Halfway between two well-known Messianic passages in Isaiah, between “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son” in chapter 7 and “For unto us a child is born” in chapter 9 comes an intriguing verse about conspiracies in chapter 8:
“Do not call conspiracy all that this people call conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.” (Isaiah 8:12)
There is certainly no shortage of fear these days. We hear of it on all sides and sometimes feel it within our own hearts. We encounter people who fear the possible loss of personal freedoms, and we encounter people who fear the possibility of catching the Covid19 virus or spreading it to others. Fear is basically a function of what’s possible in the near future. But, interestingly enough, faith is also a function of what is possible.
Fear is always a companion to protectiveness. Both groups mentioned above are protective, but for different reasons. One side fears the possible outcomes of social control and wants to protect individual liberties. The other fears the possible spread of the pandemic and wants to protect the collective good. At one extreme we observe a mentality of “full conspiracy” and at the other end is a mentality of “full compliance.” Perhaps one reason we see such polarization among those who fear is because today’s news media seems to be challenged by a fact-fakery polarity, resulting in the fuzziness of truth.
The word conspiracy is not common in the Bible. Nevertheless, there is the classic conspiracy led by Absalom to take Jerusalem from David. In the book of Acts there is the plot of forty Jews who vowed not to eat or drink until they killed Paul. Both protagonists, luckily, were tipped off by secret informants and got away unharmed.
Isaiah’s verse is interesting; it implies not only actual conspiracy but also alleged conspiracy. In modern lingo, “conspiracy theory.” Real conspiracies are born out of the shadows; sinister plots are by nature secretive. But when a theory of conspiracy has little to no basis in reality, it doubles up the shadows of an alleged group-plotting and the shadows around the public spread of a theory from an unknown source.
The kings of Syria and northern Israel were conspiring to get Ahaz, king of Judah, in league with them to better resist the threat of Assyrian attack. Isaiah 7 starts with the prophet saying, “Don’t get swooped into this plan! Trust in God!” But Ahaz has other plans in mind. He aims to acquiesce to Assyria as a way to buy off protection (Read chapter 16 of 2 Kings for background).
When the northern kings came to overtake Jerusalem, “The hearts of Ahaz and his people were shaken, as the trees of the forest are shaken by the wind” (Isaiah 7:2). Quite the image. Isaiah offers strong counterpoint: “Be careful, keep calm, and don’t be afraid.” He predicts that the plot to overtake Jerusalem will not succeed. “Stand firm in your faith if you want to stand at all” (Isaiah 7:9).
The Judeans had good reason to be afraid. Raids were increasing on all four borders. The geopolitics of the day pretty much boiled down to paying tribute to stronger nations around you or receiving tribute from conquered nations. But Ahaz placed his bets on paying tribute to a larger player in the game, Tiglath-Pileser III, king of Assyria. He threw in extra temple wealth for good measure.
The Judeans likely fell into two thought-camps: ally with Syria or ally with Assyria. At the extremes, conspiracy theories would flourish; an alliance with the wrong ally would lead to unthinkable outcomes. Behind the curtains it is probable that officials in both camps were strengthening one agenda against the other. (Read Isaiah 9:14-17 on the spread of ideas from leaders to the masses in this story.)
Eventually Tiglath-Pileser came to Ahaz, “…but gave him trouble instead of help” (2 Chronicles 28:20). Isaiah the Seer saw it all coming. He knew Ahaz’s gamble was a bad one. But so was an alliance with Syria. Most of Isaiah chapters 7 through 10 have to do with the tragic downfall of all political players. Judah, Israel, Syria, and even Assyria – they would all stumble and fall.
In such times of shifting political sands, the prophet looks God-ward. Politicians never have final answers to human-made problems. Isaiah presents the symbolic names of four sons. Either newly born or yet to be born, these boys of Israel represent the promise of a better future. The meaning of their names serve as signs of hope in times of fear:
· Shear-jashub: A Remnant Shall Return (Isaiah 7)
· Immanu-el: God Is With Us (Isaiah 7, 8)
· Maher-shalal-hash-baz: Quick To Plunder, Swift To Spoil (Isaiah 8)
· Pele-yoets-el-gibbor-avi-ad-sar-shalom: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9)
Yes, some of these names are a mouthful, but all Hebrew names are rich in theological meaning. When times are bleak and dark and conspiracies are buzzing in the air, it may seem counterintuitive that the best hope would come from the announcement of the births of powerless babies. But Isaiah, with prophetic imagination, sees how God’s presence and power are well-represented in seed form, pregnant with possibility.
Against fear and for faith, against darkness and for light, against an impossible present and for a possible future, these strange names act like tiny homeopathic pills, stimulating the imagination of God’s people deep in their hearts. They strengthen an inner resolve to rely more on God and less on political solutions. Ahaz, unfortunately, rejects an interest in signs, unable to sharpen his focus on God (Isaiah 7:10).
Taken together, these names help the faithful to remain faith-informed rather than fear-informed. God is with us from beginning to end; those who conspire will fall soon, a remnant will return to the land, and the Wonderful Counselor will reign for good. Peace and justice will someday leaven the entire dough of history.
Back to conspiracies. It stands to reason that during times of crisis, people worry about losing freedom and control over their lives. Stress ripens the social soil in which fear can grow. Fear naturally stems from real loss, but it can also stem from perceived loss. That’s where the movers and shakers of public information find a foothold. Fear can be a useful tool for controlling people’s opinions and behaviors: “The government is going to take away all of your guns!”
