Opinion: What would Jesus make of today’s conspiracy theories?

2023 was a bumper year for conspiracy theories.

There are some signs of reckoning, including the epic settlement imposed recently on Rudy Giuliani for his delirious election conspiracies. But such victories are few and far between.

Antisemitism has spiked in the wake of the Israel-Hamas conflict, dredging up centuries-old antisemitic conspiracies about Jewish power and influence. Elon Musk wrapped up a year-long flirtation with dangerous fictions by restoring the X (Twitter) account of arch-conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, who monstrously claimed the Sandy Hook school shooting was staged. Meanwhile, Donald Trump has spouted pernicious lies about immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country,” a line recycled from Adolf Hitler.

For a disturbing number of people, conspiracy theories have come to exert the force of religious dogma in their lives, guiding the most fundamental decisions they make, from how they parent to how they vote. In 2021, polling revealed that 14% of Americans, roughly equivalent to the percentage of mainline Protestants in the United States, could be classed as QAnon believers.

However unmoored from reality conspiracy theories may be, it is important nonetheless to recognize that they do represent belief systems. To contest these systems, we must take the strength of adherents’ convictions seriously, even if the creeds themselves stretch credulity.

As a theologian, I am interested in how we should separate this kind of dangerous truth-seeking from the proper pursuit of religious truth. I think Jesus offers some powerful tools. And there’s still a chance that even the most ardent conspiracy theorists might listen to him, if not to other authorities.

As it turns out, Jesus was passionately interested in how to communicate hidden truths. A preference for obscurity pervades his teachings, which comes out best in his trademark mode of instruction: the parable. When his disciples ask him why he favors this difficult form of instruction for the masses, he replies:

“To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given … The reason I speak to them in parables is that ‘seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand’ … But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear.” (Matthew 13: 11,13,16)

It’s easy to miss just how unsettling – and frankly, undemocratic – a point Jesus is making here. The fact that the majority of listeners will misunderstand the parables turns out to be a design feature, not a flaw.

The key to interpreting the parables isn’t so much cognitive as it is moral. According to the passage above, sin scrambles people’s sensory perceptions, rendering them unable to see what’s right before their eyes. The disciples’ ability to perceive the true meaning of the parables is not a credit to their special acumen – they’re hardly an elite squad of codebreakers – but rather a mark of their faith. They see because they believe.

Is this fair? Shouldn’t the truth be equally accessible to all, believers and non-believers alike? Shouldn’t Jesus dispense with allegories and make the truth blindingly obvious to everyone he meets? Jesus’s assertion that most people can’t handle or even recognize the truth might sound inequitable on the surface, but it has the effect of safeguarding the truth, preserving its precious otherness.

Rather than grounds for sanctimonious self-congratulation, this is a cause for profound humility. It’s not because of their special merit or cleverness that Jesus discloses the truth to the disciples. He tells them the truth because he loves them and wants them to know him more deeply.

This could hardly be more different from the modus operandi of Giuliani, Jones, Trump and the others who denounce “fake news” while preaching conspiracy theories. Rather than the radical humility Jesus encourages, they preach superiority over the mindless “sheeple” who follow mainstream media. Instead of the patient study of cryptic matters, conspiracy theorists promise the interpretive keys to the kingdom to anyone able to open a Facebook or an X account.

Jesus doesn’t ask people to reject what they see before them as a lie, but rather to seek truths beneath the surface. Jesus’s parables invite us to read between the lines, but the lines still matter. They’re not fake.

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