile.” – Matthew 15: 18-20 [Italics mine]
Related to the sins of slander and false witness is the problem of verifying an accusation. In this the Bible gives several examples, but Deuteronomy 19 is most explicit:
One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offense they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.
If a malicious witness takes the stand to accuse someone of a crime, the two people involved in the dispute must stand in the presence of the Lord before the priests and the judges who are in office at the time. The judges must make a thorough investigation, and if the witness proves to be a liar, giving false testimony against a fellow Israelite, then do to the false witness as that witness intended to do to the other party. You must purge the evil from among you. (Vs. 15-19)
Note how contrary the Biblical way of verification is to most CTs. In a CT a suspicion or a loose string of circumstances is all that constitutes as proof.[2] Many Christians do not realize it, but repeating a CT that is false is sharing in the sin of slander and bearing false witness. For instance, Bob’s CT about oil executives was minor compared to a medieval Christian telling his neighbors that the Jews have poisoned the wells to cause plague, but it was still a sin of slander and false witness.
At the root of many CTs is an unbiblical assumption that history or current events should be understandable and go mostly one’s preferred way. If it does not, it is the result of a specific group of evildoers who make things go badly. The Bible teaches to the contrary: mankind is universally afflicted with sin, and outcomes in history are often molded by sinful, uninformed, foolish, and selfish choices by all peoples and governments. Note the chain of dreadful events that flowed out of King David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba – rebellion, civil war and the death of his son Absolon. Sin and foolish choices result in the “wrongness” and chaos of normal history – that is, history distorted by sin, all of which go back to the “fall” and sin of disobedience at the Garden of Eden.
The book of Judges spells the negative flow of history out quite clearly. When the Israelites forsake God and turn to foreign gods, thing go badly. The normal destruction of marauding tribes happens, and the Israelites are attacked and oppressed. But when they repent, the Lord sends a “judge” to lead them back to the Lord, repel the marauders, and peace returns. Then again, when they forsake the Lord’s commandments, the “wrongness” of history falls upon them via invaders and oppressors. This simple pattern is retold in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Second Chronicles describes the tragic endgame of this cycle: the fall of Jerusalem and destruction of its temple. For the Jews, nothing could have been more “wrong” than that. But note, the Spirit-breathed Biblical account of the Temple’s destruction describes no CT by disgruntled Jews betraying their own people. Rather, it declares that God used the Babylonians, who were doing the usual empire building thing, as His instrument of judgement.[3]
The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked God’s messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the Lord was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and did not spare young men or young women, the elderly or the infirm. God gave them all into the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the Lord’s temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. They set fire to God’s temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there. (2 Chronicles 39:15-19)
The destruction of the Temple and the scattering, enslavement and exile of the Jewish people were events easily interpreted by an invented CT – a clique within the court asked the Babylonian King to come, etc. The Book of Lamentations, traditionally ascribed to Jeremiah, again rejects this temptation, and like the author of Chronicles understands the true spiritual dynamics of the fall of Juda and Jerusalem. It was the Jew’s own sin and disobedience to God’s covenant with them.
Without pity the Lord has swallowed up
all the dwellings of Jacob;
in his wrath he has torn down
the strongholds of Daughter Judah.
He has brought her kingdom and its princes
down to the ground in dishonor.
In fierce anger he has cut off
every horn of Israel.
He has withdrawn his right hand
at the approach of the enemy.
He has burned in Jacob like a flaming fire
that consumes everything around it. (Lam 2:23}
…
Yet despite the great destruction, which was the very worst that the Jews could imagine, there is a glimmer of hope:
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”
For no one is cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to anyone. (Lam 22-24. 31-33)
The effect is that the Jews are not left in despair, nor are they allowed to form CTs about the fall of Jerusalem. They must face their history as it was, with its negative outcome that reflects the disciplining and providential hand off God.
