Christian Schooling What is it?
Wesley Wentworth 2013
There needs to be a discussion as to what constitutes a school and what might allow it to be called a Christian school, a Marxist school or a Public school based on a clear statement of its educational philosophy and mission.
We as Christians would do well to understand Dabney and Wilson’s comment
(2012):
“Every line of true knowledge must find its completeness as it converges on God, just as every beam of daylight leads the eye to the sun. (p.17)” The Christian educator’s job is not to require the students to spend all their time gazing at the sun. Rather, we want them to examine everything else in the light the sun provides.
The educational task of school can be stated as being a place where students learn about the world, their nature, and their task in the world expressed as a story of the world. All subjects taught assume an understanding of these basic areas that is not derived from science but from a comprehensive framework of basic beliefs about the nature of the world and persons in it. This comes from a community’s worldview; most basic belief in one god, multiple gods, no god, or something in-between. In other words, all learning is based on some kind of belief, a religious faith. There is no neutrality. Education provides a view of the nature of the world both implicitly and explicitly. The basic question is, “Where is God and a Christian worldview in the school?” If you remove chapel, bible class, and the chaplain or if you assume that God doesn’t exist will it make any difference in how class content is taught?
We see that all education is religious at its foundation with beliefs ranging from the belief that the material world is all that there is (the most common assumption) to belief in a personal creator God. Most often there is a mixture of beliefs as teachers have not thought about the worldview from which they are teaching. This is a fundamental problem that arises from dualism in the church concerning a sacred-secular divide. It is reinforced by a failure to teach the whole story of the Bible beginning with creation. The story of the Bible can be outlined in short form as Creation, Fall, Redemption, and New Creation. It is the whole story that must be taught; yet, the first step, that of Creation, which provides the foundation for all that follows is frequently omitted. The problem can be illustrated as follows. To affirm with the understanding that “I believe in God the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.” is a radical statement that challenges the Western Enlightenment modernism dominating the education around the world and indoctrinating children in the belief that God is irrelevant for most of life. Applying the Christian belief in a personal creator would assure that when a student walks into the classroom that student is learning about the norms and laws that structure all that is studied and which are dependent moment by moment on the upholding word/power of the Triune God. The bible presents Jesus as Creator and Lord before his saving work. The world is His and his inheritance. (See Col.1:15-17.) The biblical story is not about us first but about God and his creation of which we are a part. God is speaking to persons through the created order. That is suppressed by the materialist worldview. You will see this expressed in Romans 1:18 -25. That God is speaking through what is studied has tremendous implications for what goes on in the classroom.
The second problem area is a lack of teaching about who we are as persons and our purpose in this world. Are persons created so that they can spend eternity floating around in space as an angelic choir escaping from the corruption in this world? No! Genuine, vibrant, culture-engaging Christianity is that which looks forward to the resurrection of the body in a renewed creation under the full authority of Jesus Christ the Lord, to being what we were created to be. We were created with a task—to rule over and develop the creation. We are God's representatives, God’s Image bearers. We are God’s kings in the world under King Jesus. Our meaning and our task in this world is the cultural care and development of the world to the Glory of God. (See Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and Psalm 8.) Education in its basic form is about the transmission of culture. This is not limited to the school but involves home, media and other associations. Foundational to education is the Cultural or Creation Mandate in Genesis. 1:26-28.
Central to God’s plan for the world following the Fall is not the Church but the Good News of the coming of the Kingdom of God. Rather, the Church is the community of the King proclaiming the good news of Christ and educating people for worship and service in the Kingdom of God. The school is under the Kingdom of God, not under the church. The school and the church are both spheres alongside each other to educate students for kingdom service in all areas of life. They both witness to the rule of God over every sphere of life including business, government, family, etc.
Most important, and based on the preceding principles, is the necessity that all teachers in these schools be educated and re-educated to think and teach about all of life, all subjects, in terms of the lordship of Christ. This will demand that all teacher education begin by continually reviewing and deepening the implications of the biblical story of Creation, Fall, Redemption and New Creation. This is basic to authentic Christian education for all involved. The preceding must be done as a community since a Christian school is a community of learning, learning from each other at all levels from parent to students to teachers to staff.
The purpose of Christian schooling is not evangelism but to educate students who will understand and experience the gracious rule of God in all that is learned and experienced in the school and who will become countercultural agents of change as they follow Christ in all areas of life. Since a Christian school is a place where God and Christ are taught in an integral way by the Spirit as the source of all that is learned, challenging students to be stewards of their own learning in service to and love of God and their neighbor, non-Christian students inevitably will be challenged to believe and adopt a vibrant personal faith commitment to Jesus Christ. That is to say, the challenge in a real Christian school, to be a disciple of Christ through all that is learned, cannot help but be evangelistic to those who are not Christians, and a vital faith encouragement to those who already are Christians.
Thanks to Ben Torrey and Richard Edlin for editing help.