Do you see the connection?
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It takes me just seconds on Facebook to see conspiracy theories like this one.
During this Covid-19, Cornovirus, where multiple government officials, celebraties are all saying bizarrely the same thing and we have lost so much freedom. You guys aren’t hear today and most of us haven’t had the coronoavirus or even now someone directly who does. Sadly 15 people have died in San Joaquin county. For a sad comparison Stockton had 34 homicides last year. The fear and arguments will go on but many feel compelled to see that someone or group is working all these thins together so they can have power or make money or kill people. There is enough fear and pain to go around and around.
I grew up in a household that valued truth and education. Thinking through problems and being able to argue with facts from sources that did their best to tell the truth was important. Truth itself is vital and yet we got into a bad habit or at least I fell into a bad habit. I can use a conspiracy theory to prove to others how smart I am, how I too can draw connections, and in other words prop myself up on the false beliefs of others. It seems like it makes me feel good but instead it is a meddening, worrying thing of why are there all these people thinking this way around me and how can I correct them all.
My thinking is just the opposite side of the same conspiracy coin. So God reminds us
4 Don’t answer a fool according to his foolishness
or you’ll be like him yourself.
I listened to a podcast where a guy recruited a investigative reporter from New York to investigate a murder in his tiny little town. He learned about the murder through gossip. He was convinced there was an epic cover-up with institutional planning behind it.
The investigator started working and it got very interesting but by episode 3 he said there wasn’t a murder but someone will end up dead.
Our theorist commits suicide. I was pretty invested and immediately began thinking of my facebook friends, my others who are so filled with fear.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
This pain and all my friends in pain, who were sharing in this way.
I began to think of God’s warning to the Prophet Isaiah
12 Do not call everything a conspiracy
these people say is a conspiracy.
Do not fear what they fear;
do not be terrified.
See in the thought of a conspiracy is fear.
My friends are afraid. Because conspiracies have existed. The Nazi’s burn down the Reichstag blamed it on the communists and used it to win the populace. They happen in our families, our workplaces, and yet God tells us
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, love, and sound judgment.
So I began asking my friends who were stating some pretty huge scary projections of the future and the rise of a family power group, why are you telling me this? what should I do with it.
In other words I asked them for a plan of action.
I began to ask why? What motivates a person to share these ideas and why are they so attached. The idea is what is the felt need.
People share because they care.
People share because they care.
Some people may be telling us because they care. I care. God calls on us to love each other. I also have to tell you that a person who follows Jesus cares about others. Jesus tells us that the mark of one who truly loves God is one who does things to actually help other people
16 the man who had received five talents went, put them to work, and earned five more.
35 “ ‘For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; 36 I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you took care of me; I was in prison and you visited me.’
37 “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38 When did we see you a stranger and take you in, or without clothes and clothe you? 39 When did we see you sick, or in prison, and visit you?’
40 “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
Helping others is vital but is passing along rumors, fake news stories, lies and tales helpful? What action is there?
My friends as followers of Jesus we have a conspiracy to tell that actually occured and must be accepted by faith so we must be ever vigilant to be honest and trustworthy.
Our trustworthiness is the beginning of others believing God’s work in our lives.
Our trustworthiness is the beginning of others believing God’s work in our lives.
I try to be vigilant about what I tell you, so you can trust it. I am trying not to tell you just what the government or a doctor wants me to tell you. I am trying not to tell you just what I know. I am trying to tell you to limit what I say to what I understand God showing me as trustworthy. Therefore I ask all of us to be very careful in what we say, share, because the other reason people tell others because they want to gossip.
People share conspiracies to feel important like they have secret knowledge.
People share conspiracies to feel important like they have secret knowledge.
While most people don’t think it’s that big a deal to talk about what you don’t know as if you do, or to talk about rumors of people known or unknown, it’s not loving of other people, in a huge slam of people who are lying about the Lord Paul says in
29 They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents,
That’s not a list to be a part of. Gossip and slander are included with murder and God-hating. It’s just not loving to tell half-truths, gossips about others even if we are never going to meet them.
