Willful Blindness
When Jesus used words like, "I am the Truth" (Jn. 14:6); "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free (Jn. 8:32); and "All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true” – one could rightly conclude that he had a great interest and fixation on truth.
Should we not have the same fixation? When people establish a belief, they should do so because they are utterly convinced that what they believe in is trustworthy and worthy of their confidence.
Truth must be paramount if a society is to function well. But by truth, I don’t mean your version or my version of truth. Subjective nuances on truth are now in vogue. When people say "truth is relative" they may not realize that such a statement is self-refuting. To claim it is "absolutely true" that all truth is relative creates a logical contradiction. Truth is objective, universal, and exists independently of personal feelings, culture, or opinion.
For millennia, truth has always been defined as that which is ultimately and verifiably real, regardless of what you and I feel. Truth is the “way it is” and therefore is totally trustworthy and dependable.
Accuracy is an essential component of truth. In fact, truth does not yield to opinion, popular fashion, a person’s sincerity of belief, or any spin that comes from the mainstream media that props up a government’s narrative. It does not matter how sincerely someone believes something, if in the end, it is false. Truth is in harmony with reality, and we should therefore always seek to live our lives in harmony with what is true.
So, why do conspiracy theories gain traction in the first place? Well, people have a penchant for truth. They seem to sense when someone is pulling the wool over their eyes. Now, some would suggest that if conspiracy theorists would just be good little minions and believe everything they hear, we wouldn’t have any conspiracy theories at all. But some people aren’t content with taking that subservient position, and it’s a good thing they don’t.
For example, some were calling it a conspiracy theory about Apple sending out a bug to all its devices before they drop a new iPhone. For years, we were all told that we were crazy and it was just in our head. Our phones weren’t really slowing down. Until a few years ago, when Apple agreed to settle for $500 million for a claim that they intentionally slowed down the performance of older phones to encourage customers to buy newer models.[1]
Then there is the unverified story of “mass graves found at residential schools”. On May 27, 2021, Rosanne Casimir, Chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc (Kamloops Indian Band), announced that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) had located the remains of 215 “missing children” in an apple orchard on the site of a former residential school.
Politicians and media seized on the announcement, and stories of “mass unmarked graves” and “burials of missing children” ricocheted around Canada and indeed much of the world.
In the aftermath, over 100 Christian churches to date, mainly Catholic, have been torched and vandalized across the country. Even though many other churches in that number had nothing to do with the residential schools, it didn’t seem to matter. No one checked for facts and hysteria went rampant. And while Prime Minister Trudeau at the time condemned the attacks on churches, he also used the phrase several times, “it is understandable.” That statement only handed more gasoline to the arsonists.
On May 30 of this year, in a shocking admission, many thought was long overdue, The Globe and Mail, in a board editorial, admitted to a “failure of journalism” in 2021 with its reporting of “mass graves” at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.
The editorial said, “The media, including The Globe and Mail, did not initially scrutinize, much less challenge, that assertion.” The newspaper said the fact of historical crimes committed against Indigenous children at residential schools “does not automatically validate the claims of missing remains being found” or the reference to “mass graves.”
The editorial board noted that media changed their wording gradually to refer to “possible or probable graves,” but said the lesson learned was that “assertions about residential schools should be listened to carefully, and then, just as carefully, held up to scrutiny.”
The Globe and Mail also pointed out politicians who had made unverified comments, saying then – B.C. Premier John Horgan called Kamloops “a tragedy of unimaginable proportions,” something he “had no way of knowing whether that was true.”
The Globe’s editorial board wrote that the claim of 215 children's remains had been found was “an extraordinary assertion” that “requires proof.”
The editorial said the "starting point for the media” in 2021 should have been searching for evidence when the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation issued a press release announcing “confirmation of the remains of 215 children of the Kamloops Indian Residential School” using ground-penetrating radar that identified subterranean anomalies.[2]
Former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made dramatic virtue signaling pronouncements that were also not founded in fact and ordered the Canadian flag to be flown at half-mast at all federal buildings. The flag remained lowered for more than five months.
Although B.C. Premier Horgan died in 2024, Trudeau “still has the opportunity to set the record straight,” said the editorial. “He has not; neither has the current Liberal government.”[3]
The editorial also said Ottawa has yet to account for hundreds of millions of dollars
sent to First Nations to establish whether the soil anomalies were human remains.[4]
When the federal government spends millions of your taxpayer dollars to investigate a claim that shook the entire country, Canadians have a right to transparency. They have a right to know what work was performed, what evidence was found, and how their money was used.
This is not about denying history. It is not about attacking Indigenous communities. It is about basic public accountability and the search for verifiable facts. If the government funded an investigation, the public deserves to see the results of that investigation.