Fear, then, is a companion to manufactured information. It bolsters social division, demonizes enemies, and manipulates information. It also bolsters future-focused conspiracy theories. Past-focused theories, such as JFK’s murder, do not garner fear as do future-leaning ones foretelling the loss of freedoms. Does this mean all conspiracy theories are bunk, waiting to be debunked? No. There is usually some relationship, by varying degrees, between actual (though hidden) truth and fabricated (thus publicized) truth.
The ambiguity of this relationship helps greatly to keep the “pushers” of information in the shadows. Elite groups in power often aspire to control the means of public information in order to protect their interests. There is no society without people in high places aiming to call the shots. Mixing bits of real truth with unfounded truth is a useful recipe for keeping “the truth” in the shadows. That grey area, where truth can never be proven or disproven, wields a lot of power in the public sphere.
A new angle on this topic: Postmodern thought has illuminated the interplay between knowledge and power. It gives us tools to deconstruct narratives of power and re-empower repressed voices. In the language of the Magnificat, “[it] brought down rulers from their thrones, and lifted up the humble.” The modern demon of Power-Over has been cast out, giving space for global borrowing, diversity, tolerance, and trauma-awareness. It has helpfully cleared the way for Power-With.
But as the postmodern pendulum swings further, creating new contradictions in the realm of truth and credibility, it opens the door for seven new demons (Matthew 12:45) to enter in, including disinformation, accusation, polarization, moral confusion, hyper-sensitivity to identity language, and so forth. If postmodernism created an initial crisis over the trustworthiness of truth, our newer “post-postmodern” era has notched up this truth-and-trust crisis exponentially: We live in a hyped-up world.
Before returning to Isaiah, I’ll make one digression. Since the mid-1960s, when JFK’s assassination was being probed, conspiracy theories have increasingly been defined by certain media sources as paranoia, irrationality, bias, insufficient evidence, and thus ridiculed as being outlandish. One outcome of these connotations is that all conspiracy theories are more easily lumped together as having the same characteristics.[1] If the true parts of a conspiracy cannot be successfully covered up, the next course of action is to cast all such theories in a dubious light.
The purpose of this article is not to analyze contemporary conspiracies, be they actual, manufactured, or mixtures thereof. My main offering is that in our current hyperactive times, the means of manufacturing fear through the control of information and misinformation is stronger than it was during Isaiah’s time. This begs the leading question of this article: How do people of faith become faith-informed and less fear-informed?
After writing “Do not call conspiracy everything this people call conspiracy” and “Do not fear what they fear,” Isaiah makes an expected move. “Fear God instead! Give God your main attention!” We know from other biblical texts that such fear of God is not emotive but attitudinal. It builds up faith rather than erodes faith. This is about trusting in the best Authority about truth.
The next verses in Isaiah 8 go deeper. “God will be a sanctuary for you, or God will be a stone that makes you stumble” (8:14). The Hebrew word for faith, allied to our word amen, literally means “to stand firm” (7:9). With God as a solid sanctuary in our thinking, we will remain firm, unshaken, not like trees in the wind. But if we hope in political solutions, God’s paradoxical truth will make us “stumble…fall…be broken…be snared…and captured” (8:14-15).
Stumbling stone. Sound familiar? Jesus brings to all humanity the divine dialectic, God’s Yes and God’s No. Isaiah seems to foretell this paradoxical element throughout his Messianic prophesies. He perceives how God works through the unsuspecting, lowly things of history to overturn the high and mighty things of history (no less than the high and mighty things within ourselves).
We should not be surprised at all the Isaiah-echoes in the Gospel Nativity narratives: regional kings posturing with imperial kings; baby boys named before birth; women conceiving sons; admonishments to “fear not;” light dawning out of darkness; signs “spoken against,” causing the falling and rising of many.
Isaiah 8 includes a wonderful verse you won’t find among Advent texts in the lectionary cycle. “I will wait for the Lord, who is hiding his face… I will put my hope in him” (8:17). Another translation reads: “I will look eagerly for him.” Here we find an Advent adage in the midst of fear-based information: trust in God, even when God seems to be missing. Isaiah adds more: “Here am I, and the children the Lord has given me. We are the signs and symbols in Israel from the Lord Almighty” (8:18).
Wow. God-given signs and symbols of hope in a context of uber-fear. Children represent new situations, new possibilities. Waiting and hoping, of course, are not passive. Perhaps doing the best for our children in our local contexts is also a way to do the best for our future.
Jacques Ellul understood how real hope is rooted in a realism of actual situations. In Hope in Time of Abandonment, he writes how hope exists precisely in zones where God seems to be missing and where human conditions are dire:
Hope, a sally into the territory abandoned by God… is the calling into question, not of God, but of the power of human beings… It wants to have a pole of reference which is God. It demands that God speak, because without the presence of God, humans can only go from disaster to chaos. There is no longer any light or any way. Hope is the negating of the powers and successes of humans, since it cannot be fulfilled except by God’s presence with humans.[2]
Thanks to Isaiah, we are reminded that God is present and that God does speak. Immanuel, both sanctuary and stumbling stone, helps us to navigate confusing socio-political affairs in a humble, trusting way. We are invited to not fear, but rather to be a calm, non-anxious presence in the world, lest we ourselves add to the intensification. In this light, conspiracies of all types are studied realistically, with full complexity, but never as ultimate narratives to dictate our lives.
[1] The “Shadowlands” Conspiracy Theory series in the Atlantic Monthly, May-June, 2020 is a classic example of fusing all varieties of conspiracy theories into one unifying set of characteristics. Wikipedia entries on Conspiracy Theory also portray them as being consistently unfounded and associated with negative connotations.
[2] Jacques Ellul, Hope in Time of Abandonment (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2012), 213.
Ted Lewis is a restorative justice practitioner and trainer living in Duluth, Minnesota. He founded the Restorative Church website and is executive director of the International Jacques Ellul Society.