By Colby Malsbury
The post-WWII Church was a complacent beast towards encroaching federalism at the best of times, but as the Scaryvirus narrative refuses to wither and die on the vine the pandering unto Caesar is generating infinitely more nausea than the bug could ever hope to do.
Voluntarily closing the church doors long before the official diktat came down from on high, and volunteering to keep them shut into the foreseeable future? HAL-lelujah!
Enforcing counter-productive social distancing guidelines at the few (outdoors, yet!) church functions the elder board deigns to permit? GLOR-y be!
Pastors posting pics of themselves in full masks on social media, little perceiving how queer the majority of men think masks are? (But who cares? The chicks dig such ham-fisted awareness.) TES-ti-fy!
And for heaven’s sake, whatever you do do NOT peddle about those horrible conspiracy theories regarding Covid-19’s laboratory origins, or folderol about a ‘plandemic’, and the like! Such talk is boorish and provincial after all, and will not be at all the thing to discuss at the Zoom session this Sabbath. And why aren’t you wearing your mask during the livestream, anyway???
But of course, you can’t spell ‘gnostic’ without the TGC – a la The Gospel Coalition. One can always count on this stalwart bunch of Judas kissers to advocate pushing the Overton window of church chat away from the Scriptures and towards Babel. And who better to show those tinfoil bedecked conspiracy loons what fer than the maleficent Joe Carter, the man who thought the heathen NIV warranted its very own paraphrase and who played a key role in moving the Southern Baptist Convention to the left of the Khmer Rouge? To that end, Joltin’ Joe has written a TGC screed entitled Christians Are Not Immune to Conspiracy Theories. I must say, that’s some mighty clever use of that word ‘immunity’, playing into the faithless fears of the world writ large during the current plague year. Little wonder Joe went with the allusion, though, as he has been in the forefront in lecturing churches about how they are not doing ‘nearly enough’ to halt the spread of the theoretical kung flu permeating their midst…including grasping at the government pogey dangled their way with outstretched tentacles. But that’s another article.
One can only wonder if Carter was contractually obligated to pen this polemic, because boy, it sure demonstrates a paucity of even misguided zeal. It’s one of those rote reiterations of a type of pietism acceptable to a cosmopolitan readership – not unlike Tim Keller’s continual pathetic platitudes to ‘the city’ being the ultimate in Christian societal structure. All the cliched sniffy nomenclature of the committed sophisticate is in place here – ‘outlandish’, ‘ludicrous’, ‘bizarre’, ‘anti-intellectualism’, ‘radical individualism’ – as well as some misguided howlers such as ‘Eve became the first in a long line, from Gnostics to flat-earthers, to believe powerful forces were withholding secret information’ to describe her interactions with the serpent. Ah, no – Eve’s fatal error was taking the serpent’s words entirely at face value, rather than her being suspicious of possible double-dealing. But, hey – snappy rejoinder subtly linking Coronatruthers with flat-earthers. Mission accomplished.
As this piece is primarily designed to be preached to the choir, Carter feels under no obligation to actually build a coherent case that conspiracy thought is inherently sinful. Thus, his piece is riddled with patronizing falsehoods that would be insulting to the intelligence if anyone of any intelligence ever heeded what TGC had to say on any subject. Carter’s primary insight is that conspiracy thought is wicked because the purveyors of such cannot possibly have the required proof that their claims are true, and thus are engaging in hearsay at best and slander at worst. Leaving aside the fact that conspiracy scholarship necessarily operates in the civil sphere of influence rather than in the criminal sphere, where the most stringent proofs are required, Carter is also taking a cheap shot here. After all, he is confident that he himself does not have to provide any proof that all such claims of whatever theory you choose are untrue, because of dat dere Socratic logic that he no doubt got a heaping helping of at seminary.
