Listening this morning to Arlo Guthrie and Jim Wilson’s
new version of “Hard Times Come Again No More.” I began to understand some of
the vitriol, conspiracy mania, and slander heaped upon many public officials
and the medical professions. And here I am thinking of people I know, people I
am close to, who are not usually inclined to vent so ardently against others. I
know there are those who purposely and with evil intent invent outlandish tales
of conspiracy against others, but these are not the people that have initiated
my concern. I am Reformed after all and “What is the matter with you people” is
my byword as long as it includes myself.
But watching the depression photographs in the video I
realized so many have no memory of those hard times or of the devastating losses
of World War II. And if they are not particularly interested in history they will
not have absorbed the pain and sorrow of that time or any other time for that
matter. It seems to me, we Americans, at least in the last few decades, insist
on everything turning out rosy. We build our hopes on Shangri-La and reach for
idealistic dreams. Added to this sense of optimism is a belief that it is
possible to know the exact reason why something has happened and the way it has
happened and thus to swiftly end any intruding evil.
For instance, some insist that covid-19 occurred because
a person or a group or an organization manufactured it as a means of destroying
enemy’s lives. Or, so many people have died because politicians, or/and medical
groups or/and a particular political party are lying about the cure. Or, it’s a
lie that so many people have died, with multiple explanations for the lie.
The real truth gets lost in our rejection of truth—we are
suffering—more suffering is ahead of us—we must gather strength and hope from
somewhere beyond answers that are materialistic, conspiratorial and slanderous.
The truthful answer will not be to dissuade or dispose of enemies who are supposedly
seeking our harm. The truthful answer will not be to ignore the mandates of safety
for this particular moment in our history. The truthful answer is—we are
suffering—God help us!
Recently a friend suggested I watch a movie about
Lilias Trotter a 19th century artist and missionary to Algeria. In
the movie, “Many Beautiful Things” Trotter’s potential to become a famous
artist is sacrificed for the sake of following Christ to North Africa. One of
her beautiful statements is:
Measure thy life by loss not by gain, not by
the wine drunk but by the wine poured forth for love’s strength standeth in
love’s sacrifices.
The life God calls us to, in the midst of pandemic, brutal
riots and police brutality, aims us straight into His love. His intention is to
pour, through us, His love out upon the worlds we inhabit. Our time, this day,
this year, the years to come, are times to draw near to Jesus, to think on His
cross, to rest in his love, to walk in his love.
If we have lost, in these hard times, faith in
humanity—good—now we will have a deeper faith in Jesus. We will cling to the
brother and sister who in their weakness and humility still holds to Jesus. We
will find in Jesus the government, the kingdom, the joy, that this time, this
place cannot give.
Blessed
be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great
mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable
and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are protected
by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the
last time.
In
this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you
have been destressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith being
more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be
found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him
now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of
glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. (1
Peter 1: 3-9)
There are circumstances when I feel a great need to bury
myself in God’s word and let Christian hymns and praise sweep over me. I feel a
need to have truth and goodness wash my mind and soul. Often the reading I do
for research has that effect. Sometimes just circumstances, ugly circumstances,
place me in that position. For several days I have been listening to some
extremely horrible videos. My concern for a few friends on Facebook who seem to
be affirming conspiracy theories, even placing information by people who are
involved in the Q or QAnon movement on their Facebook pages, initiated my need
to understand the religious/social side of this movement; to hopefully
emphasize the evil of this strange ideology which in some cases is mixed with a
rather heterodox Christianity.
Recently, The
Dispatch published an article “The GOP’s
Conspiracy Theorist Problem,” which high-lighted several Republican candidates who are involved in
conspiracy theories and the QAnon movement. In the article the author, Audrey
Fahlberg, devotes a paragraph to the religious side of the QAnon movement
writing, “QAnon’s doomsday flair has even captured the attention of fringe
churches, including Omega Kingdom Ministry
which regularly interprets Q drops through a biblical lens.” Fahlberg also refers
to “Home
Congregations,” a site Omega Kingdom Ministry is connected to.
I explored these two sites and their strange videos.
And yes, there is a faith
statement that sounds like orthodox Christianity with a twist. There
is this part of their faith statement, “We believe that Christ never intended
to start a religion, but that men have built the church as we know it today. We
believe that Christ never intended that His Body become a business or an
institution, but a family. We believe that Christ has called us out of the
crowd to be His Ekklesia, a governmental body, a ruling congregation of the
Kingdom of Heaven on earth.” This statement eliminates most connections between
QAnon believers and orthodox Christianity since the meaning is that only those
house churches abiding by the teachings of “Home Congregations” and the
predictions of Q are performing God’s
will.
