Speaking at Stand to Reason’s Reality Student Apologetics Conference, Sean McDowell answers the question “Where does truth come from?” He contrasts two competing answers—the cultural narrative and the biblical narrative. Sean will return to Reality April 24–25, 2026, exclusively for our California conference.
Transcript
I’m going to contrast two different narratives—essentially about human purpose, about truth, about meaning in the universe. There are two broad narratives we’re going to look at.
One I’m just simply going to call the cultural narrative. Now, I’m not saying Christians are always against culture. We are in culture. We’re above culture. We’re part of culture. But there are some times as Christians where we stand in direct opposition to ideas being pushed in the culture, and we need to have the courage to stand up for that.
By “cultural narrative,” I mean this idea that moral truth comes from the individual. It’s subjective and situational. The truth is known through choosing to believe something in personal narrative. So, increasingly in the world that we live in, it says as long as you believe something—as long as you feel something, as long as you think it’s true for you—then it’s true for you. That’s kind of what we mean by this cultural idea of individualism.
Now, contrast that with what I’m going to call the biblical narrative. Biblical narrative says truth is not found in our choices and beliefs and feelings. Truth is found in the character of God, and it’s universal. You see, rather than created, truth is discovered. It’s outside of us. It doesn’t change. It’s discovered by exploring Scripture and the world and God’s character.
So, you see the two ways we’re framing this? Either the individual is supreme, and you feel something, you want something, you desire something is true for you. The Bible has a different narrative. It says, no, actually, truth is found outside of us, and we’re only really free when we submit ourselves to that truth.