By Michael McCormack
NEW ORLEANS -- When Michael Duduit came to New Orleans in late October to host a preaching conference at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS), he was two years later than he’d planned to be.
Duduit, editor of Preaching magazine and leader of Preaching Truth in a Whatever World conferences, was scheduled to be in New Orleans to lead a conference during the Fall 2005 semester at NOBTS. Despite the disruption, Duduit took action during those chaotic weeks following Hurricane Katrina.
He couldn’t host a conference at NOBTS that fall, but he could come to the aid of students and faculty who had lost everything – including their libraries. That fall, Duduit contacted Jerry Barlow, dean of graduate studies at NOBTS, about his idea for helping replace lost personal libraries. Soon after, he called on the readers of Preaching magazine to donate books from their own libraries.
Barlow began receiving shipments of books from across the country that next spring. Shipments continued well into the Fall 2006 semester.
More than two years after he was first scheduled to speak at NOBTS, Duduit finally got the chance to speak at the seminary’s Oct. 30 chapel service. He began by addressing the pivotal question Pilate asked Jesus before his sentencing: “What is truth?”
“If he (Pilate) was speaking in 21st century America and trying to communicate the same idea, he’d say ‘Whatever,’” Duduit said. “The word whatever has become a verbal shorthand, hasn’t it?”
A response of “whatever,” according to Duduit, communicates one of three messages: the topic doesn’t matter, the response doesn’t matter or the speaker doesn’t matter.
“We’re living in a ‘whatever’ world, a culture in which truth has been stripped of its meaning and replaced with personal preference,” he said.
In a “whatever” world, all ideas, lifestyles or beliefs are of equal value. Of late, this has been called “postmodernism,” but Duduit was fast to point out that relativism is anything but new.
“It’s as old as Pilate playing politics on Good Friday. It’s as old as the Romans who didn’t care if the early Christians worshiped Jesus as long as they also worshiped Caesar,” he said. “It’s as old as the Garden of Eden where a smooth-talking serpent convinced the residents that one tree was pretty much the same as any other tree, no matter what God might have said.”
The only difference, Duduit said, is the pervasiveness of “whatever” today. According to a Barna study, Duduit said, three-fourths of Americans believe there is no absolute truth. What’s more, less than 10 percent of teenagers believe in the existence of absolute truth, Duduit said.
“Because our culture has rejected the concept of absolute truth, all moral claims have been reduced to the level of personal preference,” he said. “As a result, we’ve entered into a period of moral anarchy, and the price is being paid by our families.”
But in opposition to the mandates of the “whatever” world stand the words of Jesus in John 14:6: “I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through me.”
“That is the most audacious statement ever made,” Duduit said, “unless it’s true. And if it’s true, it changes everything.”
Duduit identified three main areas of life that the truth of Jesus impacts. The first of those is the mind.
“If I see myself as the ultimate authority in determining right and wrong, then it’s easy to get to the place where there is no wrong,” he said. “But if we recognize there’s a God who stands over and above us and that in Christ he wants to enter into a relationship with us, then it changes the way we think.”
In short, the way someone thinks determines the way that person will live.
Duduit then pointed to the truth Jesus offers for life. Jesus’ truth for life, he said, brings a sense of meaning, purpose and fulfillment to life. Duduit pointed to the Bible as a powerful guide for living a full, Christ-centered life. Unfortunately, that guide for living is often ignored.
“What happens when we ignore God’s truth for our lives?” Duduit asked. “We end up in a nation where Gideon Bibles are turned away from our schools and condoms are freely distributed. [...] We end up in a nation where we can physically not build prisons fast enough to accommodate the growing population of inmates.”
Duduit suggested that part of the problem is that many Christians take the religious dimension of their lives and put it in a box for the better part of the week “without letting our faith inform our day-to-day lives at the office, in the classroom, in the shop or in the neighborhood.
“Our faith is not one more item on the to-do list,” he said. “You and I have been called to let our commitment to Christ shape and guide everything we do in every facet of our lives. It is the truth from which everything else flows.”
In the day-to-day world in which the Christian functions, he or she must bring both the mind and the life into accordance with God’s will.
“Recognizing that Jesus is truth for our lives means acknowledging that all we have is his,” Duduit said. “When we recognize that Jesus is the only authentic truth for our lives, it will change everything. It will change how we do our jobs, how we treat our family, how we spend our money, how we allocate our time, what we do in the classroom, and on and on.”
Jesus is truth for the mind, for life and for the future.
Duduit pointed to past leaders in both television and computers who, in the 40s and 50s, predicted very limited demand for TVs and computers.
“The future’s hard to predict,” he said. “But as Christians, there are some truths we know, some things that are absolute and ultimately true.”
Duduit said Christians can know that everything exists for a purpose, because they know who brought the world into being. Christians also know that humans were created for fellowship with God but that sin obliterated that relationship.
“The good news of the gospel is there’s something else we can know for sure – God has bridged the chasm caused by sin,” Duduit said. “That’s why the favorite verse of most Christians is John 3:16.”
Forgiveness and restoration through Christ, he said, revolutionizes the future.
New Orleans was just one of many stops for Duduit’s preaching conference. For more information on Preaching magazine or the conferences, go online to www.preaching.com.