Doing something positive in today’s messy world.
This season, we are focusing on the positive things we can do in this messed-up world and covering some essential Christian virtues. We talked about empathy with the story of the bent-over woman. Last week, we talked about not judging others and forgiveness. Today, we talk about truth-telling. It feels like an important topic in an age of fraud, fake news, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and people unabashedly blurting out whatever they want to achieve their ends.
So, it’s good to remind ourselves that truth-telling is one of the essential Christian virtues. One of the Ten Commandments is not to bear false witness, and hundreds of scripture verses emphasize our responsibility to tell the truth. In our passage today, Jesus says he bears witness to the truth. May we do the same. It seems like the way to keep one’s sanity and integrity in this age is to do the counter-cultural thing of being an honest person.
It’s hard to know what is true with much falsehood, spin, and misinformation; it’s nothing new. In our passage today, Pilate is so screwed up and has such a distorted vision of reality that he has to ask Jesus, “What is truth?” Pilate was a government official who was so detached from telling the truth that he had to ask what it even was. At least he had the sense to ask.
How do you know what is true?
Let me ask you, how do we determine what is true? Some beliefs, like the idea that Napoleon was short, are taken for granted. Often, we believe these misconceptions simply because we’ve heard them before. For example, Napoleon was actually 5’6″, which was average for his time. This belief in familiarity as truth is known as the Illusory Truth Effect.
Psychologists discovered this phenomenon in the 1970s. In studies, participants viewed both true and false statements, with the false ones repeated multiple times. As they saw the false statements more often, they began to believe them–even if they had been told beforehand that they were not true!
This principle is exploited by those spreading misinformation. It gets amplified by repetition-based social media algorithms. Repetition outweighs facts, a process known as processing fluency. Things feel more true the more they are repeated. If an outright outlandish lie is repeated often enough, people will believe it and even skeptics will eventually think there might be a kernel of truth to it—assuming “Where there’s smoke there’s fire.”
Our goal as truth-tellers should be to challenge assumptions about the stuff that gets repeated and not to become part of the spread of misinformation. We can take the time to investigate what we are putting out there.
It seems there are different degrees of untruth.
I love the story about Lillian Carter, President Carter’s mother. While he was campaigning, a reporter relentlessly pursued her for weeks, seeking to find something negative. Eventually, Miss Lillian agreed to an interview at her home.
Shortly after they sat down, the reporter asked, “Has your son ever told a lie?” Miss Lillian replied, “No, never.” When pressed further, she finally said, “Well, maybe a little white lie now and then.”
Curious, the reporter asked, “What is a white lie?” Miss Lillian smiled and answered, “Do you remember when I greeted you at the door and said how nice it was to see you?”
We do it all the time. We tell little white lies: “I’d love to come, but I have a prior commitment … Send me more information, and I’ll get back to you … the check’s in the mail.”
At best, it’s a way of being courteous; at worse, it’s a way of being dishonest. Philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that the thing about falsehood is that it is a form of theft. We rob the other person the ability to make their own decisions based on the truth.
There are white lies and outright manipulative deception that aim to harm people. How many fraudsters do we hear about on a daily basis? But this stuff only scratches the surface. More pernicious is the tendency to live our lives based on a false sense of the world and what is important.
The Pilate and Jesus confrontation.
What’s at stake in the encounter between Pilate and Jesus was a contrast between worldviews. Pilate represents the might makes right, people with the most power win camp. And Jesus has an alternative vision.
Now I can’t talk this long about truth without thinking of Jack Nicholson’s line in A Few Good Men, “You can’t handle the truth.” In the movie, his character believes his hostile, sneering, self-righteous bullying is a virtue. He wears it like one of the medals pinned to his military uniform.
If I were to cast a Jesus movie, I’d want Jack to play Pilate and expand this scene by contrasting Pilate’s worldview, his truth, versus Jesus’ presentation of the truth. I imagine it would go something like this:
Pilate describes truth.
You testify to the truth? You? Let me explain something to you, Nazarene. Truth isn’t some fragile ideal floating in the ether, waiting for someone pure of heart to uncover it. Truth is power. Truth is control. Truth is whatever I say it is.
