Debunking "Live Your Truth": Navigating a Culture of Relativism

Hey everyone, welcome to season three of That's a Good Question, a podcast of Peace Church and a part of Resound Media. You can find more great content for the Christian life and church leaders at resoundmedia.cc. That's a Good Question is a place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language.

I'm Jon, I serve as a pastor at Peace Church as well as a part of this show. You can always submit questions at peacechurch.cc slash questions. Today, I'm here with Pastor Mitchell. Yeah, I'm excited for season three. I think this is going to be awesome. This week, we're jumping into a series that we're calling Calling Out Cultural Lies. This is a series that we're covering as a church and as we're both pastors at Peace Church. And today we're going to be looking at the topic of live your truth.

This is such an important and such a big topicthat whether or not you go to peace, this is still gonna be a relevant conversation for mantra you see all over the place. Yeah, so let's jump into this first question. In a real life conversation, how do I respond to someone who says this,

live your truth? Yeah, and it's something you see all over the place. And so, yeah, talking about in a real conversation with a real person, so not just engaging with a billboard, but you're sitting there with somebody and you come across this phrase, this catchy mantra.

I think the first thing you have to realize is the two different starting places that each of you is coming from, the two different world views that you're coming from. I think the underlying assumption when somebody says, live your truth, is that all truth is relative. I think that's the underlying assumption. It's just new packaging for this old idea of relativism.

It reminds me of a conversation I had going back into high school. I remember talking even then with somebody who said, we were talking about Christianity and about ultimate truth and things like that. And they said to me, all truth is relative.

And I said, and I didn't come up with this, other people have said this over the years. Actually, this is as old as Plato, Socrates, this is really old stuff. But I said to him, I said, is that true for you or true for me?

And the person got pretty flustered and said, well, that's a logical fallacy. And I said, well, actually, it's not. It's just, you know, a statement has to be able to hold up under its own weight. It's a self-defeating statement to say that all truth is relative because you're making an absolute truth claim. You're saying it's universally absolutely true that all truth is relative. And those are contradicting ideas. You can't say both of those things at the same time. So if you're going to engage somebody who says, live your truth, I think you have to start with this understanding of where they're coming from. They're coming from an idea of things being, that truth is relative.

All right, so let's get an example going. So you're sitting there with two other people at your workplace or at your school, and you're talking about something, and somebody puts forward an idea, and somebody else says, well, yeah, you do you, you live your truth. And then these two people look at you, and you're, you know, the Christian in the room, and they're kind of, you know, what is this guy gonna say? What's he gonna bring? And, and so you, you step out to engage that person who's just put forward the idea, hey, you do you, you live your truth. How do you how do you respond to that person? I think what I would start with, is asking a question that kind of makes them think about that worldview, that, that assumption and kind of question those ideas. So say, well, yeah, live your truth. You know, would that work if you were talking to a police officer who just pulled you over for speeding? You know, he comes to the door and he says, you were speeding. You say, well, you know what? My truth is that I was going 25 and he says, well, my truth is that you were going a hundred in a 25 zone. Now how's that going to play out? Right. I mean, you can't, you can't live your truth in that moment. Or you try to and you say, well, you know what, you live your truth, I'll live mine. And he says, okay, and he hands you a ticket and walks away. So you don't pay your ticket, you're going to live your truth.

Well, then eventually, you know, you get arrested, you stand in a courtroom and you try to play out that same worldview, that same way of approaching life. It's just not going to work. And so I think just kind of helping people think through the trajectory, the logical end of the line of thinking that they're on. Yeah, I think that works for a lot of people who live in a Western context where

there isn't a lot of places where they have to live in these kind of black and whites where there is a little bit of gray. It's easier to try to live in that reality, but for maybe for someone who's hearing this. What does this mean? Why is it that people say live your truth? Yeah.

So so beyond the underlying philosophy or world that you're saying like what is the motivation for that? Because I think sometimes we can paint people as these like, you know, these people are just they have no clue what they're talking about. But you know, these are real people who have come to this understanding, and they're usually not trying to posit something intentionally evil to the world. So why are they saying this? Yeah, well, so two different answers. So one answer I think is the average person is saying this because they're hearing it from people that they trust. They're hearing it very popularly, whether it's on television or YouTube videos or whatever.

