The Myth Of Relativism

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The Myth Of Relativism

August 1, 2021

“A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent”

― John Calvin

“There are no facts, only interpretations.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

So many people think that the buck stops with them when it comes to truth and reality. An often refrain in our society is, "This is my truth", which tells us a lot of what our postmodern society thinks about truth. Something may very well be true to you and you may very well believe it but that does not mean that is is true. Truth is something external to us. The scriptures paint a clear picture that truth is objective and external to human experience or interpretation. An author always has an intent in something that they do because the intent is what drives the action itself. There is a true reality to all things and we know that the fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge. Join Bryce and I this week as we display what God has told us about what truth is and interact with our cultures claim of truth being relative.

Key Texts:

* John 1:9-10; 8:12; 8:44-45; 14:6; 17:17,

* All of 1 John and 3 John

* Psalm 119:160

Resources:

* https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/relativism/ -> Defining our terms (do not endorse all information)

* https://open.spotify.com/episode/0MHUfG0XJRw1NzMDR7qLis?si=rbkAOsldRXKfwRd9WsE1Zw&dl_branch=1 -> Another podcast on the topic

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZDeQBIX7r4 -> Arguments against subjectivism

* https://newlearningonline.com/new-learning/chapter-7/nietzsche-on-the-impossibility-of-truth -> Intro to some post-modern thought

My guest joining me this week on the Sunday series is my brother Bryce. Bryce is getting his undergraduate degree in philosophy and hopes to get his MDiv. from a seminary after he completes his undergrad. He hopes to be a pastor shepherding Gods people one day.

Send inquiries to : forthekingpodcast@gmail.com

Website: forthekingpodcast.com

Transcript

(music) Psalm 119.160. The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever. Hello everybody that is tuning in wherever you may be in a car or working out or whatever you're doing. Thanks for listening and tuning into the For The King podcast.

We're about five months into this bad boy. Almost 40 episodes in. Things are going well.

Thanks for tuning in and checking us out. I hope you're, hope you stay and listen to some of the other content we have. You can walk through that.

Obviously it's all really good stuff worth listening to. Yeah, so last week we wrapped up my brother and I, Bryce, who is usually my guest on the Sunday episodes that I release. We wrapped up a little two-part series about a feminism in men and then what that can turn into in homosexuality and how that impacts society.

So now we're switching gears this week to talk about the modern theory. Obviously this problem stems all the way back to the garden with what Satan was doing. So this is a long-term problem, but it's the problem of relativism.

Thinking ourselves to be right and God to be wrong. Thinking that we can figure out what truth is. Truth is up to us to figure out.

So relativism is basically just this word that describes a phenomenon that's been happening all throughout human history and it's exactly that. Us in our own, you know, relative to us, that's why it's called relativism or it's also known as subjectivism. Both is basically saying the point of frame, sorry, the perspective for truth comes from within a conscious human.

So truth is something we figure out and this is kind of the central tenet of postmodernism, which is basically a whole framework of philosophy that basically is anchored by truth being subjective and then it trickles out into a bunch of different parts of society. But basically the base thought there for postmodernism is that the self is God. We figure things out and truth is up to us.

You know, what is true and what is noble and righteous. We determine it. We determine it and that's why I started off reading that Psalm is because it says the sum of your word is truth.

Every one of your righteous rules will endure forever. So righteousness, justice, all these things are intimately connected to truth and that's why we see this cry for justice in our society because everybody doesn't know what justice is because everybody thinks it's up to them to figure out what it is. So we're going to unpack that day, how the Bible talks about truth and what the actual nature of truth is and kind of show the flaws of relativism or subjectivism wherever if you've heard either of those terms or if not, I would probably just go with relativism.

That's probably the more common term. Did I miss anything? - It was good. - Okay.

So thanks for tuning in. Let's get into it. Do you want to go first? Do you want me to? - Sure.

