One of the reasons why Jesus was murdered was because he dared to call some very powerful people 'hypocrites'. (Matthew 23) The Bible identifies these people as the Pharisees (and to a lesser degree as Sadducees, scribes, and lawyers). But if you study the teachings of Jesus you will not be able to identify a single political or religious group which he regarded as being the good guys... the non-hypocrites. The nearest we get to such a group are "the poor" (or more precisely the "poor in spirit").
What we have come to see is that there is a universal spiritual conspiracy which is marked by hypocrisy at every level and in every group. Speaking out against this universal hypocrisy is so dangerous as to be life-threatening in every society and in every age.
What confuses many people is the fact that each side can point out the hypocrisy of the other side(s) with relative safety... so long as they can maintain the conviction within their own ranks that they would never be more than mildly opposed to hypocrisy within the in-group.
We are presently experiencing the bitter reality of this real conspiracy in our work in Kenya. On reflection, we can see that we have often confronted it, but generally retreated when the going got too tough. There may yet be the opportunity to retreat in Kenya, but we have to ask ourselves (or more precisely, Roland, then Sue, then the rest of us need to ask ourselves) whether it may be time to stop retreating.
There is widespread corruption in Kenya, so widespread in fact that (we have heard) even the Live8 appeal is not considering sending funds there, because they have so little chance of reaching the people for whom the funds would be intended. The head of a recent enquiry into corruption in Kenya, himself, ended up fleeing the country to save his life, because of the many death threats that he received from those corrupt leaders of whom he was asking difficult questions.
It has not been part of our agenda to say anything about the corruption that exists there, and that is not the real conspiracy which this article seeks to address. But we have been caught in the midst of this corrupt system and it has forced us to ask for help from other systems which are not as blatantly corrupt, but which are still a part of the overall conspiracy... a conspiracy that would go so far as to let us die at the hands of the powers that be in Kenya without a word of protest being spoken, unless we ease up on our stand against hypocrisy.
Roland has just been released on bail. However, before he could be released, bribes had to be paid to a number of different people. Despite protests from ourselves to both our lawyer and to a representative of the Australian Government, the bribes were still paid and we were still told to keep our mouths shut. And strangely, both the lawyer and the Consulate publicly say that the Kenyan system basically "works", or at least that it should be "respected".
This willingness to work in co-operation with a corrupt system is another link in the total conspiracy that we are alluding to in this article, although it, too, is only a link. We can appreciate that in the real world, some compromises need to be made. But what we really have to ask ourselves is just how many compromises can one make before one becomes part of the problem and not part of the solution? This article, in itself, may be a dangerous commitment by ourselves to the real truth about the real conspiracy, and thus act as a deterrent to Roland (and possibly Sue) escaping years of imprisonment in Kenya.
We have already faced a situation both in Australia and in the United Kingdom where we have been almost totally black banned by the media. (See our book "Excommunicated" on our website for some of the background to the Australian ban.) In the U.K. the ban was highly visible, based on an official High Court decree that the media throughout the United Kingdom was not to print anything relating to us for a period of two years. Not even the BBC was powerful enough to get the ban lifted. And it was not placed into effect because of anything that we did; it was placed in effect to hide the fact that we did NOT do what the system had already allowed (and even prompted) the media to declare we had done, in front page banner headlines all over the country.
The Kenyan media has followed suit, with numerous front page reports about the trumped up charge of abduction, without once even bothering to interview any member of the Jesus Christians themselves, and in full disregard for the videotaped statement from the so-called victim, stated articulately and confidently that she was never abducted by anyone. The Kenyan media has not even shown an interest in interviewing Betty herself. It may be that they are having too much fun throwing stones at us and her; or it may be that it would be too dangerous for them to challenge the wealth and might of Fred Njoroge.
Strangely, the media in all three countries have almost unanimously decided to ignore the serious travesty against ourselves in Kenya. Is there any connection between the silence of all three?
Our answer is that there is only a connection when one understands the real conspiracy; and the real conspiracy is not so simple as to say that the Jesus Christians are the good guys and everyone else is the bad guys. The conspiracy is based, instead, on the fact that individuals within each of those organisations have failed to deal with their own dependence on and love for money.
It is our INDIVIDUAL greed that really creates corporate greed, government corruption, and media distortions of truth. In each case, the truth has to be altered slightly in order to achieve lesser goals and appease higher powers. And the Jesus Christians are not exempt.
A prison guard says that he will deliver medicine to Roland and give him some food if we will just pay him a small bribe, and so we give in. Then the judge tells our lawyers that he will reduce the bail if the lawyer pays a much bigger bribe. And finally the courts let it be known that whoever pays the highest price will win the case on September 2, when Roland stands trial for a totally false charge.
Of course, by that stage we realise too late that we cannot win. Our opponent, Fred Njoroge, has a thousand times more money than we have. And so, too late, we cry "corruption" and "conspiracy". But we ourselves were a part of it when we first bribed the prison guard. It was only a few dollars and over time it could have saved Roland's life, and so it did not seem like such a small price to ask. But it moved us into a shady area where clear lines between right and wrong no longer exist.