They're hearing that from people they trust. They're hearing people say, live your truth. And so they're just adopting it as though it's true because they've heard it so many times. So I think so many people, they're victims, they're being lied to and they're just repeating that lie.

You know, they didn't really sit down and think up and come up with this philosophy. They're just sort of repeating it. And so, you know, I feel bad for them. We want to rescue them from that by giving them truth, rescue them from the deception.

So to go further, to go back to the people who are really propagating this idea, where is that coming from? What's their motivation? I would say that their motivation is probably they don't want to live under the moral standards of God or of Christians or society or, you know, put whatever authoritative figure you want to put on it.

But I mean, I think that's the real idea behind relativism is to say, well, I don't want to live under those strict, certain, solid moral standards. I want to, you know, loosen that up. I want to be able to go my own way and do my own thing. Yeah. It seems like a short-term solution to maybe even feeling guilty of, you know, if you've done something wrong, it's easy to say, well, I'm going to live my own truth and then I can kind of just put it behind me. But how does living without concrete form of morality, how does that lead to the adoption of subjective moral standards and how can that shift over time?

Like what are some of the potential consequences of those types of shifts? Long term, not just short term. Sure. Yeah. Specifically, if you're thinking of moral issues, I mean, you don't have an anchor. You're adrift at sea.

You know, there's nothing to tie you down and say, well, this is absolutely true and this is always right or wrong. That's one of the problems of relativism in the moral world and in all other forms of knowledge and reality is that you're just not tied to anything. Everything can shift and change. You're not tied to anything staying the same.

Yeah, I think a good example of that is in the 1970s, it was really maybe not popular, but it was widely accepted and kind of seen as okay that a college professor might sleep or have a romantic relationship with a student. And today we would say, not only is that wrong, but the professor would be fired. And I think that there's some danger there. We see, you know, something that, you know, just a couple decades ago, most of society would look at and say, OK, that's not a huge deal. And if you were to stand behind that and that if you were vocal about that back then, and someone pulled an audio clip of that today, you'd be seen as, you know, someone who's who's terrible.

I mean, someone who would be propagating the mistreatment of students, of very vulnerable people. That cultural shift, I think, having moral relativism would only lead you to be someone who has to live in fear of, is this thing that's culturally good now, or seen as culturally moral or right now? Is that always going to be the way? Can I say something about this and then, you know, think about having a job in 20 years? Right. Yeah, right. That's the danger. It can always change and I would add on top of that, not only can it always change, it's kind of in the hands of whoever has the power, right? Whoever has the most influence. Whether that be governmental, like legal enforcement kind of power influence, or whether that be like lawmaking, or whether that just be popular opinion, whatever that is, it's in the hands of those people. And so they can kind of change it to be whatever they want. I would say in some ways we're seeing that right now.

It's in different areas. You know, thinking of sexuality, for example, we're seeing, you know, 50 years ago, and not that the world was perfect 50 years ago, it wasn't. You know, we're not living in a perfect time until Jesus returns. But you know, 50 years ago, there's a lot of things with homosexuality, with transgender, all those sort of things that would have been the majority viewpoint would have been that that's bad, whereas the majority viewpoint, or perhaps not the majority, but the loudest viewpoint has shifted on that. Yeah. No, absolutely. What's the danger of thinking this way? If we're going to take this to the logical conclusion of this thought, living your truth, where does that lead us? Yeah, I think it leads you to ultimately the only authority in your life is you. You get to do whatever you want and you get to justify it because you say there is no absolute truth. I am my own truth and I do whatever I think is best. Yeah.

What about in terms of even holding others accountable? Yeah, well, there's no more standard to hold anybody accountable. Yeah. Right, it's like, I mean, if you're trying to, you know, when you measure something, you use inches or you use centimeters or whatever, you know, there just is no more measuring tool. Yeah. There's no more standard if we all have our own separate truth. Yeah, I think that's super dangerous when we think about what that does to a society or to anyone who's trying to, you know, not let things go. Absolutely. Without any sort of order. Right? Yeah. I mean, you know, imagine a judicial, a judicial system without any sort of code or any sort of, you know, there just wouldn't be it. more judges and right. Anarchy. Yeah, be a phrase for that. For sure.

