Truth in the face of conspiracy theories

How do you tell fake news and conspiracy theories from the truth? It seems that lots of people can’t. A terrifying article in The Guardian ("Trapped in a hoax") reveals that 61% of the American public consistently endorses at least one conspiracy theory about subjects as diverse as where Barack Obama was born, whether climate change is real, that 9/11 was a government-planned attack, or whether childhood vaccines cause autism. Why is that terrifying? Because when challenged over the fabrication or inaccuracy this group responds with ferocious hostility and threats of violence. Read the article and shudder at the treatment of a man whose son was killed in the Sandy Hook school massacre in 2012, but has had to move eight times in five years because of death threats from conspiracy theorists who maintain nobody died at Sandy Hook. (And before we get smug this side of the Atlantic, research also revealed that 60% of Brits are “wedded to a false narrative”, although there does not appear to be the same violence attached to that belief.)

The Guardian article is shocking in what it reveals, but why should it surprise us that people have a hard time understanding or accepting the truth? The very concept of truth has been under attack for some time, so what will that do to the way people think about truth? We are living in the shadow of a great change in thinking that began in the 17th century with what was (ironically) called the Enlightenment. We would break free from the shackles of ignorant religion and supersitition; now it would be man who would determine what was true and right. The only problem with that was that people don’t agree and, after two world wars, people came to the conclusion that truth doesn’t exist. Everything is relative, and the only truth will be what is true for me. It doesn’t need a prophet to see where that will lead.

Or perhaps it does. People today have swallowed the notion that you can reject God’s truth and invent your own, and there won’t be any consequences. But rejecting the truth means accepting lies, and lies will twist and distort everything. It is significant that in the Old Testament we frequently witness the people of Israel turning away from God to follow the idols of the nations around. When the prophets call them out for this rejection they describe the idols as “lies”, and following lies is never neutral. The prophets warned their hearers that they would become like the lies they were following; they would take on the cruel characteristics of the idols they worshipped. And that is what happened. The complaints of the Old Testament prophets about the state of Israelite society reveal that rivalry, violence, corruption and lies had gripped the nation, even leading people to sacrifice their children to their gods. Reject the truth, and lies will take a terrible toll.

But where does that leave us, as Christians, in an age that cannot tell what truth is? Obviously, we are not going to join the baying groups that scream at one another across the internet. (I say “obviously”, but it still needs to be said that we don’t use their tactics, because we can be sucked into their methods.) If you look into the Bible book of Acts you get a fair idea of the methods the early church used, often in the face of real conspiracies that came in the form of threats, mob violence and irrational hatred. Paradoxically, they keep using the truth. They speak the truth, argue for it, debate it, reason with others (even when these people are at their most unreasonable), preach it, declare it, defend it and use it. It is paradoxical that we use the very thing people cannot see and will not accept, but it is the truth that will set them free.

That truth is centred on Jesus, who said of himself that he is “the way and the truth and the life”, and the means that we use to communicate him is the Bible. That is another paradox, of course. Every aspect of the Bible’s truth is being challenged, with conspiracy theories denouncing it as, among other things, a cobbled collection of myths and legends, written centuries later concerning a figure about whom we can know very little. That is why we have to reinforce our own understanding that what we have is the truth, God’s truth, and that we can trust it. I cannot think of a better book to help us do this than Peter J Williams’ latest book “Can we trust the Gospels?” His answer is, naturally, “Yes”, but they way does it is brilliant. The book is a short one, and easily digested, but it contains a wealth of material. Look out for the chapter “Did the Gospel writers know their stuff?” which demonstrates in a host of ways how what was written in our gospel accounts can only have come from first century people who were eye-witnesses of the events they write about. That should strengthen the foundations of our own faith, and convince us that what we have believed is genuine. But it should also speak to those who are not sure about the gospels and the Saviour they describe, so it would be good to get a book like this into the hands of doubters and sceptics. After all, the battle for truth will only be won by the truth itself.