Post Author: Bill Pratt
Former cold case detective J. Warner Wallace investigated many criminal conspiracies during his career. Because of this experience, he was able to summarize rules for successful conspiracies in his book Cold-Case Christianity. Here they are:
A SMALL NUMBER OF CONSPIRATORS
The smaller the number of conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy will be a success. This is easy to understand; lies are difficult to maintain, and the fewer the number of people who have to continue the lie, the better.
THOROUGH AND IMMEDIATE COMMUNICATION
This is key. When conspirators are unable to determine if their partners in crime have already given up the truth, they are far more likely to say something in an effort to save themselves from punishment. Without adequate and immediate communication, co-conspirators simply cannot separate lies from the truth; they are easily deceived by investigators who can pit one conspirator against another.
A SHORT TIME SPAN
Lies are hard enough to tell once; they are even more difficult to repeat consistently over a long period of time. For this reason, the shorter the conspiracy, the better. The ideal conspiracy would involve only two conspirators, and one of the conspirators would kill the other right after the crime. That’s a conspiracy that would be awfully hard to break!
SIGNIFICANT RELATIONAL CONNECTIONS
When all the co-conspirators are connected relationally in deep and meaningful ways, it’s much harder to convince one of them to “give up” the other. When all the conspirators are family members, for example, this task is nearly impossible. The greater the relational bond between all the conspirators, the greater the possibility of success.
LITTLE OR NO PRESSURE
Few suspects confess to the truth until they recognize the jeopardy of failing to do so. Unless pressured to confess, conspirators will continue lying. Pressure does not have to be physical in nature. When suspects fear incarceration or condemnation from their peers, they often respond in an effort to save face or save their own skin. This is multiplied as the number of co-conspirators increases. The greater the pressure on co-conspirators, the more likely the conspiracy is to fail.
What does this have to do with Christianity? Well, many skeptics claim that the disciples of Jesus simply lied about Jesus rising from the dead. They formed a conspiracy that has fooled the world for two thousand years.
Is this conspiracy theory really a plausible explanation? In our next post, we will look at whether the disciples of Jesus met the criteria for a successful conspiracy.