A standalone study built to equip you for the conversation that comes up constantly: someone calls something evil and someone else says there is no such thing as objective truth, in the very same breath.
The Big Question
People reach for the word evil constantly. A shooting is evil. Abuse is evil. Injustice is evil. The same culture that uses that word freely also insists truth is personal, that what is true for you may not be true for someone else. This study sits inside that exact contradiction and trains you to name it clearly when you hear it. If there is no fixed standard above all of us, can we still call anything evil with a straight face? And if we can, and most people clearly believe we can, where does that standard actually come from?
Why This Matters
This is one of the most common arguments you will actually run into outside church walls, not a rare or academic one. It shows up whenever someone says, in the same conversation, that morality is just personal preference and that some specific historical or current atrocity was objectively, unambiguously wrong. Most people have never noticed they are holding both claims at once, because the contradiction only becomes visible when someone names it out loud and asks them to defend both halves at the same time. Learning to spot this pattern, and to engage it with patience rather than a gotcha tone, turns a common cultural confusion into one of the more persuasive openings for a real conversation about God.
Scripture to Sit With
Romans 2:14-15. Paul says God's law is written on human hearts, which is why people who have never read Scripture still recognize, often instinctively, that certain things are truly wrong.
James 4:12. There is one lawgiver and judge. Moral authority, on this account, is not something each person generates individually. It belongs to God and is received, not invented.
Isaiah 5:20. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil. The verse only makes sense if a real, fixed line actually exists between the two categories it is warning against confusing.
Genesis 50:20. Joseph tells his brothers they meant his suffering for evil, but God meant it for good, naming both categories as objectively real within the very same sentence.
Micah 6:8. The Lord requires justice, mercy, and humility, stated as a fixed, universal requirement rather than a personal preference offered as one option among many.
Quotes Worth Discussing
'We might not describe it the problem of evil, but when something goes wrong in our lives, the problem of evil is at the forefront of our mind. God, why? Why did you allow this?' (Lisa Fields)
'If my truth contradicts your truth, how do we even define truth?' (Lisa Fields)
'Atheism affirms evil and denies God, only theism and true theism affirms both God and evil.' (Pastor Jonathan Bennett)
'Intrinsically, we all know that there has to be right or wrong.' (Pastor Jonathan Bennett)
'God didn't know that human beings are going to do them, and because he didn't previously know that they were going to do them, he is only responsible for responding to those actions and not for preventing them.' (Rev. Darin Jones, describing a contrasting view)
Engagement: Equipping the Conversation About Evil and Truth
This guide trains a specific, reusable skill: catching the relative truth and real evil contradiction in real time and walking someone through it with patience rather than a gotcha tone that shuts the conversation down before it starts.
Listen for the two claims sitting side by side. Most people who hold a relative view of truth do not state it as a tidy philosophical position. It shows up as a phrase like your truth and my truth, usually offered to defend someone's personal choices from outside judgment. The same person, often minutes later in the same conversation, will call a specific act of cruelty or injustice evil without any qualifier attached, no your truth caveat included. Training yourself to notice both halves of that pattern, rather than only the second half that you might agree with, is the whole skill. You cannot engage a contradiction you have not first noticed.
Ask the question rather than announcing the contradiction. Bennett and Fields model a posture worth copying: 'If my truth contradicts your truth, how do we even define truth?' is a genuine question, asked with real curiosity, not a trap sprung to embarrass anyone. Asking it that way invites the other person to actually think through their own position out loud, which lands very differently than declaring, you are being inconsistent, before they have had any chance to examine the inconsistency themselves.
Walk the three worldview options without rigging the comparison. Bennett's framework, atheism affirms evil and denies God, pantheism affirms God and dissolves evil, theism affirms both, is useful precisely because it treats all three options as real positions held by thoughtful people, not as two strawmen and one correct answer. Practice explaining each option the way a fair minded person holding that option would recognize their own view in your description. That fairness is what earns you the right to be heard when you explain why you land on theism.
Move from the abstract argument to the lawgiver question, but only after the first two steps land. The final move, a moral law implies a moral lawgiver, only carries weight once someone has actually granted that a real, fixed moral law exists in the first place. Skipping ahead to the lawgiver question before establishing that the law itself is real just produces a stalemate. Sequence matters as much as content here.
Engagement Practice: Naming the Contradiction Without the Gotcha
Knowing the argument is not the same skill as deploying it well in an actual relationship. The most common failure mode for Christians who learn this argument is using it to win a single exchange while losing the relationship that made the conversation possible in the first place. The goal of this kind of engagement is never to corner someone into admitting they are wrong on the spot. It is to plant a question honest enough that it keeps working on them long after the conversation ends, the way a good question tends to outlast a clever one liner. Practice asking, rather than declaring, and practice being willing to sit in the discomfort of an unresolved conversation rather than forcing it to a tidy close before the other person is ready.
Discussion Questions
- When was the last time you personally called something evil? What standard were you actually measuring it against, even if you never said so out loud at the time?
- Where have you heard the phrase your truth and my truth used? What happens to the word evil if that phrase is followed all the way to its logical conclusion?
- Why do even people who say there is no absolute truth still get genuinely angry at real injustice? What does that reaction reveal that their stated position cannot fully explain?
- If a moral law really does point to a moral lawgiver, how does that change the way you hear someone use the problem of evil as an argument against God's existence?
- Is it harder for you, personally, to believe evil is real, or to believe a fully good God is real? Be honest about which side of that tension you actually struggle with more.
Go Deeper
This study comes from the opening episodes of the Jude 3 Project series on the problem of evil in hip hop, with Lisa Fields and Pastor Jonathan Bennett. To carry the conversation further in this collection, see the related studies on the free will defense and on process theology's attempt to explain suffering without changing what evil itself means.
A Closing Reflection
This week, catch yourself the next time you call something wrong, out loud or just in your own head. Notice that you are appealing to a standard you did not personally invent and cannot simply opt out of when it is inconvenient. Sit with that noticing for a moment before moving on. The fact that you cannot actually stop believing in real right and wrong, no matter how convenient relativism sounds in the abstract, may be one of the clearest signs available to you that the God who set that standard in place is really there.