“Christ Before Pilate,” Rembrandt (1630)
[NB: Again, this is a long-ish post. However, it is impossible to work through the current cultural complexities in 140 characters. On the bright side, I’m well under the 63,206 characters allowed in a Facebook post!]
By some bizarre twist of divine providence, I found myself teaching a Bible class on John 18-19 at the same moment that NBC’s Chuck Todd was conducting the now famous interview with Kelly Conway that spawned the hashtag #AlternativeFacts. The parallels between these two scenarios are truly remarkable.
In John 18-19, the chief priests capture Jesus and bring him to trial before the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate. They accuse Jesus of making claims on Rome’s authority: When questioned about this claim, Jesus answers cryptically: “You say that I am a King. For this I was born and for this I came into the world: to witness to the truth. Everyone who is grounded in the truth listens to my voice” (18.37b). In response, Pilate utters a refrain that reverberates through history, “What is truth?” (18.38a).
Given the political tensions that surround Pilate, he actually raises a great question. The chief priests are telling one story about Jesus. His claim to truth is equally a claim to power and authority. His demonstrations of authority – most prominently the raising of Lazarus – threaten to undo the existing political power structures in Jerusalem. The authority of Jesus challenges power of the leadership in Jerusalem. The inevitable resolution: The chief priests are the truth and Jesus has to go (It’s a chilling proclamation, read it – John 11.45-53).
Jesus also presents a story about himself, and it is a fairly compelling claim to truth, authority and power. He receives Pilate’s attribution as King, but of a Kingdom “not grounded in this world” (18.36). In fact, it is of such a different order that Pilate’s own power and authority are derived from it: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (19.11). Something about Jesus impacts Pilate. He does everything possible to free Jesus. He tries to satisfy the bloodthirsty crowd through brutalizing comedy. He offers to release Jesus as part of a good will tradition at Passover. We never hear an outright confession of faith from Pilate but at some level, Pilate is compelled that Jesus is the Truth. Which of course, Jesus has already said about himself (14.6).
Of course, Pilate also has a story. He is the representative of Rome in Jerusalem whose allegiance lies with the Emperor, who himself made claims to divinity. From Pilate’s perspective, he is the truth – at least where Jerusalem is concerned. He has power and immediate authority. In fact, he regularly exercised that power, taking from the Temple treasury to fund public work projects and placing the Imperial seal on soldier’s shields as an affront to Torah. While he certainly sees something different in Jesus, in this realm, Pilate is the truth.
So, which truth is true? The chief priests? Jesus? Pilate?
A similar crisis of truth, authority and power is unfolding right before our eyes. The past week has been a battle royale over whose truth is truth; a high-stakes game of whose reality is real; of who has the cultural authority and power to establish the narrative of America under a new administration.
Is it “grounded in the truth” that 1.5 million people attended the inauguration ceremonies of the 45th President? Or is it the truth that there were only 570,557 subway entries on Inauguration Day 2017, indicating a lower turnout than in prior ceremonies? Is it the truth that America is in a state of utter “carnage”? Or is it the truth that despite the considerable challenges the Obama administration faced, his administration left the economy in a much better place than where they found it? Is it the truth that torture works? Or is it the truth that the universal value of human life and dignity outweighs any political gains that may come from torture. Is it the truth that 3 to 5 million people voted illegally in the last election? Or is it the truth that the offices of the secretaries of state in the U.S. run clean elections? Which of these construals of reality are true? Is it the truth that there are millions and millions of undocumented workers in the US? Or is it the truth that the current structures, while not perfect, are managing immigration in a way that best represents the traditional American promise to the world?
In our story in John 18-19, it turns out that Pilate is truth. The chief priests put Pilate in a bind. If he does not crucify Jesus as an insurrectionist, they will go over Pilate’s head and complain to the Emperor. And Pilate knows the Emperor would have him killed for not executing a pretender to the throne who has stirred up revolution in Jerusalem. So, even though Pilate finds no fault in Jesus and tries repeatedly to release him, he hands Jesus over for crucifixion, bending to the will of the crowd who, theologically speaking, condemn themselves in their claim, “We have no King but the Emperor” (19.15). In the Judaism of the day, this is spoken as a direct affront to God and the ultimate example for John of unfaithfulness. While in the sum of John’s gospel, Jesus is the Truth, in this moment Pilate and Rome are the truth, bearing all power and authority – if only for this moment.
So, what is truth in the midst of our current battle over the ground of truth with this new administration? The White House Press Corps? The pronouncements of Sean Spicer? Political Scientists/Analysts? Steve Bannon? SNL? Congress? Trump’s Twitter feed? Frankly, the options – there are many more than these – are dizzying, and, frankly, the number of options is difficult, if not impossible to process.
Here are a few strategies that I am finding helpful for carefully discerning truth, authority and power amidst the war that is currently raging over the ground of truth, authority and power.
Remember: God is Truth and Reality is Real
In an interview on CNN’s Reliable Sources last Sunday, the head of NPR News, Michael Orestes, noted, “I think what’s really scary here is not the administration or the press, per se, but the society, which will lose profoundly, if we abandon our belief that there is actually reality.” The classic, western tradition that undergirds our culture is grounded in the affirmation that reality is one in nature. Jewish/Christian/Muslim traditions grasp this oneness in the person of God, who in Creation affirms the reality and coherence of human experience. While absolute knowledge of Truth is reserved for God, our knowledge of truth actually approaches and is coherent with Truth. So, remember that human experience is real and is coherent with truth. Yes, it remains perspectival, but in conversation with others we can reason together carefully, in light of the best possible information, and arrive at genuine truth that can help us decide important matters.