Yeah. I mean, Rocky are going to be staunch defenders of objectivity, which just means that truth is something that is not within the person, but it is without. It is something that is found within something that is outside of the mind of the person and me and Rocky are going to be defending that it is ultimately based upon the standard of God.

So this assumes, everything we're going to be talking about assumes that God exists. It assumes that his word is true and we're going to be proving this from scripture as several different points. So when you look at what truth is, truth is something that prescribes value to the way that we understand things.

So you usually have a trichotomy of the way that we understand the world philosophically. You would look at what is a metaphysic or the study of being, what something is above the physical realm. You have what's called ethical theory or virtue theory, which is just what is good.

And then you have epistemology, which just means how do you know things? - It's a theory of knowledge. - A theory of knowledge. So right off the bat, when you want to understand things, I think it's a good place to just start with epistemology.

So how do you know what you know? How do you know things? How do you have knowledge? And ultimately the word of God declares over and over again what this comes from. Knowledge comes from God. - The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.

- Yeah, I was about to quote it. - Now where you're about to quote it. - The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge and wisdom.

So it starts with a right understanding of who God is. Apart from that, there is no revelation. And even when we go to the gospel of John, we see that there's these radical claims about who Jesus is.

It says that Jesus is the light. It says in John chapter one, verse nine and 10, it says, "The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him." The world was made through him.

So the world is not just composed of this subjective nature of you perceiving what's around you, and that is the world. The world is something that exists outside of you because of the way God has made it. Jesus says later on in John chapter eight, verse 12, "I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." So this automatically has a basic point of antithesis, which just means that there is a right and a wrong. A basic point of logic is the law of non-contradiction. There is something that is, let's say, A, and then something that's not A. And if something's A, if something is true, that means the antithesis or the opposition to that is false, right? So Jesus is the light of the world, and he's the one who reveals to us the nature and character of the Father.

Jesus says in Colossians 1.15 that he's the image of the invisible God, right? We wouldn't know God apart from Christ, and that's why you see Jesus say and declare, John 14.6, "I am the way, the truth, the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." Right? So this automatically assumes that if Jesus is the life, everything outside of him is not life. If Jesus is true, everything outside of him is not true.

So he is the standard of the... Well, quick question before we move on. Are all things in the Scriptures or things that Jesus say are true, or are there true things outside of the Bible besides just the words that are recorded that Jesus says? Yeah, it would be Jesus being, and God himself, being the objective standard of what is true. So that means that whatever he speaks is true, and that means that all of his works are true.

So when he creates things in a specific way, it is true, and you can have discoveries of them. But ultimately, the light comes from God himself. Yeah.

Right? It's him revealing it to us, as opposed to us mindlessly searching it out and attempting to find truth. So all of these things come from God. So things outside of his word may and can be true, but the most clearest option of what is true is God's word.

Right? Like I can say that it is true that there is... The sky's blue. The sky's blue. Right? But the word never says, I don't think, "The sky's blue." Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So that would be a true fact.

But yeah. But it's not... When you're talking about truth in terms of like epistemology, a basis for truth, that's where God and Christ are capital T, truth, the beginning of knowledge. It's not that you can't... Somebody that doesn't believe in God can still say, "Oh, the sky's blue," and recognize a true statement.

They can still recognize true things, but when the Bible says the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord, it's saying, "How can we root?" The Bible's basically saying you root existence in God. Yeah. And when you discover things, you don't say, based on your own subjectiveness, I think you've stumbled upon something about reality that's subjective to you.

Like my mind is glomming onto reality and making the sky blue. You actually did discover one of God's things that he made, that the sky is blue, basically. So the nonbeliever can understand true statements, obviously, but they'll never have a basis or an understanding of where the truth is coming from.

Right. Yeah, because they would deny the revelation and the light that has been given to them. Right.

Like this goes into Romans chapter one, how although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him as God, but they exchanged the truth for a lie. They suppressed the truth and unrighteousness. So this would be a basic common understanding within Christianity is that just God is the outflow of what truth is and man perceives that.

