There’s not a cloud to be seen as I drive with my seven-year-old son – apart from the five unnatural lines left behind by planes in a grid pattern, that is. “Why do people want to control the weather?” my son ponders aloud, looking up at the unnatural lines.

Weeks prior, we saw similar trails in the sky and I told him they weren’t natural clouds, but rather chemicals flown high in the air to influence what the clouds did. “They’re not controlling it, buddy,”  I reassured him, reminding him that God has the weather under control.

Nevertheless, our experience raises the issue of geoengineering, specifically chemtrails or Stratospheric Aerosolic Injection. Recent catastrophic floods, as well as U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill to ban such activity, have brought much attention to these practices, which are often dismissed under the pejorative of “conspiracy theory.”

What exactly is a “conspiracy theory”?

The term “con-spire” means “to breathe with” or “to share the same spirit.” Thus, a conspiracy is defined as a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful.

A conspiracy theory, explains Michael Butter in “The Nature of Conspiracy Theories,” asserts the existence of a covertly operating group of people who seek, whether conspicuously or covertly, to achieve a certain end. This collusion “for the greater good” can take place between a small group of individuals or be purported by worldwide networks of corporations like BlackRock, Vanguard, Bank of America, or the World Economic Forum.

Many modern conspiracies have been (nervously) laughed off as the meanderings of paranoid lunatics who manufacture connections and patterns where none exist. The pejorative was first coined in the wake of the JFK assassination, directly associating those dissenting with the one-shooter narrative with deep paranoia and irrationalism. Thus, the term inadvertently categorized all conspiracies as departures from reality and precluded unwanted questioning.

Interest in conspiracy theories increased significantly following COVID. Author and theologian Doug Wilson attributes this growth to the increasing distrust toward many establishment experts, concluding, “Nobody believes anybody anymore, and this is reinforced by the widespread postmodern relativism everywhere.”

But it should not be contentious to affirm the existence of conspiracies. The Bible clearly does. Consider the Tower of Babel, or Joseph’s brother’s plot to dispose of him, or the numerous plots to trap Jesus.

History affirms conspiracies as well. The infamous plot against Julius Caesar is recognized as a conspiracy. Additionally, around 20% of Roman emperors were assassinated or killed as a result of conspiracies. And there are some unveiled and well-documented conspiracies in recent years, including MKUltra, Tuskegee, Paperclip, Project Cirrus, Operation Northwoods, the Iran-Contra Affair, among others.

“Everyone believes in the existence of conspiracies,” author Gary North writes in “The Reality of Conspiracies, referencing President Richard Nixon. “Conspiracies are organized groups of people who maliciously plot to undermine whatever it is you believe in. Obviously, what you believe in is good, so they are evil.” The question is not whether, but which, conspiracies exist. So, how should we approach conspiracies?

To begin, we should approach them with an appropriate fear of God, keeping ourselves grounded and our knowledge well-framed. As mentioned above, we should recognize first that smaller conspiracies are rooted in the grand conspiracy presented in the Christian scriptures. As North further explains:

The Bible reveals a much longer conspiratorial time frame: a continuing conspiracy against God and His revealed law-order. The faces change, but the issue remains the same: ethics. Money, power, prestige, and influence all flow out of this fundamental issue: Which God should men worship? … There is one conspiracy, Satan’s, and ultimately it must fail. Satan’s supernatural conspiracy is the conspiracy; all other visible conspiracies are merely outworkings of this supernatural conspiracy.

Our knowledge of conspiracies must remain under the one overarching conspiracy, submitted to a sovereign Creator who controls all things. Apart from this foundation, we are tempted to believe the powers-that-be (or worse, ourselves) are in ultimate control and thus fall into despair.

We can’t know everything, and that’s as it should be. Moreover, we were not meant to know everything. We often attempt to transcend our limits, as our first parents did, to our own peril.

Thankfully, God does not forget our limits. He created us with them. He remembers. He formed us and has compassion toward us. He calls us toward maturity, not perfection.

It is interesting in an “age of information” to remember that we are not meant to know everything. One never chooses if to learn but always what to learn, educator Nicholas Wolterstorff notes in “Educating for Life.” Our capacity for knowledge is inherently limited and therefore inherently selective. The knowledge we choose to pursue and retain is directly reflective of our loves, skills, and values, and implies responsibility in how we should act.

The degree we invest ourselves in the pursuit of knowledge, including conspiracies, is a matter of stewardship. Let us be good stewards of our knowledge and ignorance alike as we seek to live faithfully and wisely in this fallen world.

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The republication of this article is made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal. 

Image Credit: Flickr-Matthias Berg, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0