Fake News, or Good News?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about honesty and accuracy in reporting the news. A new phrase, “Fake News,” has entered our vocabulary, and is thrown around or denied by various politicians and media pundits. While some people seem too ready to cast the term accusatorily when they read or hear something they don’t like, as if they could change reality by changing what we say about it, it really is important that we strive to speak, write and report, to the best of our ability, only what is true. We need to be able to trust what we hear, especially when it comes to things that can have an important impact on our lives. Unfortunately, some people report things that are false, not just because they themselves are misled or too lazy intellectually to check their facts, but because they intend to deceive others for some personal or political gain.

With that in mind, I thought I might test your ability to recognize “Fake News.” Following are a number of statements about myself that are either true or false. What I challenge you to do is figure out which is (or are) fake and which is (or are) true. So, here goes; true or false?

1. I was once the only white singer in a Gospel choir.
2. Boris Yeltsin once chided me personally and told me, “Mind your own business!”
3. I was a National Merit Scholar.
4. I rode a Soviet Army tank in Siberia.
5. I won a citywide tennis tournament, undefeated in my division.
6. I shook hands with Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton.
7. I once invaded Canada.
8. I found gold, rubies, and sapphires in North Carolina.
9. I was the lector (Scripture reader) at Martin Luther’s church in Wittenberg, Germany.
10. I visited Santa Claus Land above the Arctic Circle.

Have you decided which of the above statements are true and which are false? Answer: they are all true statements! Yes, even the claim about Santa Claus Land; it’s located in Rovaniemi, Finland, which I visited in 1988! No “Fake News” here! So score yourself accordingly: if you guessed they were all true, you are gullible (but right). If you thought they were all fake, consider yourself skeptical (but wrong). If you thought some were right and some were wrong, you are thoughtful, a discerning thinker who was still wrong part of the time.

As you can tell by my phony labels, “gullible, skeptical, and thoughtful,,” the truth of a statement or claim rests not in the perception of the hearer, but in the accuracy of what is reported. Contrary to postmodern ideas of relative truth and subjective realities, there are objective, real-life events that really happen. What we know about them is imperfect and limited, how we feel about them will be different based on who we are and how they affect us, and what we tell others about them will likely be shaded by our biases. But regardless of flawed human perceptions and motives, there is real news of real events.

This Sunday, we celebrate the greatest real event that ever occurred: the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. By rising from the dead, as he had prophesied and promised, Jesus proved his sacrificial death for the forgiveness of our sins had been accepted by God the Father, and opened the way for our eventual resurrections to eternal life. He defeated death, proving that his promises to us will also be fulfilled. This is not “Fake News,” but Good News; in fact our word Gospel comes from an old English word, godspel, which means “good news” and is a translation of the New Testament’s Greek word, “euangelion” (evangel).

Because of Christ, others were also brought back to life. There were those he raised during his ministry: Jairus’ daughter (Matthew 9, Mark 5 and Luke 8), the widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7), Lazarus (John 11). Also there were those saints who rose from their graves at the moment of his death on the cross (Matthew 27:52-53). And not to be forgotten, there were those people raised in Jesus’ name by Peter (Tabitha – Acts 9:36-43) and Paul (Eutychus Acts 20:7-12). But as far as we know, each of them eventually died again, and awaits as we do the return of Christ and the bodily, permanent raising of all people, including you and me, some to eternal life, and some to eternal punishment.

Christ’s resurrection was a real, objective, historical event. It is as certain, from the perspective of history, as any other event that has ever happened on earth.

1. There is the empty tomb.
2. There is the failure of any doubters or persecutors of the Church to ever produce bones or other evidence of Jesus’ non-resurrection.
3. There is the written, eye-witness testimony of multiple apostles in the New Testament.
4. The testimonies were written shortly after the events, and texts of those testimonies dating from within 40 to 80 years of the events still survive. Compare this to Julius Caesar’s Gallic and Civil Wars, which texts date to no earlier than 1100 years after the writing, yet which everyone accepts as true history written by Caesar.
5. There was Jesus’ appearance to the disciples, to over 500 followers, and finally to Paul.
6. There was the self-sacrificing evangelism and willing martyrdom of the disciples. People are not likely to die for something they know to be a lie; all the disciples died for the sake of the Gospel except for John, who was persecuted and exiled on the Isle of Patmos for his preaching.
7. There is even testimony of ancient non-Christians, who though disbelieving the resurrection, gave testimony that the early Christians believed Jesus had risen from the dead. One such testimony was a letter from a father to his son, explaining that the noontime darkness (at the crucifixion, Matthew 27:45) was not from an eclipse, since it was a full moon at the time which made a solar eclipse impossible.

Nevertheless, from the very beginning, there have been people who have cried, “Fake News!” about the claims of Christ’s resurrection. The first doubters were the disciples themselves! They doubted the women’s claims that they had seen the risen Lord, until they saw him for themselves. We think especially of Thomas, who disbelieved the other disciples’ testimony, demanding to touch Jesus’ wounds himself before he would believe.

But the ones who cried, “Fake News!” the loudest were the chief priests who had sentenced Jesus to death and convinced Pilate to carry out the sentence. We are told in Matthew 28:11-15 that they actually bribed the guards they had placed at the tomb (Matthew 27:62-66) to report that the disciples had come and stolen the body. And so the “disinformation” campaign began and was accepted by those who rejected Christ.

One of those people was a man named Saul of Tarsus, who actively persecuted the first Christians. This enemy of Christ and denier of the resurrection, was confronted by Christ himself while on the way to persecute the believers in Damascus. The encounter and call by Christ to serve him, changed Saul into the greatest of the Apostles, who as Paul wrote much of the New Testament Scriptures and established churches around the eastern Mediterranean. His testimony and theological teachings have convinced many millions of the truth and meaning of Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. The truth was too much for him to deny; he had to set aside his biases and pride and submit himself to the Truth, eventually giving his life as a martyr for the faith.

That’s what the Truth finally does. It comes out, and proves itself true to all who believe now by faith, and eventually to all, by sight. For we are told in Philippians 2:9-11 that the day will come when “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

That’s not “Fake News,” but Good News! For on that day we will rejoice at Christ’s triumph and vindication, and at the final fulfillment of all God’s promises, which are “yes!” in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:20). That’s something you can truly believe in: the Truth which Christ’s resurrection on that first Easter 2000 years ago made real.

May you have a joyous Easter celebration this year, as you celebrate the greatest Good News of all!

Now may the (risen!) Lord bless you and keep you, the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you, the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.

Read: John 20 and 21