Reflection for the month - December
Truth – what is that?
Jesus did not reply to Pilate’s question, ‘What is truth?’. He had just told Pilate, ‘Everyone on the side of truth listens to me’ (Jn 18:37). There were no dictionaries in those days, but if one had been handy Pilate could have found the answer – ‘Truth is the apperception of objective reality’, in other words the seeing and understanding of things as they really are, and not otherwise. Pilate would have had a problem with that – for him truth was most probably what the majority of people agreed with, or whatever helped him advance his personal power or political goals. The plain unvarnished truth – not a biased or imaginative version of what it suits to believe at the time. For most situations today there are many truths propounded, and this is because we live in an age where knowledge, truth, morality, etc. are relative, not absolute, in other words a relativistic society. For many truth can be more or less what they choose to make it.
When there is no firm basis for truth there can equally be no firm basis for right and wrong. Facing up to the truth can be tough. Jesus is indeed ‘the way the truth and the life’ (Jn14:6). It would appear that Pilate thought Jesus did speak the truth and was innocent of the charges made against Him. Pilate may have recognised the truth but chose to reject it. Sadly there are times when we fail to recognise the truth, but it is even worse when we recognise the truth but fail to follow it.