We live in a world ruled by swords and decrees, not dreams and parables. Those swords keep chaos at bay. Those decrees hold the world together. Who do you think enforces that order? You? Your fishermen? The miscreants you attract? No, it’s men like me, who sit on thrones.
I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You preach forgiveness, but somebody has enforce the rules. Somebody has to figure out who matters and who doesn’t. Your truth—your kingdom of service and humility—is a pathetic, dangerous illusion.
You don’t want the truth, Jesus. Because deep down, you want me on that throne. You need me on that throne. I sit there and declare what is right, what is wrong, who lives, and who dies, who serves and who gets served by everybody else. My existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, keeps order in this broken world.
What is truth? Truth whatever I say it is. Might makes right. If I say you’re innocent, then you are. If I say you’re guilty, then you are. That’s the world we live in. Not your fantasies of justice and mercy, but my reality of dominance.
Instead of projecting some fantasy kingdom, I would prefer you accept the cold truth of the world as it is and thank me for keeping it together.
Jesus responds in silence.
Jesus didn’t answer Pilate. He remained silent as if to say, “You can’t handle the truth.” The truth he testified to was what he’d been talking about all through his ministry: That there is a God who accepts everyone, and no one is beyond God’s redemption. Gratitude and service and quiet prayerful meditation are necessary. That it is better to give than receive, forgive than retaliate, heal than harm.
Our world is filled with people like Pilate with a Machiavellian transactional worldview. Where truth and right and wrong are defined as whatever those in power want to do. People who know that a lie is way harder to dispel than the truth to take hold. They know that if you repeat a lie often enough and get enough people to echo it, way too many people will believe it no matter how ludacris or detached from reality it is. It gives them power and keeps them in power.
If Jesus had replied to Pilate.
Here is what I imagine Jesus would have answered Pilate if he had spoken. It’s the essence of what he taught and how he lived his life.
Pilate, the truth you speak of isn’t truth at all—it’s fear wearing the mask of strength.
You call yourself the arbiter of reality, but what is your reality? A fortress of intimidation, crumbling beneath the weight of insecurity. You crush rebellions, but you cannot silence the cries for justice. You punish the weak to maintain control. You say you hold this province together, yet you live in terror of losing your grip.
You mistake dominance for order, cruelty for wisdom, and fear for peace. But your empire will crumble, Pilate. The sword dulls. The decree fades into the wind. What remains?
Truth.
Not your truth—the fleeting truth of one who hides behind thrones and armies. The truth of my kingdom is eternal. It does not break; it mends. It does not dominate; it liberates. It is not born of fear, but of love.
You say truth is what you declare it to be, but truth does not answer to tyrants. It answers to the light within every person—the light you try so desperately to extinguish. You see people as pawns to control. My truth sees them as children of God, bearers of divine worth, each called to love, serve, and heal this broken world.
You believe the good in people is weakness. But I say to you: the good in people is the only strength that matters. Forgiveness disarms hatred. Compassion heals wounds no empire could ever reach. Service builds a kingdom no blade can tear down.
You think your army keeps peace? Peace is found when we see beyond ourselves—when we embrace not the power of one over another, but the flourishing of all. Your empire will be remembered for its brutality. My kingdom will endure because it is not of this world but for it.
And you’re right, Pilate. My truth threatens everything you cling to. Because my truth sets people free. Free from fear. Free from oppression. Free from the belief that might makes right.
For the truth of my kingdom is simple: Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And blessed are those who choose to follow the way of truth, even when it costs them everything.
Choose, Pilate. Choose which truth you will serve. Choose which kingdom you will stand in. But know this: my truth will outlast your empire, your throne, and even the grave.
Our choice to make.
Of course Jesus didn’t say these things. He didn’t have to–everyone already knew the difference between Jesus and Pilate’s vision of the truth of this world. And Pilate asked the people to make their choice.
They chose Barabbas, a rebel who wanted to replace Pilate’s authoritarian regime with one of his own. They chose Barabbas and violence; they bent the knee to Pilate and his worldview. The question is, how will we choose by what we do with our actions going forward? Amen.