I think of, you know, in Scripture when we encounter situations like that, I think of the book of Judges. Yeah. Where it says everybody did what was right. There was no king in Israel in those days and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

It was such a good book, morally positive, good example. Right, right, right, right. For those who don't know, the book of Judges is full of bad examples. You know, the nation of Israel is headed in the wrong direction during this time. They have cycles in which they get going in the right direction when a leader comes and he follows God's ways.

But yeah, a lot of the book is there was no king in Israel. Everybody was right in their own eyes, and that was bad. Yeah, there's, it's almost like loops and the loops just kind of keep going down and down until you end the book in a really, really dark place. Right. Yeah.

So this is where we come back. So the biblical worldview is very different than this worldview of relativism. So, think of passages like John chapter 8, where Jesus, well, it's a very popularly quoted phrase, the truth will set you free. Yeah.

But there's a key phrase, the truth, the truth will set you free. Not your truth, not my truth, not a truth, but the truth will set you free. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, when Jesus is talking about, you know, I am the way, the truth, and the life, right? You know, I even think about going back to the Old Testament, going back to the Ten Commandments when we're commanded not to tell, not to bear false witness. That's God telling Israel about who he is, that he is truth, right? We see in Jesus that he says, I am the way, the truth, and the life. The reason that we can't tell lies is because God is truth himself. And that's a beautiful thing.

Right. Yeah. Right. So if you're looking for a definition of truth, what is truth? I think one of the, you can weigh in here too, but one of the simplest things I think you could say is that truth is that which corresponds to reality.

Yeah. That which corresponds to reality. Something that's false, it's not real. It doesn't correspond to reality, but truth corresponds to reality. Yeah, and that's why we can say God is the ultimate truth, because he's the ultimate form of reality.

He is ultimate righteousness. He's ultimate whatever it is. He is the definition of what good is, what truth is, what real is, what love is. Yeah, absolutely. And so God gives us sort of ultimate reality in that sense. And, but there's even, and God gives us all of reality.

But when we're talking about this with somebody and you're trying to help them understand this, sometimes one of the best places to start is with other things that they already, they agree with you are real. If you're engaging with somebody about the live your truth problem, you are going to engage some, some Christians who are, who are kind of deceived on this topic. Yeah. But you're also going to encounter a lot of non-Christians. And so if you want to talk to them about this, I think maybe starting with something like science or math, two plus two equals four, like you can't live your truth when it comes to math problems. We were building a deck at my house the other day and we had to do A squared plus B squared equals C squared, figure out the triangles to keep this thing square. And it's like, you can't do A squared plus B squared equals C to the third.

You have to stick to the formula. It's only true this way and it works this way. Yeah. C to the third does not work in that. Yeah. It probably does something else. I don't know. I'm no math whiz, but neither. Yeah. When it's a ministry not to do math.

That's right. That's right. For sure. Yeah. I mean, and we've seen that even in recent culture, kind of a try to step away from some of those things, I think, because this is so pervasive. I mean, there have been school systems that have called math racist because they think that there's some sort of inequity in having some sort of object truth. And I think that's a really dangerous game societally we're playing right now. Yeah.

All right. To jump away from racism in schools, what do you think about the idea of God's truth and how it relates to how we know God, the idea of truth and how it fits into that, how we know God? Yeah, so one of the things that's been said is that all religions are the same or all religions are basically the same or there's the classic parable of the elephant and that every world religion grasps a piece of God. But if we understand that truth is absolute truth, it's not relative, it doesn't change between people, then we realize that there is the world religions actually have competing contradictory ideas.