And sometimes they perceive it wrongly. Exactly. They perceive it rightly at times and they perceive it wrongly at times.

And this is why we have this beautiful word in our language called being wrong. Yeah. Which people don't like in our society, but there is a way that you, like when you take a math test and have the teacher ask you what's five plus two and you say nine.

Oh, eight. Close. Sorry.

I was just trying to give it a shot. That would be called wrong. So I would say to you, rock, if you took that quiz, you're wrong.

But what if I get sad? If you get sad, then I say, buddy facts don't care about your feelings. Exactly. Yeah.

So, I mean, this is just something that's very, like, that is obvious to everybody, but when it goes into things like ethics or morals, like when you say, exactly. When you say to somebody, abortion's wrong. Oh, that's what you think.

That's your opinion. Like you just, you personally think that because of, you know, you know, nurture the way you've been brought up and, you know, the society that you're part of. That's just why you think that.

But our response back to that is you're correct. That is what we think, but it also just happens to be what is objectively true based upon the standard of God. Yeah.

The way I like to take when somebody's like, oh, that's just your opinion. That's just what you think. Or you're interpreting the Bible a certain way.

And my interpretation of the Bible is a different way. I just hear that all the time. It's up to the interpretation.

But here's the thing. If you went up to God and asked him the question of abortion, or you ask him, Hey, how do I interpret this, this text and whatever piece of scripture? God would tell you what the truth is and how he would respond when we would ask him a question would be the truth. So obviously, if you went before God and you said, is abortion wrong? He would give you the answer.

And the answer would be yes, it's wrong. And it's evil. That is the answer he would give us.

So basically, I just use that thought experiment to demonstrate that God basically has, quote unquote, an opinion about all the things that humans have done. And his opinion is actually the truth. What's correct, right? Opinions can be wrong and opinions can be correct.

Sometimes your opinion is literally true. And basically, it's not even that God really has an opinion. And that word already is like doing God a disservice.

Like when he says something, it's not just like an opinion, like a human have an opinion that might be correct. It what he says goes, right? And if you ask God, like, you know, whatever is this Calvinism true, or is Armenianism true? He wouldn't just say, that's a difficult one for based on the scriptures, I provided you humans, that's a hard one to figure out. He would give you an answer.

He'd say one was true. One was it? Maybe not the whole system. Maybe there's parts of it that are wrong or whatever.

I mean, who knows how he would respond, but I would imagine the majority of Calvinism is 95% of it's probably true. I would say that he would say it's 100% true. Even off covenant theology and all of its little inner workings.

Yeah, with the reform. No, no, Calvinism is specific to the sure. If we're just talking too low, then yeah, I think you say yes.

But yeah, that's just taking a lot of the modern way. No, I'm just saying all the reform thing. And obviously, I'm thinking about hato baptism, right? Like he would not, he probably, I don't think he would say, it seems like the scriptures would point the other direction on that one.

But who knows? Maybe we're wrong. I mean, right now, it is, we're just trying our best, but there is objective truth is basically my point. Right.

With that thought experience. And that can be so here's another little example. When you, this is a common skeptics response to a lot of things.

They'll say, well, if you're taking, if you're on a canoe ride and you stick your or into the water, the or it shifts and it changes and it turns to instead of a 180 degree angle, now it starts turning to 160 degree angle when it looks like it's, you know, work curve or work person to some degree. And they say, see, this is, this is the exact analogy of how we see, it's upon how we see the world. And the way we see the world might have errors to it.

We might not see it clearly. We just see it under the water and we have yet to have it pulled out from under us. Or as Plato would say, in the allegory of the cave, we just don't see the forms.

You know, the forms is on the outside of the cave. We're just in the cave, seeing shadows on the wall. But our response to that is God has spoken.

He has decreed what is true in his word. And that is our basis and foundation of crystal clear. Yep.

Crystal clear reality. Crystal clear reality. Yeah, that's the world.

