A simple experiment can be done. Get a lazer pen. Turn off the lights.
stand at one end of the room facing the other end of the room with a white baloon in the middle.
Shine the lazer at the wall. You'll notice a nice straight line.
Then, shine the lazer right next to, if you can get half the lazer on the balloon and half the lazer on the wall.
At no point with the lazer beam "bend".
You can diffract it, but at no point does the light bend.
That's my point. Light doesn't bend. And it doesn't.
Yes, when looking at massive stars tousands of light years away, light can appear to be bent, but maybe that's just how we're seeing it. Maybe it's not actually bending? And that's highly likely because when you experminet on earth like how I tried to explain just above regarding lazers and baloons, we can't replicate this bend.
So, why would we just assume that light can bent around massive masses (when light isn't affected by gravity) because when we try to replicate it we can't?
Surely we can only go from what we can prove rather than what appears to be the case, thousands of light years away?