Because I crochet a lot, people often tag me in certain posts showing pictures of glorious elephants, 10 feet high, crocheted by a 90-year-old woman. Or it could be a lion with glistening yarn eyelashes. Or a miniature buttoned sweater, made for a pet mouse.
Because I’m Catholic, I get tagged in artistic renditions of Our Lord: sand sculptures with Jesus’ hands outreaching, glowing paintings of Our Lady holding the Christ Child, sculpted or painted by a blind man in the Third World.
The constant in all of these posts, all the thousands of them, is that inevitably the sand sculpture of Our Lord has six fingers, Mary has a third arm tucked under the bottom of her babe, and the elephant has rows of impossible stitches that somehow result in unseen geometric patterns.
Because they are all AI. But every one of these images has thousands of comments: “Amen!” “Amazing!!” “Bravo!” “Praise God, Amen!” followed by the classic praying hands emoji.
Only a few people – a very few people – comment on the ridiculous notion that these images are true. Thousands are being lied to, and they happily rejoice and celebrate the lie. At least it made them happy, we might be tempted to say.
Another example, with a different outcome, comes from a video I recently watched. Before anyone yells at me, it is simply a glowing example, and not an irrelevant endorsement. The video replayed multiple clips in the career of a notorious politician. Each showed his horrendous activity, with the headlines and outrage that followed. When complete, the producer returned to each, now playing the full context of those examples including what had been cut.
Each one gave an entirely different perspective, changing its meaning completely. One recorded this politician on a diplomatic visit. He is shown feeding fish with the foreign politician, as it was culturally symbolic. The hated politician is shown dumping the crumbs into the tank and making a sour, mocking face. News sources alert the world to the abrasive insult made, “Will relationships ever be restored?!.”
The full footage shows this person originally sprinkling the crumbs, slowly and methodically. He is smiling at the fish as they approach. He then looks over his shoulder and sees the foreign president tossing the fish food into the tank, unceremoniously, in one chuck. So, he shrugs, smirks and (start video now) joins in with the food fest.
Each incident in the film resolves in this kind of way, but those who prefer their hate absolutely refuse to even watch these clarifications. For whatever reason, they prefer the falsehood over the truth of the matter. And the falsehood in this case results not in the delight of impossible works of art, but in rage and hatred.
In a few weeks, we will hear the Gospel reading of the Passion of Christ. As he stands before Pontius Pilate, with his own life in his hands, he says, “For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” Pilate responds, “What is truth?” And then he walks away without reply. Christ certainly would have revealed that he himself is truth.
Pilate has asked the pivotal question but walks away before hearing the pivotal answer. He claims to want truth but is unwilling to seek it. It might demand something of him he isn’t willing to give up.
Six-fingered sand sculptures and much-loathed politicians are only the very, very tip of the ways the devil looks to manipulate us as he prowls about as a roaring lion. But these smaller treacheries create a disposition within us to accept any deception that feeds our appetite.
We get worked up, in excitement or in hatred. And eventually the so-called truths of the world are more interesting, more compelling than the simple truth that Christ Jesus came to this earth to suffer and die for each of us. It is more palatable to excite ourselves in delight or hatred than to face the inconvenient truth that we are truly sinners in need of his Precious Blood.
Jordan Peterson, in a recent interview with his daughter Mikhaila, discusses the probable loss of his clinical licence for speaking his mind just one too many times. At the end of the interview, he asks his daughter if she has any advice for him. She suggests that he take caution from getting too worked up on social media.
He nods, and gives this stunning response:
“You’re kind of swept along, and you gotta ask yourself what you want to be swept along by. And I would say, you want to be swept away by your relationship with God. And you want to be swept along by the truth, because if you’re swept along by falsehood and the Prince of Lies, you’re being swept towards something so abysmal that the worst of your paranoid imagination would stretch itself beyond its capacity to imagine.”
It might be worthwhile, not only on Good Friday, but every day for the rest of our lives, to ask ourselves, “What is truth?” And then listen for the answer and allow ourselves to be swept along by it.
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