I mean, and that's why I read, I started off with Psalm 119. Right. God's word is where we find truth, the basis for all truth.

Obviously, you're not going to find, you're not going to figure out cellular theory or why the sky's blue or all that stuff from the scriptures. We're not saying that we're saying capital T true, the basis and epistemology of why things make sense, the uniformity of nature, all that kind of stuff. It is to be found in the scriptures.

And I was having a discussion with my philosophy professor, the president of the program. And he says he's a Christian. And I said to him that, you know, what I think about theology in God's word is that it is the supreme discipline.

And that philosophy is a sub-category, is a sub-discipline underneath theology. But philosophy is as the medieval's called it, the enchila theologia, which just means the handmaiden of theology. And he didn't, he disagreed with that.

And he said, you know, like, well, the Bible doesn't tell you about everything, just like Rocky just brought up. But, you know, he talked about this railroad that went really far out. And he's like, well, this is like outside the realm of the Bible.

How do you determine that? And my response to that is, it's the same. You have a basic presupposition that God's word is true, and that what he speaks and what he does in creation is true. And that if you come up with a system, and this is what it means when that theology is the supreme discipline.

If you come up with a system such as evolutionary theory, right, which is, some would say outside the realm of the scriptures, which it isn't. But when that theory comes up to play, I can automatically discount it, whether I can refute it scientifically or not, I can automatically discount it because of what the scriptures declare that God has done creation through Genesis 1 and 2. Yeah. Right.

Evolutionary theory is incompatible with Christianity. In the same way, if somebody comes up with some sort of a paradigm of how we view the world or a model of how a way by which we view the world that is antithetical to what the Bible says, I can automatically dismiss it because I know God's word is true. Now, some would say that this is fundamental, fundamentalistic mentality, but I would say, yeah, and close mindedness, but I would say that I'm being as open mindedly, as open minded as I can be.

And just like Cheshire said, an open mind is like an open mouth, only to be closed down on something, right? That is the only good purpose for an open mind. And I closed down on what is true in the scriptures. And now I view the whole world by that.

In the same way that C.S. Lewis said, like, I believe in Christianity, like I believe in the sun because by it, I see everything else. Exactly. That's kind of the point.

You see things through that lens. Right. It gives you, again, the foundation you need to understand.

It's the beginning of all knowledge. I would say, again, you can conduct good science as a Christian and you can conduct good science as a non-Christian, but the non-Christian will have no basis whatsoever for their findings. They will say, I guess the law of causation just is kind of there.

It's just kind of random. Yeah. Like the multiverse just spit out our universe and it's just all random.

Right. But the Christian says, no, God is obviously intelligent. God created truth.

The law of causation is a law of logic. Yeah. And laws are true.

Therefore, God made, because he caused the world to exist, the law of causation is from him. He's that cause, you know? Yeah. So yeah, it is.

I love that C.S. Lewis quote. I see everything else. It doesn't form everything.

The Bible doesn't talk exhaustively about every single topic, but it does touch everything. It guides your thinking on all things. It guides your thinking on all things.

It touches all things. Because it displays that God, that God is the creator of heaven and earth of all that is seen and unseen. He's created all of it.

So he just touched, he just touched everything. Exactly. Yeah.

So like Genesis 1.1 is foundational to how we view the world right in the beginning before time, right? God is eternal and timeless. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them. This is the God that we worship.

And this is why when we're trying to understand truth, we have to be informed by what the scriptures say, not some fat scientist who's losing all of his hair. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. Which isn't really relevant, but that just so happens to be what so many of the scientists look like. Sure.

Like you're a good depiction of a scientist. Yeah, I am. If you just look at my hair and my body.

Okay. I'm just joking. All right.

But one other point I wanted to make up just because we're talking about relativism. Open-mindedness is relativism. A feat like that book you have, relativism.

