Upward, Downward, Inward, Upward: How God’s Eternality and Transcendence Helps Free People from the Soul-Crushing Load of Relativism
A prayer of Moses, the man of God
1 Lord, You have been our dwelling generation after generation.
2 Before the mountains were born, and before you bore the earth and world, even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
3 You return men to the dust, and you say, “Return, sons of man,”
4 Because a thousand years in your eyes are like yesterday when it passes, like a watch in the night.
5 You swept them away like a flood; they sleep. In the morning, they are like grass; they spring up.
6 In the morning, it flourishes, and it springs up; toward the evening, it is destroyed, and it withers.
Psalm 90:1–6
Taking a little different approach with this devotional, let’s consider very briefly and generally the “movement” of the foundation of truth and the implications of such a movement. (“Movement” in quotes because the foundation has not really moved, but people live their lives under the illusion that it has). People understood the Scriptures to be the ultimate source of Truth until the 18th century (Upward = Christian Theism). The Enlightenment ironically proved to dull hearts, dim eyes, and harden consciences as people began to believe that truth resided in nature, in what a man can observe and test (downward = Deism and Naturalism). Deism reigned until the beginning of the 19th century when people began looking inward for Truth (Inward = relativism or subjectivism). The mindset of “My Truth” is a soul-crushing illusion.
Though the thought of a person deciding Truth for him/herself sounds loving, it in reality is simply people erecting and worshiping idols in their own images. Two of many painful repercussions of relativism are as follows: (1) if truth is determined by the individual, that individual feels the unbearable pressure of having an opinion because their opinion is inextricably linked to their identity; with no opinion or decision on what is true, they have no worth; (2) If truth is determined by the individual, any disagreement will be intensely personal because a person is not disagreeing with an idea, a person is disagreeing with the core of who that person is. These two repercussions bold and underline the reality that no human can bear the burden of defining truth, though in our pride we desire such a responsibility.
We find, moreover, such incredible freedom in letting God be what only He can be: the Source and Fountain of truth. From everlasting to everlasting, the God of the Bible is God! He is morally perfect, and He has communicated with His creation in His Word. Truth is defined by what He has spoken in His Word. When God’s Word is the final authority, that allows men and women by God’s Spirit to slay the sin of man-centeredness, dispelling the illusion of relativism. There is such freedom in submitting to this eternal, transcendent God of the Bible, infinitely more freedom than is promised in relativism. May we never cease reminding ourselves and each other that we are but dust and that Yahweh is the Creator, having existed from everlasting to everlasting.