Read Broadly and Advocate for an Open Information Infrastructure
Former CBS news anchor Dan Rather took part in a panel discussion on Chris Matthews’ Hardball last week. Concerned about the tone of the new administration toward the news media, he said, “Listen, we cannot; we simply cannot…go into this world of alternative facts. Listen 2+2=4. That is a fact. Water runs downhill. That’s a fact. It snows in Alaska. There’s sand dunes in Saudi Arabia. These are facts. This idea of alternative facts, this is a propaganda tool.” To keep #AlternativeFacts from morphing into truth, requires an informed public. Be sure to read broadly, breaking out of your information silos and listening beyond your echo chambers so that you bring into your thinking a broad range of information. Considering a wide range of different perspectives will help distill the chaos and bring the central questions of our current conversations to the fore.
The only way to ensure that our private thinking and public conversations are tempered by the best information possible is to protect our current climate of open information. Support the current environment of Net Neutrality so that the Internet does not become segmented and delimited like cable television networks. Keeping our access to information as open as it is now will not be easy, and the newly appointed FCC chair, a former Verizon exec, will try to profiteer the Internet by allowing for segmentation and throttling. Imagine not being able to access a particular online site because your Internet service provider is Comcast and not AT&T. Imagine not being able to access a livestream from a public event because open access to the feed is only available with a particular provider. A society of free information and open communication requires that the Internet remain under current FCC regulations, which categorizes the Internet under the same regulations as telephone services.
Having protected Net Neutrality and open information access, consult quality, peer-reviewed studies on key questions. Find quality journalists and news resources who have proven to be “honest brokers of the truth.” Engage in conversation with people who challenge and sharpen you and help to broaden your understanding. Without open access and open communication spaces, we will not remain a free society. And, by way of reminder, beware of any attempts by any authority to limit access to information, regardless of the reason.
Ask Questions. Hard Questions. Lots of them.
Regardless of your party affiliation or political positions, do not accept everything you read at face value – even from people and platforms that you trust. Research and seek clarification about assertions. Ask for warrants for arguments that are reasonable and “grounded in the truth;” that is, in reality. If you have a gut feeling that something is wrong, question it carefully. All manner of #AlternativeFacts and political propaganda thrive on a passive or silent public unwilling to ask good questions. America is a nation that was built on dissent. I’m not suggesting here that we be constantly disagreeable, but we should follow the wisdom of Ronald Reagan to “trust, but verify” by asking good questions. Once we have squared these questions with reality, then the way forward will be clearer.
Stay Focused and Do Not Get Tired
The constant pace of the news cycle covering executive order and executive order, appointment after appointment, press conference after press conference, tweet after tweet can easily create (and may have for many of us) media fatigue. This is a great strategy for a propaganda machine in the social media era. Simply put out such an incredibly fast moving media stream such that the news industry, and certainly ordinary people, cannot keep up with it all. Not only can the information not be reported either thoroughly or broadly, but there is no time for analysts or the public to make sense of any of it. This hyper-pacing of the news cycle and the culture of news simply wears everyone out. News coverage slips. The stories do not get interpreted or discussed, and things are allowed to move forward without engagement in the public square. This very blog post is a victim of the speed at which news has moved in the first six days of this administration. The whole #AlternativeFacts thread already feels like old news, and I’m just finding the time to process it intelligently.
Beware that this media fatigue is a tactic employed in the course of taking the ground of determining truth, establishing authority and power. When the news industry and the public tire of the sheer pace of news, or the vitriol of the battle that ensues, that’s when we tune out, stop caring and do not engage. And this is the turning point when vitally important things start slipping by under the radar. If we find ourselves so worn down that we say, “Whatever,” that is when the ground of determining truth and reality has been granted out of sheer exhaustion. This is when what we would have previously resisted becomes normalized. So, stay alert, keep engaged and do not get tired.
In Sum…
As we saw in John 18-19, when the chips were down, Pilate asserted his truth, authority and power out of political expedience. What appears to have happened this week is that that the new White House has repeatedly provoked, challenged and sought to undermine the traditional authorities of the press and the Academy so that this new administration may lay claim to the ground of truth. The press is an independent authority whose job it is to fact-check, to question and, as Dan Rather likes to say, “be an honest broker of the truth.” The Academy invests itself in independent research and its findings have the cultural authority to challenge orthodoxies and establish what is true. In order for the administration to lay claim to the terrain of truth, these two pillars of our culture must be called into question.
So, our new leadership has said that the press is “just awful,” “some of the worst people on the planet.” They need to “just shut up,” as Steve Bannon said, and report the news, not interpret, as Kelly Conway told one news anchor. The press need not ask questions that have been “asked and answered,” even when the answer was not really an answer. And whereas the press is “fake news,” the Academy has been portrayed in the campaign and the early days of this administration to breed uncertainty and announce contradictory findings. It produces “bad science” about climate change. It is apparently difficult to understand because of its complexities relative to voter fraud analysis. The NEH and NSF, which provide grants that fund high-level research, must be de-funded to not only save taxpayer dollars, but, as a side benefit, to sweep the legs out from under pubic research projects.
Challenging the construals of reality that come from these sectors lends credence to the story of the new administration. With these counter-authorities marginalized, the only appeal to authority left is either the Self or local traditions. Failing these, then the true and authoritative narrative; that is the Truth, will come from the governing authorities as a function, of course, of a “new patriotism,” characterized by a “total allegiance to the United States.” Truth, here, is the power and authority concentrated in the State, again, much like we saw with Pilate.
What is truth? God is Truth. From that primary understanding, we ought, as an informed public, to engage the current battle for truth, authority and power to ensure that it remains engaged with reality and, as much as possible, in accord with truth.