In Australia, many years ago, we burned money in protest against the materialism of the country, and it caused a riot in front of the Federal Reserve Bank, in Martin Place, Sydney. That marked the start of the end of positive media coverage for the Jesus Christians. Why? Because the riot, the arrests of several of our members, and the fact that the media was there to cover it all caused embarrassment. We had, by our action, laid bare the root of all evil.
Our lifestyle, including our refusal to let money be our motivation for anything that we do, further exposes the materialism that lurks in each of us. It is easy to see how this would anger people on the extreme right. Such people, with their fervent dedication to capitalism (i.e. "the love of capital"), have opposed us from our earliest days. But opposition exists amongst people on the left as well... people who want to believe that the answer lies only in exposing and attacking the lies of the right-wing factions.
We recently viewed "The Corporation", which was shown at the Sydney Film Festival, and which has won numerous documentary awards at other film festivals around the world. In it, we see evidence of how multi-national corporations around the world contribute to and profit from such things as war, destruction of the environment, and exploitation of children and other members of the public. The conspiracy is so well-documented and so far-reaching that it is easy to be overwhelmed by the hopelessness of ever changing the situation.
But imagine another similar documentary, entitled "The Shareholder". After all, shareholders are the people who keep the corporations going. And when viewed in that way, the pall of guilt spreads to an even wider portion of the population. In fact, the kind of discussion that seems to come from viewers of "The Corporation", is often about which corporations are morally "safe" to invest in. The idea being that even the predominantly left-wing audiences are themselves shareholders in corporations of one sort or another. We pretend to be fighting the very powers that we support through our investments, and rather than consider not investing at all (i.e. laying up treasures in heaven by giving it all to the poor... right now), we look for "moral" ways to make more money.
So we Jesus Christians come along and say that there is NO corporation that is morally safe to invest in (because they are all there to make money by taking more from others than what they give in return), and it creates an even more unbearable dilemma for those who want to see themselves as the good guys without parting with their wealth or eliminating ways to increase it. In the real world, you don't make money by being honest, generous, and kind. Even those who invest in micro-banks who help poor people in third world countries start up little businesses, are not only asking these people to repay the loans, but they are also asking for interest on top of it.
We go even farther than challenging all of the investors, and we say that the guilt extends to all who put their hope in money to find happiness or to solve the world's problems. Corruption at an international level is only a reflection of the corruption that exists in the most mundane activities of those who work for money. (Think of those who did NOT get the job, because YOU got it, for starters!)
Even trying to boycott the long list of corporations singled out in "The Corporation" would cause a lot of inconvenience to the average person. But to suggest that the entire monetary system needs some direct action is too overwhelming for the average person to even contemplate.
And that is where our faith in God comes in. It is also were we start to move away from political solutions, to a distance where we can see the bigger picture, of hypocrisy on both sides. We need a solution which goes beyond one party triumphing over the other.
A revolution, for example, in which the "people" are going to take over some public utility that has been abused by the government or private enterprise, overlooks the fact that it was "people" who were running it in the first place. We must deal with the corruption that exists in the hearts of each individual (on both sides of the political spectrum)... corruption that starts out so innocently as "just providing for my family" or "just trying to get some medicine through to Roland", If we don't do this, sooner or later the public utility that is taken back by 'the people" is going to be just as corrupt as it was before, maybe even more so. Certainly that has been the history of communism.
This is also where our faith in Bible prophecy starts to make good sense. The Bible warns about an ultimate world government that comes to power through worldwide deception and then turns bad... unbelievably bad. This tendency for political saviours to become corrupted has proven to be relevant in just about every age.
Most recently, it was the Americans who largely won the war against Hitler and his brand of fascism. For a while, it looked like the world had been saved. But now America threatens to become worse than Hitler. If the Bible is right, then the final world government will start out looking even better than America looked when it started, and it, too, will offer world peace, but then it will turn into the most evil government in history. Knowing this should not make us feel hopeless, but it should make us look inwardly for a solution and not outwardly to political solutions.
Those who oppose the wars that are presently being fought around the world (and we, as pacifists, make up that number) are desperately searching for a solution. Ultimately, it must either come from a new world government which is more powerful than all the others (the U.N. perhaps?), which can thus suppress any attempts to start wars or oppress others, or it must come from a world government controlled by God himself.
That is the picture which the Bible gives us of the final years of the world's political systems. It says that the masses will be deceived into taking yet another counterfeit political solution, which will, in the end, turn out to be more oppressive and more destructive than any which went before it. But, according to Bible prophecy, those who have faith in God and who stand strongly for the truth, will hold out until a new government comes on the heels of that government, a government with a supernatural and miraculous event ushering it in, which is generally referred to as the return of Jesus.
Extreme? A bit unbelievable? or the most realistic answer of all?
It is the only answer which does not depend on us closing our eyes to what has happened throughout the history of this planet, with each system mouthing the right ideals but then repeating (and usually escalating) the sins of the previous system. And in that respect, the kingdom of heaven, which only comes when Jesus returns, is both idealistic and realistic at the same time. For us as Jesus Christians, our money (and life) rests on that kingdom. All the rest, we see as part of a great worldwide conspiracy which is secretly opposed to the One whom we await with high hopes and expectations.
