January 2026
There is a strange belief at the heart of the modern world: that nothing is absolute, that all truth is relative, that all meaning is constructed, negotiable and personal. We are told this is maturity. That certainty is dangerous and belongs to the middle-ages. That firm convictions lead to conflict. And yet, everywhere we look, conflict is rising, not falling. Tension and anger, suspicion toward everything and everyone, and unrest. The streets are louder. The language is harsher. The eyes are colder.
This should trouble us. Because if nothing is truly right or wrong, if all truth is fluid and subjective, then something does not add up. Why the outrage? Why the rage? Why the need to silence, shame, or destroy those who disagree? If nothing is ultimately true, why does disagreement feel like an existential threat to so many people?
Something is wrong.
Relativism promises tolerance, but it cannot sustain it. Because when truth dissolves, power takes its place. Tolerance has become so tolerant, it does not tolerate the non-tolerant.
In a world without absolutes, morality does not disappear. It mutates. It becomes emotional. Tribal. Reactive. Good is no longer what aligns with truth, but what aligns with us. Evil is no longer what violates something sacred, but what challenges our identity, our narrative, our side. And so people who claim to stand for “nothing” end up standing against everything.
This is the paradox: if you truly believe that nothing has meaning, then nothing should provoke you. But that is not what we see. We see fury. We see mobs. We see fear disguised as righteousness. We see people willing to burn down institutions, relationships, even lives, all while insisting that nothing is sacred.
Hate, it turns out, does not require belief in God. It only requires belief in self.
If everything is relative, everyone lives in a private reality.
Private realities cannot coexist for long.
When absolute truth is rejected, something else becomes absolute instead: feeling. Identity. Ideology. And these new absolutes are far more fragile than truth ever was. They cannot be questioned without collapse. They cannot be challenged without violence. They demand constant reinforcement and constant enemies.
This is why a culture that claims to believe in nothing is always on the brink of war. Because when there is no shared truth to submit to, there is only force left to decide.
The secular world often mocks faith for speaking of good and evil, light and darkness, truth and deception. But it quietly reintroduces the same categories under new names. “Harm.” “Justice.” “Safety.” “Progress.” Words that sound neutral, but function as moral absolutes enforced without mercy, without forgiveness, and without transcendence.
And when these new gods are threatened, they do not turn the other cheek. They strike.
The ancient understanding was not that absolute truth causes violence, but that it restrains it. Because if truth exists beyond us, then none of us owns it. We are accountable to something higher. We can be wrong. We can repent. We can forgive. Relativism removes that safety. It turns every disagreement into a battle for dominance.
This is why the belief in “nothing” always ends in everything being at stake.
And this is also why the Christian claim is so deeply unsettling to the modern mind. Not because it speaks of love, but because it speaks of truth that stands whether we accept it or not. Truth that judges all sides equally. Truth that cannot be bent to power. Truth that exposes both the mob and the tyrant.
When Christ said, “I am the truth,” He did not offer an opinion. He offered a line in the sand. Not one enforced by violence, but one that reveals violence for what it is.
A world without absolute truth cannot explain why it is burning. A world without God cannot explain why it still longs for justice. And a world that claims to believe in nothing will always end up demanding everything.
-From the work surrounding The Fall