The World That Says There Is No Truth
“That's just your truth.” Few sentences end a conversation about God faster. It sounds humble and tolerant. It suggests that everyone has a private version of reality and no one has the right to call anyone else wrong. But the slogan carries a hidden claim of its own, and it cannot bear the weight people put on it.
Knowledge can feed pride. The point of this study is not to win arguments but to know what you believe and why, so that you can speak the truth in love with a settled heart and point people to Jesus rather than to yourself.
The belief that truth and morality are not absolute but are determined by personal preference, culture, or circumstance. It claims that no universal truth exists, yet in saying so it makes a universal truth claim that undermines itself.
The worldview that denies objective, knowable truth and treats meaning as something constructed by individuals or communities rather than discovered. It is deeply skeptical of grand explanations of reality, often views language and truth claims as tools of power, and leaves people with personal narratives instead of a shared foundation for truth, meaning, and hope.
The two are close cousins. Relativism is the everyday conviction: what is true for you may not be true for me. Postmodernism is the larger outlook behind it, shaped in the late twentieth century by thinkers who doubted that any single story could explain the world. The French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard famously summed up the postmodern mood as “incredulity toward metanarratives”: a refusal to believe any big story about everything.
Both promise freedom: freedom from rules imposed by others, and freedom to define yourself. Scripture has seen this before.
“In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”JUDGES 21:25 · KJV
The book of Judges ends with that sentence, and the same refrain appears a few chapters earlier (Judges 17:6). Between the two stand some of the darkest pages in the Bible: household idolatry, a horrific crime, and a civil war that nearly wiped out a tribe of Israel. When everyone does what is right in his own eyes, the result is not freedom but chaos and despair.
When someone says, “That's just your truth,” how do you respond?
Loading the rest of this article
For Deeper Study
- Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-AirAmazon Francis J. Beckwith and Gregory KouklA short, clear explanation of why relativism fails, with practical answers to its slogans. Beckwith joined the Roman Catholic Church in 2007, after this book was written; the book does not teach Catholic doctrine, but read his later work with that in mind.
- Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian ConvictionsAmazon Gregory KouklHow to use gentle questions to keep a conversation going and expose weak arguments without being combative.
- Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of PostmodernismAmazon Douglas GroothuisA fuller treatment of postmodern ideas about truth, language, and identity, answered from Scripture and reason.
- The Abolition of ManAmazon C. S. LewisA brief classic on objective moral value; its appendix gathers moral teaching shared across many cultures.
- Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural CaptivityAmazon Nancy PearceyShows how the split between private values and public facts shapes modern thinking, and how a biblical worldview heals it.
- Foxe's Book of MartyrsAmazon John FoxeThe classic Protestant record of those who died for the faith, from the early church to the English Reformation.
As an Amazon Associate, Theologica earns from qualifying purchases.
The Authority of Truth
Truth is discovered, not invented: God is its source, His Word is the final authority, and feelings never determine what is true.
Open Doctrine