The differences between the house
churches connected to QAnon and orthodox Christianity, including Protestant,
Catholic and Orthodox, are vast. It is the eschatology of the QAnon churches
that shapes their theological differences with true Christianity. Always they
are informed by the conspiracy theories of QAnon. Yes, they believe in the
return of Christ but their focus is on political events deeply colored by the
unknown person or persons they call Q.
In one particular video a
leader, Russ Wagner, explains what he believes is the difference between
“Church,” and “ekklesia”. He states, “ekklesia was a governmental word ‘called
out assembly.’ Tracing what he sees as the history of the words, Wagner adds,
“The body of Christ on earth today is his [Christ’s] governmental ruling
council. Wagner goes on to emphasize that, “We have been given authority to
rule what is lawful and what is unlawful in our city and in our region.” Additionally he opines, “We have been given
the authority to take legal and militant action against the destructive forces
of hell in our city.”
Since Wagner is a
charismatic most of his view of taking authority is demands made to demonic
spirits, however his concepts belittle the cross of Jesus. In a different video
he quotes Jesus’ words, “For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that
he might destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:8 NKJV),” then Wagner says,
“You see, the Kingdom of Heaven coming down to earth destroys all the work of
the enemy if the ekklesia of Christ is functioning in any given city.” In other
words it is Jesus’ manifestation plus the ekklesia functioning that destroys
the works of the devil. There are two big problems here:
First because Wagner has
made a difference between the Church and what he calls the ekklesia he places
the Church outside of the purposes and the work of Christ. But the bigger
problem is Wagner’s lack of acknowledgement of the completed work of Jesus
Christ on the cross. The beautiful hymn in the first chapter of Colossians
details this:
For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and
transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the first born
of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on
earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or
authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before
all things, and in Him all things hold together. He is also the head of the
body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead, so He
Himself will come to have first place in everything. For it was the Father’s
good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, and through Him to
reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of his
cross, through him I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven. (Colossians
1: 13-20)
Adding to Wagner’s views
about the Church and the authority of what he calls the ekklesia is the problem
of placing the conspiracies of QAnon alongside his and other’s teaching. Their
web sites are full of videos and the messages in the videos are not only
extreme conspiracies, they are theologically unbiblical. There is also the
potential for anti-Semitism in several of their wild tales. The basic conspiracies
are the usual; there is a group of families, the Rothschild’s are considered
first, who are controlling the world, own all the banks and the Federal Reserve
and most businesses and institutions. They intend to destroy all that is good.
But in the QAnon tales there is an additional concern. What is called, the deep
state, a group consisting of most presidents, many celebrities and wealthy
individuals like Bill Gates and of course Soros are involved in a worldwide
ring of pedophiles.
This is where President Trump
supposedly comes into the story. There is a plan, the Q plan, in which Trump is
involved with some military leaders to arrest all of the offenders of sex trafficking
and move the world toward a golden age. This plan involves the arrest and imprisonment
of such people as the Bushes, the Clintons, Bill Gates and Soros. And supposedly peace will come to earth
because the conspirators had been controlling such people as North Korea’s Kim
Jung-un and China’s Xi Jinping who will now make peace. As an aside, one video
suggests that Trump in the end won’t be the leader but instead John Kennedy Jr.
who didn’t really die in a plane crash!
All of that weirdness is
itself unbiblical, because it is untruthful and horribly slanderous, but here
are the theological problems. One particular video insists that all of the
conflicts and hatred happening in the world aren’t caused by common humanity
because it isn’t the nature of humanity to commit crimes or cause conflict. We
are good and those committing such atrocities are the enemy. But what does
Scripture say about the goodness of humanity? “…for all have sinned and fall short
of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).” And Psalms 53 is very clear:
The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God,’ they
are corrupt, and have committed abominable injustice; there is no one who does
good. God looked down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if there is
anyone who understands, who seeks after God. Every one of them has turned aside;
together they have become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.
(1-3)
If even a part of humanity
were good, born without sin, there would be no reason for the Incarnation and
the death of Jesus on the cross so once again the cross is belittled. Instead
some of humanity is lifted up as those who in their goodness will help to bring
about utopia. And although there is here and there a commitment to Jesus and
his salvation, in many of the videos Trump is seen as the ultimate liberator,
the one who will deliver the world from the cabal of pedophiles, the deep state.