Biblical wisdom in history vs. conspiracy theories
We in the West live in societies that are normally supportive and are appreciative of historical knowledge and the wisdom it gives. CTs have been traditionally looked upon with suspicion, so that even now when they are more common, the very term “conspiracy theory” mostly evokes the sense of “not true” and avoiding realistic judgement of circumstances. The heritage of valuing sound historical understanding and avoiding CTs is mostly due to the Biblical foundations of Western culture, with a strong assist from the Greek and Roman classical tradition.[4] In America or in the Western World it is possible to walk into bookstores and find a wide variety of well-written histories and biographies that ultimately follow the Biblical model of attempting to tell the truth in history. TV and cable channels also often do a great job in producing accurate historical series. That is, they attempt to discover the facts of history, and the motives and goals of the people involved. This includes criticizing the faults and mistakes of heroes, and avoiding caricatures of enemies. The biblical book of Judges is the unsung model for this, as its heroes were all flawed.[5] But this is found all through the Bible – just one example is the incident in Exodus 32: 21-22 where Aron, brother of Moses, lies to Moses about his role in forging the golden calf.
A significant question: Why is it that so many of the books of the Bible are historical? That type of religious writings is rarely found in the scriptures of other world religions.[6] Especially unique in the Bible are the historical books that repeat with different perspectives the same events, as in the Synoptic Gospels in the New Testament and the books of Chronicles and Kings in the Old.[7] What type of wisdom does God expect us to receive from the Bible’s historical books? These are important questions that we must keep in mind as we compare the Biblical view of history with CTs.
The historical books of the Bible stress man’s freedom and responsibility in obeying or disobeying God and His commandments.[8] God does not interfere in man’s freedom to obey or disobey, to be foolish, or propagate misinformation. Sometimes God works though mankind’s sin and foolishness to get His providential way. An example is found in the account of Joseph and his brothers.
The Bible’s historical books also blend prophetic and reproof motifs, as in Nathan’s reproof of David for his sins of murder and adultery (2 Samuel 12:1-13). Note, a great hero is exposed in his sin. But the Bible’s traverse of history also gives us hope. We may be disobedient and sinful, but after the pain of living out our sin and foolishness there is the hope of restoration. Biblical narratives stress repentance and a return to righteousness. This contrasts with CTs, where restoration and justice depend on the elimination or political ousting of an evil group.
We see the Biblical view of restoration work out in the Israeli exile and return from their captivity in Babylon. In fact, the captives were first enticed by the false prophet Hananiah to believe that they would be immediately returned to Jerusalem. He was prophesying out of his “flesh,” as Paul would put it, and confused the people’s yearnings to return home for God’s prophetic word. His words pleased but misled the exiles. But Jeremiah put Hananiah in his place:
Then the prophet Jeremiah said to Hananiah the prophet, “Listen, Hananiah! The Lord has not sent you, yet you have persuaded this nation to trust in lies. Therefore, this is what the Lord says: ‘I am about to remove you from the face of the earth. This very year you are going to die, because you have preached rebellion against the Lord’” (Jeremiah 28: 15-16).
To the contrary Jeremiah wrote a letter to the exiles which really reflected God’s will and plans for them. It deflated the heroic expectancy of the exiles. No hero would rescue them, the Babylonian king would not die in battle, etc. Instead, the true prophet had mundane but spiritually significant instructions:
This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:4-7).
The exiles obeyed the true word of God, settled, blessed and prayed for the government, and awaited divine restoration. That came, as described in the same chapter of Chronicles which described the horrible fall of the Jerusalem, via an unexpected source, a pagan king:
In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the Lord spoken by Jeremiah, the Lord moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and also to put it in writing: “This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: “‘The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Any of his people among you may go up, and may the Lord their God be with them’” (2 Chronicles 36: 22-23).
Historical writings without Biblical influence
Cultures and nations that do not have the Biblical and the Greek classical heritages are less historically astute, and often their historical writings are little more than propaganda for the current tyrant, or national, or religious groups – heroes are flawless and opponents totally villainous. This was a mark of histories written under Communist regimes, [9] Sadly, this is still common today in Islamic cultures. Bernard Lewis, the great Arab scholar, noted this historical primitivism in his book, What Went Wrong? The Clash between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East.[10] He saw that Islamic countries have been anxious to adopt Western technology and science but have been uninterested in adopting the Western tradition of critical historical thinking and writing.
