Recently, a Christian teacher in my school gave me this book to challenge my thinking. It is the book, \u201cThink\u201d, by John Piper. In this essay, I want to share about something that I learned from this book\u2013relativism.<\/p>\n
People who practice relativism believe that \u201cthere is no objective, external standard for measuring the truth or falsehood of a statement\u201d. They say that the word \u2018truth\u2019, does not exist outside you. They say that whatever that you may think is \u2018true\u2019, is not a standard that everyone else in the universe should agree with. The book then shows how relativism is harmful.<\/p>\n
In the book, John Piper encourages us to make serious thinking an important part of our pursuit of God. This goal is based on the conviction that God exists, is the ultimate Truth, and will never change. Therefore, God is a \u201cfirm, universal, never-changing foundation\u201d for the truth. Who God is and what He says is truth. But this goal is useless if this truth cannot exist or cannot be known. One way relativism is shown is to say: \u201cGod, I don\u2019t bow to your standards. I create my own.\u201d So relativism of this kind is definitely something that is wrong and evil.<\/p>\n
One major example of the seeds of relativism that the book provided was from Matthew 21:23-27. When Jesus was teaching, the chief priests and the elders asked him, \u201cBy what authority are you doing these things?\u201d Then Jesus replied that if they answer one question, he will tell them his answer. He asked them if John\u2019s baptism came from heaven, or of human origin. They said among themselves, \u201cIf we say, \u2018From heaven,\u2019 he will ask, \u2018Then why didn\u2019t you believe him?\u2019 But if we say, \u2018Of human origin\u2019\u2014we are afraid of the people, for they all hold that John was a prophet.\u201d So they told Jesus that they don\u2019t know, and Jesus did not give them his answer<\/p>\n
Here, Jesus asks them to choose between two simple sides of a truth: either John\u2019s baptism is from heaven or from man. So they start to think carefully and calculate. This is a kind of reasoning that hides the truth. In fact, the truth is irrelevant here. All they want is not to be shamed by the people, and to not be harmed. What matters to them is not the truth, and that goes against our goal in pursuing God.<\/p>\n
In this book, I learned about how even the seeds of relativism can be very destructive in our connection with God. Relativism doesn\u2019t meet the purpose of thinking: to find the truth. It uses thinking as self-protection and an escape. This is something that I have learned to never follow. I believe that God is the Truth, and that he will never change.<\/p>\n
By Hazel Lim Zhan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Recently, a Christian teacher in my school gave me this book to challenge my thinking. It is the book, \u201cThink\u201d, by John Piper. In this essay, I want to share about something that I learned from this book\u2013relativism. People who practice relativism believe that \u201cthere is no objective, external standard for measuring the truth or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,231,10],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/48980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scaccmm.sarawakmethodist.org\/new\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}