A Culture of Pontius Pilates

Jesus Christ is a prisoner. He had yet to be scourged, but the night before Good Friday inflicted its own terrible scorn with emotional turmoil: agony, betrayal and abandonment.

He knows his path leads to death; but he stands before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, who hesitates to oblige the crowd clamoring for blood. In all the Gospels, Pilate is perplexed by the accusations, consistently finding “no crime in him” (John 19:6); and he is not marked as a dastardly tyrant by Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.

But he has a few questions for the righteous man, and even believes in his innocence. When Pilate inquires if Jesus is a king, the latter replies: “You say that I am a king. 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” (John 18:37).

Pilate, in turn, answers with a question: “What is truth?”

His tone’s inflection is never described. Is it spiteful? Dismissive? Sarcastic even? Perhaps unlikely because, again, he approached the Jews saying, “I find no crime in him” (John 18:38). At this moment, Pilate seems sympathetic to Jesus and poised to spurn the crowd’s demands. But we know how the story goes: afraid of a riot by the Jews and a reprimand — or worse — by Caesar, the Roman governor caves and has Jesus crucified.

His brief response though is worth a moment’s meditation. Surely, he would have found no guilt in Jesus if the prisoner had not spoken the truth. If he suspected Jesus to be merely a madman, Pilate would not have treated him with initial respect or, at least, decency during the back-and-forth prior to the scourging. This means Pilate at least grasped what the truth was and is — that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

Truth stood before Pilate. He was face-to-face with his redeemer. Yet the weak man rejected the truth out of fear.

How often have we done this to God? How often do we know the truth, but supplant it for our misguided truths?

Pilate’s sin is a modern one — one that is endemic in the United States. Despite the truth that we live in the Empty Tomb era, today, only three in 10 Americans say they attend religious services regularly, according to a recent Gallup survey. And while 68% of Americans identify as some form of Christian, 28% are religiously unaffiliated (or “nones”), which is a steep increase since 2007 when the latter accounted for 16%. 

Furthermore, a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this year found that 80% of U.S. adults say religion’s role in American life is shrinking, and only 49% believe that is a “bad thing.”

Many Americans, particularly Christians, are rejecting the truth either out of belligerence, ignorance, or some spiritually anemic combination. Yet most (75%) believe they are fundamentally a good person; and most Americans (73%) believe in heaven. Combining the two surveys, one would assume many U.S. residents optimistically believe they will reside in heaven after death.

Yes, Jesus reveals there are “many rooms” in heaven (John 14:2), and he has a merciful heart. To be sure, not all outwardly religious people are indeed disciples — with many inflicting terrible crimes against humanity and children, particularly clerical sexual abuse. But Christ also affirms that he is “the way, and the truth, and the life” and “no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:6).

How do we come to know Christ? The Catechism of the Catholic Church succinctly, and wisely, defines man as a “religious being” since the “desire for God is written in the human heart” (Cat. Ch 1: 27). So, this journey begins in our souls. But faith without works is dead, as Scripture states, and the most glorifying ‘work’ one can do is through worship (i.e., going to Mass and partaking in the Sacraments).

Jesus Christ’s mere presence means there is only one truth to life, unless one believes he is simply mad. Many did and will to the end of time, especially over the Eucharist. When he affirmed to his disciples that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life,” many of them “murmured” (John 6:53-54 &61). And many left and “no longer went about with him” (John 6:66).

This ask is not figurative because, as Father Mike Schmitz notes in the 100th episode of The Bible in a Year podcast, the Jews “are taking [Jesus] literally. And if Jesus wanted to correct them and say, ‘You guys I’m not being literal, I’m being figurative. That’s disgusting.’ He doesn’t.” So, “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse,” as the Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis once said. Catholics and Christians alike still wrestle with the Eucharist as only one-third of U.S. Catholics believe in transubstantiation — that the bread and wine are the body, blood, soul and the divinity of Jesus Christ. How human nature stays the same.

Yet, even by the Gospel accounts, Pilate did not dismiss Our Lord as a lunatic — in fact, he was “the more afraid” when the Jews told him, “We have a law, and by that law he ought to die, because he has made himself the Son of God” (John 19:7-8). Somewhere in his soul, he knew the truth, and it stood before him on that Good Friday.

Rationally, Pilate was possibly in political and physical harm, so by placating the mob, he clung to power, preserved his own life and saved his reputation — all of which he, and we, are afraid to lose.

Every human heart is susceptible to these temptations and has been throughout human history (“In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes” [Judg 17:6]). But the decline of religiosity in America and the plague of moral relativism — better known as “your truth” — indicates we are deeply in a culture of Pontius Pilates. For one can delude oneself that money, fame and possessions are worth more than eternity; or falsely believe that life away from religiosity loosens restrictive bonds in order to explore life to the fullest. Yet the opposite is true. And it’s true because Jesus Christ says so: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31-32).

Nowhere is this moral relativism more evident than in the ongoing debates on gender, abortion, surrogacy, euthanasia, and so on. But instead of facing the “mob,” we often cower — or affirm things that are not so, saying it helps the other person’s mental state, but, in truth, it helps us escape harm (or cancellation).

Like Pilate, American society needs to ask itself collectively “What is truth” to find peace among our neighbors (reducing the rise of tribalism) and within ourselves (the latter which has inflicted much agony and death by suicide over the past few years).

However, it will only find a satisfying answer in the truth — that being Jesus Christ. The only thing is, will we hear his voice?