We began our journey at the beginning, so to speak. Before
we could venture into examining the “right” or “wrong” of anything, we first
had to find an answer to the most basic question of all. Is there an absolute
Truth, and Who is the ultimate arbiter of that Truth?
The common viewpoint of the world has become inherently relativistic,
or “nihilistic”. Historically, this has not generally been the case. In fact,
this is a drastic change from the operative viewpoints of most of our
ancestors. Although the basis for this change is in evidence as much as 2500
years ago in certain parts of the world, it has only recently exploded onto the
world scene as a whole since the early 20th century.
The search for an answer to this fundamental question led us
to examine and re-examine the major religions of the world and the writings of
both ancient and modern philosophers. In this search, we had to acknowledge
that every decision in a person’s life is a direct product of whether he holds
to an absolute Truth, or believes rather in a world of relative truth. If an
absolute Truth exists, then “right” and “wrong” are predetermined and choices
may be made accordingly. However, if truth is relative and each person judges
individually what is right or wrong according to their own opinion, then each
person becomes free to act in any fashion they themselves deem morally
acceptable. This relativism is a common thread in today’s society, and has led
to widespread disagreement among people on the major issues of morality and
ethics.
If there is no absolute Truth, then all truths must be
accepted, no matter their effects, or how distasteful another may find them.
Many people can be heard to say, “What’s true for me is true for me, and what’s
true for you is true for you.” Or you may hear “I have to find my own truth.”
This seems innocent enough, and even has a ring of spirituality and tolerance to
it – the kind of tolerance our modern society demands for all beliefs and
lifestyles. But if we ignore for a moment the flowery ring to it, we find
ourselves undeniably smacked in the face by the illogical underpinning of this
theory. For example, who can say if murder is truly wrong, when there is no absolute “wrong”? Who has the
right to condemn child molestation as evil, if there is no God, and Satan does not
exist? Indeed, if we follow the relativistic ideal to its logical
conclusion, we can only arrive at the futile nihilism espoused by Nietzsche
when he exclaimed, “All is false – everything is allowed!”
If there is no such thing as absolute good, who can say that
helping the poor or living a “moral” life is preferable to one of greediness or
vulgarity? Can these adjectives even exist in the face of a truth-less world?
One man’s “wrong” may be another’s “right”, and so on. If there is no absolute
Truth, and there is no God who has set it as law, then there is nothing
stopping me from doing whatever I want, whenever I want. If evolution is
correct, and humans are just another animal, then I may as well have as much
respect for another human life as I would for a fly that I swat when it comes
too close to my food. There would then be no point to a debate over whether or
not it is “morally” acceptable to kill unborn children. It would be perfectly
acceptable to use the “survival of the fittest” evolutionary mentality to steal,
pillage, and plunder for one’s own benefit. Indeed, our world is now filled
with these very things. We see it every night in the news. Relativism always
leads to self-promotion as a direct result of this logic.
We can see this pattern of belief take shape as we study the
religions and philosophies of the world. The most basic forms of this idea of
relativistic self-promotion are present in the “holy” books of every single
world religion, except the Christian Bible. The Bible has teaching after
teaching, verse after verse, expounding on the inherent value of all men, on
what is “good” absolutely, and on what is “evil” absolutely. The Bible teaches
that mankind was created uniquely by God for a specific purpose, and that we
are not animals in any sense of the word, but rather creations of the living
God, designed by God to be His children – and that this God has a very precise
and absolute judgment on what is right or wrong. If the Bible is not a Holy
Book and just “one of many” spiritual writings, then the statement contained in
it – that humans were created in the image and likeness of God – would cease to
have relevance. It would directly affect the way we view others, and the
practices we approve of morally.
Examining the Bible shows, unlike any other spiritual or
religious texts throughout history, hundreds of specific prophecies recorded
there anywhere from 150 to 2000 years before fulfillment, such as in the book
of Isaiah where he refers to Cyrus (by name) destroying Babylon and allowing
the Jewish exiles to return home. This prophecy was recorded at least 80 years
before they were even taken captive and 180 years before Cyrus was born. We
read in detail, in that same book, of a Man being born of a virgin, who would
later go on to be beaten and hung on a Cross – and that this Man is God
Himself, come down to show us His unfailing Love for us. This prophecy has been
dated to thousands of years before Christ was born, even by secular scholars.
It quickly became obvious to my wife and I there is indeed a
Source of Absolute Truth that is outside of this physical realm that we
inhabit, and that this Source is the One written of exclusively in the
Christian Bible. Once we accepted the existence of Absolute Truth, we then
faced the dilemma of learning how to recognize the living expression of that
Truth – His Church, which Christ Himself described our membership in as being
wholly necessary to our salvation from Death.
And so we continued in our studies, and in our search…