Because we have a bigger conspiracy to reveal and it is important that people can lean on our trustworthiness, as ambassadors of Jesus Christ, to be able to trust this conspiracy.
If you can’t figure out what God would actually have you physically do about something, than shut up about it. It’s a waste of time.
If you can’t figure out what God would actually have you physically do about something, than shut up about it. It’s a waste of time.
Our time is a precious resource and our ability for freindship/love is so important, so why waste time on politics with no action. Why waste time on rallying others without first asking God if this matters to him or what to do about it?
9 But avoid foolish debates, genealogies, quarrels, and disputes about the law, because they are unprofitable and worthless.
Speaking of time, let’s get to the real conspiracy.
Speaking of time, let’s get to the real conspiracy.
14 So the Lord God said to the serpent:
Because you have done this,
you are cursed more than any livestock
and more than any wild animal.
You will move on your belly
and eat dust all the days of your life.
The devil is told he will be destroyed, from the beginning of time, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit, And God the Son, have been working to bring Redemption to God’s people .
1 The Word was first,
the Word present to God,
God present to the Word.
The Word was God,
2 in readiness for God from day one.
3 Everything was created through him;
nothing—not one thing!—
came into being without him.
4 What came into existence was Life,
and the Life was Light to live by.
5 The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness;
the darkness couldn’t put it out.
From the begging, before time God’s love for Himself beemed forth into creating us and then from the moment sin entered the world God entered into his conspiracy that he would bring about, His conspiracy of love.
8 The one who commits sin is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God was revealed for this purpose: to destroy the devil’s works.
From Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, The conspiracy of a people from whom God would come and the way that God would provide so that all of creation would not be destroyed, the conspiracy with all of creation to love you, to provide for you, was set in motion.
From Joseph being delivered to the Pharoah’s prisions, Moses leading the people out, even the rebellion tells that God’s conspiracy cannot be stopped He is above politics and above sin. He fixes the sin problem. He will win.
From David the conquerer to Solomon with his institutions God sets forth his family line, for whom He would take on his manhood. The conspiracy was still a 1000 years away from coming forth.
Then through the prophets calling for justice, the message of Christ was foretold, the conspiracy made even more public.
Even when the Bible goes silent, after the last of the prophets, God uses the pagans to organize the world to spread the message of Him.
Alexander the Great conquers the Meditterean and creates a shared language so the Jews can now talk with many who come into their land.
The Romans move in and build rodes and establish freedom of movement and a tension between the Jewish relgious leaders who longed took their hearts away from God and the Romans who too cared about power.
Then the time was ready for the greatest conspiracy, that of the love for all mankind to come forth.
4 But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. 5 Thus we have been set free to experience our rightful heritage. 6 You can tell for sure that you are now fully adopted as his own children because God sent the Spirit of his Son into our lives crying out, “Papa! Father!” 7 Doesn’t that privilege of intimate conversation with God make it plain that you are not a slave, but a child? And if you are a child, you’re also an heir, with complete access to the inheritance.
4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.
16 For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
14 Now since the children have flesh and blood in common, Jesus also shared in these, so that through his death he might destroy the one holding the power of death—that is, the devil—15 and free those who were held in slavery all their lives by the fear of death.
The greatest conspiracy still unfurls across this globe.
If you are not yet a follower of Jesus today, the conspiracy comes to you. All of history comes to this moment. WIll you accept that Jesus lived, died for your sins, and rose again, will you obey him and allow Him to give you the fullness of life? Are you willing to follow this commitment up with a first public way to show it by baptism? Then pray with me.
You who are followers are still part of the conspiracy to spread His love, His truth, His power in this day.
He has given you a spirit of power not weakness.
He has given you a spirit of power not weakness.
Let every word that comes from your mouth, that is assembled by your fingers and a keyboard, that gets passed with a click, be loving and true. Even criticism may it come from a place of helping heal someone.
Lord all us to be the most honest, the most good, the most trustworthy in this crazy time.
The Lord wills it.
The Lord wills it.
Let’s prray