Truth?

 Imagine a boy, who is scared of his parents, being asked to look after his younger brother for the morning while they go out. He gets told that if he does well they would reward him with some ice cream from the fridge. When the parents get home they find the ice cream tub is empty.

They ask the boy who ate it, he or his brother. If he says he did, they may take money off his allowance. If he says it was his brother, they could ground him for a period. He doesn't know which is worse, so he says: "I don't know".

This is about how the chief priests and the elders answered Jesus' question about the baptism of John. If they said John had a mandate from heaven, Jesus would ask them why they didn't get baptised. If they said it was of human origin they could get themselves stoned because the people were persuaded that John the Baptist was a prophet. So they answered: "We don't know" (Luke 20:3-5).

In neither of these cases were those who answered interested in telling the truth. To them the truth was irrelevant. They may not even have believed there was such a thing as truth. Jesus told Pilate that everyone who cares for truth, who is interested in the truth, recognises his voice. Pilate's answer "What is truth" indicates that he probably did not have any feeling for the truth either (John 18:37-38).

In today's news media the same attitude to truth prevails. Each news channel has an agenda which is prescribed by the preference of the owners and its popularity among the viewers/listeners. The motive is profit, not truth. Any news reflecting negatively on the broadcaster's agenda is ignored. It's like they're saying: "We didn't know".