It would have been simple to trust, yet verify. But It doesn't look like there will be any attempt to set the record straight and give proof of human remains, as the Manitoba chief has rejected calls to exhume residential school burial sites because the "dead speak."[5]
The National Post’s, Terry Glavin, who came under fire for his first-anniversary investigative feature, "The year of the graves: How the world's media got it wrong on mass graves," wrote that the reconciliation process has been tainted and genuine residential school survivors have suffered most.[6]
Glavin noted that the flawed coverage gave rise to an expanding definition of “residential schools denialism,” which he described as a “wholly unique construct” that compares skepticism of residential stories with Holocaust denial.[7]
Over the years there has also been growing pushback that gradually developed among a group of retired judges, lawyers, professors, journalists and others who have had careers in researching and evaluating evidence. It’s no accident that most are retired, because that gives them some protection against attempts to silence them as “deniers.[8]
And a lot of that skepticism is not without foundation. Consider the flip flop of Nunavut Senator Nancy Karetak-Lindell. She told Nunatsiaq News in 2001 that her time at Akaitcho Hall was "a home-away-from-home" and that "it's not like what you're hearing about all the residential school issues today." In the same piece, she said, "At Akaitcho, we were in a structured environment compared to where we came from. That taught us perseverance and how to discipline ourselves." "It taught us a lot about doing things in life that we didn't always want to do, but those things had to be done ... We had to learn how to live with people from different cultures who spoke different languages and came from different parts of the NWT," she continued, adding that those friendships helped her political career.
Twenty-five years later, it was the same senator, now describing herself as a residential school "survivor," who stood in the Senate and introduced an amendment to Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, that proposed making residential school "denialism" a criminal offence. We are left asking, "Which version represents the true story?"[9]
When people don’t ask for verifiable proof – truth suffers and people’s lives are put in peril. Churches are burned and government-funded mainstream media goes into hiding. Hysteria and bad policies soon follow. "Truth" becomes malleable to the moment and to the audience.
In 2022, the federal government appointed Kimberly Murray as special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves. In an interim report in June 2023, Murray called on lawmakers to consider criminalizing the denial or minimization of the abuses Indigenous children suffered at residential schools.[10]
Murray defined denialism broadly in her 2024 report as not just denying the schools existed, but "misrepresenting the intent, outcome, and impacts" of the system. What counts as "minimizing" an event? Who decides where academic disagreement ends, and criminal minimization begins?
The Criminal Code is supposed to tell citizens exactly what will land them in prison. "Downplaying" and "minimizing" do the opposite — they let prosecutors decide after the fact whether your opinion was a crime. That's not law. That kind of "discretion" always lands hardest on the unpopular and lightest on the well-connected.
Canada already has laws against harassment, intimidation, and the willful promotion of hatred. Those cover conduct that targets real people. Disagreeing with an official historical narrative isn't that, and pretending otherwise is how speech laws metastasize.
The answer to an argument you hate is a better argument, not a subpoena.[11
On June 1, 2026, the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights voted to amend Bill C-9, adding provisions that would make residential school denialism an indictable offense punishable by up to two years in prison. Just think about that? If you are a genuine seeker of truth and facts and you question the government’s narrative, you could spend time in prison. Do the names Stalin and Lenin come to mind? If they don’t, they should.
On June 1, 2026, the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights reviewing Bill C-9, the Combatting Hate Act, voted to amend the bill by adding criminalization of residential school denialism. Thankfully, however, on June 3, the Senate voted down the amendment.
Section 2 of the Charter protects freedom of conscience, thought, belief, opinion, and expression. These rights exist for ideas that authority finds inconvenient, wrong, or threatening. A right that only protects approved opinions is not a right — it's a permission slip.[10]
Give government the power to declare one historical interpretation criminal, and you've given it the power to declare any interpretation criminal. That power doesn't stay confined. Every future government inherits it. Every future controversy becomes a candidate for prosecution.[11]
History gets rewritten as evidence changes and records surface. That's the job of historians. A law that freezes today's conclusions and criminalizes tomorrow's revisions doesn't protect history — it kills the practice of doing history.
When “conspiracy theorists” question the prevailing “truth”, it’s easy to label them as right-winged lunatics. But shouldn’t everyone have the same desire for the truth? Why settle for speculation or surmising? After all, verifiable facts should matter to everyone.
We humans have an unusual relationship with truth. There is a side of us that wants to pursue the truth, particularly if it is leading us in a direction that affirms our version of “truth”. On the other hand, we seem to balk when an inconvenient truth challenges our long help assumptions and we fall into a state of cognitive dissonance.
Often, we establish beliefs because they generally express how we want life to be. This is why Blaise Pascal said, “People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”[12] But some truth is just blunt and unattractive.