He also resorts to a canard that those who have escaped the Matrix are thoroughly familiar with: he picks the dopiest conspiracy theories he can run across as representative of the breed to bolster his case. A case in point is a coronavirus theory he cites in the text as a ‘prime example’ of his thesis: that 5G broadband technology is being used to spread the virus. Wha’choo talkin’ about, Willis? Had Carter bothered to do even a cursory bit of research before taking pen to paper, he would have discovered that no one of any repute is claiming such fallacious nonsense! Methinks he stumbled upon one of the myriads of disseminating chatter meant to muddy the waters of this particular false flag’s motivations. Students of conspiracy also understand this tactic very well, but Carter is content to play the role of an ignorant Greek chorus. Why is he allowed a forum, and we who traffic in uncomfortable truths aren’t, again?
Nowhere does Carter mention the numerous Scriptural examples of fallen man engaging in conspiracy for their own wicked ends – chief of which, of course, would be the Pharisaical murder plot against Jesus, which plot was brought to light via the overriding consideration of Divine revelation, which never once enters into Carter’s calculations. This is far from the only inspired conspiratorial example we have. What of the private conversation Rehoboam of Judah had with his young peers, wherein was decided to burden the people of the land with a weightier yoke and a chastisement of scorpions? (1 Kings 12) What of the secret cloisters crammed with filthy idols and hidden within the very Temple by conspiring man, revealed unto the eyes of Ezekiel by our all-perceiving God Himself? (Ezekiel 8) And of course there is the sticky wicket of Psalm 2, in which the counsel of the rulers together – ‘Let us break Their bands asunder, and cast away Their cords from us’ – set the basis for all future intrigues on the part of the occult oligopoly. Does Carter care about any of this? Nope. Way outside his comfort zone, y’see.
So yes, Carter here attempted a hot take and only wound up with a tepid quake. And yes, it’s painfully obvious that his entire reason for existing is to secure for himself a comfortable sinecure in the hallowed halls of Judeo-Churchianity, as that sure beats working for a living. And the imagery rife during the current Antifa/BLM Troubles, from busloads of out-of-state agitators being photographed heading to the likes of Spokane to conveniently placed pallets of bricks clearly visible on downtown street corners, renders his verdict laughable and proves Joe Carter to be a vainglorious fool.
None of that is the worst part.
The worst part is that Carter himself seems to be a most willing dupe in one of the most nefarious conspiracies of all…the titular conspiracy of silence against those who would dare question the prevailing meta-narrative of whatever false flag event we are currently enduring.
One Stephen Wolfe on Facebook made this prescient observation:
“The use of the ‘conspiracy theory’ accusation is an elite rhetorical tool to maintain the delusion that the elites’ public views match their private ones and that their public views are not products of private scheming and careful deliberation.”
It’s hard to disprove that this was indeed Carter’s intention all along. Or if he really is this stupid, then perhaps serious students of conspiracy should take heed to 1 Peter 2:15 and ‘with well doing…put to silence the ignorance of foolish men’. Has he never been informed that his perpetual hackneyed cheerleading on behalf of the forces of establishmentarian progressiveness has long been the trademark of various Rothschilds and Rockefellers, Armand Hammer, George Soros, et al – none of whom have ever been shy about revealing their underlying motives to a helpless public at large? I’m not buying it. The well-known concession of the Southern Baptist Convention towards the efficacy of liberal hacktivism is starting to get some gray hairs on its pate by now, and as a leading luminary in that officious body Carter is very much aware of who cuts his hefty checks. Cavort away, thou damned marionette!
And while we’re on the subject of Carter’s rampant Biblical illiteracy, has he never read God’s curse upon reprobate Israel of Isaiah 3:4: ‘And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them’? Were you ever a kid, Joe? What do children in their natural state do?
They conspire.
They make leagues with their siblings against their parents, or with one parent against another parent, or with one or more siblings against other siblings, or with Tickle-Me Elmo if no other opportunity arises. All to get an extra cookie for dessert, an extra half-hour before bedtime, or to avoid a just chastisement. Why would children placed in high office by a righteously wrathful God behave any differently, except on a far higher level of intensity, as befits the stakes?
Bottom line: if Carter is determined to hew to the Renaissance humanist line that if man’s works can be equated to God’s works than he must be ‘basically good’, he can have at it, but he can then spare us his facile insights making claims to Christian orthodoxy at the same time. Or, since one prescient meme is worth a thousand words:
