Absolute Truth vs Relative Truth - Developing Your Worldview

Hey, I want to continue our conversation we had last week on absolute truth versus situational ethics But I want to change the title a little bit call it absolute truth versus relative truth This is an essential thought That we're gonna look at today as we figure out what it means to develop a world view You understand all of us have a world view Everybody does no matter where you're at no matter where you live you have a lens that you wear continually As you see the world and you look at the news when you hear about you know things happening in the world when you see current events you see through a certain lens That you've been either raised with or influenced by and primarily in young people today Most of them see the world through the relationships they have with others first then before looking at the evidence of You know content that helps shape their worldview and so the danger is with this with younger generation is They build their worldview based upon connections with people rather than sound Evidence that helps them know what's true and so absolute truth versus relative truth is essential for understanding how to build a worldview for example take any of the current events that have happened in the last few months and You have a perspective based upon your lens that you see life through in how you watch the injustices of the world And so I want to talk to you right now about how to what is absolute truth. What is relative truth? And then how do you build your lens? To really create the most solid foundation for your life In what to build on absolute truth the definition is something that is true at all times and in all places Regardless of beliefs perspectives or situations it is unchanging universal and independent of anyone's Opinions okay for example two plus two equals four you're welcome. All right. This is mathematically true no matter What you believe okay water freezes at zero Celsius or 32 Fahrenheit Under standard atmospheric pressure. This is a physical fact you can fight it or not It's just always gonna be true something cannot exist something cannot both exist and not exist at the same time in the same way That's a basic principle of logic or the law of non-contradiction All right Objectives non-influenced by culture perspectives or opinions These are some key features often associated with science logic and some religious philosophical claims some people believe That you know these kind of thoughts don't really matter just we just need the power of God I believe we need the power of God, but we also need logic and reason in fact We're gonna look at something here in Acts chapter 19, which is one of the greatest revivals That happened in the first century church, and you're gonna see how these thoughts played into being okay relative truth means truth is truth that depends on the perspective culture or Experience of individuals or groups it can vary from person to person or society to society for example Some people think spicy food is spicy some people think it's not at all It's all it's a relative you know a relative taste right. It's wrong to eat meat for some vegans It's you know and for others if you don't eat meat. You're not a man, right? Freedom means being able to do what you want. That's what the idea of freedom can you know it can vary based upon political or sociological standards Your key features here are it's subjective. It's culturally or personally influenced often found in ethics Aesthetics and personal beliefs, so why does this matter okay in science absolute truth or the law of physics? Helps us understand and navigate the natural world you know for example It's really good that the world believes in gravity because if they didn't people be trying to fly without squirrel suits on and we'd be Having a lot more accidents In ethics and philosophy the debates between absolute and relative truth shapes discussions on morality justice and human rights in religion some claims that belief Reflects absolute truth while others argue All beliefs are culturally relative and so this is essential for the conversation Absolute truth is like a fixed compass Where relative truth is like a map you can just kind of see I can choose 500 different ways to get to a certain? Place but absolute truth is north is north south is south east is east west is west All right How about let's look at? You know religions absolute truth in religion some religion systems claim about absolute truth that beliefs are considered universally valid for all People regard regardless of time or culture for example in Christianity Jesus Christ is the Son of God. He's presented as an absolute truth in Islam there is no God, but Allah is a foundational absolute claim that they they claim There are not just personal beliefs their claim to be true for everyone, so you got to look at the evidence In order to find what's true relative truth in religion others view religious beliefs as culturally or personally the relative Meaningful and true for followers, but not necessarily binding for everyone for example a Buddhist might see Reincarnation as truth within their beliefs, but not expected to share it to share to not expected others to share Some of might say all religions are true in their own way reflecting a relativist view I get this all the time When I talk people on the streets, they're like yeah, that's true. That's great for you That's true for you, and they believe crazy stuff absolute relative truth truth when it comes to Religion is the most illogical Asinine thought that that people could apply to belief in faith in God Because you know if you look around today at different religions in the world I mean jihadists believe it's okay to blow up children and blow up people in the name of their God or you know in Hinduism in India a family could be starving to death and and a cow comes walking through their rice patty and destroys their rice fields But because they have a belief that that cow could either be a reincarnated grandma or somebody else or a God They have to let that cow destroy their crops, and then they starve as a family. That's crazy All right now you might be offended right