truth

Occasionally, scripture sounds so contemporary you could almost imagine seeing it unfold on Fox or CNN. Here’s an from Jesus’ hearing before the Roman governor Pilate as found in John 18:37-38: 

“Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’

“‘What is truth?’ retorted Pilate.”

What is truth? That’s really hard to tell these days, isn’t it. Truth is what we want to hear. Bad news is fake news; news that supports the ideas and positions we already have is truth. And in this weird way, we become the thing that makes something true. Truth is what we want to believe, therefore what we believe is true.

There’s something supremely ironic about Pilate, face to face with the divine God become man who revealed himself as the Truth, asking, “What is truth?” He should have asked, “Who is truth?” and the answer would have been right there in front of him.

Had Pilate been on the side of truth, as Jesus says here, he would have listened to Jesus. Instead, he never sees Jesus for what he is.

Pilate is what we too often are: a cynic. He’s skeptical about what he’s told, and trusts his own judgment above what he hears from others. So he too becomes a person who defines his own truth by what he believes.

Further irony: we are the worst people in the world to judge truth as it pertains to us. Our feelings are unreliable. Our feelings make mountains out of molehills all the time; we let our fears make cowards of us, jumping at shadows and guarding against things that not only aren’t there but never come to pass. In anyone else we call this crying wolf; in ourselves we trust it as a superior knowledge of the truth.

What is truth? It’s the reality of God and his work in our lives. As such, it’s incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t listen to Jesus.