Expect the Spirit of Truth
John 16:12–15
12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
When Jesus promises us the Spirit of Truth that will guide us into all the truth, it sounds too good to be true.
Pontius Pilate may have been more our style. He asked Jesus dismissively, “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus answered by declaring that his role in life was to testify to the truth. Pilate then replied, even more dismissively, “What is truth.”
Stephen Colbert may have been even more up to date when, twenty years ago, he said this was the time not for truth, but for “truthiness.” If you feel in your gut that you are right, then you may not know truth, but you advocate for your “truthiness,” and that’s enough.
Is there promise for us in this prospect of the Spirit of Truth guiding us to ALL THE TRUTH?
· Some things feel true that are not.
· Some things have half truth in them, and they feel like we would like them to be true, but they bite us where the sun don’t shine.
· Some things have just enough of a grain of truth that they feed our resentments, anger, and fear. And doing so they often serve to destroy marriages, lives, and society.
We can laugh at others for their wacky truths. Crazy conspiracies keep hanging on, and we read about these freaky people. But then they sometimes they show up at our Fourth of July get-togethers and it’s harder to laugh. When we actually pay attention to what they are saying we will find people who believe:
· The government controls the weather,
· The earth and moon are hollow
· Paul McCartney died in a car accident in 1966,
· Elvis is alive,
· Jesus lived long enough to raise kids with Mary Magdaline,
· We are all living a digital simulation controlled by the Matrix,
· And, more dangerously, thousands at least half-believe QAnon, that the Democratic party is dominated by canabalistic child molesters and sex traffickers in league with the deep state—and, of course, Donald Trump is our only hope in battling them.
These untruths seem just truthy enough to manipulate thousands of us into silliness, and out-and-out destructive lies.
Modern life is no more sophisticated than ancient. Suckers are born by the minute. Truthiness rules. Cults of half-truths have long dominated. Now conspiracy theories breed in a sort of free-lance ways. But always, I believe, they have been characterized by at least three key markers:
· They take a half truth or just a grain of truth and twist it.
· They dress up and sell their lies with fake love.
· They are impersonal—and therefore completely incapable of genuine love.
And today so-called artificial intelligence is bringing untruth right into our homes. If you have turned on your computer or your smart phone lately you see AI being sold and used everywhere. But AI companies are multiplying as we speak, and Open AI itself, the biggest AI business with its seductive ChatGPT, today has over half a billion regular users.
But in the Spirit of Truth, let me add my voice to those who are trying to warn us.
Artificial Intelligence works by sweeping up great gobs of data, essays, books, movie scripts, and news reports off the Internet. So it is fundamentally fed on a mixture of truth and falsehood.
You and I have had decades now to learn that the Internet has some good stuff, but it also has a lot of garbage.
· Stuff that’s inaccurate.
· Stuff that’s sensationalized and intentionally polarizing.
· Stuff that’s pure fiction.
· Stuff that is hatched in hateful minds.
So, the “intelligence” of AI may contain just a grain of truth, but also plenty of things that are deceiving, and often destructive.
Secondly, AI—especially chatbots, dress things up with love. The industry admits that it programs the chatters for engagement. They are begotten by companies that get their money when you come back for more.
· So if you are a drug user, the bots might say it’s okay to take just a little bit. You can handle it.
· If you are inclined to blame other people for your mistakes and your hardships, chatbots will agree with you and commiserate with you that other people don’t recognize your inner beauty and genius.
· And if you believe in conspiracy theories—look out!
So, vulnerable, perhaps a little mentally unstable people are very liable to fall in love with their bots, whom they name and whom they believe are the only “people” who really understand them.
And the third marker of deadly “truthiness,” the most frightening one of all, is the way AI creates counterfeit people who feel like they love us. We are intentionally made to think the ChapGPT has feelings, AI is sentient, AI understands you, AI is a person. All the while, the only hard core fact in all of this is that that AI is nothing more than ones and zeroes. It is a software program. Yes it sweeps up stuff. Yes it plays a mean game of word association. Yes it engages and entertains us. But it is not a person.
One great irony is that OPEN AI admits in a public statement that there are big problems with this. People do fall in love with their chatbots. This thing called “engagement” that chatbots are designed for, causes people to get divorced, causes them to have mental breakdowns, causes them to punch in the face loved ones who try to reason with them, causes them even to commit suicide.
The other great irony is that even those who have been hurt by AI—the divorced spouses, the parents of the kids who commit suicide—keep on using these seductive bots who have hurt them. Why? Because the bot seems to know everything, and to be able to see even into their own souls.
Jesus says, “I’m sending you the Spirit of Truth, and he will guide you into ALL the Truth.” And as we trust I Jesus we must also learn to expect this of the Spirit.
We need to understand what Jesus means by truth. This isn’t a nit-picky, nerdy or pedantic thing to consider. It means everything.
In the Bible the words used for truth always mean, most fundamentally, trustworthy. Truth is something you can rely on, invest in, stake your life on.
In the Gospel of John this idea is augmented by the big word abide. Just before he goes to be crucified, Jesus has this long talk with his followers to get them ready. Our lesson today is from this talk: “I’m not abandoning you. I’m leaving you with this comforter, this Spirit of Truth who will guide you.”
The person of Jesus and the person of the Spirit by their very natures are trustworthy. They are the embodiments of abiding.
· That’s what Holy Communion is all about, Jesus says, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.”
