Mythbusters: Conspiracy Theory

 Back in the early nineties, I was creating medical videos and traveled extensively every other weekend.  The video crews who traveled with me were subjected to what became known as “The Don Heatley Assassination Tour.”  Our trips earned this name because whenever we were in a city where a Presidential assassination took place, I always dragged the crew to see its location.  Once, when in Washington DC taping Newt Gingrich, I rushed the crew to pack up our equipment quickly so we could make it to Ford’s Theater before it closed.  I didn’t limit the tour to just successful assassinations.  Failed attempts were on my tour map too.  So we also made time to drive by the hotel where John Hinckley shot President Reagan.

Of course, when it comes to assassinations, JFK’s is the big one.   JFK was killed when I was a year old so growing up, it was always one of the defining events that shaped my reality.  Even as a child, I sensed that even the most stable of symbols and institutions were vulnerable to random bullets, illegal break-ins or scandals. Every election or inauguration, it seemed there was a collective cultural disappointment that the each new president was not JFK.  As I moved into my teen years, I became fascinated with books and articles about the conspiracy theories around his death.  My father had saved Life magazines from 1963.  Taking a magnifying glass, I would examine the pictures in them, scanning the grassy knoll for any shadow that might be construed as a sniper.  Over time, I became convinced that there had to be vast conspiracy behind this tragic event.  It couldn’t be the work of a lone crazed gunman.  That was too random and meaningless.

So when my video crew traveled to Dallas, I just had to get to Dealey Plaza.  We spent over an hour just walking around in the Zapruder landscape. Right away, I experienced a phenomena that is common when visiting places in person which one has previously only seen on TV.  And that is that places always look bigger on television.  If you have ever gone to the taping of TV show and sat in the studio audience, you’ve experienced this.  The set always looks much smaller than it does when you see it on your screen at home.  Dealey Plaza is no exception.  Standing there on the sidewalk, right beside the big “X” in the road that marks the spot Kennedy was hit, everything appeared much smaller than I had imagined.

I looked over my shoulder up to the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository and it too was much closer than I had pictured.  I thought about all the books I had read and all the documentaries I watched claiming how impossible it would have been for Oswald to fire accurately, and suddenly those claims didn’t seem so credible.  As looked back to the “X” and up to the window again, I thought to myself, “You know what?  I think even I could make that shot.”

From that point on, I became very skeptical of conspiracy theories.  Not just regarding the Kennedy Assassination, but in general.  I wondered if they are primarily coping mechanisms for dealing with tragic events. Are the random shocks of assassinations, terrorist attacks and their seeming meaninglessness too much for us to deal with, so we reinterpret them to support our own world views?  Do we make Kennedy a martyr who was killed because he wanted to end the Vietnam War, as Oliver Stone proposed in his film “JFK”?  Do we use 9/11 to demonize Israel or the Bush administration, as many conspiracy theorists do today?  Are the tragedies of life so impossible for us to bear that we must invent wild explanations to account for them?

The death of Jesus of Nazareth was a tragedy for his followers.  It had all the shocking impact of an assassination or act of terror.  When Jesus was crucified, the hopes and dreams of God’s new kingdom appeared to have been crucified along with him.  In addition, it also packed all the numbing pain of a personal tragedy for his disciples.  Jesus was their friend whom they loved and had loved them.  If you have ever lost someone close to you suddenly and senselessly, you know how that feels.  Furthermore, it was a tragedy for his disciples internally.  They had all turned their backs on him.  The questions they must have asked themselves are the same questions that haunt one after being involved in a sudden tragic death; “What could I have done to stop it?  What if I called the doctor sooner?  What if I paid more attention to my driving that day?”

When faced with the shock and tragedy of Jesus’ death, we might expect that the church would develop some kind of conspiracy theory of its own, something would explain why he died and would give his death a larger meaning.  The place we would expect to find that explanation is in our creeds.  Yet, surprisingly, when we look at all the early creeds of the church, no such explanation is given.  The Apostles Creed, which probably dates from the Second Century, merely claims that Jesus, “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified dead and buried.”  None of the creeds put forth an explanation of Jesus’ death or what theologians call a theory of atonement.

This is surprising because if you ask many Christians, or even those outside of Christianity, they would tell you that a particular theory of atonement (called the penal substitution theory)  is in fact, what Christianity is all about.  Basically this view of atonement goes like this; the whole purpose of life is to get into heaven and the way you get to heaven is to agree that this is the right atonement theory.  Specifically, because of our sin, we humans deserve punishment from a just and holy God.  On the cross, Jesus took that punishment in our place which satisfies God’s requirements for justice.  Once we believe this, we are saved, born-again, or justified, whichever term one wants to use.

