Relativism: Your Truth or Mine?

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

Relativism contends that all truth is relative except for the claim that ‘truth is relative.’ Edward W. Younkins

There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believe, 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. Allan Bloom

Most worldviews drink from the same pool called relativism. From ancient to present times, relativism permeates many mindsets and ideologies. It can’t stand on it’s own two, contradictory feet because of just that, it contradicts itself. Take any “religion” or philosophy or fad or analytical system that attempts to explain the world we live in and relativism is embedded in its foundations. It’s been around since the dawn of time yet has risen its subtle head since the 1960s counter culture revolution.

It can’t be escaped. It’s the default of self justification and is the signature trait of much of pop culture and rise of modern, self-focused culture and thinking. In the universities, pop culture and music, media and movies, politics and more, relativism is back in full force.

Relativism is convenient. It thinks it can escape the safety and boundaries of truth. It allows mankind to define and protect its thinking and activities. It sometimes sounds logical but drowns in a whirlpool of self-deception. Relativism is like the argument from religious experience. It appears it can’t be refuted because well, “I experienced it so it has to be true.” It’s a safe form of argumentation. It guards itself in a subjective force field. If there is not absolute truth, then I can do what I want. Truth can’t cramp my style. I’m my own master of moral choices and their consequences.

However, not so fast. There’s more to our “truths” than meets the mind…

My Truth And Your Truth

We hear it all the time. “My truth” or this is “Your truth.” See the short list below:

• Arthur Peña: “My truth? Your truth? No truth? … It’s worth asking: Is any of this actually true?”
• Saam Gatsheni: “Our generation has socially constructed the idea of multiple truths. There is your truth, my truth, our truth & the truth. One of them is a lie.”
• Marcus Aurelius: “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
• Bertrand Russell: “People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people, is a secondary consideration.”
• Karl Popper: “Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty.”
• Friedrich Nietzsche: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
• George Orwell: “The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.”
• Thomas Huxley: “It is wrong for a man to say that he is certain of the objective truth of any proposition unless he can produce evidence which logically justifies that certainty.”
• Abhijit Naskar: “There is no such thing as an objective truth, it’s all subjective …”
• Vladimir Lenin: “The assertion made by science that the earth existed prior to man is an objective truth … if truth is only an organising form of human experience … there can be no truth independent of the subject.”
  

Thus, what we are faced with is called The relativist-fallacy … which claims that something is true for one person but not true for someone else, when in fact that thing is an objective fact. It shoots itself in the foot and begs the question: “So how do we indeed determine truth?”

Language as the Vehicle To Redefine Reality

Since the 1960s, a number of intellectual currents in philosophy, linguistics, cultural theory and social critique have argued that language is not merely a transparent medium that names a fixed reality, but a constitutive force which shapes, partitions, or even constructs what we take to be ‘reality’. In other words: language doesn’t just reflect the world — it helps define it. Let’s briefly trace how this claim has evolved, the different strands it takes, and how it has influenced how we think about truth, power and identity.

The “linguistic turn” and philosophy of language

In the mid-20th century, analytic philosophy shifted focus to language: thinkers asked not just “what is reality?” but “how is reality expressed in language, and what constraints does language place on our thinking?” This so-called “linguistic turn” emphasized that our conceptual scheme, embedded in language, influences how we experience the world.

For example, the works of Richard Rorty (in *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 1979) argue that philosophy should stop treating language as a mirror of nature and instead see it as a tool or instrument in contingent historical practices. This move begins to challenge the assumption that there is a stable, objective “reality” behind language that language simply maps. Instead, language becomes part of how reality is experienced, structured, and understood.

Implications and tensions

The effort to view language as redefining reality leads to important implications:

• Epistemological: If language shapes our conceptual framework, then our knowledge is contingent on the language/discourse we inhabit. The possibility of “view from nowhere” or fully neutral “objective” description becomes more problematic.
• Ontological: If language helps construct reality (or our experience of it), then reality is less fixed and more mediated. Some have taken this to mean that truths are relative to discourses, language games or paradigms.
• Political/social: Recognizing that language selects, highlights and hides possibilities draws attention to the power of naming, framing, classification. How we speak matters for how we act, what we permit, and what we marginalize.

Some of the Tensions, Criticisms, and Questions

• If language wholly constructs reality, one may drift into radical relativism or skepticism about any stable truth. Some thinkers, notably in science and metaphysics, resist that.
• There remains a sense that reality pushes back, that language cannot entirely determine everything because we have experience of resistance, surprise, anomaly.
• The distinction between “language mapped reality” and “language constituted reality” is subtle but important; how far one sees language as constitutive vs reflective remains contested.

