This is a very off-brand post for me. I wrote this back during the pandemic when all of the craziness was going down. It’s mainly aimed at the people who have fallen down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theory life. I aim to help you either understand that where you are heading has no life at the end of it or for the family members who are watching their loved one go down this road to help you understand what that road leads to. Talking with someone who is convinced of these things is nearly impossible and can be an all-consuming job. Make sure to have good boundaries and speak the truth with as much love as you can. Help them see that the end of this road doesn’t lead to anything but pain and anxiety. Here’s my story….
If you take a look into my past, you will find I am closely tied to the Christian right. I grew up in the South in a non-denominational church who were convinced they had the corner on Christianity (at least that was how I saw it) . . . but did we?
Years later I look back and see what a broken mess it all was. The fruit of the ministry ended children’s lives, discounted mental illness, and led many of the offspring to find radically different paths than their parents. What does that have to do with conspiracy theories? Glad you asked.
With what is happening in the world instead of posting a one-liner on my FB page and getting hate from all sides, I thought I’d tell my story instead. However, I will preface this with a caveat: what I am not saying is that the world is perfect and we have no problems. I’m not saying that people in power are all perfect and there isn’t a corrupt one among them. I’m not saying evil, selfish people with power don’t exist. I’m not saying vaccinations are 100% safe for all people and I’m not saying we shouldn’t stand up for what we believe, but here is what I am saying: sometimes just sometimes, we need to take a step back and examine, “What is the fruit of my belief system? And do my beliefs keep me from being present in my day-to-day life and family?”
My story begins when I was around 10. My father started getting into conspiracy theories. He began to dig into the Federal Reserve System and became obsessed. Now being a Christian family, this was all hidden under a veil of “revelation” that God was “revealing” to us to be ready for the economy to collapse and revert us back to the 1930’s Depression Era (mind you we were in the ‘90’s and early 2000’s). As he continued to dig, he would meditate and constantly talk about how we were headed to a one-world government system and how eventually we wouldn’t be able to buy food with cash. This belief started an avalanche of bad decisions that left his family in financial and physical ruin.
As time went by, my dad’s obsession with having no debt led us to only renting houses and never owning anything. He didn’t trust doctors so we never went and didn’t have health insurance. My brother who had his own demons to battle was attracted to the paranoia and need for significance that conspiracy theories afforded. One of the draws of a conspiracy theory is it makes you think you have “secret, inside knowledge” that no one else knows and, therefore, you have a special ability to save yourself and others from future peril. In the Bible, there’s a verse that states, “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for [Jesus’] sake will find it.” (Matthew 16:25) This is a core principle of Christianity. Our goal isn’t to save ourselves. And it shouldn’t matter what the world does; we aren’t of this world. If you’re looking for evil, why are you shocked that it’s evil?
Over time, I left my father’s house and went to live my own life, but every time I came back, there was a new theory. I remember, in the days of the Obama administration, my father was explosive all the time. “That man is going to RUIN our COUNTRY!” he would shout, “We are all going to be under Sharia Law and all of us will be forced to choose between being Muslim and being a Christian.” The fear was palpable. My brother at this time was a heavy drug user and, with his intense hatred and unforgiveness, lashed out at all authority figures. This dangerous rebelliousness was fed by my father’s belief system that had systematically dismantled any and all proper power of authority (including police officers) had over us by telling us of the deep state’s corruption. And this was in the late 1990s and early 2000s—way before “deep state” became an internet buzz word.
Anyone from government officials to doctors were corrupted—everyone had evil intentions and no one could be trusted. The seed of paranoia began to build. Yet the fact that Jesus never fought against the Roman Empire, which was arguably the most demonically-influenced government of His time, never crossed my father’s mind. Jesus never fought against the government because he was from a completely different Kingdom. He knew he would win by doing the one thing the enemy never saw coming: laying down His own life (the best warfare ever).
In 2008, my mother at the age of 58 was diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer. This was after months of her not feeling well and only going to alternative medical “doctors” (who couldn’t legally diagnose her) because my father had no insurance and because he didn’t trust mainstream doctors. They had also falsely believed that in California they would force you to be treated by chemotherapy and doctors didn’t have any other treatments than this poison. But nevertheless, he finally took her and she decided she didn’t want to get Chemo (because it was so evil) so she went the natural route. My father poured over all the information he had been digesting for years not only his Faith but also his conspiracies. He found a doctor who believed cancer was a fungus and said he could cure my mother with baking soda so my father flew my mother to Italy and the man successfully sold my father snake oil.
