Today we constantly hear things like, “That’s your truth,” “That’s your reality,” “Who are you to judge?” Sadly, this is a symptom of a thinking disease called relativism. Relativism is the belief that there is no absolute or objective moral truth. In short, the relativist believes that you have your truth and that I have my truth and that there is no truth with a capital T.¹ So prevalent is this thinking disease that according to Barna only one-third of adults believe in absolute [or objective] moral truth.²

Of course, this disease isn’t brand new. When Jesus told Pilate that He “came into the world to testify to the truth,” Pilate retorted, “What is truth?” (John 18:37-38). Indeed, the Romans were syncretistic—they had no problem accepting the worship of other gods. As Frances Schaffer has pointed out, the Romans didn’t hate the Christians because they worshipped Jesus—the Romans hated the Christians because the Christians would worship only Jesus.

Similarly, today, relativists ignore those Christians-in-name-only who don’t think Christianity any more true than any other religion. Relativists welcome these truthless Christians as their own. What irks the relativist is that true Christians argue that only Christianity is true and every other religion is false. That belief is not only unpopular, it has gotten tens of thousands of Christians killed over the centuries.

This is important for our evangelism because if before we begin our witness we don’t treat the disease of relativism, then they will hear our Gospel proclamation as no more than a “this is what works for me” religion that in their minds is as truthless as a jelly fish is toothless.

Thankfully, the symptoms of relativism are obvious. Those in its grip spout things like, “that’s your truth” or “who are you to judge.” When I encounter these folks—which I have many times—I give them what I have coined the Truth SERUMM.

But before I explain the acronym, I need to explain the law of non-contradiction, which is the foundation of logic. The law of non-contradiction is that A cannot be not-A at the same time and in the same way. Contradictory things cannot be true. In other words, you cannot have a hot/cold, inside/outside, day/night at the same time and in the same way. You can’t have a colorless-red car or a two-sided triangle. Neither can you have a square-circle because squares have parallel lines and pointy things and circles do not.

Square-circles and colorless-red cars are known as self-referentially incoherent. As soon as you say them they refute themselves. For example, if I write “there are no English sentences longer than four words,” that would be self-referentially incoherent because it is a sentence in English longer than four words.

Now sometimes you’ll hear people try to get out of logic by saying something to the effect of “logic is Western.” What they don’t realize is that the statement “logic is Western” actually affirms the law of non-contradiction because it contends that logic is one thing but not another. It is “Western” but “not Eastern.” That affirms the law of non-contradiction. Ravi Zacharias tells the story of his lunch with a professor:

As the professor waxed eloquent and expounded on the law of non-contradiction, he eventually drew his conclusion: “This [either/or logic] is a Western way of looking at reality….The real problem is that you are seeing that contradiction as a Westerner when you should be approaching it as an Easterner. The both/and is the Eastern way of viewing reality….”³

After he belabored these two ideas on either/or and both/and for some time, and carried on his tirade that we ought not to study truth from a Western point of view but rather from an Eastern viewpoint I finally asked if I could interrupt his unpunctuated train of thought and raise one question. He agreed and put down his pencil.

I said, “Sir, are you telling me that when I am studying Hinduism I either use the both/and logic or nothing else?”

There was a pin-drop silence for what seemed an eternity. I repeated my question: “Are you telling me that when I am studying Hinduism I either use the both/and logic or nothing else? Have I got that right?”

He threw his head back and said, “The either/or does seem to emerge, doesn’t it?”

“Indeed, it does emerge,” I said, “And as a matter of fact, even in India we look both ways before crossing the street—it is either the bus or me, not both of us.”

Do you see the mistake he was making? He was using the either/or logic in order to prove both/and. The more you try to hammer the law of non-contradiction, the more it hammers you.⁴

With this in mind let’s reveal the folly of relativism—that objective truth doesn’t exist—by injecting the Truth SERUMM. The acronym SERUMM tells us six things that relativism is.

S          Self-refuting
E          Evil-enabling
R          Racist Befriending
U          Utterly Hypocritical
M         Morally Stagnating
M         Mind closing

Self-refuting

The first problem with relativism is that it is self-refuting. Why? Because to say there are no objective truths is to state an objective truth.

One day when I was a freshman in college and was waiting for a government class to start, I heard behind me, “You can have sex with anyone you want!” That got my attention! So I turned around to hear this fellow tell an attractive blonde coed that “It’s true: you make up your own rules so you can have sex with anyone you want.” I immediately spoke up and said, “I think I know what you’re saying. Aren’t you saying that you have your truth and I have my truth and your truth is no better than my truth and my truth is not better than your truth and there is no truth with a capital T. Is that true?”

