QFD | Unchangeable Absolutes: Why a World That Denies Absolutes Still Lives by Them

Unchangeable Absolutes: Why a World That Denies Absolutes Still Lives by Them

We live in a world that will not sit still.

Bodies age. Technology updates. Opinions evolve. Cultures flip values in a generation. Relationships that once felt secure can fracture in a year. If there’s one thing everyone agrees on, it’s that everything changes.

And yet, inside this restless world, we still use a very stubborn word:

Unchangeable.

From a logical standpoint, that’s odd.

If the “common sense” view of our day is right—that everything is relative, that nothing is fixed—then what does a word like unchangeable even mean? How can it carry any weight in a culture that doesn’t really agree with the purest definition of the word?

Let’s follow that question through.

1. What do we actually mean by “unchangeable”?

In strict philosophical terms, unchangeable would mean:

“Never changing in any way, at any time, in any respect.”

Most people don’t speak that precisely. In everyday life, when someone says “unchangeable,” they usually mean something like:

• “Stable enough that I can rely on it.”

• “Not up for renegotiation just because someone’s feelings shifted.”

• “Not at the mercy of cultural fashion.”

So there are two levels at work:

1. Conceptual meaning – the idea of absolute stability.

2. Practical use – things we treat as stable enough to trust.

Now here’s the tension: our culture often rejects the conceptual level (“There are no absolutes!”), but still depends on the practical level every day.

That inconsistency is not trivial. It’s a clue.

2. Why a “relative” world still smuggles in unchangeables

Even people who say, “Everything is relative,” live as if some things are not relative at all. Consider three examples.

a) Communication

For any conversation to work, some meanings have to stay put long enough for both sides to understand each other.

• If “true” means “accurate” to you but “emotionally satisfying” to me, and we never stabilize that, we cannot reason together.

• If words constantly and totally shift with no shared core, language collapses.

So at minimum, we need a relatively stable core of meaning to even say, “Everything is relative.” The sentence refutes itself if nothing stable exists.

b) Logic and everyday reasoning

Even the most outspoken relativist:

• trusts that 2 + 2 = 4 today and tomorrow,

• assumes that a flat contradiction is false (A and not-A can’t both be fully true in the same sense at the same time),

• expects cause-and-effect to hold (if I walk in front of a moving truck, I get hit, no matter how I feel about trucks).

If your bank treated math as relative on Thursdays, you’d find another bank.

In practice, everyone lives as though there are unchangeable rules of thought and number.

c) Morality (even with “my truth” language)

People often say, “You have your truth, I have mine”—until something truly evil happens.

Most of us, including relativists, think that some things are just wrong:

• Torturing a child for fun is wrong.

• Betraying someone’s deepest trust purely for amusement is wrong.

Not “wrong for me personally,” but really wrong, no matter who you are or where you live.

The moment you grant that even one moral statement is always wrong, you’ve admitted that not everything is relative. Something like “unchangeable” has snuck back in through the side door.

3. The self-defeat of “everything is relative”

Now look at the statement:

“Everything is relative.”

Ask one question:

“Is that statement itself relative or not?”

• If it is relative, then it’s only “true” for some people, some of the time. In that case it can’t claim to be a universal description of reality—and there might well be non-relative truths after all.

• If it is not relative, then at least one thing is not relative. The statement “everything is relative” is simply false.

Either way, radical relativism collapses under its own weight.

You cannot say “all truths are relative” without quietly assuming that at least one truth is not.

That doesn’t yet prove what is unchangeable. But logically, it shows that the very idea of “unchangeable” cannot be dismissed as meaningless. The word is naming something we cannot live without.

4. So what does “unchangeable” mean in this kind of world?

In a culture that distrusts absolutes, unchangeable still points to realities that carry immense weight:

• Framework-level stability – laws of logic and math that we must treat as fixed or life stops working.

• Identity stability – that you are truly you across time; you are not a different person every morning with no continuity.

• Moral anchors – at least some actions that are wrong regardless of preference or culture.

We may argue about which things belong in these categories, but we can’t escape the fact that some categories like this must exist or meaning, reasoning, and trust evaporate.

So from a logical perspective:

1. Our culture says “everything is relative.”

2. But language, logic, science, and morality all presuppose some unchangeable structure.

3. Therefore, the word unchangeable still names something real enough that we lean on it constantly—even while we argue against it.

This raises a deeper question: if there are such unchangeable realities, what explains them?

5. From unchangeable truths to an unchanging Mind

You could say, “That’s just how the universe is. These are brute facts.” But that answer is thin. Unchangeable logical laws, moral realities, and deep human longing for stable goodness all look strangely like the imprint of a mind, not an accident.

The Bible offers a different explanation:

“He has put eternity into man’s heart…”— Ecclesiastes 3:11, ESV

Our awareness of permanence is not a glitch; it’s a feature. We live in a changing world, but we carry a built-in orientation toward what does not change.

Scripture identifies this unchanging reality as God Himself:

“God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’”— Exodus 3:14, ESV

“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed.”— Malachi 3:6, ESV

“…the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”— James 1:17, ESV

Here, God is not one more shifting piece inside the universe. He is the I AM—the One whose existence and character are not borrowed, not fragile, not evolving.

In the New Testament the same language reaches its clearest expression:

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”— Hebrews 13:8, ESV

If that is true, then our use of words like truth, good, justice, and unchangeable is not random. It reflects, however dimly, the reality of an unchanging God whose character is the reference point for everything else.

6. The unchanging God who stepped into change

Christianity goes one step further. It does not only say that an unchanging God exists; it says that this God has entered our changing world:

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…”— John 1:14, ESV

The eternal Son of God took on a human nature in Jesus—stepping into time, hunger, grief, and death—without ceasing to be who He is from all eternity.

In that light, unchangeable is no longer just a philosophical category. It becomes personal:

• A love that does not fluctuate with our performance.

• A promise that does not expire.

• A standard of goodness that doesn’t twist with political winds or social trends.

Apologetics, at its best, is simply this: asking which worldview makes the most sense of the world we actually live in—a world where:

• we say “everything is relative,”

• but we cannot live without unchangeable truths,

• and we ache for an unchanging love.

If the word unchangeable is not an empty sound but a window into reality, then it is worth asking:

What if the reason we cannot escape this word is because we were made by, and for, the One of whom it is most fully true?