What Ground News taught me about the gospels
My favorite YouTubers I listen to partner with Ground News and while listening to one of the ads between the videos, something occurred to me about the gospels.
First, what is Ground News?
It is an app that helps its subscribers get a less biased version of news item by providing access to different perspectives across the spectrum of media reports with diverse political leanings. It also provides a blindspot feature that shows what both sides of the aisle are failing to highlight. Now I have never used Ground News and do not have a partnership with them so my description here is based on the ads on the YouTube channels I am interested in.
Now one reason people say they are highly sceptical about the gospels is that they contradict each other and were written with an agenda in mind. This is one reason Alex O’Connor (AOC) for example has proffered for doubting the gospels. (Let us ignore the fact that virtually every historical work was written with an agenda in mind and the gnostic gospels which AOC is very fascinated with was especially written with an agenda in mind). Problem with this reasoning is that the fact something is written with an agenda in mind does not mean it is not true. It would in fact mean that different things would be emphasised based on the agenda of the author. So think about this.
Various media reports on Ground News have been written with different agendas and as such will emphasize different things. The reports will even in some cases seem to contradict each other, but you know the most stupid conclusion you can draw from this? That nothing ever happened!
Let me give an example, the recent LA riots. One side of the aisle might emphasize how the heroic Donald Trump is standing up for America and kicking out illegal immigrants who commit crimes, hate America and are destroying America! They will provide quotes from interviews and social media to give this perception. Another side of the aisle will emphasize how the dictatorial Nazi Donald Trump is persecuting immigrants who have taken desperate measures, risking their lives to come in to the country for a better life and just want to live in peace. They will of course interview the pro-migrant rioters who are fighting against the dictatorship to uphold those values of justice, freedom and equality that made America great in the first place! The same Trump, the same scenario, massively different and contradictory perceptions, the most stupid conclusion that can be drawn from this is that the riots are some sort of hoax! In fact both sides are drawing from a core history and telling us how they perceive these objective facts.
Same thing with the gospels, the authors have their different goals in mind. Matthew aims to portray Jesus as the Royal Messiah, Luke as the perfect man, John as the divine Son and Mark as the divine servant. They emphasize different aspects of Jesus’ ministry, they include different perspectives on similar accounts yet what do skeptics do? Call all of this a contradiction and conclude we cannot trust the gospels. What if there is a common core of history which the authors are reporting tempered by their perceptions of the events and the end goal they have in mind? As a whole what exactly do the gospels contradict each other on? Is there a gospel where Jesus is not divine, does not die and rise from the dead or is not the fulfilment of the Hebrew scriptures regarding the Messiah?
Do we now see that the fact something is reported with a bias does not necessarily render it untrue?