This is due to the different scriptural bases of Christianity and Islam. The Koran has no separate historical books such as 1 and 2 Kings and Chronicles, the Gospels, Acts, etc. Rather, there are historical vignettes and moralistic examples scattered about the Koran with no clear chain of historical consequences and development. There is nothing in Koran to parallel the magnificent and tragic ending of 2 Chronicles where the author relentlessly exposes the ultimate cause of the destruction of Solomon’s temple.
Lacking these models, many Muslims can only think in terms of the faults and sins of other peoples. Accepting fault for sins committed by Muslim peoples seems to be an insult on Islam itself. For instance, the attempt of Turkey to join the European Union was delayed by the Turkish government’s refusal to acknowledge its responsibility in the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917. To have publicly admitted that genocide would have admitted that somehow Islam failed. There is simply no model for critical self-judgment in the Koran as there is in the Bible. Incredibly, the Turkish government erected a monument to Turkish citizens supposedly slaughtered by Armenians during the period in question.[11]
At times the Muslim reaction to critical and embarrassing aspects of their own history is to cover it up. Again, for instance, the Turkish government has gone to great lengths to bulldoze the remnants of its abandoned Armenian villages. Similarly, Palestinians in the West Bank have purposely pulverized recovered ancient Temple artifacts in the attempt to negate that there really was an ancient Jewish temple in Jerusalem.[12] Without a true sense of critical history, Islamic peoples are wide open to CTs of various sorts. This happens even at a local business enterprise level where offices and industries are riddled by factionalism because disputes and normal disagreements devolve into local conspiracy theories between “them” vs. “us.”[13]
CTs are “counterfeit history.”
From the Biblical standard, CTs are counterfeit history. They rob persons of the wisdom and self-examination they should develop in reading and understanding historical situations and their complexity. For instance, relating a present crises to an analogous one in the past often suggests that there might be complex factors not understood about the present, and that simplifying negative events into a CT may be satisfying, but destructive to wisdom as well as sinfully slanderous.
Persons under the sway of multiple CTs, Christian or not, are encouraged to believe that the elimination of an evil group and the triumph of a “good” faction will bring about peace and harmony. Thus politics is confused with messianic expectations. Christians who buy into multiple CTs believe they must give divine providence a helping hand. They want the offensive group or faction removed or exterminated so that the golden age may come forth. That dream might be, as the Trump followers wish, an America where the Left is reduced to impotency and America return to the conservative interpretation of the Constitution. Similarly, a Left person might dream of a Republican and “fascist” free America with a socialist economic and political system.
And what if their goals are reached? Paradise will still not be achieved because mankind is inherently sinful. Unintended consequences of secular policies will breed a new generation of problems. Let us recall what happened when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and Communism in its awful, Stalinist, one party, state-established form was destroyed.[14] A respected political scientist declared in a widely read essay that the world had come to “the end of history.” That is, that democracy and free market economies had won out and serious world conflicts would not reoccur.[15]
Well, guess what?
[1] A great teaching on these related matters is by John MacArthur, “The Blasphemous Sin of Defaming Others, Part 1,” Grace to You, blog. Accessed 4/13/24. https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/59-26/the-blasphemous-sin-of-defaming-others-part-1 MacArthur is an extreme cessationist and my theological nemesis. I have strongly criticized his theology in various places in my works, and he in turn dedicated part of a chapter to criticize my work, See his book, Reckless Faith (Crossway: 1994). For my critique of MacArthur’s cessationism, see “Strange Fire as a Parody of Jonathan Edward’s Theology,” in Robert W. Graves’s, Strangers to Fire (Eugene: Harrison House, 2914). But, I am in 100% agreement with him on his views about slander in the Bible. .
[2] Johnson, Jesus Cares. Dr. Johnson has published several works on the Hebrew way of thought, including its stress on careful verification. See especially his, Biblical Knowing: The Scriptural Epistemology of Error (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2013).
