They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, it turns out that its value may be much less. Fake photos on social media showed captured U.S. Soldiers and Tel Aviv in shambles. They looked real, but they were fake. When filtered through AI to discern which ones are generated by AI, apparently AI can’t always decipher what is AI and what is not.
“What is truth?” Pilate scoffed when Jesus stood before him.
We all fall prey sometimes to untruth. That book, which you once said, “changed your life,” actually didn’t. The diet, rather than shrinking your gut, put another ten pounds around your waist. The best sale of the season, the candidate you voted for, and those bank-draining car payments for the vehicle that promised to make you feel like a million bucks, were all disingenuous.
Truth can be difficult to determine.
Pilate, Roman Governor of Judea, had no interest in judging religious disputes. Yet, there he was, with Jesus standing in front of him, and an uproar building around him. The elite religious rulers, the Sanhedrin, charged Jesus with blasphemy because He claimed to be God. Pilate wanted to shove the issue back to their jurisdiction. His interests and power belonged to Rome.
Jewish rulers needed Pilate to view Jesus’ words through a political lens not a religious one. They sought greater condemnation than the Sanhedrin could give. A Jewish sentence could stone Jesus. But, a Roman conviction would hang Him on a cross.
A hanging or crucifixion, was a horrible thing in Jewish culture and belief. It was a shameful death. Based on Old Testament law, “he who is hanged is accursed of God.” (Deuteronomy 21:23 NKJV)
And so they twisted truth like a crown of thorns, into a threat of political treason. They represented Jesus as someone aspiring to take the throne. On social media He would have been portrayed as a power-driven, Pilate-overthrowing, danger to society.
Pilate asked Jesus, “Are you a king, then?”
Jesus responded, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.” (John 18:37 NKJV)
Pilate, hearing Jesus’ answer, thought the issue revolved around philosophical non-answer-ables.
In our world today bursting with manipulated information, outright lies, ideologies, and political intrigue, isn’t it easy to imagine the sneer on Pilate’s face following Jesus’ declaration. The relevance of truth in his mind was at best malleable to the situation.
“What is truth?”
If Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary had been around, Pilate could have found this answer: the real facts about something.
Had Mark Twain been in the room he may have muttered: Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.
And if Winston Churchill, had been there, he may have, with tongue in cheek, added: A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
Christ defined truth like this. “I am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14:6 NKJV)
Pilate, asked the wrong question. He should have asked, Who is the Truth?
Instead, the one supposedly able to discern truth in the matter of Jesus’ accusers, dismissed its relevance with a smear of cynicism. And with that misinformed and pressured context, he climbed onto his Judgement seat and made his decision.
And here we are today. The same question plagues our world. Similar to when Jesus stood before Pilate, the answers we hear often come from voices with neither knowledge nor truth. They shoot their way through screens, written words, and popular opinions. They arrive at conclusions by tumbling unmoored through personal reason or experience unrelated to facts.
It’s somewhat like a false photo created by AI but yet cannot distinguish whether or not it is AI.
In truth, Jesus’ path had already been preordained. His unjust sentence, manipulated by much greater forces than local politicians, was already determined in a Garden where a slithering serpent convinced Adam and Eve of a lie.
In tiny ways we, like Pilate, make similar choices everyday.
Sometimes relationships tangle and we don’t recognize truth in the mess. Is it real, or is it fake? Finances may falter and trust shatters. People in leadership fail. A promise is broken.
It is a duped world we live in.
Jesus stood before Pilate, the antithesis of everything false or fake. He testified that truth is more than just relevant, it is relationship. Who is the Truth? The One who died without sin. The Way. The Truth. The Life.
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