The claim that truth is subjective — that what is true for you may not be true for me — is one of the most widely held positions in contemporary culture. It sounds tolerant and reasonable. But Scripture treats it as one of the most fundamental errors a person or society can make.
The Mistaken Assumption
Truth is a matter of perspective. Different people, cultures, and experiences produce different truths, and none of them can claim priority over others. Insisting that your truth is the truth is arrogant at best and oppressive at worst. The humble position is to hold your beliefs loosely and acknowledge that others may be equally right from their vantage point.
What Scripture Actually Shows
Scripture does not treat truth as perspectival. Jesus does not say He is a truth — He says He is the truth (John 14:6). The claim is absolute and exclusive. John’s gospel opens with the declaration that the Word was in the beginning and that all things were made through Him — a claim about the structure of reality, not a cultural preference. Pilate’s question — what is truth? — is presented in the gospel not as sophisticated philosophy but as a failure to recognize what was standing in front of him. The biblical worldview assumes that truth exists, that it is knowable, that it is connected to the character of God, and that human perspective can be wrong about it.
Why This Feels Hard
Claiming that truth is objective sounds arrogant in a culture that treats certainty as a social threat. But the alternative — that no truth claim can be made — is equally problematic. It cannot critique injustice (who decides what is unjust?), cannot sustain genuine relationship (which requires honesty), and cannot ground any moral claim whatsoever. Subjective truth is not humble — it is ultimately incoherent.
What Faith Looks Like Here
Holding to objective truth does not require arrogance about your own access to it. Scripture calls for humility about human understanding while maintaining confidence that truth itself is real. The goal is not to claim that you have perfect understanding but that there is something to understand — and that it is worth pursuing honestly, carefully, and with genuine openness to correction by Scripture and by reality.