A feat firmly planted in mid-air, in open air. An open mind will eventually clasp down on something. So when people tout that like being open-minded is this great virtue, it's actually just being subjective and, hint by the way, subjectivism is objective.

To say there's no truth, to say that the truth is my truth is an objective statement. So, I mean, obviously subjectivism, open-mindedness is not a worldview anybody can take. No rational human can take it.

But if you're an atheist, agnostic person, that's usually the point of view you will fall into. Oh, Theodore Dostoevsky says, "If there is no God, everything is permissible." Right? There's just blind, pitiless indifference. Usually you'll be a subjectivist if you're an atheistic person.

Well, that was Richard Dawkins, right? That was Dawkins. I quoted Dawkins too. Yeah, sorry.

The first one was Dostoevsky. But basically, subjectivism is an irrational, absurd worldview. And it's laughable.

It's a walking contradiction. And like even think about this. Because to say there's no truth is a truth basically is my point.

Just imagine that you walked along the side of the road in a city. And in the back alley, you see a guy with a trench coat and it's kind of pop, pop, what is it called? The collars? Collars popped. He's looking fresh.

No, not fresh. I'm trying to paint a creepy guy. He's got a dark hat on.

Who knows? Who knows? And he says to you, "I've been in my laboratory and I've just discovered that everything that we know about logic, that all of math is actually subjective. Two plus two doesn't equal four. Let's go like, come, let me show you all I've learned.

If this guy's an engineer, he's going to say, "This guy's crazy." Of course not. I'm not, I'm about to go to some city and build this bridge. Of course he's not going to go listen to him.

So open-mindedness is actually something that we deny in our life day by day. Every human does. You deny it when you come across absurdity.

And that's why when we see absurdity, you just deny it. It's something that you intuitively know that you should not be open-minded. Not open-minded to everything.

You should be, what people want to, what they actually mean by that is you should be humble when it comes to your epistemology. You should be humble in that. That's what they mean.

There's just things that you don't understand and you should be humble with a hand open to receive that possibility of truth that might help. Exactly. And that's the problem is that these relativists, and they have their hands opened towards a world that has no causal connection from the beginning of the world.

They've been made through line processes that literally means nothing to them. They are just a bunch of protoplasm, you know, whatnot. Bags of protoplasm and cells.

I mean, they're really not human. They're just a bunch of stuff. You're on the same level as animals, so you have no basis to say whether anything is right or wrong.

That's the hand that they have opened is towards that. But the Christian is open-minded or humble in the sense that we have our hand open towards God. And what does Jesus say about this? He'll lead us.

He will lead us to truth. And it says in John 1717 that Jesus prays that God the Father would sanctify us in truth. And then what does he say next? Your word is truth.

So truth is defined not only as Christ, but Christ is the word. And it's defined here in John 1717 as that which sanctifies us. It is true.

So that's what we have our hand open to. That's what we have humility towards. Not blind space that tells you nothing, but the personal God who's revealed himself in the scriptures.

So open-mindedness is not a virtue. It's a vice. Relativism is absurd and coherent at best.

It doesn't provide any sort of basis by which you say, "Maybe things are wrong." There's so many relativists, all these liberals who are crying out at the institution and saying, "Black Lives Matter," this and that. What does it matter to them in their perspective? What does it matter that George Floyd died? That literally means nothing. Christians are the only ones that can actually say Black Lives Matter because they're made in the image of God just like everybody else's.

Right. And there's just no basis to defend justice like that. Right.

And with it saying that with a small caveat, we do not support the actual organization. Oh yeah. The organization Black Lives Matter is an evil Marxist organization, but obviously the statement Black Lives Matter, Bryce and I are on board with, the statement, not the organization.

Just like every other life has made the image of God. It's not like they're special. And complete statement.

Exactly. It's not like they're special in any sense. Yeah.

So to back up real quick, the hard sciences are like the only thing keeping objectivity alive right now when you brought up a civil engineer, design, architect design, or kind of thing. It's funny. I remember this story about Robbie Zacharias, although he had his pitfalls at the end of his life, which is very sad.

