By Mark Kelly
A couple of times in the past few months, we’ve received inquiries about whether Pastor Rick is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. The letters were sincere questions from friends, the kind of queries we get every day. What was really unusual about them were the Internet rants they pointed us back to.
Did you know Rick Warren has for years been a member of a semi-secret cabal the world’s power elites are using to create a One World, New Age government and pave the way for the emergence of the Anti-Christ?
We were shocked too.
Conspiracy theories are fascinating – obviously for those who believe them, as well as for those who wonder why anyone ever is taken in by them. Given the right mental and emotional state, however, I suspect many of us could be taken in by a convincing hoax. Sometimes it’s easier than coping with reality.
I remember walking into a living room on a day in early January more than 25 years ago. The whole family was seated together, consoling each other, eyes red from crying, children sniffling. I was distressed by their heartache and asked what had happened.
It was Jan. 8 – Elvis Presley’s 65th birthday, had he not died three years earlier. The tears, however, weren’t exactly about Elvis’ death. The family was upset that “the King” had faked his death – and they couldn’t understand why.
I understand the business of conspiracy theory. At one point, more than 12,000 conspiracy books were listed on Amazon.com’s zShops. Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie, JFK, grossed $205 million. Fox TV’s X-Files reportedly pulled in more than $500 million in advertising revenue.
If you have a book to sell, a Web site that needs traffic, or a talk show that needs listeners, perhaps your scruples about half truth and innuendo might take a back seat to your need to succeed.
On the other hand, perhaps you actually believe the conspiracy theory you promote. Perhaps you feel powerless to stop the collapse of moral (or theological) order in the world about you. Perhaps you don’t understand why someone else has experienced the success you desired. Perhaps you can’t come to terms with the darkness in your own soul and you need to transfer it to a prominent public figure. Perhaps your need to be a hero requires a villain for you to vanquish. Psychologists have all sorts of theories about why people take refuge in – and promote – conspiracy theories.
Yes, Pastor Rick was invited in 2006 to become a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, which is a "think tank" that gives government officials, university scholars, and leaders in society an opportunity to discuss, better understand, and influence American foreign policy. The CFR was organized in 1921, and discussions at first focused on naïve notions that world peace could be achieved by establishing a global government. Projects like the ill-fated League of Nations were undertaken toward that end. Apparently that still makes the CFR a great target for conspiracy theorists, though recent discussions have focused on topics like Congress’s proposed guest worker program, relationships with China, defending chemical plants against terrorist attack, bipartisan opposition to free trade agreements, al-Qaeda's new leadership, and terrorism in the Horn of Africa.
Pastor Rick accepted the invitation to join the Council on Foreign Relations because no other pastor had ever been invited to join, and he saw it as an opportunity to keep God and his purposes before a gathering of influential people as diverse as Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Jimmy Carter, and Barbara Walters. That's a group whose members are very different intellectually and politically. Do you find it hard to imagine them agreeing on how to create a one-world government?
The Internet isn’t just a great place to promote conspiracy theories. It’s also custom designed to create them. Toss a couple of unrelated key words into a search engine, and you come up with pages of results – dots just begging to be connected. If I already have a bias against someone, it becomes evidence that confirms my suspicions. All of us are more likely to accept information that supports our opinions than evidence that contradicts them.
Personally, I take such conspiracy theories to be a distraction the devil uses to keep God's people from fulfilling his purposes in the world. There seems to be no shortage of people who can cook up an exciting bit of make-believe – and no shortage of people willing to believe what they read in a book or see on a movie screen. Too many people actually believed The Da Vinci Code was fact, not fiction.
Playing on people’s fears to further your own career is one thing, but employing half truth, innuendo, and outright falsehood to promote scandal against another servant of Christ is something else altogether. When the Bereans heard Paul teach, they went back and examined the Scriptures to see whether what he said was true. (Acts 17:11) Even though the teacher had been taught by Christ himself, they still went to the source to check the facts themselves. The world needs more people like the present-day Bereans who write us – clear thinkers who don’t take Internet rants at face value.
The world also could use fewer conspiracy promoters. The Bible tells us that “for lack of wood the fire goes out, and where there is no whisperer, contention quiets down. Like charcoal to hot embers and wood to fire, so is a contentious man to kindle strife.” (Proverbs 26:20-21 NAS)
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April 11 – Accused of "propaganda, half-truths and ad homonyms (sic) attacks" for not mentioning the CFR's "Global Governance" category of discussions, I invite you to visit those pages and see if you can locate material advocating a one-world government. Just because one person assigns a pernicious connotation to someone else's phrase does not mean the other person uses it that way. Another example of the fallacious reasoning that typifies such sites. [And it's hominem, not "homonym."]
Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.
