The Seduction of Relativism

Enemy of Objective Truth

You can’t judge a book by its cover. Things are not always as they seem. Every culture has its version of that warning, because every culture has its oleander.

The oleander is breathtaking: delicate pink and white blossoms, soft petals, sweet scent. Children are drawn to it; landscapers plant it everywhere in warm climates. Yet every part of the plant—petals, leaves, stems, even the nectar—is loaded with cardiac glycosides. One leaf can kill a child. A handful can stop an adult heart. There are documented deaths from people steeping its flowers in tea or drinking water where the blossoms floated.

Appearances are deceiving.

Scripture gives the same warning in raw, masculine language. Proverbs 5 says of the seductress:

“Her lips drip honey, her speech is smoother than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her feet go down to death; her steps lay hold of hell.”

-From the book of Proverbs

Eve heard the same lie in Eden: the fruit was “pleasing to the eye.” It looked like life. It was death in disguise.

We are made for the infinite, yet we keep reaching for finite counterfeits. No house is big enough, no lover beautiful enough, no pleasure intense enough to still the ache. As Augustine discovered after years of chasing them:

“Thou hast made us for Thyself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

-St. Augustine

Jesus made the same point to the woman at the well: “Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.” Yet a force exists that wants us forever thirsty, forever chasing the next empty well. That force has a modern weapon more beautiful and deadly than any oleander: relativism.

The Seductive Disguise

Relativism arrives wearing the petals of tolerance and humility. It refuses to “impose” belief on anyone. It flatters us: “Your truth is true for you.” It removes guilt, baptizes desire, and crowns the self as the only measure of good and evil.

It feels like freedom. It tastes sweet at first—just like the nectar of the oleander.

But the sweetness quickly turns bitter.

If truth is relative, then nothing is intrinsically shameful, nothing objectively evil. Lust becomes love, greed becomes ambition, sloth becomes self-care. Fornication, adultery, abortion, euthanasia, the mutilation of children in the name of “gender”—all are rebranded as personal choices, matters of “values.” Values are morally neutral. Stalin had values. Satan has values. Virtues—faith, hope, charity, justice, courage, temperance—are objective and binding. Relativism hates virtues because virtues demand conversion.

Relativism is also self-refuting. Its one absolute dogma is that there are no absolute truths—an absolute truth stated absolutely. Pope Benedict XVI called it the “dictatorship of relativism.” It promises happiness and delivers anxiety, isolation, and nihilism. Without objective truth there is no objective good to love in another person; charity degenerates into sentimentality. Human rights become whatever the powerful say they are. Justice collapses.

Worst of all, relativism severs man from God, who is Truth Himself. “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” To deny objective truth is to deny Christ, to make the Incarnation meaningless and the Cross pointless. If sin does not objectively exist, redemption is a fairy tale.

Like the oleander, relativism kills quietly. It dominates universities, media, law, medicine, and entertainment. It attacks the family—the foundation of civilization—by treating marriage, sex, and life itself as preferences. It weakens evangelization: why proclaim Christ if all religions are equally valid highways to God?

The Catholic Antidote

The Church answers with the full force of reality. Vatican II’s Dei Verbum affirms that absolute truth is revealed by God in Scripture and Tradition. Veritatis Splendor declares that certain acts are intrinsically evil, regardless of intention or circumstance. The Ten Commandments are not suggestions. Human dignity is absolute because every person is made in the image of God. Sin is real. Grace is real. Heaven and hell are real.

Truth is not a concept; Truth is a Person. The martyrs did not die for an opinion. They died for the objective fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

As St. John Paul II taught:

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

How to Fight the Oleander

We fight one soul at a time, beginning with our own. Daily conversion. Frequent sacraments. Scripture. Prayer. Study of the Catechism and the lives of the saints. Unapologetic fidelity to the non-negotiables: life from conception to natural death, marriage as one man and one woman, religious freedom, the reality of sin and the necessity of grace.

We refuse to compromise, we refuse to lie—even in small things—because every white lie is a petal of the oleander. We place our hope not in cultural victory but in Christ’s promise: the gates of hell will not prevail against His Church.

Relativism is loud today. It will be silent tomorrow. The Word of the Lord endures forever.

So the next time you see an oleander blooming in a neighbor’s yard—or spot its petals in a headline, a classroom, a courtroom, or the screen in your hand—remember:

The flowers are still deadly.
Only one Water is living.
Only one Truth sets us free.

Jesus Christ is His name.

To Him be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.