· “You and I are like a Vine and Branches,” Jesus says, “You abide in me as I abide in you.”
· “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.”
· And Jesus says, this is exactly what this Spirit of Truth does that is so truthful and trustworthy – he abides with you and will be in you. (Jn 14.17)
The trouble with cults is that they rip people from their families and turn them into drones that can’t think for themselves. The trouble with conspiracy theories is that they suck people into rabbit holes or echo chambers that make us deaf to people who truly do care for us enough to call us back to earth. The trouble with chatbots and AI is that none of them tell us all the truth because they are counterfeit humanity—they are all depersonalizing and dehumanizing.
So this isn’t just a few whacky people we can make jokes about.
Cults, conspiracy theories, and chatbots are creating lonely people who can’t love the world as it is because the real world, the world God made, is populated by different people with different lives, perspectives, and ideas.
They are creating people who can’t think for themselves. They are creating people who can’t tell truth from lies, or fact from fantasy.
Because of this they leave people wide open to the worst kinds of propaganda and closed to healthy critique of leaders. They create fertile ground for totalitarianism.
Jesus and the Spirit of Truth saves us from all of that. So we must expect the Spirit of Truth to guide us.
Surely to fully understand what all truth means in the Fourth Gospel, we need to see that this is all about Ultimate Truth.
Throughout the Gospel of John and the New Testament the idea of Truth isn’t academic truth, or scientific truth or historic truth. This truth Jesus is talking about as all the Truth can’t be proven by laboratory tests or by footnotes filled with impeccable sources.
This Ultimate Truth can be proven only by living it. Truth that is trustworthy and humane and living among us to care for us and guide us reliably, is Jesus. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
But contrary to what fundamentalists claim, or to what critics of Christianity accuse all Jesus-followers of, trust in Jesus as Truth doesn’t mean we close our minds. It means we open them.
Having Jesus as ultimate truth doesn’t mean if someone isn’t a good Lutheran or Christian, or doesn’t understand the Creeds of the Church, they are going to hell. It means that Jesus is more than words and doctrines. Jesus is a living human being who also happens to be God’s Son.
· It means Jesus and the Spirit guide us. They eat at table with us. They abide in us.
· So, when we don’t quite understand all the language of the Creeds, the Spirit talks it over with us.
· When we can’t quite put our full trust in the amazing promises that Jesus makes, the Spirit understands and helps our unbelief—is patient with our lack of trust.
· When we can’t quite love God or our neighbors as ourselves—something Jesus says is the key to life—the Spirit invites us to dinner, with God, with our neighbors, and draws us ever closer to that love that is the secret to the fullness of life.
This kind of person of a Spirit—this forgiving and affirming Sprit--then guides us into all truth by freeing us to be self critical. Truth cannot be all truth without being honest with and learning from sins and mistakes.
One of the most destructive untruths going on today is the erasing of history—our American History. Universities, museums, media organizations at home and abroad are being bullied into erasing the history of America’s sins, from slavery to dispossessing of Native Americans to abuse of the land itself. But erasing history will lead to forgetting, forgetting to repetition of sins, and repetition to decay and decline.
The Holy Spirit of Truth, instead, opens our eyes to our failures when we realize there is a God of New Life who walks with us into the future. The triple personality of the Trinity welcomes us back to the family table each Sunday. We are freed to be honest with ourselves, freed to see ourselves as sinners and forgiven saints at the same time.
Finally, by being a Person to Guide us, the Spirit enables us to do wonderful things. Expecting the Spirit of Truth is to expect the unexpected, and even the impossible.
With the Spirit of Truth as our guide we are no longer lonely – shut off from people with different ideas. We feel the joy of thinking anew to meet every day’s new challenges.
Think of the disciples Jesus was preparing for his departure, and to whom he made this amazing promise of the Spirit of Truth – this Trustworthy Spirit…
· they went from fishing on the Sea of Galilee to the cities and market places.
· They met the world, and loved the world as God does, and they went to work to change the world for the better.
· They did more than what was in them. They thought and spoke all the Truth. They lived the Truth. They gave their lives for the Truth.
Martin Luther was another guy who did the same. Before the promise of the Spirit hit him he was floundering—didn’t know even what to do with his life. But then, he said, “By our own reason or wit, we can’t know the Truth of Jesus. But the Holy Spirit of Truth opens our eyes of faith.”
When he talked about this verse in John’s Gospel, chapter 14, and he read Jesus promise of the Spirit of Truth that guides us into all the truth, he realized Jesus meant the Truth that sets us free and gives us courage for life. He wrote.
The Holy Spirit is not only a Comforter, who makes Christians defiant and courageous in the face of all kinds of terror; He is also a Spirit of truth, that is, He is a true and reliable Spirit, who does not deceive you or fail you.
Only the Spirit can save us from the
· Lies of cult leaders dressed up in fake love,
· The counterfeit truthiness of the great conspiracy theories,
· Or the false promises of Artificial Intelligence pushed on us by Chatbots programmed for engagment,
· or the propaganda of totalitarians dressed up as patriotism.
Only the Spirit guides us into all the truth because the Spirit connects us with Jesus who goes all the way to the cross for us. The Spirit is what a caring person is. The Spirit abides, is trustworthy, and guides us into all the truth.
Expect the Spirit to get us through these foggy, MAGA-muddy, chatbot-crazy days of truthiness.