Pontius Pilate, the Roman politician, was the man who asked Jesus, “What is truth?” Pilate was all too familiar with situational ethics, relativism, and public opinion. He saw a fickle crowd saying “Hosanna”to Jesus last Sunday, and that now says, “Crucify Him!” today.
Pilate’s comment reminds me of the story about three men sitting in a room: a statistician, a mathematician, and finally, a politician. Each man was asked, “What is two plus two?” With the help of his graphs and charts, the statistician determined the answer lay between three and five. The mathematician got out his calculator and notepad and decided four was the correct answer. Looking both ways, the politician whispered into the interviewer’s ear, “What would you like two plus two it to be?”
Webster defined relativism as “The doctrine that knowledge or truth is relative and dependent upon time, place, and individual experience.” Ancient Israel had times of relativism. “In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” (Judges 21:25). Because Israel refused King Jesus’ rule, they made up their own rules and laws. They defined marriage, morality, and sanctity of life by “what was right in their eyes.” Sound familiar?
There is a significant problem with this! God said to Job, “Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4). God’s creation is ruled by immovable absolute truths. Take gravity, for instance. If a friend of yours was going to walk off a great precipice and you said, “You’re going to fall!” he or she replied, “Gravity might be a truth for you to follow, but it’s not for me.” Your friend would be both foolish and dead.
God, who by His Word founded the earth, said about his written word, “Thy word is truth.” (John 17:17). The truth about heaven & hell, salvation, and the devil is as true as the law of gravity. When we “speak the truth in love,” we shouldn’t be any less confident about the results of stepping off an earthly cliff than an eternal cliff. Both truths are absolute!
