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PITTSBURG —
In John 18, Jesus is on trial before Pontius Pilate. Before we go into areas reserved for religious leaders, we should note why we bring up this scene.
In it, Jesus is making his case before Pilate and referring to truth. Pilate responds with a simple, yet timeless question: “What is truth?”
So what did Pilate mean? Well, no one’s quite sure. It could mean this, it could mean that. It could have double meaning, standing for part of this and for part of that.
The question is so perplexing that Johnny Cash even wrote a song in which the voice of the youth cried out, “What is Truth?”
In theory, truth is simple. But in practice, it’s complex. That’s why when witnesses are sworn in before the court, they are asked to tell not just the truth, but the whole truth. And nothing but the truth.
Because although one is either being truthful or not, the line between truth and falsehood can be blurred.
Take for instance the recent political conventions.
Rep. Paul Ryan has been criticized for his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech, with many saying that his information had the problem of not being, well, true. Others at the GOP convention had the same problem.
It’s not as though Democrats have been particularly clean, either.
For instance, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was reported to say that Republican policies toward Israel were “dangerous” for Israel. Then, in an interview, she claimed the newspaper had deliberately misquoted her. That would have been true, except, well, she was on tape and the report was exactly accurate.
We could go one listing the truths, half-truths, not-truths, would-be truths, and so on of the conventions, the campaigns, and we could fill multiple pages of this and many other papers.
Heck, we could even go into detail about fake pundit Stephen Colbert’s creation, truthiness (when something “feels” right, but isn’t).
One of the problems with the two-party system is that it creates adversarial positions. If one doesn’t like the truth coming from the other side, then it becomes easy to dismiss as “truth,” with quotation marks serving as dismissal.
Essentially, the major parties have made truth a battleground. It is the goal and task of each side to proclaim their own truth and to decry the truth of the other party.
In John 18, Jesus is on trial before Pontius Pilate. Before we go into areas reserved for religious leaders, we should note why we bring up this scene.
In it, Jesus is making his case before Pilate and referring to truth. Pilate responds with a simple, yet timeless question: “What is truth?”
So what did Pilate mean? Well, no one’s quite sure. It could mean this, it could mean that. It could have double meaning, standing for part of this and for part of that.
The question is so perplexing that Johnny Cash even wrote a song in which the voice of the youth cried out, “What is Truth?”
In theory, truth is simple. But in practice, it’s complex. That’s why when witnesses are sworn in before the court, they are asked to tell not just the truth, but the whole truth. And nothing but the truth.
Because although one is either being truthful or not, the line between truth and falsehood can be blurred.
Take for instance the recent political conventions.
Rep. Paul Ryan has been criticized for his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech, with many saying that his information had the problem of not being, well, true. Others at the GOP convention had the same problem.
It’s not as though Democrats have been particularly clean, either.
For instance, the Democratic National Committee chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, was reported to say that Republican policies toward Israel were “dangerous” for Israel. Then, in an interview, she claimed the newspaper had deliberately misquoted her. That would have been true, except, well, she was on tape and the report was exactly accurate.
We could go one listing the truths, half-truths, not-truths, would-be truths, and so on of the conventions, the campaigns, and we could fill multiple pages of this and many other papers.
Heck, we could even go into detail about fake pundit Stephen Colbert’s creation, truthiness (when something “feels” right, but isn’t).
One of the problems with the two-party system is that it creates adversarial positions. If one doesn’t like the truth coming from the other side, then it becomes easy to dismiss as “truth,” with quotation marks serving as dismissal.
Essentially, the major parties have made truth a battleground. It is the goal and task of each side to proclaim their own truth and to decry the truth of the other party.
Democrats and Republican spend so much time and effort trying to convince those who are neither that their truth is truer.
For the undecided voter who is neither, where can one find the truth? Since the parties themselves have turned black and white into gray, then who can do the opposite.
This is where the news media is supposed to make its living, as the theoretical referees. But some refs are better than others at calling the game down the middle.
We’d like to recommend a few sources for those who want the truth, whether they like it or not: Politifact.com and the Washington Post’s Fact Checker.
While we wish both would just say whether or not something is true, both have sliding scales to explain the amount of truth.
Politifact.com has a “Truth-O-Meter” with True on one end and Pants on Fire on the other end to indicate a blatant lie. False, Mostly False, Half True and Mostly True lie in between.
Washington Post’s Fact Checker rates lies on a scale of 1-4 Pinocchios, with truths earning a Geppetto Checkmark.
But the best bang for our truth buck is at FactCheck.org. This site neither has a sliding scale nor rates the lie by any sort of gimmick.
All of these three sources will help tell what is and what isn’t truth.
What is truth, asked Pontius Pilate.
The truth is that truth is a lot of things.
The truth is stranger than fiction.
The truth is out there, for X-Files fans.
Joseph Heller said “The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don’t you know history?”
Mohandas Gandhi said that “even if I am a minority of one, truth is still the truth.”
Finally, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple,” according to Oscar Wilde.
Ain’t that the truth.
The Morning Sun