The treatment failed, of course, but my father wouldn’t give up that the government had banned books that had the cure to cancer and there was someone who would know that cure. We found HIM! The savior that was going to cure my mother’s stage 4 cancer was a mad research scientist who loved to smoke pot and shoot up vitamin C. He was it. In the meantime, we found the source of my mother’s malady—it was the mercury in her fillings. So, my father took her to San Francisco and had all the amalgam fillings removed. Surely with new porcelain fillings, my mom’s cancer would be cured! Expect back in my mother’s home country, all of her family had the same fillings and never had cancer including her mother who is in her 90s and still alive as I write this.
With our own personal savior, we knew that everything we were putting my mother through was going to be her salvation. We didn’t know where the cancer was, how far along she was, or even if the treatment was working because we couldn’t trust the doctors. And yet on the other side of this, we were believing for a miracle. Everyone believed she was going to get healed. Then she died August 1, 2008.
All my father’s conspiracies, research, finances, and hard work didn’t save his wife. After my mother’s death, my father found another conspiracy theory. I’m not exactly sure of all of the language but basically the thought was he wasn’t going to pay the banks the mortgage because they didn’t hold the title of the house and so he would only pay the person or company holding the title. Along with that conspiracy, came “the sovereign citizen revelation.” And it was at this point, I finally checked out. My father’s disconnection from what was actually happening in the world around him scared me. He wasn’t engaging with the grief process or the protection of his children. He felt no need to be present in the moment and all the conversations that he could have were about what the government was or wasn’t going to do. Sadly, those who he did find to listen to him were dragged down with him.
He lost the house soon after my mom died because he refused to pay the mortgage. At this point, my brother had gone through his own paranoid life where getting a job was slave labor in his mind. The government owed him millions of dollars because he was being used as collateral by the US government. He also had been deathly ill with a gluten allergy and other gut health issues that were only cured by smoking copious amounts of pot.
In 2012 I moved back to northern California to be closer to my family and, the day that I moved, my father moved in with his fiancé in Reno because California was way too expensive, etc. After my father left, my brother started having a break with reality as well. His drinking was out of control and the “savior mad scientist” was giving him shots of a substance called procaine. This, of course, was “outlawed” by the FDA because it cured every ailment you ever had. The government didn’t want you to have it because while you’re on it you could conquer the world and out-smart them at their own game.
Later that same brilliant, mad scientist was found dead in his cabin from hypothermia but also probably an OD of procaine. My brother got obsessed with getting a hold of this for himself so much so he bought components from China and had the police after him for trying to bring illegal substances into the States but it was all justified because the government was just the “deep state just trying to control its people from getting freedom.” They don’t want us to have control over our health or finances—we must always remain slaves!
A year or so later, my brother was found in the woods bleeding to death after he had slit his own throat and stabbed himself multiple times because he was convinced he was the antichrist. He was in the hospital for 6 months and was never made to find counseling or help for his mental illness. I took him in for a while but his obsession with the government always watching him, knowing “who he is,” and always listening to his phone calls got too much for me. My duty was to my daughter and, after he completely destroyed my house in one of his manic moments thinking he was a god, I could no longer care for him.
Years later, my father has completely disowned his children and my brother’s instability, which can still be haunting at times (he recently feared he had caused the coronavirus outbreak), is somehow managed while permanently qualifying for disability. We are completely destroyed as a family; shattered from all sides because of the obsession of my father and brother. The fruit of obsessing about a future you can’t control is a complete and tragic disengagement with the world right in front of you. “Don’t worry about tomorrow for tomorrow will take care of itself,” (Matthew 6:34) was never applied in our family. At every turn, my father would have told you he was on a righteous journey to bring justice and fight for freedom but, in the end, he lost everything because he didn’t see what was right in front of him.
The enemy comes to kill, steal, and destroy but Jesus comes to bring life and life abundantly.
Friends, it costs too much to spew hate and anger and believe things just because it’s contracultural or anti-mainstream. For every relationship that is broken in the Body of Christ in this time, the enemy wins. I’m not telling you how to think, but please be present with those around you, do your research and check your own biases, promote truth but not just something that sounds true or you want to be true—look at the fruit and, most importantly, look into the loving eyes of Jesus because He is the Ultimate Truth.