THE EMMAUS WALK PRESENTS:

"How to Share Truth in a Relativistic World,"

by Kim Triller, CPC HEARTBEAT, VOL. 11, NO. 3

Kim Triller is Executive Director, Crisis Pregnancy Center, Tacoma and Puyallup Washington

"It is vain, oh men, that you seek within

yourselves the cure for all your miseries. All your insight

has led to the knowledge that it is not in yourselves that

you discover the true and the good...Your principal maladies

are pride, which cuts you off from God, and sensuality

which binds you to the earth."--Blaise Pascal, "The Mind on Fire"

As Christians and Americans we face a a deadly enemy entrenched in the highest levels of our government (and the lowest too), Relativism. We need to know what this enemy is and how he thinks so we can defeat him, and not compromise. This war is all-out battle for supremacy. This enemy uses deception and intimidation, and also compromise to defeat and enslave us. Demonization of their opposition is also a favorite weapon. Post-modern society is relativistic. We face a dictatorship of relativism, which is the kind of tyranny that relativism leads to. This dictatorship of relativism is presently holding the Presidency, the Congress, most of the courts, the schools, the universities, the media, even mainline churches. Listen to how it speak, how it acts, and know it for what it is--Relativism. Kim Triller defines Relativism, and how dangerous an enemy it can be in our society. Yet she also exposes its inherent contradictions, the irrationality that is at the heart of its logic and reasoning. With these contradictions in hand, along with the Word of God and its true absolutes, we can as Christians confront and defeat this false absolute of relativism and return our nation and society to its Judaeo-Christian foundations.--Ed.

It has been said that truth, by definition, will always be exclusive. Jesus claimed to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Historically we know that Jesus claimed such exclusivity. Had He not made that statement, Jesus would have been unreasonably implying that truth is all-inclusive, which is an impossibility.

In this age of tolerance, of all-acceptance, and of relativity, those who speak from moral absolutes and proclaim right from wrong are condemned as radical, unyielding, judgmental, intolerant, bigoted and trying to force their morality on others. To the relativist, truth is what one wants it to be be and everything will fall according to the reality one's perception of truth has determined. Moral relativism is the belief that there are no objective standards of right and wrong, only personal preferences. Therefore, we should tolerate other views as being equal to our own.

Scott Klusendorf, a pro-life apologist with the organization, Stand to Reason, states that "Relativism is seriously flawed for at least three reasons.

"First, it is self-refuting. That is to say, it cannot live by its own rules.

"Second, relativists cannot reasonably say that anything is wrong.

"Third, it is impossible to live as a relativist."

For years the pro-choice advocates have steered the argument about abortion from the one true issue at hand. That issue is "What is the unborn?" According to Klusendorf, "the answer to the question, 'What is the unborn?' trumps all other considerations in the abortion debate. It is key to answering virtually every other objection." His colleague, Gregory Kouki points out, "If the unborn are not human, no justification for abortion is necessary. But if the unborn are human, no justification is adequate."

In their attempt to get attention away from the one true issue in abortion, abortion advocates have utilized several tactics to steer the public away from the question "What is the unborn?" They have cried foul when graphic pictures of aborted babies have been shown. It is interesting to look at a pro-choice advocate and feminist's reaction to this ploy. Naomi Wolf made the following point in a New Republic article of October 16, 1985:

"The pro-choice movement often treats with contempt the pro-lifer's practice of holding up to their faces their disturbing graphics...[But] how can we charge that it is vile and repulsive for pro-lifers to brandish vile and repulsive images if the images are real? To insist that truth is in poor taste is the very height of hypocrisy. Besides, if these images are often the facts of the matter, and if we then claim that it is offensive for pro-choice women to be confronted with them, then we are making the judgment that women are too inherently weak to face a truth about which they have to make a grave decision. This view is unworthy of feminism."

Another tactic used by pro-abortion advocates to get away from the one true issue, "What is the unborn?" is to attack the person rather than refute the argument. In his book, "Pro-life 101", Klusendorf slays, "Instead of defending the abortion act itself, some "pro-choice advocates personally attack those who do not share their views...Instead of defending their views with facts and arguments, (they) are attacking the character of pro-lifers. We call this the "ad hominem fallacy". It is fallacious "reasoning because even if the personal attack is true, it does nothing to refude the pro-lifer's argument."

Pro-choice advocates also confused functioning as a person with being a person--such as the case for severely handicapped preborns, or the viability of the unborn. Another method is to disguise the true position by appealing to the hard cases--such as the case of rape, incest, the need for partial birth abortion, etc.

In his book, "Can Man Live Without God," Ravi Zacharias tells about our culture, and the entertainment industry that has gone to great lengths to pervert the truth about our human lives.

"It is this willful suppression of truth that results in an assault upon the sacred in the pursuit of the profane...God tells us we are created in His image. In the book of Genesis, He strongly requites the penalty for murder because murder is a direct attack upon the dignity of man, crated in the image of God...Jesus reminded His followers that true worship is not in a building of bricks or stones. The human body itself is a temple...These two truths--that humanity is made in God's image and that the body is the temple of God--are two of the cardinal teachings of Scripture. What else will entertainment do when it gets profane but attack the two principal teachings of the human essence? Violence defaces the image of God, and sensually profanes the temple of God."

Recognizing and acknowledging these tactics, and bringing the argument back to the one true issue at hand helps open the eyes of many who are "personally opposed, but..." The truth of the matter is exclusive. The unborn are human beings worthy of protection.

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