When wolves are circling the treehouse, only a fool accuses his friend of imagining them. From lockdowns and closed churches, to the moral misuse of “Providence,” this essay dismantles the myth that resistance is unholy—and that reality is a conspiracy.
Picture yourself lounging in a treehouse, quarrelling over Ludo, stacking marshmallows on cocktail sticks, birdwatching upside down, or devoting yourself to any of the other pet occupations of an 11 year old, when there is a sudden growl from below. You and your best mate scuttle, wide-eyed, to the window. You are confronted by the sight of prowling wolves, hair bristling, narrow eyes glittering, breath smoking. And they are coming from all directions.
Now, there are several relatively predictable reactions from you and your buddy in this scenario. You might, first of all, spontaneously pinch each other to verify you are both awake. You would, most likely, grab a phone and call the emergency services. You would almost certainly dive under a handy divan and pray it’d all go away. You might also start chucking stuff everywhere, looking for quick-release fireworks or, even better if less likely, hand grenades with which to singe their pesky muzzles in the hope they’d clear off. In all probability, you’d get round to each of these four reactions in due course.
The one thing you would not do is accuse yourself or your best mate of hypothesising about wolves under the window.
The one thing you would not, however, do is accuse yourself or your best mate of hypothesising about wolves under the window. And if your pal happened to mention the dreaded C.T. (“conspiracy theory”) phrase, you’d rightly assume she was delusional or hysterical, and that the ever more menacing growls would provide the needed reality check.
Transposing reality checks to the adult world, we note that, in recent history, unprecedented control measures were enacted by governments worldwide. We were unpredictably given measurements of exactly how far distant from each other we should remain, heavily pressured to accept untested and unproven treatments, and solemnly assured that our elderly should be shielded from our harmful company. Folks who blinked, frowned, looked up and ventured “Hey, that’s dangerous!” were accused of theorising. They were hypothesising, apparently, about danger. Danger, per se, did not exist. There was no danger at all in having their businesses closed and in being under a form of house arrest, only being allowed to exit for exercise once a day. There was not the slightest menace in having their churches locked. There was no threat whatsoever in preventing them from earning a wage or from meeting their friends.
And all the governments (bar a couple) moved in lockstep to impose these radical moves. Conspiracy? Nothing to see here…
Danger, per se, did not exist.
In one of the deepest ironies of all, whilst shelving the facts -the concerted attack on inalienable rights – under a “conspiracy theory” label, thereby consigning the struggle against reality to a fringey, time-wasting loony bin, the supposed realists were swallowing a much flimsier story. For, in order to overlook the attack on fundamental rights, one would have had to swallow the theory that absolutely everyone- politicians, healthcare workers, and pharmaceutical companies- was motivated solely by the common good and the noble desire to heal people of Covid. And this theory would have to be maintained in the teeth of the testimonies of those who sacrificed careers and salaries to cry a warning that the planned protocols for emergencies were being ignored, and that the untested vaccines weren’t vaccinating people. Such a naive assumption of universal benevolence was, in the harrowing circumstances, just as fanciful as the implausible belief that societal control methods devised by Communist China and implemented in the West for the first time in Christian history – even the victims of the far, far deadlier Black Death were not forbidden deathbed Sacraments – could actually be motivated by the true good of the masses.
Closely allied with the conspiracy-theory-shouters (and they were ubiquitous) were the what’s’-the-point-shruggers. It didn’t matter, apparently, whether we knew what was going on or not. Providence had decreed that the powers of this world grind us down for our sins – an undoubtedly true first premise – and that hence our struggle to expose their machinations had a whiff of impatience and unholiness about it.
If God, in permitting an evil situation, actually desired our passivity or lack of response, no one would ever defend the unfortunate or persecuted for fear of flying in the face of Providence.
My quarrel is with the “hence.” St. Thomas Aquinas teaches that no one is bound to concur in his own punishment for private sins; even less should one concur when our innocent neighbour (the child whose education was stunted, the elderly patient dying with neither Sacraments nor a loving presence) is unjustly afflicted. If God, in permitting an evil situation, actually desired our passivity or lack of response, no one would ever defend the unfortunate or persecuted for fear of flying in the face of Providence. This passive approach could stray, in interpretation if not by intent, perilously close to the pagan notion of karma: after all, if people are suffering, it’s their own fault, so they had better put up and shut up.
My scared and bedraggled fugitive from the lupine, still in situ in the treehouse, cannot, incidentally, work out the logic of that idea either; her only response was a wrinkled nose and an incredulous “Wha’?” as she wriggled out from under the divan, armed with Scout knives, ropes and hairspray cans….
Spot the theorist.
Which sparks the question: even if WE think we deserve to suffer, whence the certainty that Providence had not equipped us for a prudent struggle? David, in his fight to the death against Goliath, was granted a stone and a sling. Providence gave us, if not the ability to evade oppression entirely, at least the intellect to dance through the loopholes in the legislation. Providence also gave us a voice to shout “Freedom!” in the streets. Providence gave us hands to pull off the dehumanising mask and the nimble brain to say we are exempt from wearing them. (Everyone is exempt from bad, mad laws like the mandates that saw folks enter McDonalds in a mask and shed it five minutes later, presumably on the premise that Big Macs stop viruses spreading.) And, above all, Providence granted us unparalleled means of communication in this digital age: they may have locked us down, but they couldn’t shut us down, even when the superficially pious idea – that God was on the side of the silent – was floated in their favour.
When we have used all our faculties in vain to escape oppression, then we can bow our heads and say we’re suffering by the permissive (never the active) will of God. If we elect to leave Providence’s weapons idle, can we attribute the only-too-predictable results to Providence?
Well, then. Next time a stubborn fact masquerading as a conspiracy theory walks up to us, proffering an elbow bump and politely promising to make our lives a living hell, I hope we are all ready- with a handshake and a badge saying “The only time I’m six feet distant is when I’m six feet under.”
Getting back to our little friends in the treehouse: one of them is, as we speak, knotting ropes to execute an exit move over the treetops. The other is sitting in a chair, reading the Beano, and imagining Santa must be doing wolf rather than reindeer this year. Spot the theorist.
