What Is the Difference Between Relativism And the Belief in Absolutes?

How can we know anything about anything

To try to explain truth to him who loves it not is but to give him more plentiful material for misinterpretation. George Macdonald

Do we have to make a choice between science and the Bible?

NO!

That is NOT where the problem is, but that is what everyone seems to want to talk about.

Take science as an example. How can we know anything about the created material world around us?

How can we know anything from what we can see using natural sciences?

We all see the same things in the material world, but we don't come to the same answers.

Why is that?

How can we know anything about the Bible and what it teaches? Every person believes different things about the Bible and how it should be read.

Why is that?

Same scientific facts. Different answers.

Same Bible. Different answers.

Why is that?

The true question is this: How do we come to our answers that we get from what we can see through science or what we can read in the Bible?

How do we think about what we see using science or what we read in the Bible?

How do we analyze what we have seen and read?

How do we interpret what we have seen and read?

We use logic, but logic always has a foundation. Jesus talked about building on the Rock. That Rock is Jesus Christ. He is the true foundation. There are also the false foundations of the ungodly.

An example might help.

Question: Why do you believe in evolution?

Answer: Because my science teacher told me that evolution is scientific fact.

Question: Why do you believe your science teacher?

Answer: because he agrees with the textbook he assigned us to read.

Now, we have asked, "Why?" twice.

If we continued to ask, "Why?" we would come down to the foundation of this person's thoughts.

When we get down to the foundations, there are no more questions that can be answered. So where to the foundations come from?

There are three possibilities.

things that we make up, pulled from the air
demonic lies
divine revelation

Question: Why do you believe in creation?

Answer: Because God revealed this to me. He spoke to me through the Bible and gave me His faith so that I could believe Him.

See how quickly we got to the foundation. This is a belief that has a foundation that is solid and that cannot be moved.

In reality, the things that we make up, that are pulled from the air, are actually from demons and all the lies of demons spring from the prince of demons, Satan. So these are one and the same.

Divine revelation comes from the Almighty, Creator, God, Jesus Christ. So there are only two choices, but how do we know there are only two choices? Because God has revealed this truth to us.

The question then is how do we tell the difference between the revelation that comes from God and the lies of Satan?

The answer is that everyone who sincerely wants to do the will of God will know.

Jesus said, "If you really want to obey God, you will know if what I teach comes from God or from me"

The rejection of the revelation that comes from God is not an intellectual problem. It is a moral problem.

Jesus said, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you: For everyone who asks receives; and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks it shall be opened." *

Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to those who ask him? Matthew 7:7-11 *

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. You can set the truth before someone, but you can't make anyone believe those things that they don't want to submit to. They have to want to obey God.

How frequently it is brought to our attention that nothing good can be done if the will is wrong! Reason alone fails to justify itself. Richard M. Weaver

Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32)

"If we are not prepared to buy the truth at the cost of our own humbling we shall not receive it"

Lies appear to have no price upon them. They seem cheap and they abound everywhere. But for the truth there is always an obvious price to pay.

"[God] has set a day when He will judge all the world's people with fairness. And He has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for Him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death" (Acts 17:31).

"There is a judge for the one who rejects Me [Jesus] and does not accept My words; that very word which I spoke will condemn him at the last day" (John 12:48)

That also stands for every person who speaks the utterances of Jesus. When we hear them, we hear Jesus Christ, and we either accept or reject. Every person who follows Jesus Christ is commanded to only speak His utterances and not their own.

"When we love others, we know that we belong to the truth, and we feel at ease in the presence of God" (1 John 3:19)

Ravi Zacharias did two open forums in a university. On the second night, one man told him that he had brought two Atheists in the night before who said that the arguments presented were so strong that they could not contend with them, but they were going to remain Atheists because that is what they prefer to be true.

In another case of just listening to an unbeliever and drawing out his reasoning, the unbeliever finally came to his foundations.

They turned out to be assumptions that were pulled from the air. When asked why he believed his basic assumption, the unbeliever looked startled and blurted out, "I guess I'm making the whole thing up." It was quite a revelation to him since he hadn't even known that he had any assumptions. However, he decided to remain an Atheist because he didn't want God to rule over him.