And it sounds mean in today's world, but only one of them can be true. a story in a book about a guy who was in a debate and he was a Christian debating a non-Christian and the non-Christian got up and said, my opponent here has this crazy idea that Christianity is true and all other religions are false. And I thought that was quite the claim to make against him. And well, the Christian speaker got up and stood up and said, my friend here is a humanist and he believes that humanism is true and all other claims are false. You know, that's what people don't realize that actually all the religions and even humanism and atheistic perspective on life, they're all exclusive in that way. They all believe that they are right and everybody else is wrong. And that's the law of non-contradiction. We can't all be, we can't have opposite ideas and both be right in the same way at the same time.

And there's nothing wrong with that, right? Like, the idea of something being narrow is actually a really good thing in most other fields, right? If you think about music, right? If you're playing a guitar, how many ways is there to play a D, right? There's one.

And if you're off key, it sounds bad, right? And to have a narrow definition of what D is or what, you know, C or E minor is, is a good thing when it comes to making music. You wouldn't want to listen to music that isn't in tune or isn't narrowly in tune to what we've defined E minor. I think that's a really good example because it just reminds us that even in what we would consider the most creative of fields, which we would say there's some subjectivity, right?

We all have preferences as to what type of music or art or things that we like the most. But even in what would be considered probably one of the most subjective fields of the world, there is objectivity. There is an order to musical notes and how all that works. I also just think this is a scary idea personally, to think about my spiritual reality that I'm going to just chase after my own

version of God, my own version of whatever, right? Like that's scary. If there is a God, if there's one true God, like the whole idea is that I want to find who he is. I want to worship him truly. version is so nearsighted.

It's so silly to think about that I would have, that I could manifest my own version of God or that he would change to me. No, no, no, there's one true God and our job is to not throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. It's to find who he is.

It's to find the narrow way and to chase after it. Right, and especially as Christians we believe that because we know that that's where ultimate joy is going to be found. That's where eternal life is going to be found. Yeah. And this is why we care so much about, you know, so I could imagine somebody saying, well, why don't you just leave those poor people alone who want to quote unquote live their truth? It apparently makes them happy. Let's just let them do their thing. Well, but for us as Christians, we read the Bible. We know what God says. We believe that's absolutely true, and therefore we believe that there is such a thing as hell, that without Jesus, people are headed there, and that they need to hear the good news, the absolute truth, that Jesus Christ came and he lived a perfect life of righteousness.

He died the death for sin on the cross for them, and he was raised to new life on the third day, that they could have new life too by putting their faith in him. We care about them too much to let them live in a lie. Yeah, it's because we were exactly like them, right? Moral objectivity and this idea of running after your own truth is not running towards God, it's running away from the truth.

It's running away from God, right? And that's what we believe. We believe that all humanity is not running towards God and God's some cosmic goalie who's saying, no, you can't get in, you can't get in. But we see in the Bible, and this is what the Bible says, that we're all running away from God. Right. And that God in his good nature stops some of us and says, no, not you. As we're running to hell, he says, no, not you, and he brings us back to himself. We care for these people because we know, you know, from our own lives, when we were running and when we hated God, when we loved our own sin, but praise God that God's changed that, that we now love God and we hate our sin. And we want more and more people to experience that reality. As you're saying that, I'm thinking just right now off the cuff, another way of looking at this is it's almost like people out there are realizing the Christian truth that we don't measure up to God's perfect standard, but they're coming to the wrong conclusion.

Yeah. They're saying, man, we have this internal conscience. We know that there's some objective moral standard out there and that we're not making it. So our answer is to say that there is no more objective standard. Our answer is to say, live your truth. You know, that's our way to avoid. We want to avoid the standard instead of finding an actual way to meet the standard and to be with God. Yeah. So, kind of grasp the, you know, in the heart of every human being, God has put that need for him, that desire, that drive to try to connect with the Lord and with what he's provided for us. But obviously, without the gospel of Jesus, they're missing it. So that's why we want to bring people the truth, even though it is hard, even though it hurts. So if you're encountering this at school, at work, in your neighborhood, in your home, wherever it might be, you wanna do it with love, but you do wanna bring people back to the truth. Yeah, and we're no better than these people. I mean, we all have areas in our life, we can't demonize these people who say these things that are misled.

