Truthfully Relative

So I had a thought the other day. If you believe that truth is absolute, then you inadvertently believe in God. God can't exist without absolute truth, and neither can absoluteness (in anything, but particularly in truth) exist without God. Not necessarily God in the Judeo-Christian sense of the word, but somehow, there has to be a higher power - if anything is to be absolute.

And, if you believe that truth is relative, then you do not necessarily believe in a higher power. Without said God, relativity is the rule.

Allow me to briefly provide an illustrative example. Lets say that two people are in court testifying about the of a particular third person. Now, Person A insists (and truly, genuinely believes) that they saw Person B Person C (who was found in an alleyway without any additional witnesses and minimal corroborating evidence). But Person B passionately insists (and believes) that they did NOT Person C. Who is correct? Is each persons truth relative to their position, point of view, and other factors? Or is there one correct truth regardless of what Persons A and B believe? If you agree with the latter, then somehow, someway, there must be some higher power to differentiate. It doesn't even have to be a spirit - it could simply be time, or existence. But somehow, there is something greater. If, however, you believe the former, then there is no need for a God/higher power, because nobody needs to differentiate, and therefore each person is his own God.

Which brings me to the dilemma - Can you believe that truth is relative, and still believe in God?

Conservatives

I have a friend who is a self-procalimed conservative. Not so far right to qualify as fundamentalist (actually, he's pretty centrist), but definitely with a strong conservative lean. And incredibly vocal. He supported McCain all the way through the campaign with an intense passion. He was even a little concerned about how liberal McCain had been in the past. But on Nov. 4th, he set aside his thoughts, and supported Obama. Not because of a change of heart, but because he was the one who had been elected. "He's my president," he said to me. "And I'm going to support him because I believe in the beauty of the American system more than I believe in my own views." Why can't people like him run the country?

On Community and Politics

I'm not sure why people only care about politics for about 7 months every 4 years. Some people don't even care that much. But it continues to amaze me, the amount of people who put elections on a back shelf after the elections, where it gathers dust for 3+ years, until the next election. Why? Why does the political arena only matter when we are electing a president?

I understand the need for both a political stratum, and an apolitical stratum - one is more involved than the other, based on a balance theory, like yin and yang. There has to be one for the other. But really? People don't seem to care... at all. Taxes, national security, energy policy, gay marriage rights; everything affects everyone. If we make gay marriage legal, it means that those individuals (who were previously taxed as individuals) now get the tax benefits of being married. Which means that the money the government was getting from them is going to have to come from somewhere else. Granted, it will be minimal - the tax increase per person would be negligible, but, it still has an affect - because we live in a community.

But we seem to have lost that sense of unity. Notice that it's part of the word community. There's a reason for that. Maybe that's my biggest criticism of America right now - we live in a world of greed and personal gains. Not of community. What happened to the days when neighbors would bring food to one another, when you lived within walking distance of the grocery store - and actually walked, when people said hi to one another on the streets, instead of avoiding eye contact? Where did it go? And how do we bring it back?