now that I'm talking about this But the I'm just telling you the facts and that's just nuts to believe. Oh, yeah, that's just good that you believe that and so You'll know the truth when and when the truth and the truth will set you free Jesus said Martin Luther said I'd rather be divided by truth than united with error That's a good word. We're living in a time right now. It's not a peacetime. We're in a wartime Jesus said I have come don't think I've come to bring peace. I've come to bring a sword Jesus brought Division I know a lot of people don't like that, but the truth is He came and he he destroyed Pharisees religious mindsets He destroyed all these other ways to God and showed he said I am the way the truth in the life No man comes to the Father except through me if you don't believe that that's divisive to your beliefs. That's not subjective truth Okay But we're living in a day Paul said in Romans chapter 1 verse 25 that they exchanged the truth about God for a lie A.W. Tozer said the true followers of Christ will not ask if I embrace this truth What will it cost me rather he will say this is truth God help me to walk in it and let come what may So good so good. Listen. Here's another thought. Okay, this is from What's his name Randy Alcorn said you and I can discover truth, but we cannot create it What is true is true and what's not is not for all of us all the time our cultural views True our culture views truth as something inside us Subjective to revision according to our own growth and enlightenment Scripture views truth as something outside us which we can believe or not, but can never sway It's important that you understand Absolute truth versus relative truth if you want to build a life, it's going to be solid When I was a teenager, I I built my life on Relative truth, I didn't understand any of these terms or any of these thoughts But I thought it'd be okay to smoke it if you got it get plastered on the weekend, you know do all sorts of stuff in sexual morality and and think that I All was gonna be good, but I realized that that that kind of living brought major consequences of pain in my life And that pain helped turn me back to God and so living in relative truth Will actually will actually end up wounding and hurting you now, let's look at the Bible in Acts chapter 19 where Paul the Apostle He in Acts chapter 19. He found some disciples. They got filled with the Holy Spirit They got baptized in the name of Jesus and then he went to the synagogue in Acts 19 He went to the synagogue and begin to preach there and the Bible says that their hearts were hardened and they did not believe but spoke evil of the way before the multitude and he departed from them and With his disciples and then he went and he reasoned daily in the school of Tyrannus The school of Tyrannus was probably a Greek school where they went to learn philosophical thought and the more intellectual way, right? Now here's the deal. He this this continued for two years. So that all who dwelt in Asia This is crazy here. Listen to this all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus both Jews and Greeks Now God worked unusual miracles by the hands of Paul so a couple of things happened Paul reasoned with the world according to what is true and he also worked miracles signs and wonders and all of Asia heard the word of the Lord because of what Paul was doing there and it broke out into a massive revival of God moving so it's truth and power that awakens a person's conscience Psalms 19 says that the law of the Lord is perfect reviving the soul What do you mean reviving the soul the law of the Lord thou shalt not lie thou shalt not steal thou shalt not commit adultery How does that revive the soul because when somebody is living in sin when they're living in the air of their ways believing I can Just do whatever I want, which is relative truth The wages of sin is death it creates death in our lives But the law of the Lord shows you like a mirror what you look like and it actually brings that thing of sin in your life to the forefront and causes you to see you're actually dead and The truth is when you see oh my gosh, I'm dead. It cuts your heart to the core to where you're like You want help? That's what happened to me as a teenager. I need help I need something else in my life The law of the Lord is there to help you turn to Christ so that you don't live in death Wow Ephesians chapter 1 chapter 2 verse 1 says you who were once dead had been brought to life By by the grace of God you who wants dead. Oh, I can't remember. I forgot it. Let me look at it here I want to quote it perfectly Ephesians chapter 2 says and you he made alive Who were dead in trespasses and sins God takes those who are dead and makes them come alive by his grace and by his mercy Who else paid for your sin who else? Took death to the cross so that you could come to new life. Nobody else did that. But Jesus that is an absolute fact I don't believe in absolute truth. Are you absolutely sure? To say there's no absolute truth is a statement of absolutes And you're actually destroying your own argument in your fat and your emphatic opinion that there's no such thing as absolute truth There is absolute truth just like in in world in you know There is absolute truth just like in gravity just like in you know When water freezes just like in you know, all these other things we talked about in the earlier part of this video So why is it important to build a really strong worldview? Have you ever had somebody lie to you and Then you paid the consequences for believing their lies We've all been there before and it's funny because all of a sudden it was fine for them to lie to you in their minds But in your mind you got hurt and mad about it Why was it long wrong for them to lie to you if there's no such thing as absolute truth, and it's just relative Well that relative truth ended up hurting you and hurting your relationship so when I was in high school, I was trying to power through an assignment one day and Me and my friend went to the library and I was just trying to write this this This script for a speech had to do in speech class And and I was cheating I was just trying to get through the