Truth matters

It was of course Pontius Pilate who famously asked: “What is truth?”

Many centuries later, Hannah Arendt, in her famous book The Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist.” It was Goebbels who chillingly observed: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

As Christians we are called to have a strong commitment to truth. Therefore, when we see transparently false statements being massaged into public consciousness, we have a duty to be watchful and, as appropriate, to speak out. It might, for example, be false ideological claims about “male” and “female” being things we can simply pick or choose to be as we wish. It might be erroneous assertions that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is a “dictator” and has only four per cent approval ratings.

Truth depends on using language carefully. For example, words and phrases such as “foetus”, “hate speech”, “Islamophobia”, or “alternative facts”, can be used to muzzle the speaking of objective truth.

Words matter. Truth matters. As Christians we know that Jesus is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”, and that all Scripture is “God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness”, since God “cannot lie” (Titus 1:2). While we may want to maintain an appropriate humility in recognising our own potential lack of knowledge and indeed sinful blind spots when it comes to some contemporary situations, let us not hesitate to speak truth boldly, and with love.