[3] God’s judgement is a topic not often dealt with by modern theologians, but an excellent recent work on the issue is Steven J. Keillor’s, God’s Judgments: Interpreting History and the Christian Faith (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2007).
[4] Most scholars of the history of historical writings (“historiography”) would reverse this and say that the West’s robust historical writings come mainly from its Greco-Roman tradition with further developments in the early modern period. I hope to elaborate my dissenting view that the Biblical influence is preeminent in a future book. For now, I would refer the reader to the classic study of how Christianity formed Western culture in Christopher Dawson’s Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (London: Sheen & Ward, 1949), modern editions in print. Very important is the study of the historical method by the English Christian scholar: R.G. Collingwood’s The Idea of History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956) Part II. Collingwood shows that Christian historical writing introduced the concept of character development or decline, a concept not found in the classical Greco-Roman writers who believed in set character via the stars, i.e., astrology. It is also important to understand the seminal work of Mircea Eliade’s, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History (Princeton: Princeton University, 1955) in which the Eliade points out the critically important contribution of the Jews to history, that of linear history (non-repeating). See also, Thomas Cahill: The Gifts of the Jews (New York; Nan L. Talese: 1998), and the classic work by Herbert Butterfield, The Origins of History (New York: Basic Books, 1981). For use in a Christian school or adult Sunday school I strongly recommend John Fea’s Why Study History? (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013).
[5] See a seminal article on this issue: Lee Roy Martin’s, “Judging the Judges. Searching for Value in These Problematic Characters.” Pneuma Review (Oct. 13, 2013). http://pneumareview.com/judging-the-judges-searching-for-value-in-these-problematic-characters/4/
[6] The scriptures of other religions often have founder’s tales, but nothing to compare to the systematic history found in books of Kings or Chronicles, or the book of Acts, etc.
[7] The best answer to this is found in a book by J. Wallace, a homicide detective, which shows that the variations in the historical records set forth in the Bible tract the variations in honest witness accounts of a crime event. See his Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels (Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 2013)
[8] A modern Pentecostal classic on this is Jon Mark Ruthven’s work, What’s Wrong With Protestant Theology (Tulsa: Word and Spirit, 2013).
[9] Even though China is now a free market country, its government is Communist, and it writes its history following Communist hero/villain patterns. See Cris Buckley, “China’s History is Revised, Through the Glory of Xi Jinping,“ New York Times (Nov. 16, 2021). https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/16/world/asia/china-history-xi-jinping.html
[10]Bernard Lewis. What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East. (New York: Harper Collins, 2003). Chapter 6, “Time, Space and Modernity.”
[11] See the Wikipedia article for “Iğdır Genocide Memorial and Museum.”
[12] Mark Ami-El, “The Destruction of the Temple Mount Antiquities,” Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints. Posted August 1, 2002. http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp483.htm
[13] Arndt Graf, Schirin Fathi, and Ludwig Paul, eds., Orientalism and Conspiracy: Politics and Conspiracy Theory in the Islamic World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011), for a great short study on the prevalence of CTs Muslim thought. See also Jamie Bartlett, “Conspiracy Theories Fuel Anti-Western Sentiment in the Middle East,” New York Times, (Posted, Sept. 13, 2012).
[14] Incidentally, this definitively proved wrong the John Birch’s conspiracy theory (see below) that Truman, Eisenhower and other US presidents were presiding over a conscious conspiracy to turn the world over to the Communists. Rather, the policy of “containment,” first articulated by the diplomat George F. Kennan, which urged that the Communist nations be contained but not attacked, proved true. Kennan foresaw that Communist society would fall apart in time. However, that was not totally true. Communism’s fall was brought forward by pressure from the West, as in President Regan’s “Star Wars” anti-ballistic missile program, and spiritual forces loosed by Pope Paul II. On the latter, see George Weigel’s, The End and the Beginning: The Victory of Freedom, the Last Years, the Legacy (New York: Doubleday, 2010).
[15] Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History,” National Interest (Summer 1989). https://www.jstor.org/stable/24027184