He replied (rather pleased), “That’s true.”

So I said, “Are you absolutely sure?”

He said, “Yes, I am!”

So I exclaimed, “So there is absolute truth then!”

He immediately pointed to the clock and blurted, “Class is about to start!”

And the blonde said, “He got you!”

I’ve told this story many times because it points out the first and perhaps most severe problem with relativism: to state that there is no objective truth is to state an objective truth. It’s sad to consider that a majority of American (if not a majority of people in the entire Western world) hold a belief that actually refutes itself as soon as it dribbles out of their lips.

Evil-enabling

The second problem with relativism is that it is evil-enabling and by that I mean that the relativist, to be consistent, cannot even condemn the most horrific of evils. Here is the classic question which I’ve asked many relativists: Is it objectively wrong to torture babies for fun? Greg Koukl came up with a variation of this that I also like: “is it wrong to kick babies down the street for fun?” And the relativist’s first response is almost always: “Oh, I hate that! That’s awful!”

Me: “I’m not asking if you like the idea. I’m not asking you to tell me something about you. I’m asking if it is objectively wrong to torture babies for fun.”

Relativist: “Oh, that’s horrible, I hate that!”

Me: “But again, I’m not asking you if you personally don’t like it, I’m asking you if it is objectively wrong.”

Relativist: “Well, that’s a stupid question!” (I’ve heard this a lot and so will you!).

Me: “It’s a simple question and you can answer it.”

Relativist: “I hate that and it’s a stupid question.”

Me: “It’s a simple yes or no question—you can answer it.”

Relativist (rather meekly): “Well, I can’t say it would be objectively wrong to torture a baby for fun.”

Me: “Do you see where your philosophy is leading you? You can’t even condemn the worst evil!”

What’s going on here? The camel’s nose under the tent! They realize that if they do admit the obvious—that it is always wrong for all people at all times to torture babies for fun—then I’m going to say something like, “Okay! We’ve just discovered one objective truth, let’s see if we can find another one!” The jig is up and they’re sleeping next to a smelly camel.

Racist-befriending

The third problem is that relativism is racist-befriending and that follows logically from the point above.

Me: “Was it absolutely wrong for the Nazis to murder the Jews?”

Relativist: “Oh, that’s horrible, I hate that!”

And here we go again! No kidding, I’ve had this conversation a bunch of times. When I’ve pressed the relativist, they finally admit, rather sadly, “I can’t say it was objectively wrong for the Nazis to murder the Jews”! That’s depraved, right?

I was teaching an introduction to Christian apologetics class in Los Angeles which was comprised almost entirely of African-Americans. Well, this attractive, young, black professional woman started arguing with me that there wasn’t objective truth. To this I asked, “Don’t you think it was objectively wrong for Americans to enslave black people?”

She replied, “Well, I can see how a young white woman, in the South, might not think it was wrong.”

I had to hand her one thing: she had a lot of guts to tell a room full of black people that it wasn’t objectively wrong for them to be enslaved by white people! Why did she spurt this silliness? Because she realized (as do other relativists) that if she gave in on even one point then her entire philosophy would swirl down the drain (she changed her mind by the end of the course, by the way).

Relativism is, indeed, the racist’s best friend. Are you loving relativism yet?

Utterly Hypocritical

The fourth problem, and this surprises relativists and non-relativists alike, is that relativism is utterly hypocritical. This seems counter-intuitive because the relativists’ claim to fame is that they are so “accepting” and “non-judgmental.” But it turns out that relativists accept only other relativists. Those who hold to objective truth are, in their minds, “judgmental, narrow-minded, bigots!” You’ve heard this, right?

You can have some fun here. The next time you hear someone say, “You shouldn’t judge others,” ask them, “Is that your morality?” They’ll say it is. “So are you saying that it’s wrong to say what I said?” That’s where they’ll realize that they’re in trouble. There are many other examples of how to catch them in this hypocrisy and I encourage you to read Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air by Frank Beckwith and Greg Koukl.⁵

When I first came to Biola I was teaching a class where the students had to turn in the same paper at different stages of development and one of the students argued for relativism. I wrote on an early draft of his paper “You are going to get an F!” (I’m not making this up). He rushed up to me at break very upset about it. I replied, “Why would that bother you? That’s just the way my community talks about truth! Why don’t you just tell everyone in your community that F stands for fantastic?” To this day I don’t know whether he agreed with me or lied about what he believed, but either way he argued against relativism in his final submission. Relativism feels comfy until you’re the one being gored by it.

