John 18.28-38 (CEB)
The Jewish leaders led Jesus from Caiaphas to the Roman governor’s palace. It was early in the morning. So that they could eat the Passover, the Jewish leaders wouldn’t enter the palace; entering the palace would have made them ritually impure.
So Pilate went out to them and asked, “What charge do you bring against this man?” They answered, “If he had done nothing wrong, we wouldn’t have handed him over to you.” Pilate responded, “Take him yourselves and judge him according to your Law.” The Jewish leaders replied, “The Law doesn’t allow us to kill anyone.”
Pilate went back into the palace. He summoned Jesus and asked, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus answered, “Do you say this on your own or have others spoken to you about me?” Pilate responded, “I’m not a Jew, am I? Your nation and its chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” Jesus replied, “My kingdom doesn’t originate from this world. If it did, my guards would fight so that I wouldn’t have been arrested by the Jewish leaders. My kingdom isn’t from here.”
“So you are a king?” Pilate asked.
Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. I was born and came into the world for this reason: to testify to the truth. Whoever accepts the truth listens to my voice.”
“What is truth?” Pilate asked.
It is a very interesting conversation that takes place in The Gospel of John. Pilate’s is not a question of legality or alethiology, the study of the nature of truth. Instead, “What is truth?” is a statement about the way humans interpret information and make distinctions between fact and fiction. And what Pilate is suggesting is that we don’t.
Pilate’s final question to Jesus, “What is truth?” could not be more profound. Read in context, this is a question not about Jesus’ guilt or innocence, but how we as human beings perceive the world around us. It’s essentially an ethics question, posed by a representative of an empire to a rebel attempting to overthrow their reign and replace it with God’s.
Jesus’ people—the Jewish people, lived under Roman occupation. They mostly accepted the consequences of this reality, although occasional armed skirmishes show they didn’t necessarily like it. Jesus, who is much more highly attuned to God than anyone else around him (than anyone else ever, perhaps), sees through the Roman reality of sovereign subjugation. He sees “reality” as purely temporal, something that can be changed by perceiving, thinking, and believing differently.
Jesus understood that the way we humans view reality as “that’s just the way it is” profoundly affects our spiritual well-being. By acquiescing to the currently accepted thinking, we participate in the perpetuation of a reality that is often not in our best interests, those of our global community, or the welfare of our planet.
What is truth? It seems to be whatever you’ve been told that resonates with your preconceived notions.
To that concept—persistent to this day—Jesus says, “Yeah, no.”
My kingdom doesn’t belong to this world
Remember, before Pilate asks his weighty question, Jesus makes a statement that is even more mind-bending, yet reveals precisely what he thinks about the nature of human truth: “My kingdom doesn’t belong to this world.”
What does that mean? That Jesus comes from another planet? Is Jesus giving us a clue that he understands the multidimensional nature of reality and that he is a visitor from another realm? Perhaps, and I’ve previously interpreted this passage in that manner.
But it’s also important to recognize that both Jesus and Pilate are making political statements. For Pilate, truth is whatever the government tells you, perhaps even what the people want to believe, whether true or not. For Jesus, there is only one truth: God’s unconditional and universal love. One would think Jesus would easily win this argument, yet 2000 years later, here we are in a world of “fake news”. The lies of empire still eclipse the truth of Jesus.
Why does this happen, especially if Jesus is an enlightened master revealing an incredible new way to live in human community? Why does the crowd so rabidly throw Jesus to the dogs of Rome and organized religion?
To answer that, let’s move forward in history because the advent of the printing press clearly illustrates why humans are so susceptible to lies.
There’s a fabulous new TV series called “The Great.” Disclaimer: it is a lewd show with vulgar language, so it’s not for everyone. But it’s also a brilliant, fictionalized account of the rise of Catherine The Great in Russia.
Early in the series, Catherine introduces a printing press to the Royal Court, insisting that freedom of speech is a hallmark of modernity and necessary to begin educating the Russian population. She imagines printing textbooks galore and freely sharing information. She is correct about the future, of course, but at the time, instead of philosophy and poetry, people immediately start printing bawdy photos and spreading vicious rumors about the Empress—rumors that persist to this day.
Naturally, the courts remove the printing press.
Sometime later, Catherine meets the Queen of Sweden, a country in which the free press is firmly established and still running. While Catherine is discussing the negative implications of a free press, the Queen of Sweden remarks, “Oh yes. We quickly learned that the first lie wins.”
What is truth? The first lie wins.
It turns out people believe what resonates with them, not necessarily what is true.
We’ll even believe outright lies. One need only turn on a cable news channel to see the truth of that. These days, we’re told there are “alternative facts,” as preposterous, nonsensical, and illogical a notion as there ever was.
There were “alternative facts” in Jesus’ day, too, which is why Pilate asks his question, “What is truth?” knowing full well the truth is whatever the masses will believe. Of course, sometimes the truth, presented by an authority, is just as vicious as a lie: The religious and civic leaders proclaimed of Jesus, “This Jesus is a rabble-rouser, an insurgent, a blasphemer, and a heretic!” “Okay!” the crowd agrees. “Okay!” Jesus’ disciples agree because they still don’t understand what the truth is, even when it’s standing before them in the flesh.
Jesus understood the danger of lies for both our individual spiritual well-being and communal peace. By acquiescing to currently accepted thinking—which is often the consequence of a persistent, first lie perhaps hundreds or thousands of years old—we participate in the continuation of a reality that is often not in our best interests, the interests of our global community, or the health of our aching planet.
No truth is absolute (except, perhaps, for math)
“Truth” for Jesus, as it should be for his disciples, is found only in the unconditional, revelatory love of God. To experience and live into God’s love like Jesus, we have to realize that if we are stubbornly attached to an absolute truth, it perhaps needs reexamining and testing against God’s unconditional love. We need to consider where we first heard something we believe—who said it, their context, their motive.
In our contemporary era, where facts are increasingly irrelevant, it is incumbent upon all followers of Jesus to perform this love litmus test all the time. We must ferociously examine our hearts, minds, and actions and ask, “Is this love?”
And if the answer makes us uncomfortable, or forces us to rethink a “truth,” then it probably is.
Amen.
You must be logged in to post a comment.