He was at some secular university and he said, I, oh, he was at an art building. Did I tell you this story? I don't think so. He was at an art building at this secular university and there, they were supposed to be like this postmodern artistic design to this building where there would be supporting beams that would like stretch all the way to the ceiling, but then they would stop like a foot short.

So they actually weren't supporting anything at all. And it was supposed to be like this postmodern take of like subjective kind of a reality of building design. And then Robbie said, I bet the foundation isn't built like that.

Cause obviously the building is standing. So there still had to be some objective truth that we need this kind of foundation. We need this kind of support to support us looking like we don't need support in these areas.

And it's just funny. So I thought that was a clever statement. And obviously what Bryce and I are talking about, and obviously what God himself is talking about in the scriptures when he's, when he brings up truth and he mocks humans for trying to, you know, in the nation's plot and rage and vain based on their own subjective, whatever they are conjuring up, they're suppressing the truth and the righteousness and doing evil things in many different ways and being inventors of evil and all this kind of things.

And the second thing I wanted to bring up, I can't remember. I can't remember. But I thought that was a funny story.

Yeah, that is hilarious. Yeah. It's a perfect picture of the world.

It is. Yeah. There was another thing about open mindedness, closed mindedness that I was going to bring up.

I can't remember though. Open your mind a little bit more. I'm going to find it.

Let me be a little open minded to my own mind. Did you have more with from John? Because I had a few from third John. Because you brought up 17.

17. So the only other thing is going when Jesus addresses lying, he again points it out as something that is there's a basic standard of antithesis or something's right or it's wrong. And Jesus even says to the Pharisees when they are lying about who he is, or sorry, when they're lying about themselves, he says, you are of your father, the devil, and your wills to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell you the truth, you do not believe me.

So Jesus declares to the Pharisees that their father, that they're acting in accordance with who their father is. And it's that they're liars and they're murderers, because they act in the way that Satan acts. And this goes all the way back to the creation where Satan deceived Adam and Eve and lied to Adam and Eve and said, surely you won't die this day.

But God knows that if you eat of this fruit, you will be like him. So Satan lies, which is the epitome of him acting as a relativist. He stood in his own truth and he acted on his own volition.

And you can believe a lie. That's the point. I mean, he's lying because he's believed a lie.

He is a relativist. He believes what he's saying is true, but he's irrational. Oh, I just have it open because I'm about to read from this, but the book right after 3 John, he says that like these people are blaspheming all that they do not understand in Jude verse 10, and they are destroyed by all that they, like unreasoning animals, understand instinctively.

So it's irrational to when in our sin, there's a lot of language using the Bible, how we act like animals in our sin. We're like the animals when we're lying and cheating and raping and pillaging and murdering and all these things. That's us acting like animals.

It's irrational and relativism is the animal kingdom. That's what relativism is. Oh, and the thing I was going to say earlier that I forgot, Candace and I were, um, my, me and my fiance, um, were at their house and they have chickens and we were just sitting there watching them for a little bit and like we were only watching them for like a minute and a half.

And like, um, one of the hens got in there with all of the roosters and like, um, this hen's just like walking through them and all of a sudden one of the, one of the roosters like goes to basically rake, rape, you know, the hen. And then, uh, another one got mad and started pecking at it and was like, like, like chasing it. Like he wanted to kill it and all sorts of stuff.

And I was just laughing with her. I'm like, let's see, this is what we are like in our sin. Like we, we almost, this is the animal kingdom.

We almost watched a rape and a murder and we were only sitting here for like a minute and these are domesticated animals. You know what I mean? Um, I just thought it was funny and we were laughing at it because it was like, whoa, it's just, it got, it got for real for a second. Right.

