This past Wednesday, we had a dozen Athens High School seniors in our home for pizza and Bible study. Some of these students are in church regularly and some aren’t. Some have visited GCPC a fair bit over the years. Since we weren’t starting the actual study, we had a lengthy discussion about truth.

I told them the story about getting in trouble in school when I was in 9th grade. I’ll spare you the details but will simply point out that there were two versions of what happened. There was my version of the events and the Middle School principal’s (Dr. Adams) version of what went down.

My question to these teenagers was simple: Is there a scenario in which we both are telling the truth?

I. Was. Shocked.

Nearly every single one of them was prepared to argue that I could have been telling my truth and Dr. Adams was telling hers.

How do you argue against personalized, relative, subjective truth in the minds of high school seniors? Simple. 

“Have you ever accused a friend of lying to you?”

If truth is relative, lying doesn’t exist. If truth can be up to each individual, then that individual can’t twist the truth. They can’t fabricate falsehoods. They can always hide behind, “Well, this is my truth.” And there’s nothing we can say back.

This is just an example of what the church is facing today. We must first believe that truth is objective, is from God, who is Himself true, and has been communicated to us in His word. For that matter, Jesus promised that the Spirit would “guide [us] into all truth” (John 16:13).

We must also learn how to speak that truth and defend that truth from the moral relativism so pervasive in the world around us. Part of our mission, as a church, is to be aware of the schemes of the evil one (2 Corinthians 10:11; Ephesians 4:14), in the world without being of the world, have our thinking renewed according to the Word of God (Romans 12:1-2), so that we might be better prepared to reach the lost and equip them to serve in Christ’s kingdom – even in Athens.