Holding On to Truth

Americans have never been more spiritual yet more immoral. Research done in 2009 by the Barna Group concluded that “increasingly, Americans are more interested in faith and spirituality than in Christianity.” According to the study, Americans are now creating their own brand of faith.

And why not? Now that we live in the age of the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, why not the iGod? They keep what they like and throw out what they don’t like. If they believe in a God of love and forgiveness and mercy, they keep that. And if they are offended by the biblical teaching of a God of holiness, righteousness, and judgment, they delete that. They are effectively making God in their own image. As it has been said, “God made man in His image, and man returned the favor.”

The result is moral relativism, the belief that there are no absolutes. Moral relativism teaches that we are all products of the evolutionary process, that we make our own luck, create our own fate, and are all basically good. And if we happen to go bad, then it is because we are simply products of our environment.

The ironic thing about those who accept moral relativism is they are very tolerant of everyone, except people who believe in absolute truth. Then they suddenly become very intolerant. There is no tolerance in our culture today for such a view.

Moral relativism may sound fine in theory: I have my truth. You have your truth. Your truth is not necessarily my truth. But what if we were to put it into practice? What if we removed all the traffic lights and painted over all the lines on our streets? It would be absolute chaos. And that is what moral relativism is doing in our culture today.