Relativism says there can be no absolute doctrine, principle or standard. Of course, that means that relativism violates its own premise, because relativism is an absolute doctrine, principle, and standard. The belief in absolutes, sometimes known as absolutism says there can be an absolute doctrine, principle or standard. Note: there are other, unrelated meanings of the word, absolutism.

Liberal Big Brother said, "Those who control the past, control the future." (George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984) The control of history has largely rested, unchallenged, in the hands of liberal Big Brother for decades. It could be said that those who control the news, control the present. And control of the news has rested in the hands of the liberal Big Brother for decades, also unchallenged by the non-liberal voice. The same could be said of science. Liberal Big Brother has largely established control of the sciences and what is accepted as "fact." Recently, non-liberals began to state the non-liberal viewpoint, bringing other facts to light. Big Brother has protested loudly to any non-liberal voice because Big Brother was used to having a complete control of all media.

Now, since there is more than one voice, we have come to the day of the self-proclaimed verifiers and validators, but who is going to validate the validators. And then, who is going to validate the validator validators. You can see the problem. It is Pontius Pilot's question: "What is truth?" The relativists answer: "There is no truth." Who will control snopes.com? As it was with the mainstream media, those who are willing to fight for control are the ones who get control. In general, that means that the liberals will control, because the Spirit of Christ doesn't work by coercion and street-fighting. Blessed are those who don’t submit themselves to the counsel of the ungodly.

The relativistic view says that the democratic process will yield truth for today. They say that each person must find his or her own truth. God doesn't care about opinion polls or personal opinions, though. Wikipedia is an example, stating that all may freely edit the information, but a quick look will tell you that it is liberal-controlled. Wikipedia is pulled in the direction of the most persistent, those who are most dedicated to controlling the message. Wikipedia is controlled by power, not truth. The only challenge to the relativist is how to package and control the message so that Big Brother stays in control.

From Genesis 1:1 through Revelation 22:21, the individual has the responsibility to discern between truth and error, darkness and light, sent and self-appointed. Eve listened to the serpent rather than God, and death was introduced to the earth. Ahab listened to Jezebel and the prophets of Baal and introduced the first recorded instance of the exercise of eminent domain. His final error in discernment was when he listened to all the lying prophets rather than listening to Micaiah the prophet, and he was killed. Jeremiah warned concerning the pillow prophets that God had not sent them, yet they ran. God had not spoken, yet they prophesied. The people didn’t listen to Jeremiah and they went into captivity. The New Testament warns us about those who say they are apostles and are not. It says that there will be those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness. God commends the church at Ephesus in that that they were able to discern the difference between true and false apostles.

Who is telling the truth and who is lying? Here is an easy one. Those who say that there is no truth are lying. These are the relativists. An absolutist believes that some things or all things are absolute. Most don’t think that they have absolute truth, but they believe that there is absolute truth.

Here is a funny thought. It’s normal for absolutists to be relativistic, and relativists to be absolutist. As an example of relativists being absolutists, consider the relativist who is absolutely certain that all things are relative.

As an example of absolutists being relativistic, if we agree that the Bible is the Word of God, without error, and that it is a sin to add to the Word or take from the Word, how could our doctrine possibly not agree? We are exercising relativism in the form of assumptions, preconceptions, and human interpretations, that’s how.

Here is the good news. God is in control. God doesn’t conflict with Himself. He is ever present. If we all seek the Lord, He will be found by us all. He is willing and able to have fellowship with His people. Through Christ, we are reconciled to Him. He sends the teacher, the Holy Spirit, to all who will receive, but He forces Himself on no one. Those who want to lean on their own understanding can do so. All who seek, find. All who ask receive. To all who knock, it will be opened. God is able to give good gifts to His children. If they ask for bread, He won’t give them a stone. The unity that Jesus prayed for will be reality, and it involves not only our unity with each other but also our unity with the Father and the Son.

Numbers 15:39... and that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye use to go a whoring:

Rom 8:7 because the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can it be.

Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Proverbs 28:26 He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool: but whoso walks wisely, he shall be delivered.

Jeremiah 23:16 Thus says the LORD of hosts, Hearken not unto the words of the prophets that prophesy unto you: they make you vain: they speak a vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the LORD. They say still unto them that despise me, The LORD hath said, Ye shall have peace; and they say unto every one that walks after the imagination of his own heart, No evil shall come upon you.

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

What Is the Difference Between Relativism And the Belief in Absolutes?

How can we know anything about anything

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