Now it’s not that there is anything wrong with the penal substitution theory or that it is untrue. Certainly many verses in the New Testament can be interpreted in such a way as to support that view.  It’s just that this is not the only way in which Christians have found meaning in Jesus’ death.  In fact for the first 1000 years or so of Christianity, it was not even the most prominent explanation of the meaning of Jesus’ death.  In that time period, a model called Christus Victor predominated Christian thought.  It saw Jesus’ death as a victory over the powers of sin and darkness which set us free from their power.  Jesus rescued us, ransomed us, or liberated us. These are a very different metaphors than that of taking a punishment in our place and we find all these images in pages of our Bibles.  In fact today, this Conflict/Victory model is still the primary view of atonement in Eastern Orthodox churches and in contemporary movements such as liberation theology.

Additionally, other Christians have historically found meaning in the example of Jesus’ death.  This Moral Influence theory understands Jesus’ death, as well as his life, as a demonstration of God’s love for us.  This divine love both moves us and empowers us to repent, turn our lives around, and live such a life ourselves.  On a Workcamp trip a  couple of years ago, one of our teens shared with me and Bob Scott, another adult leader, how this idea was the only way she could make sense out of Jesus’ death.    In the past, she had been only been exposed to that penal substitution model of atonement and so she thought her thoughts we somehow heretical.  She was so relieved when Bob explained that she shared this view with many Christians throughout history.

This is why I am so thankful that inspired by the Holy Spirit, the writers of the New Testament used a multiplicity of images to make sense of the cross.  Jesus spoke of his death as a ransom. Paul used judicial metaphors such as justification before God and expiation or a “covering over” of our sin.  The author of Hebrews wrote extensively about Jesus as a sacrifice, which from his context of Temple-based Judaism made the most sense.  These are all distinct and different metaphors which all point us to the meaning of Jesus’ death, but cannot describe it completely.  Scot McKnight, in his book “A Community Called Atonement,” compares atonement models to a bag of golf clubs.  It’s not that any of them are inherently wrong, we just need to use different ones depending on where we find ourselves on the course.

In their wisdom, the writers of our creeds did not settle on just one of these metaphors and make it dogma.  They assert that Jesus “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried.”  For them, these words were significant since they confirmed that Jesus was a real historical person.  They were busting the myth of the Gnostics of their day who claimed Jesus was a essentially a mythological character and his death essentially occurred in the realm of “ a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.”  Inserting the name of Pilate, a particular political leader in history, grounded the Jesus story in the real world.  The real world of suffering, unexplained tragedies and questions like, “If there’s a God, how could he let this happen?”

In grounding Jesus in our human and historical reality, the church fathers have in fact given us the ultimate conspiracy theory.  Not a conspiracy theory in the sense of sensational story that gives an easy explanation for the unexplainable, or acts a coping mechanism for life’s tragedies.  But a conspiracy theory in the literal sense of the word “conspire.”  Conspire means literally to “breathe with.”  By not tying us to one model or explanation of the cross, the Apostles Creed enables us to breathe with God as we seek meaning in that historical event.  The Creed gives us breathing room to explore the rich multifaceted expressions of the atonement in Scripture.

Most of all, the Creed conspires by bringing “God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth” into our suffering.  This same Almighty God who is conceived in the human that we call Lord, breathes with us, breathes in our suffering.  Not only does this God breathe with us, this God bleeds with us.  So when the worst in life happens and we are overcome by grief, violence, pain and disappointment, and we ask the deep question “Where is God during all of this?” we can look to the cross and say “God is right here, suffering with us.”

 

 A message on Mark 15:1-15 from Don Heatley, pastor of Vision Community Church, Warwick, NY.

Comments

[Nick]

I agree how you say there is a better way of understanding the cross than Penal Substitution, but I disagree with your claim that Psub is a proper way of viewing the Cross.

I'm finishing a debate where I show the concept to be thoroughly unbiblical:

http://catholicdefense.googlepages.com/PenSub.htm

p.s. you should enable the option for your comment box to "email me of new comments," so when people comment they can get an email telling them a new post was made. Without this option, I might miss out if you or others comment.

[Don Heatley]

Hi Nick,
Thanks for stopping by. I'll read your essay. The Penal Substitution model does not resonate with me personally, but I recognize that it may be helpful for some people. That is why I included it as an option in my sermon. Since all the models are fairly metaphorical, I'm not so sure we have the ability to determine objectively which ones are "correct" or exist "out there". At best we can discern which ones are found in Scripture, how they were interpreted through history, and which are more or less helpful in our own context. So your essay may be helpful in that regard.

As far as the email and comments feature goes, I'm still looking through the menus to find it. If you know where it resides in Typepad, please let me know.
Don