This reminds me of the documentary Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. In the documentary, they reveal that Jeffrey Skilling, the leader of Enron, had his eyesight corrected via LASIK surgery. After this, it seems that all employees who wore glasses followed his lead, so that no one wore glasses. The creator of the documentary saw this as a metaphor for what was going on in the company. No one was looking closely, for the longest time, at how Enron was producing such immense profitability. As journalist Joe Morgenstern described it, “For those inside Enron, as well as those outside looking in, this epic corporate scandal was a case of willful blindness.”
Willful blindness refers to any situation in which people intentionally turn their attention away from an ethical problem because the problem is too disturbing to deal with. People are afraid to look reality in the eye, because it may take them in a direction they don’t want to go, especially if they have already put a lot of effort, time and money into their position.
C.S. Lewis believed this was one of the great flaws in our character. He said, "One of the most cowardly things ordinary people do is to shut their eyes to facts." And, in an era inundated with information, the deliberate disregard of inconvenient truths poses significant challenges. Lewis, renowned for his profound insights into human nature, cautioned against the perils of self-deception and the refusal to confront reality.
Willful blindness doesn’t just plague the secular world. It rears its ugly head in the religious world as well.
In the New Testament there is a very clear example of willful blindness. Jesus had just performed a stunning miracle, by raising Lazarus from the dead. Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days, and Jesus had the stone moved from the entrance and then ordered Lazarus to come forth. There were several witnesses present who obviously were stunned when this dead man of four days walked out.
What is interesting is that many of those witnessing the event went straight to the Jewish religious leaders to report what had happened. These leaders had been hearing rumors that Jesus might be their long-awaited Messiah. You would think that after learning of this incredible miracle, they would investigate it for themselves. In other words, let's determine ifn this story is really true. Then they might conclude that Jesus was, indeed, the Messiah.
Instead, these religious leaders realized that if Jesus continued these astonishing miracles, they would lose all their followers, and the Romans would take away their power. So, instead of pursuing the truth, because it was inconvenient, they began to plot how to get rid of Jesus. He was a threat to their power. So, they set out to treat him like a criminal and have him killed. This is clear example of willful blindness. Their mind was made up about Jesus, and they surely didn’t want it confused with the facts.
We must recognize this natural tendency in each of us to put feelings over facts and to gravitate to a popular “truth” even when it isn’t right. Groupthink provides us with a false sense of security. Groupthink or herd mentality causes individuals to suppress dissenting opinions and ignore warning signs, often resulting in irrational or disastrous decisions. This is especially true when it comes to people’s adverse views about God and spiritual reality. Isaiah said it well, “All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own.” (Is 53:6).
Don’t get me wrong. We can still choose to follow our own paths, deny truth and embrace groupthink like sheep. We can still choose to reject Jesus because of his inconvenient truths. But that won’t change the truth about him or what he says about us. His position on truth is clear. He told Pilate at his trial, “I was born and came into the world to testify to the truth. All who love the truth recognize that what I say is true.”
Don’t be willfully blind. Love the truth. Follow Jesus, who said, “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; and then “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
[1] Jonathan Stemple, “Apple to pay up to $500 million to settle U.S. lawsuit over slow iPhones,” March 2, 2020,https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/apple-to-pay-up-to-500-million-to-settle-us-lawsuit-over-slow-iphones-idUSKBN20P2D7/
[2] The Editorial Board, The Globe and Mail, May 30, 2026, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/editorials/article-there-is-no-reconciliation-without-truth/
[3] Paul Schratz, The Catholic Register, June 5, 2026, https://www.catholicregister.org/item/4001-globe-and-mail-editorial-admits-kamloops-coverage-lacked-proof.
[4] Ibid.
[5] David Wiechnik, "‘THEY SEND US MESSAGES’: Manitoba chief rejects calls to exhume residential school burial sites because the dead speak", The Western Standard, July 20, 2026.
[6] Terry Glavin, “The year of the graves: How the world’s media got it wrong on residential school graves”, May 26, 2022, https://nationalpost.com/opinion/the-year-of-the-graves-how-the-worlds-media-got-it-wrong-on-residential-school-graves.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Tom Flanagan, The Fraser Institute, “No evidence of ‘mass graves’ or ‘genocide’ in residential schools.”, Feb. 12, 2024, https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/no-evidence-of-mass-graves-or-genocide-in-residential-schools.
[9] The Canadian Press, “Special interlocutor 'waiting' for MP bill criminalizing residential school denialism”, November 26, 2023, https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/special-interlocutor-waiting-for-mp-bill-criminalizing-residential-school-denialism/.
[9] Randy Crosson, freedomsadvocate.ca
[10] Ibid.
[11] Ibid
Comments