Truth is not just personal, and the person who doubts it is often carrying the evidence. Someone who walked away from church because professing Christians used the Bible to defend slavery is still sure that was wrong, and wrong for everyone, not only for them. That conviction, along with the conscience behind it, points to a moral standard that sits above every person. The guide below works through that case and prepares you to raise it with a friend who left the faith for real reasons. Use it alone in one sitting or with a group in a single meeting. It draws on chapter one of Jude 3 Project’s Courageous Conversations curriculum, “What is Truth?”, along with a close reading of Romans 2.
The sentence you will actually hear
Most people don’t open with a philosophy lecture. They say something like who are you to tell me what’s true? The curriculum names one common reason behind that question: people have watched professing Christians distort the Bible to harm others, and they no longer trust anyone who claims to hold the truth.
The lesson opens with a lighter story about its writer losing a debate over whether an idiom is “coming down the pipe” or “coming down the pike,” then keeping her own version anyway. That example concerns a fact, and moral truth is a harder claim. Still, it shows the move that matters: feeling sure and having friends agree does not settle whether something has a real answer.
The curriculum then names the two options. Relativism is the view that a person or group decides what is true for themselves without regard for objective facts. Absolutism holds that there is a moral standard built into creation, so right and wrong are set before we show up and apply to everyone.
One distinction keeps this from turning into a shouting match. People really do experience the world differently, and those experiences matter. The relativist claim is stronger. It says experience decides what is true. Your friend can have a real, painful experience of the church and still be making a claim about right and wrong that they believe holds for everybody.
What your friend may already believe about justice
The curriculum names one of the biggest reasons people reject Christianity: professing Christians endorsed slavery, white supremacy and racism, and twisted the Bible to do it. Someone who walks away over that history is usually not saying cruelty is a matter of taste. They are saying it was wrong then, wrong everywhere, and wrong even when the people doing it felt fine about it.
That is an absolute claim. The curriculum draws the conclusion directly: “Without this universal law there is no justification for calls for justice and equality.” If morality is only what each person or group decides, then the slaveholder’s view and the abolitionist’s view are just two preferences. Nobody could call one of them a distortion. The word distortion only makes sense if there is something true to distort.
The curriculum adds a generous observation. It says that “those who reject absolute truth share the same motivations as early philosophers who were looking for it.” Both want a just and harmonious world. The difference is that one group concluded truth itself was the problem, because they watched people use truth claims as weapons. That changes your posture. On justice, your friend may be on the same side as you.
Pause and observe. Write down one injustice you are certain is wrong, the kind you would not let anyone talk you out of. Then ask: what makes it wrong for everyone, and not just wrong to me?
Reading Romans 2 with care
Paul gives the clearest biblical description of conscience in Romans 2. Read Romans 1:18 through 3:23 in one sitting if you can, because the passage belongs to a longer argument. Paul is writing to a church of Jewish and Gentile believers. He wants to show that everyone, with or without the written law of Moses, stands accountable before God.
In the middle of that argument he says that Gentiles without the law still “shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Romans 2:15). “Shew” is older English for “show.” Paul’s point is that people who never read the commandments still recognize some of what the commandments require. The moral knowledge did not come from Sinai. It came built in.
Notice two details before using this verse in a conversation.
First, Paul calls conscience a witness. The same verse goes on to describe people’s thoughts as accusing or excusing one another. A witness can be mistaken, pressured or confused. Conscience points to a law. It is not the law. That will matter when we get to the hardest objection.
Second, Paul is not arguing that some people are morally better than others. His argument lands in Romans 3:23: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” The conscience that shows a standard exists also shows that none of us meets it. If you bring Romans 2 into a conversation as proof that you are right and your friend is wrong, you have read the passage backward. It puts you both on level ground.
The curriculum points to C.S. Lewis making a similar observation from outside the Bible. Lewis noticed that people everywhere carry the odd sense that they ought to behave in a certain way, and they can’t shake it. The lesson connects that shared sense to modern calls for fairness and equal treatment, which rest on the belief that every person has equal worth.
The objection worth taking seriously
A thoughtful skeptic will push back, and they should. The strongest form goes something like this: Consciences disagree. Slaveholders had consciences too, and many felt no guilt at all. So conscience can’t be evidence of a universal standard. It’s just whatever your culture installed.
Start by agreeing with what is true. Consciences do get bent. The history the curriculum describes is full of people who used the Bible to quiet their own consciences about cruelty. Paul’s language already allows for this. A witness that sometimes excuses what it should accuse is exactly what he describes.
