“So the guards accepted the bribe and said what they were told to say. Their story spread widely among the Jews, and they still tell it today.“

Ironically, it is harder today to discern truth than it has ever been.  I say it is ironic as we live in the greatest age of transparency known to man, but yet with all of the ability to source back to the truth, those who thrive and prosper off of untruths become more and more sophisticated in spinning, weaving and deceiving.  We’ve fought this in advertising on TV and radio, but on the internet, anything goes.  The next time you receive an email, a newsletter, a share, or something in your social feed that feels like it is too good to be true, approach it with the suspicion that it is indeed too good to be true and that it is a false claim.  And then realize, that someone, somewhere has been paid to originate that message (getting paid more money to make it look like they haven’t) and they know they are doing it!

We have to be careful with what we do with words.  We are taught extensively about the words that we create on our own, but not as much about the words that we repeat or carry forward.  It saddens me that there were those who took money to create stories about Jesus that contributed to His crucifixion and that even today there might be those who won’t even entertain the thought of believing because of the generation of the passing and mutating of those stories that they were told and taught about who He wasn’t, never getting to who He was and is today.  We are likely not guilty of taking bribes and creating our own false stories, but let’s consider that when we don’t call out and counter the untruths that we hear or read from others, coworkers, etc. that we are yes, participating for what could cause damage beyond what we know.

Reference: Matthew 28:15 (New Living Translation)