{"id":24757,"date":"2020-09-28T20:01:36","date_gmt":"2020-09-29T01:01:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=24757"},"modified":"2020-09-28T20:06:44","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T01:06:44","slug":"whatsoever-is-true-reflecting-on-the-growth-of-conspiracy-theories-among-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/?p=24757","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWhatsoever Is True\u201d: Reflecting on the Growth of Conspiracy Theories Among Christians"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Editor\u2019s Note: A Special Thanks to B&amp;H for permission to reprint this adaptation of chapter 7 of Dan Darling\u2019s A Way With Words: Using our Online Conversations for Good (Nashville, TN: B&amp;H, 2020)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>* * * * *<\/p>\n<p>Well, that\u2019s what they want you to think,\u201d a friend insisted, with particular emphasis on the <em>they <\/em>and <em>want<\/em>, after the end of a long and fruitless argument about whether or not a group of secretive bankers was plotting in smoke-filled rooms to destroy the world. I tried, in vain, to convince him that Donald Trump\u2019s election, a natural disaster in Indonesia, and the rise of the price of plastics were not, in fact, tied to a central, evil, dark conspiracy.<\/p>\n<p>You, too, probably have encountered a friend or family member convinced of a conspiracy. Perhaps you\u2019ve had someone plead with you to \u201cjust watch this\u201d or have had someone tell you, convincingly, \u201cIt\u2019s been proven!\u201d and provide the web links to back it up.<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe it\u2019s not a friend prone to believing in Sasquatch, UFOs, or that the world is flat; maybe you are the one who believes these things. If so, this might get awkward because I\u2019m pretty skeptical<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You probably have encountered a friend or family member convinced of a conspiracy. Why is this happening? And what should Christians do about it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[327,1376],"class_list":["post-24757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9marks","tag-life-together","tag-politics","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24757"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24757\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24759,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24757\/revisions\/24759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}