Jesus’ uniqueness, sacrifice and triumph is simply treated as nothing when one
commentator states that Q’s plan will, “be regarded as the greatest story ever
told.” Another speaker, a professor, Douglas Belmore, who professes to be a
Christian, insists that his listeners should not worry because “Q owns the most
powerful military intelligence the world has ever known.
The possibility of
anti-Semitism comes in a series of videos that attempt to explain communism by
linking it to the occult and what is called the Illuminati. Two men, Benjamin Chasteen and
Rob Counts, are the producers of this series. In their video, “The Illuminati End
Game: The Secret Societies behind Communism,” they use Nesta Webster, the
author of World Revolution the plot
against civilization as their main reference. They explain that in the
academic world she is known as a Nazi sympathizer but they attempt to explain
that away. They state that in her “findings Nesta made a grave oversight; she
found that people who called themselves Jews were behind several subversive
movements because of that she confused these people who called themselves Jews
as actual Jews.” And “she ended up joining societies who considered themselves
Fascist before those societies are considered what they are today
But Bob and Rob show their
own anti-Semitism when they attempt to excuse Webster’s. Because her information
is mostly made up and partly based on the fake Protocols of the Learned
Elders of Zion it is Webster who
named them Jews. She was not confused; she not only joined several British
Fascist societies but also wrote for an anti-Semitic journal, The Jewish
Peril.[1]In a third video, “Deep State Funded Lenin,” Bob and Rob state that a Rothschild
and several other Jewish bankers funded the early communist revolution, adding
that J.P. Morgan also funded them. The creators of these videos keep bringing
up Jewish bankers without admitting to their own anti-Semitism. They suggest
that Hitler was a Rothschild and was raised by Ashkenazi Jews and then make fun
of the four letters at the end of the word.
The leaders and members of
these two religious organizations and the many other Q followers insist that
there is a personal great evil above the deep state which will be brought to an
end by political, martial and judicial ends. There is a personal great evil,
but one that has already been defeated on a bloody cross. We live in the
already/not yet of that defeat. And if we are Christians we live beneath the cross,
not under the manipulative hands of slanderous mythical tales. Our times are in
the hands of Jesus, our fellowship is with the Church, His body. Do not forsake
the one who bought you.
When I began this blog
posting I was letting the word of God and this Christian song sweep over me:
For a daily devotional I use The St. James Daily Devotional Guide. This morning I was pleased
with some commentary about the difference between truth (the eternal forms)
which are true by necessity and the truth which is Jesus Christ whose truth is
displayed in freedom.
I believe it was in my junior year of college at the
University of California, Sacramento, when I won the philosophy contest for
that year. In my essay, “Plato’s Four Concepts of Soul in the Phaedo,” I
attempted to prove “a great deal of the confusion of the concepts with one
another is caused by Plato’s idea of personal souls and their likeness to impersonal
forms.” I have thought about this often, we Christians cling to a personal God,
unchanging yes, but that unchanging includes compassion, mercy and forgiveness.
And in that unchanging merciful God is freedom.
The author of the commentary, Patrick Henry Reardon,
is relating this to Mark 4:35-41, the story of Jesus calming the winds and the
waves. Reardon writes:
…in today’s Gospel story,
the truth he revealed to those disciples threatened by the storm on the lake—fearful
for their lives—was utterly free, backed up by no explanatory or metaphysical
necessity. He overwhelmed the apostles—along with the waves and the wind—by the
redemptive assertion of his presence. Christ’s debarim—the things he did and said—formed an absolutely free gift,
conveyed in the experience of grace and election.
…Always, the truth
revealed in Christ is pure grace—truth freely and generously given, truth
freely and humbly received.
Here I think it can be pointed out that not only was
this grace and truth freely given it was so very personal. The Hebrew Bible clearly
tells us that God controls the seas and storms, “He caused the storm to be
still, so that the waves of the sea were hushed (Psalm 107: 29).” But in Jesus
the disciples see the personal, the face of God as the storm is stilled. And
there is more.
In Mark’s account of this story there are other boats.
Mark writes, “Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat,
just as he was; and other boats were with him (4:36).” R. Alan Cole in
the Tyndale Commentary suggests that
this may be like the closing words of Jonah, “and also much cattle (Joh. 4:11),
with its undertone of the infinite mercy of God.” This personal God, very God
of very God, as the creed states, was not just training Apostles he was caring
for the crowds of people as he did when feeding the five thousand and the four
thousand.
Here we are living in the midst of a pandemic, living
in the midst of unholy racism, living in the midst of unholy riots, perhaps
fearful of what is coming in the future—and yet here stands our Redeemer who created
the universe and controls the universe. This personal God, Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, knows us personally and has us in his tight grip. Fear not.
