Truth and truth

I want to continue a thought I began a couple of weeks ago. Sorry it has taken so long to get back to it, but things have been HECTIC with all the various things that have come up.

I think we are happy settling for little-t truth these days. As we are constantly bombarded and reminded by our culture, all truth is relative. Your truth may not be my truth, and vice versa. Yet a problem seems to exist within these mantras: universal truth does seem to exist.

For example:
1. Every culture in the world believes that murder is wrong. Now, the interpretation of murder is different in each culture, but every culture agrees that murder is wrong. In some states in the United States, we execute a person for the vicious murder of another person. We call this justifiable execution. War against enemy combatants is called "the elimination of a target or threat." In many African tribes, murder is reserved for people of one's own tribe. If you kill someone outside of the tribe that isn't murder, because that individual isn't a real person.

2. Child rape is wrong. Every culture in the world values their children and wants no harm to come to them. Each culture has a moral rule against child rape. Some cultures tend to ignore their own rules (tribes of the Trobriand islands, some Afghan tribes, etc.) But most people believe that taking the innocence of a child is wrong.

Morality isn't subjective or totally culturally driven. There are universal standards that exist. Thus, not all truth can be relative; some things are universal.

Some would point to the inconsistencies between the two aforementioned rules as proof that morality is relative. Each culture calls things differently and has their own inherent rules... Thus, isn't it all relative to their experience.

I would argue that they are making a little-t truth out of a Big-T Truth. God said, "Do not murder." Yet it seems to be the second sin committed by mankind. Cain tried to justify his actions, just as cultures try to justify their own thinking. The Truth gets ignored for the truth. (Yes, the words and capitalization are intentional...) Just because we distort Truth doesn't mean that that Truth doesn't exist.

Truth is universal, applying across time and space. Yet there is a place for interpretation within our own cultural contexts. "Do not commit adultery" can now apply to internet pornography. Jesus' appeal to turn the other cheek can apply to nuclear proliferation or economic recessions. These Truths are universal, and yet we are called to apply them in our own circumstances.

Little-t truth should be the application of Big-T Truth; yet so often we allow it instead to replace it.