Parking - Absolute or Relative?

A while ago I had a funny conversation with a neighbor out by the mailboxes in our apartment complex in Southern Indiana. The man was young and seemed to be fairly fresh out of college. At some point we got into talking about absolute truth versus relativism. He unashamedly laid out his views of moral relativism and how one set of beliefs is just as good as the next. "It's all relative really" he would say as if he were quoting some mutual professors we had. I questioned him several times only to get the same response over and over. "So it really doesn't matter what anyone does?"... "Nope"... "Nothing at all, no right or wrong, no universal law?"... "No, none of that really matters." Usually the point of such conversation is that, all things being relative, one person can't say what another should or shouldn't do in their lifetime. Sounds interesting doesn't it? Of course no one ever lives that way. It's always funny to ask someone who says there are no absolute truths if they are absolutely certain that is true. We wrapped up our conversation and headed our separate ways.

This relative mentality is penetrating our culture at every turn. I remember being so confused and frustrated when going with some family members to see Star Wars Episode III. At the best and worst moment of the movie, Obi Wan the Jedi (good guy) is about to take on Anakin the Sith (bad guy), it was the moment that action sequence lovers like myself were awaiting. Before Obi went to work, he and Anakin argued back and forth to build the suspense, only to have Obi spit out, "Only a Sith deals in absolutes"... at which point I said to myself, "Go ahead and take him out Anakin" Where did that come from? It's everywhere you turn in theory, but seldom practiced. Those who have lived out these beliefs in everyday life have gone down in history as mass murderers or evil dictators or might be found in an insane asylum... so maybe it's not all relative after all.

I was surprised to leave our complex one day and see our neighbor working diligently on something across the parking lot. There has been an ongoing saga for many that live here getting squeezed out of a space in the parking lot because of how people park their cars. The picture above shows the careful work done with a bucket of paint and a brush that day. I thought it was funny so we took a picture, but it does beg the questions I had asked him earlier. Apparently there is at least one absolute in our complex... parking. I wonder if I could convince him to paint our side as well?

2 Corinthians 13:8 "For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth." -ESV