The moment of Truth is a scene in the movie “Man Without a Face”, an American drama directed by and starring Mel Gibson and released in 1993. It is a film based on the book The Man Without a Face by Isabelle Holland. It tells the story of a teacher who was unjustly condemned by society after a car accident that left the teacher’s face burned, and the student he was traveling with, dead. The town began to falsely accuse him of having abused that student before the accident, and even though this could not be proven, he was fired from the school and was unable to teach again. From here comes the play on words of the title, regarding his disfigured face and his teaching vocation, which he could no longer practice, and which was the true reason he was left “without a face” (i.e., without his identity and vocation).
Charles “Chuck” Norstadt, a rebellious boy from a fatherless family with several sisters and a mother whose lovers constantly changed, had become a troubled kid who was doing poorly in school. However, he had a dream: to get into the military academy and become a pilot. To do that, he needed to study, and he was completely lost because he did not know how to study; no one had ever taught him how, neither at school nor at home.
One day, Chuck met this teacher, who was shunned by society, and asked him for help. The teacher gradually proved to be a true educator for two reasons: first, because he motivated the boy’s freedom to learn, drawing out the best from within him, thus allowing Chuck to recover the personality he had lost due to the poor family environment in which he lived; and second, because he taught him according to the nature of things and not personal whim. In this way, Chuck learned to understand reality because he learned to “intelligere” (from inter: between; legere: to read; that is, to discern: to read between the lines of reality) and to know himself.
At a certain point, Chuck learned about the accusations against his teacher. Disturbed by this, he asked his teacher about them: “The boy in the car, the boy that died, did you molest him?” The teacher, who refused to abandon his role as educator in order to become his own defense attorney, appealed to his own teachings: “What do you think Norstadt?” he asked the boy; to which the boy answers: “Stop playing the teacher here, just tell me.” But the teacher insisted: “Did I ever abuse you? Did I ever lay a hand of anything but friendship on you? Think Norstadt. Reason. Could I? Can you imagine me ever doing so? And what about the past? What do you see?” And the boy insisted: “Just tell me you didn’t. I’ll believe you.” And the teacher: “No, no sir. I didn’t spend all summer so you could cheat on this question.”
Chuck finally thinks and does not hesitate: the answer is no, that man could not have done such a thing.
This is precisely what Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us on more than one occasion that we must do, even when He is asked to defend Himself against the accusations made during His Passion: do not judge by gossip, nor be swayed by the opinions of murmurers, but you must judge for yourselves, by what you have seen and heard from my public works and words. The reason is very simple: Each tree is known by its own fruit(Lk 6:44).
We must be very careful because this tendency to judge and condemn without evidence, shielded by the authority of YouTubers, influencers, journalists, bloggers, etc., is being exacerbated more and more in our society with social media.
In addition, schools are teaching children less and less how to think, and our own laziness is part of the problem because it is easier for us to accept what a YouTuber says than to think about whether what they say could be true or not, if it makes sense, if it is coherent, etc. This causes us to be increasingly led by the opinion of others and to think less.
In the Gospel, Jesus tells us that we must learn to judge people for ourselves, and He gives us the criterion: A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of (Lk 6:45).
