Me and church.... church and me

This is a reflective post on Sunday's message.....
Relative truth was the topic.
I appreciate that the issue of relativity was discussed and the concept of truth and truths.
These kinds of philosophical discussions get my blood pressure up in an excited, impassioned way. I have no idea why, really, I don't, but they just do.
So, church inspired thought but I have to say, that I disagreed with some of the main points discussed tonight.

We talked about how contemporary society sort of has adopted views that do not recognize truth as concrete and absolute but is rather something debatable and contextualized. This is something I agree with; I am one of the 65% that do not believe in absolute truth.

But let's look at why....

There are so many reasons why truth is less and less revered as big capital "T" truth.
Post-modernism and subsequent philosophical reasons are probably the main perpetrators: Following two grim wars, philosophical thought out of Europe reflected ideas that rejected government, the state, and frankly became critical of any fundamental ideology that claimed sovereignty and accurateness. I mean, who could blame them, millions murdered, several totalitarian governments later... Who wouldn't be disillusioned?

Another main reason is globalization; the movement of people and places across borders and time (ie: via internet) thus making the world seem smaller. This state of communication and existence means that we are constantly exposed to more ideas, more cultures, world views, and are more aware of both good and bad things that go on in the world.

My point is to put into context some of the historical reasons why there is a general shift to relativism (although it always seems to shift back and forth). Essentially, it is important to me that relativism not appear to be an exit strategy from the hard work of sticking to a faith. It is not. It is taking into account our world, our fellow humans, our histories, our stories and mapping them out to make sense of everything. It is harder to be a relativist because it is an acceptance of how little we know and this inspires me to want to learn and discover and become a more active participant in my faith. My faith as I knew it when a young-girl when I identified myself as "born-again" no longer seems like Truth but rather, I am trying to extrapolate truth from those experiences, from those teachings. I believe that there is truth that is equally valid in the world views of others vis a vis Muslims, Buddhist, Confucius, AGNOSTICS (yea baby!...) Because, just as there is truth in all those things including Christianity, there is also a lot of bullshit because the history of faith whether or not the Bible is the word of God is shaped and defined by human experiences and thus has both moments of truth and moments of error.
Thus in my opinion, being a relativist is about being a critical thinker, about seeing the world as more complicated because truly it is. We always need to be learning, seeking understanding, tolerance and acceptance; that is not at the expense of faith or even/especially Christian faith, but I think it becomes it.

I like the icecream flavour illustration for my faith because no matter what flavour we have, it is still icecream and it is good stuff.