The pharmacist told me he would have my medication in about 15 minutes. What do you do with 15 minutes? Go back home? Take a walk? Go to Taco Bell? Fifteen minutes…

I wandered towards the front of the store and happened to walk by the magazine rack. “That’s what I’ll do, I’ll sit and read their magazines!”  They didn’t have a single car magazine, so I had to see what else they had to offer.  A million women’s magazines…. no.  National Geographic and Time special magazines—Jesus is big at Christmas time. But as I paged through them, they seemed just like last year’s edition, same old questions and same old responses. 

And then, I found one I had never seen before.  It’s called, descriptively, Conspiracy Theories. What has this world come to that we heed the siren call of conspiracies to such an extent that they can produce a magazine about it!?  “Conspiracy Whatever Theories” is the way they present it.  Yes, the Epstein File redactions have made it into the collective consciousness so much that we associate a black marker redaction with conspiracy theories. Every page had varying degrees of black marker lines in it – those black lines graphically elicited the paranoia very simply and effectively.

And the conspiracy theories?  Let me list a few.  Was 9/11 an inside job?  Was the pandemic real?  Are contrails really poison in the sky?  (I was in Cuba many years ago and a pastor’s wife quietly told me that when jets leave those long cloud trails, it means that they are spying on you—that was a new one!). Did NASA actually land on the moon?  They elaborated on at least 20 conspiracy theories, so many my medicine was ready before I could learn whether the Clintons left a trail of bodies in their careers or not.

Christians are well acquainted with conspiracy theories.  Many skeptics have questioned the virgin birth, claiming it had to have been Joseph. God couldn’t do that! The Sanhedrin accused the disciples of conspiring to hide Jesus’ body while claiming He had risen. God  couldn’t do that! The feeding of the five thousand wasn’t a miracle of multiplication of bread and fish, it was a miracle of sharing. God couldn’t do that!  And as we start reading through Isaiah this month, many a conspiracy theorist cannot believe that a prophet could so accurately predict what foreign powers would do to Israel in the future.  God couldn’t reveal that to a prophet!  The book had to have been written after the events to get them right! I read just last week about a carbon dating test done in 2025 that suggested that the Dead Sea Scrolls version of Isaiah predates the last prophesies of Isaiah, hundreds of years after he died. Hmmm. Who’s conspiring now?

Conspiracy theories have their place. I think journalists and police need to pursue them routinely. You never know sometimes.  But when the questions rise to the level of magazine subscription levels, skepticism leads to disillusion at best, and madness at worse. Miracles demand faith, no doubt (so to speak). I believe that Jesus’ was a virgin birth. I believe that God raised Him from the dead.  Why?  Because listening to those stories explain why Jesus has transformative power in my life and in the life of others that I know. The reality is that Jesus makes a difference in your life. Prayer asking for intervention makes a difference. Heeding His teachings has changed civilizations and history itself.  How could that happen? Well, because Jesus was Emmanuel (Emmanuel means “God with Us”) on Earth and His presence and power today can only be explained by His eternal life received at the resurrection. And any hope that I have for an eternal zoe in the future is based on
Jesus receiving his bios back 2000 years ago.  (If you were in church last Sunday, or know a little Greek, you will know what I refer to here.)

I want to embrace the stories of the Bible. The conspiracy theories on the other hand?  Not worth the paper they were printed on.

Back from the pharmacy,

Craig

These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.  John 20:31