Um, so I just thought it was funny and it's, that is what we're like in our sin and that is what the world's like in a relativistic, um, point of view. And, and that goes to, to show that relativism breeds anarchy because a society, again, we were talking about this in our last series of society cannot be built upon the foundations of homosexuality or a feminency homosexuality by nature to what, because you can't produce and in the same, reproduce and in the same way, when you live in a relativistic society, you can't have societal laws, right? There's no civil authority because the authority is only yourself. It denies hierarchy.

So now you have no governing authority over you. So it's only anarchy and that's what we see happening in our society right now with all these liberals. These liberals are rioting, they're looting because they are their own standard of right and wrong.

Exactly. And anarchy is a wicked, wicked, wicked evil. The people of Israel did this in the book of judges.

Everyone did what was right in their own eyes. Exactly. And the, and Solomon declares to us in the book of proverbs to not lean on your own understanding, right? But to trust in God and have confidence in him and in his salvation.

So what is, which is prescribed in his word. So anarchy is a wicked evil. It destroys society.

And that's why relativism is very, very, very practical because it bleeds into your entire life. How do you talk with your coworkers? When somebody says that something is just kind of up to you or based upon you, are you going to stand up and say something? Yeah. Because God's very concerned with the truth.

He says, if you don't walk in the truth, you're a liar and the truth is not in you. That's first John. Yeah.

Or I'm kind of getting into that too. No, it's good. No, your section.

But yeah, societies cannot thrive on relativism. So we're going to go back to the standard of objectivity and we need to honestly confront these fake conservatives, which I think is a really big problem who they're conservative for no reason. They don't know the, the, what they're trying to conserve and they, there are these fake libertarians, which for them libertarian just means whatever you want to do as long as you don't come take my guns or whatever you want to do as long as it's in your room.

It's like, no, what you do behind your bedroom matters. Yeah. Right.

If you're committing homosexual acts, that's destroying society that matters. I don't care if you're behind your bedroom. I want that door to be broken down.

Right. Yeah. I want you, your sin to be exposed.

Yeah. So relativism is a wicked sinful evil that leads to anarchy. If relativism is right and like all these conservatives say, it doesn't matter what's happening in your own bedroom.

Well, look what's happening now. Homosexuality is rampant. You have the LGB to the LGBTQ, whatever is so flamboyant just as much as they are.

Yeah. It does matter what happens behind closed doors. It matters what happens in your workplace.

It matters what, how you talk to people. The words that you're saying, if you're just saying that everything's up to chance or your opinion, like these things matter. Exactly.

And we shouldn't be talking like that as Christians because truth is essential because it's found in Christ. Exactly. Okay.

I just want to read a few verses. John talks about truth a lot. And then third John, he talks about Gaius, this man that he loves in the truth.

He talks about, he rejoices greatly in verse three, when the brothers came and testified to your truth as indeed you are walking in the truth. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. So even that thought that there's people that are walking in the truth and people that aren't walking in the truth, the scriptures are clear.

Truth is objective. There's a path. Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth and the life.

John 14, six, the way there's a path of truth to leads to life. Like Jesus is clear there that there's one way, there's one truth, there's one reality. And John is just saying that some of these people are walking in the truth and he rejoices in that.

So the fact that if the world really is relativist in its morals and all of its principles and all these things, then everybody's walking in the truth all the time, regardless of whatever faith or religion or whatever morals they believe in, they're always walking in the truth. So the Bible is clear. The truth is objective.

And then he says, verse eight, therefore we ought to support people like these that have gone out for Christ and for the sake of the name is what he's talking about, that we may be fellow workers for the truth. And then he finishes out this whole section talking about this man Demetrius. He says, Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself.

We also add our testimony and you know that our testimony is true. So John talks about this a lot and that's why a lot of the excerpts about truth Bryce read from the book of John and John understood truth very well and Jesus is the truth. He is the objective truth.

And then I want to finish with a story real quick. When I was in my undergrad, I got a minor in philosophy and my philosophy 101 class we talked about the two big topics or the three big topics that we talked about was God, mind, body, dualism, and then like ethics. And we talked about cultural relativism and relativism in general and objective truth.

