This is an assignment I had for my apologetics class this semester.
In the world's eyes, truth is often viewed quite relative. The problem is defining what truths are, and what (if anything) makes them true. Since there is no single accepted criteria with which to recognize something to be true, there are only theories. Skeptics doubt all notions of truth, and relativists want to replace absolute truth with a theory of relative truth. In a relativist mindset there is no more to truth than a personal or cultural belief, which means that what is true for me might not ne true for you. The result is that there is a lot of different truths for everything in the world. Synonyms with the word truth are: fact, veracity, sincerity, candor, frankness, precision, exactness (www.websters-online-dictionary.org). Even the thought about relative truth, however, is plainly absurd. Anyone in his right mind agrees that a person either exists, or doesn't exist. One either has been born or hasn't been born. The fact that I am alive, thus I exist in the world, will not change in any way even if someone who had never seen me wouldn't believe in my existence. It is no different in the case of God - He either exists or does not exist. Therefore, even if you decide not to believe in Him, the outside circumstances and the absolute reality remains the same. Truth is something that is an irrefutable fact, something that is real, completely irrespective of whether one decides to believe it or not.
In Psalm 119:160 the Bible declares the entirety of God's word to be true. Psalm 33:4 says that "the word of the LORD is right, and all His work is done in truth". His truth endures to all generations! (Psalm 100:5) Jesus promised us that if we abide in His word, we shall know the truth and the truth shall make us free (John 8:31,32). Besides that, Lord Jesus Himself professed to be "the way, the truth and the life" in John 14:6. It is clear that we need to study the Scriptures in order to find the true truth in this world.
In a society that is based on relativism rather than truth, one shouldn't be expecting good results in any aspect of life. No one can judge or confront another for his actions or behavior, since there is no absolute truth. Defining acceptable and decent behavior becomes irrelevant; if stealing is right in my view of life, how can anyone tell me that I'm wrong if truth is relative?
As an example, let's think about the horrific genocide in Rwanda that took place only 17 years ago, in 1994. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed as the Hutus tried to wipe all the Tutsis out of the country. They were nothing but two different ethnic groups; Hutus being the majority, seeing the Tutsis as a foreign race, as an indigenous minority. If truth is only a personal or cultural belief, as the relativists insist, the Hutu militants were only performing the act that in their personal belief was right. Yet I'm sure we all agree that what they did was terrifyingly wrong.
In Romans 1:22,25,28 Paul says that those professing to be wise became fools, exchanging the truth of God for the lie worshipping and serving the creature rather than the Creator. As they didn't like to retain God in their knowledge, God have them over to a debased mind. This is exactly what we can see in the world today, resulting partly from the relativist mindset. Things that used to be clearly immoral in our culture, are now widely accepted, such as homosexualism, having sex outside of marriage or even outside of a relationship, etc. Even though people were already committing those sins in Paul's day and age, I'm quite confident that the situation today is much worse.
To conclude my thoughts, I can only quote 2 Chronicles 13:8 "For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." As born-again Christians "we are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error". (1 John 4:6)
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