Jesus said to Thomas, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, ESV)
Recently, Greg Bond put me on a book that has had a profound impact on my view of the Christian faith and how we as Christian disciples interact with the world around us. The book, by Chris Stefanick, is entitled Absolute Relativism: The New Dictatorship and What To Do About It. In the book, Stefanick sounds the warning bell about one of the biggest threats to Gospel proclamation in our day: moral relativism.
In short, moral relativism can best be stated this way: there is no such thing as moral absolutes, and what might be considered truth to you is not necessarily truth to someone else. We’ve all heard this from time to time, haven’t we? And if we hear it enough times and it goes unchallenged, then we begin to believe it. After all, it sounds good on first reading. But when we really look into it scripturally, it really makes no sense whatsoever.
The problem with those who are proponents of moral relativism is they treat relativism as if it is an absolute. That is the biggest problem with someone who engages in relativism. They say things like “there is no such thing as absolutes” yet that statement, in and of itself, is an absolute. And on the flipside, many of us who do speak in absolutes are often called bigots and are labeled as intolerant. Nobody likes to carry around those labels, so many types we back of the absolute truth and we give in to the tyranny of relativism.
The reality of the Christian faith is that there are such things as absolutes, and Jesus Himself spoke in absolutes. Jesus’s revelation of who He was in John 14:6 above is a great example of an absolute statement. Jesus said “I am the way, and the truth and the life.” As Stefanich puts it, He did not state that “I am a way, an opinion, or just another type of lifestyle.” Throughout scripture, Jesus spoke with clarity and conviction about who he was and who God was calling him to be. The “I am” statements in the Gospel of John are powerful evidence of this. Never did Jesus say “I think I am the Good Shepherd,” or “I might be the bread of life.” He never said “in my opinion, I am the light of the world. Let’s just agree to disagree, OK?” He spoke the truth in love with courage and conviction and we should too.
And that, my brothers and sisters, is how we combat the sin of moral relativism – by believing that there is such a thing as absolute truth, and that Jesus the Person embodies that absolute truth. We as Christian believers are called to proclaim that truth in love, believing that Jesus really and truly is the way, and the truth, and the life, and not just one in a long series of valid opinions. If we do this, we can be compelling in our witness. If we do not, then we are merely coming across as preaching something that we do not necessarily believe in, and when we do that, we are not compelling. In closing, speak the truth in love. When the truth and love of Jesus go hand in hand, powerful things happen.