Since the 1960s counter cultural shift, a strong intellectual current has argued that language does not merely reflect a pre-given world, but helps shape, delimit and redefine what we call “reality.” From the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy, through deconstructive and post-structural critiques of representation, to rhetorical and discursive analyses of power and naming, language has been increasingly seen as constitutive of experience, knowledge and world‐making. This shift has challenged long‐held assumptions about objectivity, meaning, and truth — and has had profound implications for philosophy, social theory, cultural studies, science and everyday life. While this “language-as‐reality” view opens productive terrain, it also raises deep questions about how we anchor truth, how we know anything, and whether reality is ultimately negotiable.

How Do We Anchor True Truth?

We now come to the truth crux of the matter. How do we find the concept of what Francis Shaefer called, “True Truth?” Are we locked into a circle of self contradiction, as all the above quotations ultimately lead to. For if there is no truth above the truth then mankind simply falls prey to a historical circle after circle of endless attempts at “truth seeking.” Is there a way out of this relativistic mess? In sum, can we find true truth to judge my truth and your truth?

Since both language and logic comes from mankind over a given history and body of learning and knowledge, we are thus limited in perspective and scope. We can only draw from our limited knowledge and experience.

The Universe Next Door and True Truth

I posit a truth above all other truths—a revelation that must come from outside our human experience. Some may refer to this as Natural Law, but I would take it a step further into what theologians call both general and special revelation. In short: God. A Creator. A personal mind behind the heavens, the earth, and humankind.

As I contemplate the remarkable design of the cosmos, the beauty of the earth, and the intricacy of the human body—its eyes, brain, organs, and especially the DNA code—I see unmistakable evidence of an intelligent mind. There is a programming structure embedded within matter itself, a logic that goes far beyond a distant theistic or deistic “god” who creates and then walks away. When all these elements of design are considered together, it requires far more faith for the agnostic or atheist to believe that everything emerged from nothing more than time, chance, and matter.

The specificity and intentionality of the universe are too great to be random—especially as modern science and technology reveal ever deeper layers of complexity. There simply must be a personal mind behind the material world. I can reach no other reasonable conclusion. Not “my truth” or “your truth,” but His truth—the truth. An infinite, personal God who has spoken and is not silent, as Francis Schaeffer often said.

Would God’s Call Drop?

No—God’s call did not drop. He has spoken through nature, and even more clearly through two sources that decisively correct relativism: the Bible and the person of Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. God is present, and He has spoken.

The Bible stands as a reliable source of historical narrative and epistemological truth. It makes claims unlike any other ancient text, and it has withstood the test of time, scrutiny, and historical examination. As C.S. Lewis said, it has “the ring of true truth.” And as Ben Shapiro succinctly put it, “There is no such thing as ‘your truth.’ There is the truth, and your opinion.” Christ did not offer mere opinion; He made a singular, authoritative truth-claim.

In the New Testament epistle of Colossians, we read: “a true knowledge of God’s mystery, that is, Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:2–3). Not some treasures, but all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are both hidden and revealed in Christ.

Jesus did not say, “I am your truth,” or “I am a truth.” In John 14:6 He declared, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by Me.” Here Christ makes an absolute, exclusive statement: He is the truth—nothing less, nothing partial. He was crucified for claiming to be God, and He verified that claim by rising from the dead. The historical fact of the resurrection has never been successfully refuted. Many have attempted, but none have succeeded. The apostles and more than 500 eyewitnesses saw the risen Christ. His claim to be the truth and the only way to God was absolute, not relative.

In my view, relativism has been tried and found wanting. It does not withstand the test of time, logic, or everyday common sense. It simply does not work.

There is right and wrong, and behind it all stands the God of history. He has spoken clearly and made claims no other religious leader has dared to make.

Absolute truth exists—and it is absolutely true. Seek it in the person of Jesus Christ. You will be amazed by what you discover and by what He does in your life. Come to Christ and find the True Truth we all seek.

Stuart Atkins

About the Author
Stuart Atkins is a retired marketing professional with over 25 years of experience in the high-technology industry and a former adjunct professor of marketing at Cal State Fullerton, where he taught for 17 years while also operating a small digital marketing agency. He holds an MBA and two degrees in theology and has written books on business and theology. He writes on Christian apologetics, history, economics, and worldview issues, drawing on both academic study and decades of professional experience. He is the founder of ChristianProofs.com.