Conspiracy

The gen­eral def­i­n­i­tion of “con­spir­acy” has to do with secretly con­spir­ing together to do some­thing ille­gal. It has a pos­i­tive def­i­n­i­tion as well — one that has to do with chang­ing the world for the bet­ter. I am a mem­ber of that type of con­spir­acy. It has ancient roots and has mem­bers in many coun­tries. In true James Bond fash­ion, I do not know the names of but rel­a­tively few of its mem­bers. Our leader refers to us in the code terms of “salt” and “light.”

We pay our taxes and live a lot like every­one else, but we have an agenda: to get peo­ple to see that there is an over­all “plot” to life that has a Divine pur­pose. There are code words and rit­u­als in our var­i­ous groups (some meet for­mally in large build­ings, some meet in homes — almost like sleeper cells). We know each other not by pri­vate hand­shakes but by the lov­ing real­iza­tion that we have been called into this con­spir­acy by an inspired mes­sage and a death-defying leader.

This is not some run-of-the-mill under­ground polit­i­cal cause or rev­o­lu­tion. It is obvi­ous and secret at the same time. We have been per­se­cuted from the beginning. Many thou­sands of us have been killed; many more have been maligned. Sel­dom does a day go by that one of our num­ber is not mur­dered for what we are doing some­where in the world.

We have bet our lives on a past his­tor­i­cal fact and on the out­come that will take us to another world - where we will never die. For as grandiose or bizarre as that may seem, it has given us ulti­mate pur­pose. What do we have to lose? Every­one on this planet lives on bor­rowed time any­way. We can pre­tend that all is okay, or we can admit to the con­flict­ing causes that have very dif­fer­ent out­comes — for good or evil.

Our alle­giance is to our leader first — even if this gets us excluded from fam­ily and coun­try. We see things oth­ers do not see and dream dreams of won­der­ful pos­si­bil­i­ties (things like uni­ver­sal peace, love, and hap­pi­ness). Ridicule is inef­fec­tive on us. It is in our new nature to turn the other cheek when we are hit. Despite our mis­takes, we are on a suc­cess track that defies and tran­scends every era’s def­i­n­i­tion of it. We learn from our fail­ures and con­tinue our course of action no mat­ter what. Killing us is a waste of time. Our exe­cu­tion­ers often become con­verts to the cause.

There are false mem­bers of the con­spir­acy that try to use the move­ment for polit­i­cal or eco­nomic pur­poses. Their efforts and pseudo-successes are short-lived. You will notice that they are a ner­vous lot. They do not share our calm dis­po­si­tion. Some­times they have a “sec­ond con­ver­sion” that takes them into the true heart of the calling.

Things have no per­ma­nent hold on us. Do not waste your time threat­en­ing us over our mate­r­ial pos­ses­sions. Sooner or later, you will also have to give them up. We have a bet­ter deal for you.