I don’t know about you, but I am daily inundated with a barrage of videos or posts, each claiming to present the truth on some issue, but which inevitably turn out to be spreading falsehoods. I don’t know if I receive more such items or fewer than others. My role as teacher and pastor does make some students and parishioners to send me queries. But my impatience with obvious untruths might dissuade others from sharing things with me.

Whatever my relative exposure to fake news, I am writing this post because I believe that spreading fake news has a direct impact on the witness of a Christian. In fact, given that a Christian is called to testify to the greatest events that ever happened and to the greatest person who ever lived, the ramifications of undermining the witness of a Christian can be enormous.

Our faith is rooted in history and geography. Unlike many Christians, I do not espouse the ideas of universal truths. We have historical and geographical truths, the gospel of Jesus Christ being just such a truth we are called to proclaim. This gospel is located in history and geography. Something happened in the Ancient Near East, specifically in the Levant, more specifically in the regions of Judea, Galilee, and, to a lesser extent, Samaria and Egypt, in the first century AD, while the region was under Roman occupation, during the reigns of the emperors Augustus and Tiberius. Without any of this, we have no message.

But these events are, per our understanding of things, singular events. They have happened only once. And they have never been repeated. Because of this, the burden of proof lies on us who testify that these events happened. This is one reason why Jesus has given his Spirit to the Church.

If we were talking about less uncommon events the burden would be reduced. The more common an event, the lighter the burden. For example, no one would disbelieve you if you said you saw a rainbow after a shower of rain. No one would disbelieve you if you said you saw an accident on a highway. But if you said you saw a flash flood, there might be some skeptics. Or if you said that you saw animals fall from the sky more people would be disinclined to believe your claim. However, both these events, flash floods and animals falling from the sky, though not too common, have been reported often enough in the past that a simple reference to a past, well supported occurrence might be sufficient to overcome the disbelief.

However, what do you do with claims about some event that not only happened just once before, but by definition will not ever happen again? This is what we Christians believe about Jesus’ resurrection. It happened once around AD 30 when Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion and will not happen again until he returns. This makes the event of Jesus’ resurrection one that is inaccessible to normal historical study. No wonder so many find it difficult to believe. It is something that, by definition, they will never experience as a literal reality in their lives.

How then will they be able to believe such an unbelievable claim? They only have the witness of Christians to go by. We Christians – you and I – are the only means of access they have to the reality we claim to experience. How reliable are we?

Most fake news can be shown to be fake with a couple of well framed internet searches that take only a few minutes. In an earlier post I suggested seven steps to mitigate against fake news. In other words, for the vast majority of videos or posts a couple of minutes of my time is all that is needed to show that the item is a fake. Do I invest this time to uncover the falsehoods or do I not?

If I forward fake news it means that I am the kind of person who does not care to invest in determining what is true and to separate the truth from what is false. If I am such a person, can someone trust me to have conducted an investigation about the singular, historically inaccessible truth that I claim is the hinge of history and that I claim has changed my life? If I cannot even determine what is true with regard to easily verifiable events, how can I be trusted for something that, by its very nature, is unverifiable?

There is a saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything.” (I’m probably paraphrasing, but you get the gist!) I don’t agree with this statement. There are times when you have to speak words that are not nice to hear. But I could paraphrase it further, in the context of truth, and say, “If you are not absolutely sure something is the truth, do not share it.”

The gospel of Jesus’ death and resurrection refer to historically inaccessible and unverifiable events. Yet many early Christians went to their deaths because they believed that this gospel was true. We call such people ‘martyrs’ which derives from a Greek word that simply means ‘witness’. They were martyred (witnessed?) because they witnessed (martyred?) to the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Would we bet our lives on some of the videos and posts we share? Would we be willing to defend them as being true? If not, why do we share them? The Christian gospel is inextricably linked to truth claims and if we show ourselves to be people who cannot distinguish between truth and falsehood, then we only undermine our reliability as witnesses to the greatest events that have ever happened and to the greatest person who has ever lived – and yes, who is still alive!