Hey friends! It’s Claudia Kalmikovof Mama Bear Apologetics, a partner of Ratio Christi International. Mama Bear Apologetics exists for the sole purpose of equipping moms to answer the tough questions of the faith. These questions start in the home, and moms are usually the first ones to hear them. So ladies, let’s band together, and educate ourselves. You can follow Mama Bear Apologetics on the web, Facebook, twitter, youtube, and iTunes. Today’s topic is…Truth!”
Today we live in a world where some say we can’t know truth. Some say there is no truth or that science is the only way we can know anything about truth. Then why should we believe any of these claims if there is no truth? They don’t live up to their own standard. But we don’t really live like there is no truth do we? Think about it, we expect truth from every area of our lives, don’t we? We expect truth from our doctors, spouses, bankers, loved ones and anyone we depend on to make important decisions in our lives. We live in a world where objective truth is known and expected by everyone.
Moral Relativism says there is no objective truth. It says that there is no such thing as right or wrong, good or bad, that we shouldn’t judge, and that your truth is true for you and my truth is true for me. Relativism is the worldview that all worldviews are true. But here’s what I want you all to know: Every person should know that relativism is false and objective truth exists, because of the consequences of relativistic thinking.
Before I explain the consequences of relativistic thinking, I need to talk about truth first. Truth is when your beliefs match up to reality. What we must realize is that there are different kinds of truth and that we should not confuse them. For example: If I say chocolate ice cream is the best ice cream, that is a subjective truth because it is about me—the subject. Not the ice cream. Subjective claims are personal, private, or just your opinion. They are about what you think about something. Subjective claims can be true for some and false for others. So it can be true for me that chocolate ice cream is the best ice cream. But it might not be true for someone else. That’s ok because we are talking about a subjective claim for which there is no consequence. However, if I say that ice cream controls diabetes, can that claim be true for some and false for others? No! This is a different kind of claim isn’t it? This kind of claim has consequences. This is an objective claim--a claim about how the world actually works. Of course we know that ice cream doesn’t control diabetes, but insulin does. Insulin controls diabetes anytime, in any place, for anyone. Objective claims are true for all people, at all times, and in all places. It doesn’t matter what one’s opinion is about an objective claim or whether you believe it or agree with it or not, it’s just true.
So why am I making this distinction between the two different kinds of truth? Because our culture today wants to put religion and morality in the subjective category. That’s why you hear people say, “That’s true for you but not for me,” when it comes to religion and morality. The mood of our culture is that morality is subjective.
If there’s no objective standard of morality, if morality is like ice cream, can we judge anyone for doing anything morally wrong? Can we? Think about it. If morality is like ice cream, we have no more right to make judgements about someone than we do to make judgements about their ice cream preference. If morality is like ice cream, we can’t judge the terrorists for decapitating Christians or any of their captors, and drowning them in cages. We can’t judge anyone for doing anything that offends us no matter how wrong it seems, because moral relativism legitimizes every personal choice. Even the ones most offensive to us.
When a young person says morality is subjective, I don’t believe them. I never believe them. Because I don’t believe people really live like that.
Part of being human is knowing the difference between right and wrong. If you try to jump off a cliff, thinking you can fly, gravity is going to have something to say about it. You can say you don’t believe in gravity but stubbornness doesn’t change truthfulness. Just as we have laws of gravity that exist in the objective world outside of us, there are laws of morality that exist objectively as a transcendent standard.
If you want to know what someone really believes about the objective status of morality, it’s not in what they say or in what they do. It’s in how they want to be treated.
Everybody wants to be treated as though morality is an objective feature of the universe. It’s inescapable. If somebody says there’s no such thing as objective morality, cut in front of them in a line, take their wallet and watch their reaction. We know people’s beliefs about morality not be their actions but by their reactions.
There was a professor teaching an ethics class at a major university in Indiana. He told his students to write on any ethical topic of their choice, requiring each student to back up their thesis with reasons and documentation. An atheist wrote on the topic of moral relativism. In his thesis, he argued that all morals are relative; there is no absolute standard of justice or rightness: it’s all a matter of opinion, he wrote. “You like chocolate, I like vanilla,” and so on. The paper provided what the professor asked; the reasons, the documentation, it was the right length, on time and stylishly presented in a nice blue folder.
