Ah, but everything is relative. Ask Einstein. I've never held with absolutism or absolutists, although I suspect we're in a semantic quandary more than actual disagreement. I also don't particularly care for the word "Morality", but there again I think its more semantics than actual disagreement.
Speaking as a Christian, Relativism is a threat to the Christian faith because it undermines the idea of universal truth on which the latter is based. The reason I bring up Christianity is because this country (and one could argue modern civilization as a whole) was founded upon Christianity.
The idea of the university and academia has long been that of a community dedicated to discovering truth and its application to life. Guided by this mission, students and teachers were enabled to find the noble and beautiful things in the world, discover their relationship to one another, as well as establish a concrete structure from which all thoughts, words and actions flowed in their proper order.
However, many Western universities forsook their original purpose as they became increasingly permeated by relativism. Ambivalence toward truth claims over time, gave way to the outright rejection of the potential for discovering objective truth.
According to relativism, there is no absolute right or wrong, and no situation will ever be black or white. Instead, each individual sculpts their own personal vision of truth and consents to the idea that everyone’s truth is simultaneously correct, at least for themselves.
As a Christian, I refuse to dismiss the idea of truth as relativists do. For me, truth is something much bigger. As Christians, we believe in moral laws and in doctrine. We believe in a moral order and in rules about how we are to conduct ourselves, physically and otherwise. For example, we believe that marriage is sacred and that adultery is wrong. Sounds crazy, right?
To treat truth as authoritarianism and fundamentalism is to set up a straw man. The Bible itself strongly condemns the Pharisees, who were full of moral rules and judgment but had no love and grace for those who struggled morally. Those who try to turn the God of the Bible into an authoritarian figure who merely thunders judgment may find themselves surprised when they learn about Jesus. For example, Jesus famously showed grace to the woman taken in adultery and did not condemn her as the Pharisees did. Clearly Jesus was no authoritarian or fundamentalist, neither was he a relativist. He said to the woman, “
Go and sin no more.” He didn’t wink at sin; he acknowledged it as sin and then he forgave it. To have only half the truth is to have none.
Most American colleges and universities today are steeped in relativism. It may be assumed by many fellow students, professors, and even by the curriculum. Students will undoubtedly be inundated with the idea that truth is a matter of perspective, and to say anything more definitive than that is positively unenlightened.
In any case, my doctrine may be different than your doctrine and I can respect that. When it comes down to it, I truly believe that self-worship, relativism, and nihilism--to name only a few--are the cause of a lot of the problems we see in this country today.
Consider that in this modern day and age, a man can say he's a woman and most of society will not only affirm him in his declaration, but they'll celebrate him. He'll probably tell you that according to his "lived experience", he sees himself as a woman and therefore society must accept him as such. When everything is relative to the individual, truth is subverted, perverted, distorted, and deceived.
I believe that truth should always be spoken. I look to God himself for that truth.