Addendum: Let me note from the outset: I’m not claiming to know exactly what is going on with how COVID19 might be being used. I’m not subscribing to the various theories out there, per se. I’m simply noting that in pursuit of trying to understand the massive disproportions that are related to the predictions, the responses, and the on the ground actualities and data, that a greater theory that has real explanatory power is required. I believe there has to be more to the story, but I’m not claiming to know what that is.

We are Protestants, or at least I am. Protestants operate out of a ‘libertarian’ (or even nominalist at some level) type of thinking; in the sense that their sense of authority is to no human, but to the living God in Christ. We don’t, in principle, have a magisterium telling us how to read the Bible, or what it takes to be right with God. We don’t, in principle, have a politick wherein we allow totalitarian leaders to supervene over our lives in overly deterministic ways. We are a people, in principle, who question the authorities by appeal to the living Word of God. For Protestants, God in Christ is our authority; therefore, no principality or powers-that-be have any ultimate word over our lives.

It is the above sense of freedom from man/woman, and freedom for and from God that the Protestant became Protestant to begin with. The original Protestant, I am thinking of Martin Luther and the ground swell that stood behind him, was someone who worked against the mainstream; not because he sought to ultimately thwart the mainstream, but because he recognized that the mainstream needed to be ‘reformed.’ Luther, during his time, and if such propagandizing language was available during his time, would have been known as a ‘conspiracy theorist.’ John Calvin, likewise, would have been thought of as a conspiracy theorist. During these earlier stages of the Protestant Reformation, many who affirmed Luther et al, contra the mainstream of Roman Catholicism, would have been understood as one of those ‘conspirators’ or ‘protestors’ against the mainstream Church of the day. Catapulting forward, but still in Germany and Western Europe, we come across someone like Dietrich Bonheoffer and Karl Barth. Bonheoffer (and Barth) stood against the mainstream of what became Nazi culture and media. Bonheoffer would have been understood as a conspiracy theorist during his day; as would have Barth (Barth still is considered that among hardcore classical theists of our day).

But as Hegel recognized (and we don’t have to accept his “immanental-metaphyscial” connivations to affirm this) there is a dialectical cycle to the evolution of history. What once was the conspiracy theory becomes the mainstream, and what once was the mainstream becomes the conspiracy theory so on and so forth. This is the irony in this moment; at least to me. People who are elevated now, like Luther, Calvin, Bonheoffer, Barth (in certain circles) et al., during their time would have been considered the tin-foil wearing scum of the fringed earth during their day. Eventually the theological intelligentsia has come to think of them as the mainstream mainstays and heroes of the theological past; at least in Protestant circles. And yet, these same intelligentsia, at a political level, have aligned themselves with mainstream media sources, group think-tanks, and talking points that would make the spirit of someone like Luther and Bonheoffer cringe with despair.

To concretize this a bit: if say I were to suggest that there is something much more sinister about how COVID – 19 is being used; if I were to be of the belief that in order to find the greatest explanatory power about what is going on in the global culture, that it would be germane to consider what might be seemingly outlandish explanations; I will immediately be labeled a conspiracy theorist. But why is that?! The irony, is that many of these same people who would consider me a conspiracy theorist for considering various explanatory theories about the global realities we are facing, in order to help explain them in more globalist ways, are the same people who celebrate former conspiracy theorists for liberating the world from political, ecclesial, and theological tyranny in the mediaeval past. So, you think Bonheoffer was a radical with a cause; that he was able to discern things that most couldn’t during his day? You think he was noble for this? I do too. Then why is it considered ignoble to be that sort of fool currently? The heroes of today were the fools of yesterday. True, it isn’t always apparent who the heroes or the fools are at the moment, but when there is a groundswell of evidence, for those with eyes to see, in regard to the global powers that be, and what their attempt is to overthrow the current world order; it behooves us, at least those of us operative in the Protestant spirit, to identify these things. Christians are supposedly people of the truth; the truth rarely coheres with the mainstream perception of reality (and this for a variety of base reasons).

Anyway, this is as forthright as I can be at the moment. I think people need to wake up though. Not become “woke” in the mainstream way that is understood—indeed, this is what needs to be thwarted and overturned in the upheaval sort of way that Luther engaged in contra the Catholic church—but woke in the sense that there are real life conspiracies underway right in front of our faces. If the whole global economy being shut down for nothing more than a bad flu season isn’t illustrative enough for you, then you must be part of the mainstream, and you ought to repent quickly!