What is moral relativism?

You have probably heard phrases like who am I to judge, or that might be wrong for you but it's right for me, spoken casually in everyday conversation. These statements reflect moral relativism, a widely held but rarely examined view about the nature of right and wrong. Understanding what it actually claims, and where it breaks down under its own weight, will help you think clearly about morality and speak with both conviction and grace when the subject comes up.

Moral relativism holds that there are no objective, universal moral truths that apply to everyone, everywhere, at all times. Instead, what counts as right or wrong depends entirely on the beliefs of a particular culture, a particular era, or even a particular individual. On this view, statements like slavery is wrong are not descriptions of an objective moral fact but expressions of a culture's or a person's preferences, no more universally true than a preference for one style of music over another. What is considered moral in one society may be considered immoral in another, and relativism insists neither society is more correct than the other, since there is no standard above both to judge by.

Relativism often appeals to a genuine and admirable impulse: humility about one's own culture's blind spots and a desire to avoid arrogant judgment of other peoples and traditions. History is full of examples where one culture wrongly imposed its customs on another under the banner of moral superiority. Relativism seems to offer a way to avoid that arrogance entirely by refusing to judge any culture's practices as objectively wrong.

The book of Judges describes a period in Israel's history with no king, when everyone did what was right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25), a phrase that could easily describe relativism's basic instinct. Notably, Judges does not present that period as a golden age of tolerance; it presents it as a spiral into violence, injustice, and moral chaos, precisely because there was no shared, transcendent standard holding the community together.

Relativism sounds tolerant in theory but becomes unlivable in practice. Almost no one, when confronted with genuine atrocities like genocide or child abuse, is willing to say that such acts were simply wrong for that particular culture rather than actually, universally evil. Most relativists, when pressed on cases severe enough, quietly abandon consistency and insist some things are wrong everywhere, which is exactly what objective morality claims and relativism denies. The very people condemning past cultures for practices like slavery are implicitly appealing to a standard that transcends any single culture's preferences, the same standard relativism says does not exist.

Relativism also cannot account for moral progress. If morality is only ever relative to a culture's current beliefs, a society cannot meaningfully improve morally over time, since there is no fixed standard to improve toward, only change from one set of preferences to another, neither more correct than the last.

The Bible presents a sharply different picture: God's own unchanging character grounds a moral law that is genuinely true for every culture and every person, not merely for those who believe in it. The rules of the Lord are described as true and righteous altogether (Psalm 19:9), and Paul teaches that even those without God's written law still show its work written on their hearts, their conscience bearing witness (Romans 2:14-15). This grounding gives you a stable place to stand: you can love and respect people from every culture while still affirming that some things, cruelty, oppression, dishonesty, are genuinely wrong everywhere, because they violate the character of the God who made every person in every culture in his own image (Genesis 1:27).

People sometimes defend moral relativism because they associate it with kindness, open-mindedness, and not judging others, values Christians should genuinely care about too. But relativism and tolerance are not the same thing, and conflating them causes real confusion. Tolerance, rightly understood, means treating people with respect and civility even when you disagree with their beliefs or choices; it assumes real disagreement exists and matters. Relativism goes further, denying that any disagreement could ever be more than a difference of preference, which actually removes the possibility of meaningful moral respect, since respect implies you are taking someone's differing view seriously enough to think it could be right or wrong, not shrugging it off as merely one more equally valid opinion.

Ironically, a relativist has no principled way to say that intolerance itself is wrong, since condemning intolerance requires appealing to a standard that applies beyond personal or cultural preference, exactly what relativism denies exists. Christians, by contrast, can call for genuine kindness, humility, and respect precisely because Scripture grounds those virtues in the unchanging character of a real God, not in the shifting, ultimately groundless sentiment that nothing is really right or wrong.

You do not need relativism's approach to avoid arrogance. You can hold firmly to objective moral truth grounded in God's character while still listening humbly, examining your own cultural blind spots, and treating people of every background with respect. That combination, real moral conviction paired with genuine humility, honors both the truth Scripture reveals and the people relativism was trying, in its own way, to protect.

If you find yourself drawn to relativism's stated values, humility, kindness, respect for others, take that as a good instinct pointing you toward something relativism itself cannot ultimately supply. Those values need a real foundation to stand on, and Scripture offers exactly that: a God who is both perfectly just and perfectly loving, who calls you to hold your convictions with confidence while treating every person you disagree with the same dignity he showed you before you ever deserved it (Romans 5:8).