Our best way of doing this is loving them, helping maybe explain some things, like you've said, by showing them where this leads. But we've got to say, you know, this is someone who needs the gospel, just like the rest of us.

Right. Jon, how would I convince someone that there is big T or capital T truth when they say that this would make you prideful or arrogant or bigoted or whatever they're going to say? Yeah, right.

So you're likely going to encounter that. And when they say, live your truth, and you butt in and say, well, actually there is the truth, you know, they're likely going to get frustrated right away. And yeah, they're going to see you as arrogant, maybe bigoted, things like that. So, I mean, a few things to keep in mind is that, yeah. Truth is true regardless of your age, your gender, your race, your socioeconomic status.

You know. Yeah. So I think when people are saying things like, well, that saying that there's if you claim to have the truth that makes you racist or bigoted or or arrogant or whatever. I think that still is coming out of that same world view that there is no such thing as absolute truth. Because so think about it. You know, if you believe that if you believe that there is no such thing as absolute truth, that all truth is relative, then your perspective must be that those who claim to have absolute truth are just doing it to control people.

Yeah. Right. And that's something that we're hearing a lot right now. And I actually I actually think it makes sense if you have that worldview. Obviously, we think that's the wrong world view, it's totally incorrect. But if you have that world view, that makes sense, is that truth isn't real.

Therefore, those who say they have the truth are just trying to control people. Yeah. So that's what they're assuming about you. But it's obviously not the case. Yeah. Can I ask a follow up? What about those words? What what moral weight is behind those words themselves?

Yeah. I mean, you're saying like, you know, the sort of self-defeating idea there is that you're saying? Like the idea of arrogant, bigoted, racist, you know, what moral weight is behind those words? Yeah, I think you're – yeah, so those obviously come with a ton of moral weight, but for them who doesn't believe in moral truth, it doesn't have any weight. Yeah, so I mean that'd be – that's a – that'd be a great way to respond. It would be to say, well, actually, hey, so you're calling me arrogant, bigoted, whatever. You say, well, how do you know those are bad things?

Yeah. You know, and let them try to explain what the foundation, now, you know, because you and I can say, we believe those are bad things because God's word says so, or we can say, you know, because God created all human beings in his image, and therefore we all are equal in value, and so, you know, racism is awful and doesn't make any sense, you know, bigotry doesn't make, you know, all those things we can, you know, we have an answer to that question, whereas they don't. Yeah. So yeah, that's a great point. Or to say, you know, well, your view of racism and my view of racism are different. And you know, that's my truth.

Yeah, live your truth. Yeah. Right. I mean, it- Turn it on its head. Yeah, it's a little sarcastic, but you know.

Yeah, so you can try to stick to a loving tone instead of getting sarcastic like we maybe are. But you're still you're helping them understand the flaws in the system, the flaws in their own logic. Yeah, it is very interesting that people who really hate the idea of some sort of strict morality or some concrete morality, often they're the ones who sling those moral statements. You know, this is wrong, you're racist.

Right, they don't realize that there's no foundation for them to stand on to say those things. Yeah, yeah, totally. So speaking of which, one thing we didn't talk about was much was how do we know that God's word is the truth? So that's a whole different rabbit trail we go. We've done episodes in the past talking about that. We could talk about arguments for the historical reliability of the Bible, of the Old Testament and the New Testament.

I think that's where you want to go, right? So, you know, if you say there is such a thing as truth and therefore we need to, you know, work hard to try to find the truth. Well, then you got to say, well, what are the criteria for finding truth? And you say, well, you know, is there evidence for it? Is there a logical argument for it? You know, those kinds of things are the questions you start asking. And then that's when you go to, well, for the Bible, there is, there is a lot of logical argument for, you know, if there is a God who created the world, this is, you know, he would, you know, want to communicate those kind of things. And then also there's the, you know, there's just the evidence for especially the New Testament, just the historical reliability of our New Testament manuscripts compared to other ancient documents, compared to other religious documents. You know, there's the testimony of the apostles and the fact that they died for the things that they wrote and said, you know, so then you can get into some of those kind of arguments. Yeah, there's, yeah, it's one of the most well-preserved books. It's almost silly to debate it, but it's unbelievably, you know, almost God's superintended type of thing when you study that. It's really, really cool. So for those of you who are watching this on NRB TV or on YouTube, if you want to go back, this is also a podcast on Spotify on a few different platforms, wherever you listen to podcasts, you can listen to that. So if you want to listen to that episode, you can go back and find that. It's a really good episode about that'll dive more into that topic too.