And this is a secular university I was at. The day we went in there to talk about relativism, this is all the resuscitation instructor said. She said, professor, whatever that is teaching the course, in our little resuscitation, it was like a gathering of the class outside of the actual lecture and where we would just go over the material.

And she was like, we've decided that you know relativism is just such a irrational thought process that nobody, no real philosopher takes it seriously. This is not a secular university. So we're not even going to teach it.

We're just going to walk through it real quick about what it teaches and how it is absolutely, you're unable to hold a view like this. But what's sad is that a lot of people in our world hold this view that nobody takes seriously. It's kind of like the opioid of the masses.

Karl Marx like to say that religion is the opioid of the masses. But actually relativism, atheism, evolution, all of that, that's the opioid of the masses. That's numbing everyone's brains to think they're animals and to basically destroy society.

So that's kind of my final story. I thought it was so interesting and that's always stuck with me that they even these secular, they're not even Christians. Like these people weren't Christians.

They're just secular philosophy professors. And they were like, yeah, nobody takes this seriously. We're not going to even, we're not even kind of contend with relativism because it's just kind of, it's a bane of society.

Yeah. Relativism is for all the English professors. Exactly.

Yeah. Like talk about poetry and for all the artists who think that it's a pretty form of art to have a toilet with a flower coming out of it. Yeah, exactly.

Like if you guys go look at art, art's indicative of the society, the more abstract it is, the more abstracted that the person's face is and you can't even understand what they're even drawing. Yeah. And if this is the question you have to ask for it to be good art, this is how you know that the society is impacted by relativism.

Here's the question. What do you see? Yeah. What do you see in the painting? Exactly.

It's like, no, no, no. The problem is what did the author intend? Right? Like the people say, like I had the, I talked with somebody before about Lord of the Rings and we were talking about who's the main character is. And I said, it's Samwise Gamgee.

And the person was kind of like taken aback by that being the main character. And my explanation for why he's the main character is because that's what, that's who Tolkien said the main character was. So because he's the author, he determines what his story is.

That doesn't matter what I say. Yeah. What matters is the objective truth of what he created.

Yeah. So Samwise Gamgee is the main character of Lord of the Rings, regardless of if you think he is or not. Exactly.

So yeah. Yeah. Even in art, if you're making a stroke, like they thought it was pretty in the moment or whatever, or even if they thought in their head, Oh, I'm, you know, I'm making this for someone to be up to interpretation.

Well, it's objectively true that that person was creating that art to be up for interpretation. Yeah. You cannot escape objectivity.

And art is not neutral. If you just take in what you see, art will kill you and art will kill society. You just totally went on a new topic.

It's literally that serious. Well, yeah. Cause it's all relativism and it's like you never know.

You don't know it's hitting you. Sure. Um, you literally can't see it.

Yeah. We're blinded. We need to be vigilant.

Yeah. Aware. Don't let art kill you.

Keep your heart with all vigilance for from it flow, the springs of life. All right. Thanks for listening to the for the king podcast.

Hope you guys enjoyed that content and what Bryce and I just walked through. Um, you can leave any inquiries or ask me a question or ask Bryce a question. I'll make sure it gets to him.

Uh, whatever at for the king podcast@gmail.com. I have a website where I post the episodes, try to write a few blog posts, trying to develop the blog. If you want to come on and write for the blog, if you're an amateur writer and you would want to come on and share something with us, you're more than welcome to do that. It's a for the king podcast.com and you can ask me on email, anything like that.

Um, please pray for the show. Um, uh, financially support it. If that is, if you feel inclined to do that, um, always appreciate listener interaction.

Most of all, I just love hearing who's listening. So, um, yeah, thanks for listening. I'm going to finish out with, um, first Timothy chapter one, verse 17 to the king of the ages, a mortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen. So a day of. Core.

Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Oh, okay.

Oh, okay. Oh, okay. Jesus.

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