What Does That Mean When Someone Says, “That’s truth for you but Not for Me?”

Have you ever heard someone say to you in the midst of a conversation, “Truth may be true for you, but not for me.” If everyone has his own truth, there is no objective or absolute truth, and all beliefs are equal, then can we assume that everything that people say or believe is equally true? Yes? No? Not sure? Anyway, let’s see!

For the person who says it

Anytime you hear people say, “truth for you but not for me,’ know that you’re dealing with a worldview. What is a worldview, and how important is it? A worldview is a set of beliefs about how someone thinks the world is. It is his big picture of reality. This belief system also helps him answer life’s big questions like:

•  Where did I come from?
• Who am I?
• Why am I here?
• How should I live?
• Where am I going?

In other words, a worldview is the sum of a person’s beliefs about the world. Therefore, whether we realize it or not, everyone has a worldview. 

Postmodernism is a worldview, and postmodernism claims that truth is something relative. This worldview also claims that there is no absolute truth before we dig deeper into the postmodernism that makes the statement that “There is no absolute truth,” notice that is a self-defeating statement. Why? Because saying there is no absolute truth is itself an absolute statement. 

Let’s go back to our postmodern guy who told you the truth at the beginning of this article for you but not for me. Your friend is saying that truth is relative or absolute truth does not exist. The problem is that if truth is relative, everything becomes a matter of personal interpretation. You can take whatever you want as truth because, after all, nobody knows the truth. 

For instance, many Haitian gang members believe that they are invincible because they carry some voodoo protection spells. How do we know that these gang members’ beliefs are inaccurate? The answer is not complicated. Just wait and see what happens when the police catch them.

So, we must be careful about our worldview because our worldview leads to actions.

• Hitler believed the Jewish people were an inferior race, and you know what he did.
• French colonialists thought African people were inferior, and you know what they did; they enslaved them.
• But unlike these above worldviews, which cause people to harm others, Christianity informs us how to love God and our neighbors. The golden rule states, “n everything, do to others what you would have them do to you” (Mat. 7:12). Christians also believe a person’s soul is eternal and worth more than the whole world. That conviction leads to actual actions, such as evangelism, charity, good deeds, caring for the poor, building orphanages, schools, agriculture infrastructures, etc. You see the point!

Postmodernism believes that the gender of a man is not determined by biology but rather by society. And you know what they do, they’re pushing the false alphabet and promoting the “deconstruction theory.” 

Notice that each of these worldviews has profound implications in how people think about themselves, how they treat others, what they consider right or wrong, and how they live their lives. This is to say that every worldview leads to real actions.

Let’s take another example, say that your postmodern friend tells you that the computer device you’re using now has multiple interpretations. Andre thinks this is not a computer; rather, it is a table. Jacob thinks otherwise, he affirms the computer is a chair. James enters the conversation to argue that both of these guys are wrong, to say something new, that the computer is a car. Now the question is: Can we assume that all these interpretations are true because, after all,  every person has his own truth.

If we say such thing, it would be a chaotic situation, because it makes it impossible for us to make distinctions between a car, a chair, a table, and a computer. In other words, anyone can come along to redefine what a computer is, just like we see that in the example. We will also lose track of the definition of a computer in the first place.

On the other hand, if we are willing to look at the reality, that words have meaning, we will discover that regardless of what Andre, Jacob, and James say that a computer is, the reality teaches us something totally different: a computer is not a table, nor a chair, nor a car. Like the old saying says, “It is what it is.” A computer is an electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.

With that in mind, whenever you hear people say such slogan,, “truth for you but not for me,” we need to be aware that there are other worldviews that are other worldviews that claim their interpretation about the world, current events, political systems, culture, God, goodness, justice, religion, economy, and politics, and big questions of life to be true by ways of deconstructing what the reality already is. Hopefully, all interpretations cannot be true at the same time. One of them has to be. One that takes account of the reality of things. I mean a Christian worldview