WHAT IS TRUTH?
AND WHO IS TRUTH?

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What is truth? This intriguing question comes from Pontius Pilate, the Procurator (the Governor) of Judea, when he was interrogating Jesus shortly before Our Lord’s Crucifixion. Jesus told Pilate “I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth” (John 18:37). This prompted Pilate’s famous response “What is Truth?”(John 18:38).

Remember that Christ submitted Himself to a cruel and shameful death for us so that we might have eternal life. But in His Passion He was fully in control, even when He seemed most powerless.

Jesus had once said during His earthly ministry as recorded in John’s Gospel “I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again; this charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17-18).

We see Jesus standing up for himself and for his mission, even in the midst of great suffering, (John 18:19-23) even before he got to Pilate. But Pilate's haughty response to Jesus, Truth in the Word made Flesh, highlights our fallen nature and our subsequent ambivalence in following Christ, so many times!

This ambivalence about what is true is nothing new, sadly. We read in the Old Testament book of Judges, describing conditions in Israel over 3000 years ago, before the time of kings, that “In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what is right in his own eyes!” (Judges 21:25)

More than three millennia later, is this still not the case? Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the dictatorship of relativism, where truth is in the eye, or should I say in the mind, of the beholder.

More importantly, I get to define the truth as I see it, but also importantly, your truth is as good as mine, whether our beliefs are objectively true or not. In fact, it's ironic when people say in a statement about truth that there is no truth, no one truth. That's a contradiction in itself.

This kind of thinking has plagued humanity ever since the serpent Satanically seduced Adam and Eve with the promise that if they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden that they would be as gods, knowing good and evil (Gen 3:5). Ever since then, we have strayed from absolute truth.

But note that Jesus Himself said in the Sermon on the Mount, speaking against those who would swear oaths hypocritically, "Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from the Evil One” (Matt 5:37).

Speaking of the Evil One, Jesus also described the devil as “a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

It's more important than ever to realize that we are entitled to our own opinions, but not to our own facts. Nowadays, relativism seems worse than ever, and the deleterious nature of this trend of belief is compounded by Artificial Intelligence.

While AI, as it’s known, can be a good tool to simplify getting answers for various projects, or speeding up tasks, there’s a real danger that we might all start relying on AI not only to do our writing for us but our thinking for us as well.

It is also worth noting here that if I'm not mistaken, Artificial Intelligence is only going to be as good, as reliable, as the biases of those who program it in the first place. That's something to keep in mind.

You may remember an axiom that has been quoted by journalists and various activists and academics that they must speak truth to power. Too often however, especially in Marxist and totalitarian societies, power determines what is considered truth. For the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, for example, "truth" was not a reflection of reality, but a tool for maintaining power.

Think also in this regard of George Orwell’s famous novel 1984 where a totalitarian society runs on doublethink, which Oxford’s Languages Dictionary has defined as “the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time, especially as a result of political indoctrination”. Orwell writes in 1984 of that fictitious totalitarian government I just mentioned which bandies about slogans like “Freedom Is Slavery” and “War Is Peace”.

In addition, truth can be threatened when one's paycheck can be the determining factor to one's opinions of what is and isn't true. The well-known novelist Upton Sinclair once wrote, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." How true that is!

There’s a famous confrontation in the movie A Few Good Men when Tom Cruise, as the prosecutor in a court-martial, says to Jack Nicholson, playing a Colonel, “I want the truth!” to which Nicholson responds "You can't handle the truth!"

Don’t various governments think that way about us? Think of various "conspiracy theories”, some of which have become conspiracy facts, such as the knowledge that corporations, and governments themselves, have been hiding, or otherwise obfuscating, important facts and details about the origins of the Covid-19 virus, and effective treatments for it.

And recently we’ve seen the Trump administration being reluctant to release the trove of damnable documents and Satanic malfeasance contained in the Epstein files, because they were afraid, like Jack Nicholson’s words in the movie mentioned above, that society would not handle the truth about so much depravity on the part of our elites. That the stock market would crash and governments would just collapse from all this degeneracy on the part those in high places both here in the US and in Europe being exposed.

While this has not happened it’s a challenge nonetheless not to get too wrapped up in despair over the depravity of the human condition these days!

Don't forget, of course, that this is also a spiritual battle, and we are dealing with those men and women in the higher-ups who think of themselves as gods or that the state is God.

They don’t want to do as Jesus commanded as quoted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. They wish to give Caesar what is God’s in terms of who they worship and serve.

We’d all like to think, even in awful circumstances when it seems we’re all caught up and surrounded in a web of lies, that truth will out, ultimately.

You might have heard a famous line in line words to the effect that “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” In the meantime, however, lies can leave a whole trail of shattered, broken, and snuffed-out lives and destruction in their wake!

When power becomes the main calculus and determinant of the truth, and it is backed up by force, one way or another, that's when all the damage is done! As we see today, Christianity is facing threats perhaps as never before in quite a while from increasingly “progressive", "woke” secular societies here and in Europe where the state becomes God. Militant Islam is aggressively on the ascendancy in many parts of Europe and even in this country, to a certain extent, although not as much here yet.

So, between artificial not-so-intelligent intelligence and way-too-intelligent intelligence, and the rise of Marxism, collectivism, and radical Islam, as well as a so-called new synodal approach to interpreting Church doctrine to keep up with the times that may go against Catholicism’s teaching authority in her Magisterium, we have a lot on our hands!

What is most important now is to stay close to God in prayer, in spiritual reading, in partaking of the Sacraments, of going to Confession, and of being aware of the degree to which you are fooling yourself at times. Strive mightily to avoid listening to the enemy within, the devil trying to plant lies in your head.

Allow our Lord to permeate your soul with genuine truth, which incidentally also leads to genuine love, the love of the Ten Commandments. This involves loving God with all your heart and and soul and loving your neighbor in a way that reflects His love for us. This is crucial.

There are too many choppy waters these days, much as the kind that the disciples experienced in stormy seas, as we read in Matthew’s, Mark’s, and Luke’s Gospels. For us to have any sense of calm, we need Jesus to say to our souls, as He did the wind and the waves in stormy seas, "Quiet! Be still!" And as we are told in Psalm 46, verse 10, ”Be still and know that I am God”. Amen.

God Bless,

Christopher Castagnoli
for www.ourcatholicprayers.com

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