We just got done watching several documentaries about the assassination of President Kennedy. This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of one of the most controversial events in modern American history. Although this famous crime was committed years before I was born, once having been introduced to the circumstances surrounding the event, I have remained fascinated with the tragic mystery of President Kennedy’s death.
I have read numerous books presenting diverse theories about who may have been responsible for the president’s assassination. Culprits abound, from the Cubans, to the mafia to the CIA, and all have been presented over the years as feasible perpetrators. Each hypothesis reveals compelling motives and complex plotlines. Depending upon which version I am reading at the time, I am often completely convinced of the plausibility of each new theory. It seems we humans are eager to believe a conspiracy exists and that only a diabolical genius could have pulled it all off.
Conspiracies are not just the stuff of yesteryear. The twenty first century has spawned a number of hotly debated matters, many of which surround President Obama. Just turn on the radio during the day and find a talk show, and chances are good that you might hear a caller or two listing in detail any number of facts indicating the illegitimacy of our current president’s claim to the highest position in the government. I personally do not have any inside scoop on the veracity of these claims, but there is that little cynical person inside me that is willing to consider that anything could be true. Perhaps I have watched too many detective shows with farfetched scripts? Who knows, but for some reason I am open minded when it comes to some conspiracy theories.
Of course others I dismiss out of hand and never really pay them much attention. There is a theory that we never actually landed on the moon, that it was all filmed on a Hollywood soundstage. There is a theory that the United States Government was secretly behind the bombing of the World Trade Center. There is a theory that the famous Sasquatch video footage that was taken back in the fifties was really a guy in a suit trying to trick his friends. I don’t think any of this can be true. I am certain we landed on the moon. I can’t believe that our government, though it is corrupt in so many ways, could do such an evil deed as that. And I am convinced that Sasquatch is real and running around somewhere in the Pacific northwest. I guess I’m a little selective about my conspiracy theories after all?
What if there’s this conspiracy theory out there that modern enlightened minds summarily dismiss but it actually turns out to be valid? I’m talking about the mother of all conspiracy theories: the cosmic story of the universe and how that relates to you and me? Yes, I call this a conspiracy theory because it fits the bill. Every good conspiracy theory requires a hero or tragic victim who has good intentions but they were thwarted and undone by some villain and his cohorts. So here’s how it goes – God creates mankind with a free will and a desire to be in relationship with him. The devil is a liar and always in competition with God so he deceives and coerces man into disobedience based on a false promise of selfish gain. This original fall from grace has corrupted every relationship that has ever followed- between humans and each other as well as them and their creator. The only way repair these relationships heal the wound caused by pride was to have God intervene again through the sending of his son Jesus to pay the penalty of sin for all mankind. And what if the devil remains so passionately opposed to people experiencing this gift of redemption that he continues to lie, cheat, and steal his way into the lives of people everywhere so that they think they are either too far gone to deserve a savior or too intellectual to believe such nonsense? What if all that ends up being the truth?