The root of ultimate relativism

The central problem in knowing is not the world (or race, class, gender, and generation, as postmodernists believe), but the self. The autonomous self bows to no one and seeks to be the sole arbiter of life and truth. The claim to the ‘right to myself’, which includes the claim to the ‘right to my view of things’, is the reason we do not naturally conform our desires to the truth but try to conform truth to our desires – and in the process ‘hold truth hostage’. Our use of reason itself is not only wounded and weakened but made willful and wrong by sin. Unless this relativity is addressed and the standard of absolute truth brought back into the picture, our love can never escape being self-love. And our self-knowledge can never rise above self-deception. Here is the root of the ultimate relativism and of the deepest distortions we each bring to reality.

Os Guinness, Time for Truth (2000)