But I even think the idea of God's word being trustworthy is such an interesting thing when it comes to his character. You know, God being truth, it's part of how we understand God's Word. What would you say to someone who may be struggling with that being able to even trust the Bible? Yeah, so if you've gotten past some of the arguments about, you know, the historical reliability and moved on to, okay, the Bible is from God, but is all of it true?

Does it have errors? Those kind of things. So, you know, the category you're talking about, is the Bible inspired and is it inerrant? Those are kind of the theological terms for what you're talking about. And one of the most basic arguments we could go to is just the character of God. That God is true, God is perfect, and thus His word carries those traits.

God's word is also perfect. It's also without error, just as God himself is without error. So God can't have errors, His Word can't have errors. So yeah, crazy as it might sound, we believe that every single word, not just the ideas, not just the concepts, but each and every individual word in the Bible is true and is without error. Yeah, it's because God himself is truth. That's yeah, and we see that again We've done other episodes on this so we could talk about this at length, but Jesus himself when he was on the earth So one of the things you can always say is that well, you know

That was Jesus's view of the Bible Jesus throughout his ministry on the earth Referred back to specific verses in Scripture He even made arguments going down to specific words and even to the tense of different words, you know We're present or past tense. I think of when he's talking about the God of Abraham, he says, I am. Yeah.

He makes an argument from the tense of a word. So, Jesus is getting down to the very letters of the text. Yeah, yeah. Not a jot or an iota, you know, like even the little parts of a letter, you know, he's saying that that's all inerrant.

There's some really great boring books that talk about Jesus's view of scripture and how almost every act that he did in his ministry reaffirms that he believed that the Old Testament was not only inerrant, but it was revealed by God. It was from God. It was inspired. And I could go on forever about that, but we don't have forever. So how about if you're arguing with someone about this, if you're going back and forth and you're having a conversation and some of those names start getting slung back and forth or you feel yourself talking with someone who you're not getting anywhere and maybe you're getting frustrated, how do we respond to this as Christians?

Where do we go from there? So you've tried to have the argument and you don't feel like you're making progress. That's likely. Usually, somebody's not won over in a single conversation. But don't give up.

My goal is usually, in a conversation like that, is to try to give them at least one thing to think about. If you've left them with at least one thing to think about, then I think you've done great in a conversation like that. You want to walk away and be able to pray for them. You want to be able to go back into another conversation with them.

So I think, you know, just at some point, if the conversation is just not being fruitful, to just say, hey, you know what? Thanks so much for talking. I've heard what you said, you know, I'm glad that you've heard what I've said.

I can see that we disagree. I'd love it if you keep thinking about it and I'll have to talk about it again sometime. Let's maybe get together again and talk about it. Yeah, you don't want to say things that make it, so that way you can't have a follow-up conversation with them.

Don't ruin your chance to go back and have another conversation. Yeah, and the beautiful thing is that they're not rejecting you, they're rejecting God's Word, they're rejecting God, and it's you doing your job of presenting this to them. You know, you don't feel like a failure if you can't win everyone over. Even the Apostle Paul didn't win everyone over.

And so it's God's work to change hearts, not ours. Our job is to proclaim the gospel, to challenge faulty ideas, and to do it lovingly. Plant some seeds and let God do the work. Yeah. Well, thanks, Pastor Mitchell. Yeah.

Thanks, everybody, for listening. It's been an awesome time getting to talk about God's truth, getting to talk about some absolute truth. If you have questions, we always love to hear them and get to answer them here on this show. You can submit them at peacechurch.cc slash questions. Have an awesome week. Can't wait to see you next time.

Bye!