assignment and my friend was like, okay And he got out a dictionary and he began to read to me. He's like just write this down he began to read to me and I was basically plagiarizing from this book and And then I get in class the next day and he was a man. This is gonna be good So good. This is gonna be exciting so I go up in front of the class and I'm reading about the assassination of somebody and You know going through it in his history and I'm reading and all of a sudden I'm in the front of the class and I Say so-and-so was assassinated by James Earl Jones Blah blah blah blah and my friends sitting there and I finished my speech and my teachers looking at me like, okay And I sat down and he looks at me and he goes you're such an idiot man. James Earl Jones was played Darth Vader, you know That was like, oh my gosh. I Didn't even know what the heck I was doing Listen, that was a bad day for me It was fine for him to lie to me and I paid the price at my expense for you know, obvious obvious reasons. So Maybe this is a stupid example, but the truth is You got to build your life on a world. That's that was a that was a funny moment But what if somebody lies to you? about who they are and you end up marrying that person and They think it was false just a lie. It's just fine It's just a lie, but yet you enter into a covenant of marriage with them and you really didn't know who you were marrying Because they were believing truth is relative in the moment and it's fine Right when people get married make decisions like that boy You will you will not be able to escape the consequences that will come from decisions like that So it's important to build your life on a worldview. That's solid Genesis chapter 1 verse 26 and 27 as an essential verse That's never been more controversial today to quote but I'll quote it It says that and God said let us make man in our image and in our likeness So he created them both male and female he created them male and female and so our founding fathers They looked at the Bible and they found tons of references to found our founding documents the Constitution United States of America the Bill of Rights and One of the thoughts they portrayed in there that was from Genesis chapter 1 26 is that all men are created equal in the sight of God Well if I was to come in the 1955 or 1960s and I was to say all men are created equal in the sight of God this is absolutely true at all times for every generation and it's true now black people are created in the image and likeness of God just like a white person is just like a Japanese person is at the Time in 1955 that would have been controversial to say why because people were applying relative truth To culture rather than biblical truth and it was a biblical worldview that ended up shifting culture away From slavery and from racism and it's the biblical worldview that will continue to shape this world For good in the future there really is only one hope for America So how do we build our biblical worldview when it comes to the unborn? marriage sexuality finances The way we treat the poor all of these things listen the Bible is the clearest Roadmap we have of how to create a biblical worldview of truth and the Bible is true This is really the thing this and you can try to put the Bible on trial all day long But the Bible is not the thing on trial because the Bible is true and it will outlast all Generations of people who try and fight against it So let me go really fast on why let me talk really fast on why you can trust the Bible To shape your worldview in your lens from in other words if one of your friends says it's alright to lie It's fine. Just lie, but the Bible says Take off let lying spirit. Do not bear false witness Believe the Bible not your friends If your parent says to you, you know, you can pick whatever gender you want to be if you want to be a furry That's fine But the Bible says there's male and female believe the Bible over your parents if your teacher says You know that Something that contradicts the Word of God believe the Bible over your teacher It's weird that I'm even having to say some of these things But it's people are believing relative truth crazy things that are all it flows with culture Rather than standing on the rock of what God's Word says So let me give you just a few key thoughts and there's a lot of information out there of why I'm saying You can believe the Bible to build a worldview that is solid and unshakable In the current day we're living in where everybody's just believing whatever they want to believe that's relative for for themselves okay, the Bible is 66 books written over a span of about 1,500 years by over 40 different authors three different nations three different languages Hebrew Greek and Aramaic and It was written from different backgrounds of people from from from Kings to fishermen to politicians and they all wrote About their revelation of the God of Israel that manifested himself through the Son Jesus Christ they all wrote over the span of about 1,500 years and They all had one Theme from Genesis to Revelation that never contradicted each other and that was the redemption of mankind through Jesus Christ There's no other book on the face of the planet that does that nothing else You know would portray truth as powerful as the Bible does nothing can compare to that So I want to encourage you today To get into the Word of God and begin to begin to build a worldview of how you see marriage How you see children how you see the future how you see education how you see government should work How you see sexuality how you see family all based upon what the Bible says every Every contradict everything that we're trying to face today everything we're trying to figure out today in culture the Bible has an answer for and So I want to encourage you to jump into the Word of God for yourself. This is where you're gonna build a solid Ground to stand on that's unshakable Culture is constantly gonna be changing and shaking and moving don't build your worldview based upon reels And you know in different videos you see on Instagram. It doesn't matter Don't let those people shape your lives build it on what the Word of God says and you will not be shaken