"For us Christians, all truth is 'relative,' relative to this Jew named Jesus. We really do not know what the world is, much less where it is headed, until we know him."
Postmodernism typically evokes the notion that all truth is relative. I once saw a book that labeled postmodernism as a heresy because of this very idea. After all, if all truth is relative, and Jesus says, "I am the truth," who is anyone to say that he is or isn't right?
(Interesting side note from a Barna Email Update I just received [ http://www.barna.org ]: "By a 3-to-1 margin (64% vs. 22%) adults said truth is always relative to a person's situation. The perspective was even more lopsided among teenagers.")
The popular belief of universalists contends that there are multiple paths to God. As nice as this sounds, that just doesn't make sense to me. If I believe in just one small part of what Jesus did, then I have to accept his whole teaching, his whole life. I have to believe him when he says "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." That narrows the field down.
I would even contend that I still do not know what the world is or where it's going. I do know that God is in control and that this world will eventually be replaced by a new one. I don't know how or when that's going to happen. In this anxiety over the future, I have to stake my claim to Christ, to what he says is truth. If he says all my good deeds won't get me into Heaven, I have to believe that. The world has given me nothing better to believe in.
Our pastor did a series at TerraNova called "Redefining Reality." In this series we went through different words associated with the Christian faith, such as communion and prayer. In our walks with Christ, we are every day encouraged to redefine our perceived reality with the words of truth found in Christ's reality. He's the only one that really knows what's going on. The rest of us are just guessing. We attempt to make the best decisions we can, but we don't have near the amount of knowledge that God does regarding our own lives. In that sense, he knows more truth about us than we do about ourselves.
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