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Okay, so I’m trying to figure out this one concept for my physics class about how light bends around massive objects. I read the textbook and watched a couple videos, but I’m still stuck on why the path isn’t just a simple curve. My teacher mentioned gravitational lensing in passing, and now I’m just turning it over in my head. Does it have more to do with how spacetime itself is warped, rather than light just being “pulled” like a normal object? I feel like I’m almost there but missing one piece.

You're on the right track. In general relativity light does not get pulled it follows a geodesic the straightest possible path through curved spacetime. The mass tells spacetime how to curve and the curved geometry tells light how to move which we observe as gravitational lensing.

I would say it is not that light is tugged by gravity its that the coordinates you use show a bend because space itself is curved near the mass. The pull idea is a convenient shorthand but the real story is geometry.

Maybe the piece you are missing is that the observable effect depends on the whole mass distribution and where the source is. Instead of a single curve you often get multiple images and rings the fingerprints of gravitational lensing.

Some students picture spacetime as a fabric others prefer more abstract math. The rope on a rubber sheet helps intuition but breaks down in details the real thing is four dimensional geometry.

Einstein's equations couple spacetime and matter so a lens can warp both light paths and the clocks along them and that means time delays between images too. Hmm does that complicate the simple deflection picture?

Gravitational lensing reveals how mass bends spacetime. It is about geometry not a simple force.

Maybe the framing wants light being bent by gravity but in GR the path is dictated by curvature. Is that framing the right lens to use?

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