We live in an age of uncertainty. We are ignorant of our past, and fearful of our future. And in the here and now, well, we just don’t know. The one thing we’re sure of is that we’re not sure at all. That is a part of the folly of postmodernism. This epistemology of the culture is immediately, obviously and devastatingly self-referentially absurd. It affirms the truth that there is no truth. It says you are false if you affirm there is a false. But the contradictions do not stop there. It is not only epistemological nonsense; it is also moral nonsense.
As post-modernism crept into our culture it came in the thoughts and works of a ragtag band of mourning Jeremiahs. Sartre wept over the death of truth, as did his compatriot Camus. Kierkegaard may have been the melancholy Dane, but Nietzsche was not a man you wanted to invite to a party. This was no giddy celebration of emancipation, but the doleful realization that we are but strangers in a hostilely indifferent universe.
It’s ironic that the younger generation, those who find the lightness of being rather bearable, in some ways are more consistent than their fathers. Consider, why would one mourn to discover that there is no truth? One cannot mourn unless one presupposes that it is true that truth has value. If nothing is true, it’s not true that truth has value. And so nothing is lost. And so there should be no mourning. Perhaps they’ve learned the lesson, though we cannot either say that it is true that it is false to think it sad that there is no true, if there is no true.
The younger generation, however, has its own version of the same inconsistency. They not only mourn the loss of truth, they attack as evil those few of us left who affirm that there is truth. One of the supposed great advantages of relativism is what is can do for peace. If Roman Catholicism can be true for you, and Protestantism true for me, but neither can really be true, than why all the fighting in occupied Ireland? If Judaism has no claim on the Muslim, and Islam on the Jew, we need no more summits at Camp David. The problem is solved. If we just agree to disagree, or agree to agree that it is true neither of what we hold to is true, then peace descends like the dew.
We don’t agree. We affirm that Jesus is Lord, over those who in His grace recognize it, and those who do not. We affirm that there is true truth, and that relativism is a lie. And so we are attacked. Sometimes we are attacked lawlessly, as in Waco, or in Nazi Germany. Sometimes we are attacked through the law, as in the silencing of abortion protesters. (Of course, war does break out, every time your reality clashes with mine. To me, it’s fine for me to take what you own. To you, perhaps not. And so the shooting starts.) But so far, and believe me this is changing, we are merely attacked socially. That is, we are called names. And tops on the list is “Arrogant.”
That is what we are called, whoever the “we” is that affirms objective, knowable reality. “Who do we think we are? Do we think we have a corner on the truth? Who are we to say what’s true and what’s false? Where is our humility? We always think we’re right.” The pimps of tolerance won’t tolerate us walking on their street corner. It’s bad for business. And sadly, we are just relativists enough that we let this nonsense get to us. We bend and scrape, and plead, and make sure we let everyone know that some of our best friends are relativists.
We miss the simple hypocrisy of their judgment. We miss out on the opportunity to respond, “Are you saying it is objectively true that I should never say something is objectively true?” “Are you saying it is wrong for me to say that anything is wrong?”
But we also miss the most astounding hypocrisy of all, that they think they have mastered humility and that we have the arrogance problem. Ask them this: Which is more arrogant? I say that there is an objective reality outside of myself. I did not make it; I do not control it. I cannot comprehend it in its totality. But I can, and you can know something about it that is real and true. Or, I create all reality. Whatever is is because I believe it to be so. Neither you, nor some god, nor anyone else can change the reality that I have constructed in my own head. To me sodomy is fine, and as such, it can never be judged.”
Relativism is not rooted in epistemological humility, but in the very ontological pride with which the serpent tempted Eve. Bite into relativism and you shall be as God, creating reality, morality, all that is. Our view in turn turns on the conviction that the God who made us also made all things, and that He has revealed some things to us, such that we can know them. We are the subjects of reality, not its master.
Relativism is not humility; it is instead humiliating. It is the non-system of non-sense that falls of its own weight before it can take a step. All the moral posturing is just that, the faux posture of those slouching toward Gehenna. We are indeed called to be humble, to recognize that there but for the grace of God go all of us. But we must never be humble about God, and about His revelation of Himself. We must never confuse our own wishes with His reality (especially when it comes to Him, when we write off His attributes by speaking of “God-to-me”). He is what He is; that’s His name. And we are His creatures, who must believe and affirm all that He teaches.