CAPE TOWN, South Africa– In an age when information travels at the speed of light, truth is seen as subjective and every person “is a god unto themselves,” how do Christians present the Gospel and the Person of Jesus Christ in an effective and loving way?

These were the issues Cape Town 2010: The Third Lausanne World Congress on Evangelization was grappling with this morning as it entered its first full day.

The four panelists—Carver Yu, Michael Herbst and Os Guinness—shared their thoughts during the first plenary session of the Congress. Yu is the president of the China Graduate School of Theology in Hong Kong. Herbst is a researcher in evangelism and church development. Guinness is the co-founder of The Trinity Forum.

Yu issued a rallying cry for the clear and confident teaching of Christian truth: “Truth matters, for it has consequences.”

Noting that pluralism “is an ideology that proclaims that truth is a cultural construction valid only for the culture that constructs it—there is no truth that can claim to be truth for all,” Yu pointed out that this relativistic outlook is self-defeating.

“In proclaiming pluralism, the pluralist tacitly claims that he stands on a vantage point towering above all culture or all individuals so as to see their relativity. Yet, miraculously, the vantage point on which he stands is nevertheless absolute,” he said.

“While trivializing… religious truth as oppressive, the pluralist unashamedly promotes the secularist version of truth, pushing the secular worldview to be true for all.”

Yu argued that what lay behind a militant atheism which “is allowed to become the new religion” in cultures as diverse as China and the UK was a desire “to define moral values for oneself over against any transcendent boundary.

“The real issue is how one’s life is to be conducted.”

The topic is a hot-button issue for many Christian ministers and missionaries throughout the world.

During the past 30 years there has been a significant shift in western education’s approach to reading texts, with the focus moving from discerning the author’s intent to discussing only the understanding of and effect on the individual reader. This clearly has implications for how Christians can bear witness to a God who has revealed himself objectively through his words in Scripture, and so for the Bible’s claims of Jesus’ exclusivity.

Equally, in non-western cultures, exclusive claims about Jesus often clash with the highly-regarded teachings of sages, elders or ancestors.

Delegates at the Congress were encouraged to approach holding out the word of life in such a relativistic atmosphere with “bold humility.”

“We cannot but stand up to turn back the tide,” Yu concluded. “We have to preach the truth of the Christian Gospel at all costs.”