Pastor, here’s how to answer “What’s true to me is true to me.”

You’ve heard it over coffee after service, in a small group, maybe from your own kids: “What’s true to me is true to me. What’s true to you is true to you. As long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.” It sounds humble. It sounds kind. It’s a sermon of the serpent, and it quietly sits under almost every other dark idea in this series. Here’s what it really says, and how I answer it as a pastor.

What relativism is

Relativism is the belief that truth isn’t objective or universal. It’s relative to each person or culture, so there’s “your truth” and “my truth,” and nobody is wrong as long as nobody gets hurt.

One version of the argument goes like this: truth is only held in language, language isn’t universal, so truth isn’t universal. That’s just ridiculous. Whether or not you have my word for an object, the object is still there. And God Himself says, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). He is, He was, and He always will be, whatever vocabulary we bring to Him.

The serpent’s question

In the garden, the serpent promised, “You will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:5). In other words: you will decide what is true and what is not. Relativism is that promise with a friendly face. Its version of the oldest question is “Did God really say what’s true, or only what’s true for Him?”

Once that question lands, authority moves inside. Truth is no longer external, knowable, and findable. It’s generated from within. I become the genesis of my own truth and the arbiter of my own truth.

Step 1 — Spot the false hierarchy

When you take truth off the top, something else has to take its place. In our culture, that something is kindness, or really, nonconfrontational agreeableness. The goal becomes getting along rather than having a real, truthful exchange.

Listen for this in your own leadership culture. Agreeableness passed off as virtue is still a false hierarchy. Kindness matters, but it was never meant to sit above truth. When it does, we can’t confront each other or even have an honest conversation, because everyone is looking inward instead of outward to discover what is true.

Step 2 — Let truth confront you first

Truth by nature is confrontative. It confronts our perspective, our presuppositions, our actions, and our motives. In relativism, that makes truth a threat, because it challenges the person who believes they can generate their own.

So preach truth as something that confronts us, and start with the preacher. If your people only ever hear truth aimed at somebody else, they’ll learn that truth is a weapon. When they watch it confront you first, they learn that it’s a gift.

Step 3 — Show that relativism can’t build anything

Relativism produces no progress. Only truthful speech lets you build. Think about business: you have to be honest about the measurements. My perspective is skewed, so I need an external ruler. Nobody builds a house where every carpenter gets their own definition of an inch.

A book from a couple of decades ago described relativism as having your feet firmly planted in thin air. That’s exactly what’s happening in our culture right now. Ask your team the honest question: where are we choosing to get along over saying what’s true?

Step 4 — Point to the Person of truth

The answer to relativism isn’t just a better philosophy. It’s a Person. Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Truth is not something I manufacture. It’s Someone I meet.

That’s why this matters so much. If I am the arbiter of truth, I’ve rejected the Person of truth, Jesus Christ the Lord. And I think it’s worth naming that our culture has been swimming in this for three decades and more. Relativism births a lot of the isms that follow, so it’s worth learning to hear it early.

We have to reject the sermon that says truth lives inside the self. Truth is external, knowable, and findable. Jesus is the truth. Plant your feet on Him, not on thin air.