Here’s an amusing example of Deepak Chopra being caught in this kind of hypocrisy.

Morally Stagnating

The fifth problem is that relativism is also morally stagnating. By that I mean that the relativist can never acknowledge moral improvement. For example, ask a relativist if a man is more moral now that he has stopped beating his wife and children? They can’t agree! This is crazier than the Tasmanian Devil on crack, but that’s what the consistent relativist is forced to concede. Ask them, “Is America more moral now that it has stopped enslaving Africans? Is Germany more moral now that it has stopped killing Jews?” They can’t agree! This is a fun one: Ask the relativist “Would I be more moral if I became less judgmental?” Or how about asking the relativist this, “do you think that you could improve morally?” They can’t say “yes”! This is all nuttier than squirrel poop, right?⁶

Mind Closing

The final problem is that relativism is mind closing. That statement shocks relativists because they claim to be so open minded. But how open minded are you really when you don’t think that any moral truths are any truer than other moral truths? In other words, all moral statements are equally true and equally false. After all, if there are no objective moral truths, then there is no point to trying to discover what they are! As Allan Bloom put it in The Closing of the American Mind:

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. If this belief is put to the test, one can count on the students’ reaction: they will be uncomprehending. That anyone should regard the proposition as not self-evident astonishes them, as though he were calling into question 2 + 2 = 4…. The danger they have been taught to fear from absolutism is not error but intolerance. Relativism is necessary to openness; and this is the virtue, the only virtue, which all primary education for more than fifty years has dedicated itself to inculcating…. The study of history and of culture teaches that all the world was mad in the past; men always thought they were right, and that led to wars, persecutions, slavery, xenophobia, racism, and chauvinism. The point is not to correct the mistakes and really be right; rather it is not to think you are right at all.⁷

Should we examine the roots of anti-Semitism, slavery, or the oppression of women? Why bother if those things aren’t wrong? There is no point to ethics courses or discussions about what might be ethical. Class dismissed! The words “right,” “wrong,” “good,” “bad,” “moral,” “immoral,” and other such words become meaningless. It would make no sense to discuss whether it’s wrong to pilot a 787, drive a school bus on a mountain road, or perform a vasectomy while drunk. Relativists’ minds are about as open as a Chernobyl cafeteria.

So relativism is self-refuting, evil enabling, racist befriending, utterly hypocritical, morally stagnating, and mind closing. We should terminate it with extreme prejudice.

So why should anyone believe that Christianity is true? Because the evidence is that Jesus really was raised from the dead. That’s a fact of history!

After hearing that their intellectual and moral beliefs make about as much sense as a screen door on a space-station, the relativist might reply, “Oh, how nice for you, Clay, that Christianity is a white, Western, male religion and you just happen to be a white male that lives in the West.” But that’s just as confused. If you look at a map you’ll find—shock and awe—that Christianity is a Middle-Eastern religion. Also, in Their Blood Cries Out, Paul Marshall has pointed out, Christianity “was in Africa before Europe, India before England, China before America. Three-fourths of world Christians live in the Third World.”⁸ Also, more people attended Christian services last Sunday in China than in every country of Europe combined—England, France, Spain, Germany, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Holland, and so on. And not only is this true of China, this is also true of Africa and South America. More non-whites are Christians than are whites and more women are Christians than are men. Thus when you put it all together it turns out that I’m the adherent of a non-white, third-world, female religion.

Proverbs 21:2: “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes, but the Lord weighs the heart.”

Amen.

1. I’m indebted to my first philosophy professor, Mr. Graham, for this short definition. [↩]
2. http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/325-barna-studies-the-research-offers-a-year-in-review-perspective?q=absolute+truth [↩]
3. By both/and the professor meant that in the East they both accept the law of non-contradiction and they don’t accept the law of non-contradiction. [↩]
4. Ravi Zacharias, Can Man Live Without God? (Nashville: W Publishing, 1994), 128-129. [↩]
5. Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory Koukl, Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998). [↩]
6. You don’t need to use the word “objective” in these questions because “more moral” accomplishes about the same thing. To say that someone is “more moral” than someone else is to suggest that there is an objective standard. [↩]
7. Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 25-26. [↩]
8. Paul Marshall, Their Blood Cries Out (Dallas: Word, 1997), 7-8. [↩]