It
was February 5, 2003 only 15 years ago that General Colin Powell, then
Secretary of State and the man I personally believed was the most honest person
in the American government, went before the United Nations Security Council in
an internationally televised event to lay out an argument laden with detailed
information proving that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and the means of
rapidly producing them. The most memorable
moment of his speech was when Secretary Powell held up a little vial of white powder
pretending it could be anthrax. This
briefing convinced the people of the U.S. and its Allies that we needed to invade
Iraq because it’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was a narcissistic, despotic madman
who could not be trusted WMD’s. It was
therefore the moral duty of the global community to use military power to
remove Hussein and free the Iraqi people from oppression and to do it
immediately before he again uses such weapons against his own people or sells
them to terrorists.
In
early March of 2003 the invasion began.
Nine months later Hussein was captured. Surprisingly, Secretary Powell then said that
based on information he wished he had had months earlier it was not likely any
WMD’s would be found. In the ensuing
months, it was determined that Iraq had had no weapons of mass destruction or
the facilities to manufacture them.
Hussein had in fact destroyed everything he had years prior in
accordance with the agreement reached after the Kuwait War. Yet, he never truthfully admitted doing so
because as a narcissistic despot he, himself, and him were the people he had to
answer to. The invasion was thus
unnecessary. General Powell later said
that he had been fed misinformation by the Defense department and the
Vice-President’s office and that there were those in the intelligence community
who at the time knew the truth but the Vice-president’s office apparently
suppressed that information. They even
fed President Bush inaccurate information. Eleven months after the capture of Hussein,
Powell was asked to resign for no reason other than he may have been getting too
close to the “truth”. This mishandling
of the “truth” for unknown reason has given conspiracy theorists a field day.
I
believe that this moment in history was the moment the world should have clued
in that “truth” was not a matter of collecting accurate information from which
to determine what really is going on so that one might respond in a manor of
the highest moral integrity. We should
have learned that “truth” is that we will believe what we want to believe and
seek facts to reinforce what we already believe regardless of their validity. Quite simply, after 9/11 Westerners wanted to
go to war on Middle Eastern soil and we listened only to what we wanted to
believe. On the conspiracy side of
things, Vice-President Chenney had something to gain from a war in Iraq in
particular and manipulated the information at hand for his own reasons.
That
moment in history was an exposé on the odd relationship
between truth and power. Those who have
the power to control information can control what people accept as truth. Moreover, those who have the power to control
the information from which truth is derived will only tell the truth to those
whom they perceive to have power over them and only if they then feel it is in
their own best interest to do so. This
is as true for news agencies as it for those in public office. This basically means that powerful people are
not going to tell the truth to those who need them to tell the truth unless
they see benefit in it for themselves.
That
moment in history is now eclipsed by an even more crucial moment in
history. Today, “truth” is the blurb
that somebody has posted to their Twitter or Facebook account regardless of
fact. People will believe Tweets before
they will believe facts from otherwise reliable news sources. If you have enough celebrity appeal to draw a
large audience on Twitter or Facebook then you have the capacity to be a
powerful broker of “truth” even if the truth as you believe it to be has no
basis in fact or in reality period. Just
say what you want and in an instant your followers will en masse believe it to
be true and it will happen so fast that no one has the time to think it
through…not that anybody these days would anyway. It is troubling, indeed dangerous when global
leaders broker in “truth” in this way.
Never has Pilate’s vague “What is truth?”
question been so critical as it is in this moment in time. Pilate asked that question after Jesus said
he had come into the world to testify to the truth and that everybody who
listens to the truth hears his voice. So
and thus, if we want to know what truth is we need to pay particular attention
to Jesus. In John’s Gospel, Jesus said several
things about himself that we can hold to as Truth because they lead us to life
in God:
“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not
hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me
will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (John 8:12).
“I
am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.” (John 10:9).
“I
am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11).
“I am the resurrection and the life. The
one who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and
believes in me will never die” (John 11:25-26).
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If anyone
remains in me and I in them, they will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do
nothing” (John 15:5).
If you hunger and thirst for meaningful life, if
you need to know the way to go, if you need safety, if you feel dead and need
new life, if you need a fruitful life, then come to King Jesus, who didn’t lord
power over us but rather gave up everything and suffered and died for our
healing. He is the Truth, the Life and
the Way.
Jesus came to create a transnational, transracial,
trans-ethnic, transgender community of followers who act like him and who are
indwelt by the Spirit of God, a community marked by unconditional, healing love
and hospitality, a community whose economy is marked by those who have too much
considering those who have too little in tangible ways, a community where
greed, lust, and power mongering are just utterly out of place if not tacky. If your favourite source of truth on Twitter
or whatever doesn’t invite you to Jesus and this type of community then it is
not truth. It is Lie. Amen.
