Wake Up, Look Up

Hello, everyone. Thanks for listening to Wake Up, Look Up, a podcast where we connect events happening in real time to the gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm Zach Weihrauch. And in today's episode, we're talking about the Epstein files, and we're asking the question, who is lying now? This is prompted by an article I read in the New York Times, but, really, all the outlets we use here for Hulu, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Washington Post, were all talking about this recently.

The idea that the Trump administration through the Department of Justice and the FBI are now saying that Jeffrey Epstein, the financier who was involved in human trafficking and sex rings and allegedly had a blackmail list that he kept for various celebrities really did die from suicide in his jail cell and that he did not have a blackmail list of any kind. Now this is interesting because during the campaign season, a prominent talking point of the so called MAGA movement, president Trump and those who support his brand of politics, was that should they come in power, they would release the information they said existed about Jeffrey Epstein and his associates. In other words, they were certain there was scintillating evidence out there that would expose celebrities, expose political officials. And now that they are in power, they're saying, well, it turns out there isn't any. In fact, president Trump on his social media platform recently said that the Epstein conspiracy is a hoax and actually went so far as saying that anyone who believed in it, he actually didn't want their support in in the end after all, which again is interesting because a talking point of his campaign season was that he knew it existed and that his administration would release it.

Now this is disillusioning some people in the MAGA movement. So people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, congresswoman, Tucker Carlson, former news anchor, are now turning against president Trump and alleging either a mishandling of the information or that they're unwilling to release the information, others claiming that they're now part of the conspiracy, and then others saying, well, the Democrats must have destroyed the data that was out there before the Trump administration came into power. So it begs the question, well, which is it? Were they lying during the campaign season when they said it was there and that they would release it, or are they lying now when they say it isn't there at all? Well, that's a great question, and, of course, I can't answer.

But I can say this, what you're seeing is the very reason why it's a waste of time to engage in conspiracy theories because those who do are never satisfied. President Trump is saying that there is no scandalous information out there that has not been released to the public about Jeffrey Epstein. And those who once thought he told the truth about everything now think he's lying about this. And those who still believe he tells the truth are now creating further conspiracy theories to give reasons why he doesn't have the information. The goal post just keep moving.

And as Christians, this should show us that this kind of thinking is just not worth our time. Let me offer some biblical points as to why. First, truth is not a weapon. In Ephesians four fifteen, the apostle Paul says that we should speak the truth in love. For a Christian, the truth is not about indicting our enemies or winning political battles or getting elected.

The truth is simply that, the truth. We're interested in it because Jesus told us, of course, that truth sets us free. We wanna traffic in truth. That's what we're looking for. The second thing is that conspiracies aren't really about truth.

They're about creating a fog of truth or an illusion of mistruth. This is why the apostle Paul tells Timothy in first Timothy six to avoid what is falsely called knowledge. In other words, what you don't know to be true, what God has not revealed or you have not seen, because doing that leads to this inane kind of circle. Conspiracy theories deal with what cannot be proven, right or wrong. That's how they keep going on.

No matter what you say, people just say, well, this must have happened or that must have happened. And Paul is saying that kind of so called knowledge takes our eyes off of what God really wants us to do. And most of us know a family member or friend who's gone down the rabbit hole of conspiracies and is no longer thinking or talking about much else. The other thing is, just to make the point, that when you put your hope in political leaders and in movements, I'm not talking about voting or supporting, but when you put your hope in them, you're gonna be disappointed. Psalm one forty six three says, put your hope or do not put your trust in princes.

That's because political leaders, even the best ones, let us down. They make promises they can't keep. They make pledges that they never really intend to follow through on. And I don't know if president Trump knew there was no information and just told a lie to get elected, or after getting elected, discovered that what he had once said so certainly wasn't in fact true. But either way, he's simply showing us he's human.

And because he's human, he's not worth being the the the ultimate focal point of our hope. And then finally, the point about conspiracy theories is that they reveal more about us than they do about the people we're lying about. Conspiracy theories are born out of the idea that our political leaders are dealing in in mistruths and half truths that they're out to deceive. And I can't help but feel that psychologically, it's what we call projection. Meaning, we know we're not trustworthy, and so our leaders must not be either.

But the answer to that isn't taking a flashlight to the Internet to try to find the truth. The answer to that is dealing with the deception in my own heart. Listen, if you went down the rabbit hole of the Epstein files and you now are disillusioned with the people who seem to be encouraging you to do that. Let this be a wake up call. Step off the Internet.

Get out of the rabbit hole of conspiracies and turn your attention on God. Let his truth, as Jesus said, set you free. Hey. Thanks for watching this episode of Wake Up, Look Up. If you enjoyed it, please help us get the word out by sharing it with someone you think might benefit from it.

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