For God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. –2 Timothy 1:7
I was the recipient of yet another chain email today with a link to a youtube video. This one seemed to intimate–with a gravely serious voice over artist speaking against a backdrop of ominous and brooding music–that either Oprah Winfrey or Barack Obama is the Anti-Christ. Or maybe Oprah is the false prophet and Barack is the Anti-Christ. Or maybe it’s some other combination of the two. Naturally, at the end of the video I am told to purchase a book that explains it all. Snake-oil salesmen, it appears, are not extinct.
It is a common failing among humans that we permit our logic to be overridden by that which we WANT to believe. In these opening years of the 21st century, it appears that my Christian brothers and sisters want to believe that the most popular and most powerful Americans are conspiring against us. We are all free to subscribe to whatever paranoia we desire. However, Christianity is a faith spread by evangelism and solid evangelism requires that its agents be credible and trustworthy.
With each spam email that is forwarded and each conspiracy theory that is advanced, we risk undermining our witness and our credibility. We too often adopt ideas because they confirm what we already believe. Rather than do the hard work of critically analyzing accusations and putting them through their intellectual paces, we’d rather let unnamed and faceless emailers speak to our doubts and fears. The day will come–and in fact is already here–when we will need to speak out and to do so with credibility. I fear that the spam email campaigns that so many of us fall victim to are serving to silence our voice when we need it the most.
A Christian should not be controlled by fear. If you read the scriptures about the fruits of the spirit, the description seems to be of an individual in control of his or her faculties, calmly and carefully navigating the torrents of life. We should therefore approach all ideas with a critical and discerning mind, no matter our predispositions.
No theories–and no political candidates and no talk show hosts for that matter–should be immune from a logical dissection of the ideas they advance. Neither should we rush to believe the worst about them simply because it confirms what we already believe. We owe it to the God we serve to be faithful and competent ambassadors of our faith. Anything less is a travesty.
