What Is Truth?
“You have your truth, and I have mine.”
It sounds humble and tolerant, but it quietly empties the word truth of any real meaning. If truth is whatever we say it is, then no one can ever be wrong. And if no one can be wrong, no one can truly be right either.
So what is truth?
For centuries, philosophers understood truth as correspondence with reality. Thomas Aquinas defined it as “the conformity of the mind to reality.” Aristotle said truth is simply saying of what is that it is. In this view, truth is not invented… it’s discovered.
But modern culture has shifted. Truth is no longer treated as something outside of us, something we conform ourselves to. Instead, it’s treated as something inside of us, something we define based on feelings, experience, or perspective. We’ve moved from asking “What is real?” to “What feels real to me?”
That shift has consequences.
Relativism, the idea that truth changes based on individuals or cultures, undermines our ability to make meaningful moral or rational claims. Moral relativism leaves us unable to say that things like genocide, slavery, or injustice are truly wrong, only personally disliked. Epistemological relativism claims that knowledge itself is subjective, but it collapses under its own weight. If all truth is relative, then that statement must be relative too.
Even the act of reasoning assumes shared logic, stable meaning, and objective standards, things relativism quietly depends on while denying.
Scripture offers a different foundation.
Jesus doesn’t merely teach truth, He claims to be the truth (John 14:6). God’s Word isn’t just true; it is the standard of truth (John 17:17). Truth is stable because God is stable. His character doesn’t shift with culture, preference, or power.
According to Scripture, the rejection of truth isn’t merely an intellectual mistake, it’s a spiritual one. Romans 1 describes humanity as exchanging the truth about God for a lie. When truth is detached from God, it doesn’t liberate us; it disorients us.