How Do We Know What’s Real Anymore?
Claude Monet, Water Lilies, 1919
The other evening I listened to something horrifying, disorienting, deeply troubling. I found myself asking some of the most disturbing questions I have ever asked: What is real? What is true? How do we know? And what if what seems real, but is not, gets into the hands of those who want to do harm? What will happen when untruth gets our whole world in its grasp?
What I listened to was a mother talking about a call from her daughter: “My daughter was extremely distraught. She was crying. She was afraid. Much to my utter disbelief, she told me she had been abducted.” And then the voice of a man came on: “Yes, your daughter is my captive now. I need for you to pay a ransom for her release, immediately. Otherwise we will have no choice but to harm her.”
How horrifying. These troubling stories are circulating among us. We are beginning to ask those deeper questions. Maybe we’ve come to the end of knowing what is real and what is not. This girl’s voice was “not real, made up,” with the tools of AI. Or was it real? A mother knows the voice of her daughter, for goodness sake. Apparently we can’t tell the difference anymore.
This gets us back to the question we’ve been asking for centuries: How do we know what is true? Once we threw God into the trash bin of history, what will be our source of truth? We have to rely on each individual as the ultimate arbiter of truth. And how’s that working out? Well, we disagree, vehemently, sometimes violently. How then do we resolve disagreements? That’s among the great questions of our day.
We’ve been through a massive cultural, philosophical, intellectual shift that leaves us dizzy. We’re left searching for the guardrails. Have we enjoyed not knowing the source of what is true and real? Maybe we’re getting a glimpse of how terrifying the consequences may become for human life and for our civilization.
Up against all of this, I feel really small. I don’t know how to address the enormity of the questions. I don’t know how to stop the shaking of the foundations.
So what can I propose, for myself, for my world? I know it may feel like a copout, but I think I’ve got to get simple. I’ve got to narrow the parameters of what I’m willing to consider. What I need right now is some bedrock source that keeps the ground from shaking. I need help, we all need help, to be able to call some things true and others not true. I’ve got to start simple and then work out from there.
Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Over the last two weeks I’ve been contemplating the greatest mystery of all time. It was scoffed at way back then, as it is now. Jesus Christ is risen today. Talk about shaking the foundations. Talk about a new reality. There is life rather than death. There is kindness instead of hatred. There are places where people gather around this new reality to worship. Things did change. Maybe they can again.
I find myself harking back to things I used to say, ways I would pray, hymns I would sing in childhood innocence:
Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in his wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of his glory and grace
For a long while I wrestled with the notion that “things of the earth will grow strangely dim.” That seemed like separatism. I came to assert aggressive engagement with the world. But as things of the earth grew utterly disorienting, as it has now, I began to withdraw, pull back. I began to see that my starting point, the bedrock, was looking into the face of Jesus. That means looking into the light of the world, into glory and grace. I needed renewed practice of looking into this face, daily. I needed this reorientation into what is real and true.
Too simple? Too narrow? Preposterous? Well, what else is being offered? Living in a world of untruth is horrifying, destructive, harmful. By eradicating the source of truth, we are reaping what we have sown. I need now more than ever to look into the eyes of Jesus, this new reality. Can we ever get back to something so simple, so true? That’s what I am counting on.