After the professor read the paper he wrote on the front cover, “F--I don’t like blue folders!” When the student got the paper back, he was enraged. He stormed into the professor’s office and yelled, “F! I don’t like blue folders! What is this? That’s not fair! That’s not right! That’s not just! You didn’t grade the paper on its merits!” The professor calmly raised his hand to quiet the student and said, “Wait a minute. Wasn’t your paper the one that said there is no such thing as fairness, rightness, and justice?” “Yes,” answered the student. “Then what’s this you say about me being fair, right and just? Didn’t your paper argue that it’s all a matter of taste? You like chocolate, I like vanilla?” The student replied, “Yes, that’s my view.” “Fine, then,” the professor responded. “I don’t like blue. You get an F!” Suddenly the light bulb went on in the student’s head. He realized he really did believe in objective morality. This simple lesson defeated his entire case for relativism.
The moral to the story is that objective morality exists. And if you really want to get relativists to admit it, all you need to do is treat them unfairly. Hang around with them long enough, and watch them contradict themselves. The Moral Law is not always the standard by which we treat others, but it is nearly always the standard by which we expect others to treat us.
As I stated before, there are consequences to relativism. Ideas have consequences.
One consequence is that relativists can’t accuse someone of doing something wrong or complain about the problem of evil. Relativism denies such things as right or wrong. What’s right or true for you is not true for me, right? If you believe that morality is about personal definition, then you can’t make moral judgments about another’s actions no matter how offensive they are to you. You can tell them you don’t like their morality, but you can’t tell them they’re wrong. Relativism legitimizes every personal choice.
The next consequence to relativism is that a relativist can’t complain about the problem of evil. How can evil exist if morals are relative? Relativism denies that things are objectively wrong. The problem of evil would disappear in a true relativistic world.
Relativists can’t place blame or accept praise or charge others with unfairness or injustice. Relativism renders these terms as meaningless because there is no external standard of measure. So nothing could be bad and worthy of blame, nor be good and worthy of praise.
Relativists can’t promote tolerance. Relativists argue that morals are individual and that we should tolerate the views of others and not judge other’s behavior and there should be no objective rules. Well this view is self-refuting because if there should be no objective moral rules, how can there be a rule requiring tolerance?
Relativism makes religion irrelevant. Our culture treats objective and subjective truth like a two story house with the bottom floor being the objective floor including things we know for sure like science, math, law, business. On the second floor is where we live—this is the subjective floor where we cook the foods we want, we have the friends we want and we have our personal traditions and all our preferences on this floor. What our culture does is treat religion and morality as though it belongs on the second floor because it’s a personal preference and not science. This makes religion and morality fade into existence and be irrelevant to our lives. But this is wrong, because we have to treat religion as our foundation. In Matt. 7:24-27, Jesus said, “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against the house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” If we don’t have Christ as our foundation, our whole house is going to collapse. What is our house? Our future in eternity.
Friends, there is such a thing as truth, it’s written on our hearts and we know it. Jesus calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We need to grasp the fact that we were saved for something.
We have a responsibility to speak truth to others. Our salvation employs us in God’s redemptive plan for the world. You can’t love people by ignoring the cultural evils that victimize them. This should motivate us to have a heart for those who believe the lies of our culture that say that religion and morality are relative. So what do we do now?
1. Get informed about the lies that stand against the truth so you know how to refute them.
You can do this by reading good books on the subject of truth by Greg Koukl. One is called Tactics.
2. Be prepared to respond to bad ideas. Be bold about having conversations about truth with your own children and with others.
3. Teach your children that objective truth does exist and show them how we know.
Okay, that’s it for today. Tune in next month as we discuss (the evidence for God’s existence) And don’t forget! To get more resources from the Mama Bears, please visit us at mamabearapologetics.com
About Claudia Kalmikov
http://straighttalkwithclaudiak.com/
Like some of you, I learned to surrender to Jesus after having kids. Funny how quickly you learn after having children that you can’t control anything. Going through the teenage years is enough to bring any mother to her knees!
I have two incredible sons. They are both college graduates with careers, and are out on their own.
My husband, John, and I are enjoying a new phase in our lives. Empty nest-hood. We took advantage of our new found free time by going back to school. We graduated in December 2016 from The Biola University Masters in Christian Apologetics program, and now we are anxious to put that to use. So we are jumping right in by teaching and speaking at various events. We enjoyed Biola a great deal because we learned so much about the Bible and other religions along with Apologetics. Since we hadn’t been in college for 32 years, it was a challenge. But I loved it and the Lord sustained me every step of the way. That’s another story!
It is my hope to be able to share some of my thoughts, experiences and wisdom as an apologist, and parent with you. I pray that you will be blessed by what you read and that God may speak to you through my blog.
God Bless
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