Then look closely at what the objection assumes. When your friend says the slaveholder’s conscience was wrong, they are measuring that conscience against something. A ruler that bends doesn’t prove there is no such thing as straight. It proves we can tell when something is crooked. People argue about what justice requires because they share the conviction that justice is real and worth getting right.
Be honest about the limits too. This is an argument about which explanation fits best, not a laboratory proof. Someone can say the sense of obligation is just a product of biology or upbringing. Ask whether that account explains why we feel bound by justice even when it costs us, and why we call reformers right instead of merely different. If obligation is only upbringing, the abolitionist was not more correct than the slaveholder, just raised differently. Many people who left the church over its injustice will not accept that conclusion, and their refusal is worth noticing together.
Some will accept it. A friend may say plainly that nothing is really right or wrong, only preferred. That is a different conversation. You are no longer talking about church hurt but about whether any moral claim can be true, and it deserves slow, patient attention of its own instead of a quick rebuttal.
From a standard to a person
The curriculum describes the universal law as an “art of living,” a way humans are made to live in order to flourish. It argues that God built order into everything He made in Genesis 1, and asks why He would leave human beings alone to invent their own way. It adds that free will does not cancel that design. We can choose another way of living. That choice does not make another way true.
Be clear with yourself about what conscience can and cannot show. At most, it points to a moral standard above us. It does not, on its own terms, tell you that the standard is a person, or that the person is Jesus. A skeptic who grants a universal law can fairly say so, and that further step needs its own reasons. The curriculum takes it by reading John 1:1 alongside the Greek idea of the logos, an ordering reason behind the world, and arguing that John presents that reason as Christ himself. Christians also point to the resurrection and to who Jesus claimed to be, which are questions for another conversation.
Here is the claim at the center. In John 14, Thomas has just asked how the disciples could know the way, and Jesus answers: “Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6). In context, Jesus is comforting frightened friends on the night before His death, and the comfort He offers is Himself. That matters for someone hurt by Christians who treated truth as a club. The history they are angry about is people using truth claims to dominate others. The one who made this claim went to a cross.
A practice: trace one grievance back to its standard
This works alone with a notebook or in pairs. In a group, give it about twenty minutes.
- Name a real reason someone you know, or have heard about, gave for leaving Christianity. Write it in their words as fairly as you can. In a group, don’t name the person.
- Underline the moral claim inside the reason. Most reasons contain one: they lied, they used people, they protected abusers, they twisted the Bible to justify slavery.
- Write one sentence agreeing with that moral claim, if you honestly can. The curriculum’s guidance is direct: “to take issue with how people distorted the truth doesn’t mean that we have to throw the truth out with the bath water.” You can reject the distortion completely.
- Write one real question that invites your friend to look at the standard they are already using, such as What do you think made that so wrong? Avoid traps.
- Switch sides. The curriculum suggests pairing up and role-playing: one person speaks as someone who rejects Christianity and absolute truth, the other explains why they believe both. Then trade roles and give each other honest feedback.
For whoever is leading: the role-play is the part people will want to skip, and it teaches the most. Ask the person playing the skeptic to argue the best case they can, not a caricature. Afterward, ask which response made them feel heard and which one made them want to leave. Keep the focus on how the argument landed, not on who won. If someone in the group walked away, or loves someone who did, let them decide whether to share. Nobody should have to put a family member’s story on display.
Questions to talk through
- When someone tells you a truth only holds for you, what might they be responding to? How would your answer change if their reason is something Christians actually did?
- Paul describes conscience as a witness that can accuse or excuse. When has your own conscience been wrong, and what helped you see it?
- The curriculum argues that calls for justice need a universal law behind them. Where does that reasoning feel strong to you, and where would you want to test it further?
- Has a story of Christians behaving badly ever shaken your own confidence? What did you do with it?
- Romans 3:23 puts the believer and the skeptic on the same ground. How would that change the tone of a conversation with someone who left the church?
- If a friend grants that some things are truly wrong but asks why that should lead to Jesus, what would you honestly say, and what would you still need to learn?
Before the next conversation
Pick one person. Before you say anything about absolute truth, find out what they think is truly unjust in the world, and let them finish. Then follow the curriculum’s simple advice: “Ask questions, agree when you can, and be lovingly honest when you can’t.” If the conversation reaches the question of where justice comes from, you will be there together, both convinced that some things are really wrong, and both able to ask why.