Ben

Serving God and Studying Salamanders

November 5, 2015 by Ben

After we finished family worship, my wife asked me to work with our first grader on a science project. The assignment, from the BJU Press Science 1 Teacher’s Edition (page 92) instructed her to make an informative poster about a wild animal. The week before, we’d found a salamander on a camping trip, so my daughter wanted to do a project on salamanders. She’d gotten a couple of books from the library, and we set out to find a few pictures.

I must confess that it was easy for me to fall into the trap of secularism that evening. Instead of remembering that God is relevant in all areas of life, I initially bought into the idea that this activity could be approached without involving Him.

It seems to me that Christians too often buy into this secular approach. We think certain activities are holy service to God, such as our family worship time, church attendance, or personal devotions. Other activities, such as cooking and cleaning, marketing, or finance are things we have to get through. They aren’t service to God. They have to be done, and we should obey God while we do them, but there isn’t a “Christian” way to do them.

The image in this blog post helps me understand this wrong way of thinking. The first story of the “house” is a typical suburban home. The second story is a church. Everything in the top story is “redeemable.” Everything in the bottom is “unredeemable.” Sometimes we wrongly assume that the people who work on the upper floor in “full-time Christian service” are doing God’s work and the rest of us working down on the lower floor are second-class Christians who only serve the Lord when we participate in spiritual tasks.

But God doesn’t teach this way of thinking, secularism does. God says that everything belongs to Him, and He has something to say about it.

As I helped my daughter with her project, my mind at first fell into the trap of thinking we’d moved from God’s things to earthly things, but thankfully my daughter’s textbook didn’t take that approach. On page 68, the BJU Press Science 1 textbook teaches:

“God gives animals what they need. But He also wants people to care for animals. In Proverbs [12:10] the Bible tells people to take care of animals. A good man takes proper care of his animals. We give glory to God when we take care of the animals He made.”

This kind of teaching helps my daughter understand that everything should be service to God.

So that evening as I helped my daughter with her salamander project after family worship, we were really moving from one service to God to another. My daughter and I learned what salamanders eat and where they live. On a small, first grader level, we were learning how to obey God’s command to take care of the world.

What kind of teaching are your children receiving?

Why Teach History From a Textbook, Even at Home?

October 22, 2015 by Ben

I love standing in the history section of the library and scanning the titles that line the shelves. Historical narratives tell true stories that are far more captivating than fictional stories. That’s why I head for that section of the library most often. Here are a few history narratives I’ve read recently.

City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas by Roger Crowley
The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan by Russell Shorto
Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World by Margaret MacMillan

These and other well-written historical narratives grip my attention as well as providing analysis and insight on the past. As a history enthusiast, I’m tempted to share these books with my daughters as soon as they’re capable of reading at that level. The founding and development of Dutch Manhattan is fascinating, but most textbooks only give it one or two paragraphs!

Can’t children just skip the history textbooks and get straight to these gripping stories?

I don’t believe they should. History textbooks play a vital role in children learning about the past. There are two reasons I want my girls to learn about history through textbooks before they read books like the ones I listed above.

The first reason is related to helping children learn about history the best way—through organized units of information that are balanced and chronological. History textbook authors put information into digestible portions, making it easier for children to master. But the real key is balance when it comes to historical figures and events. That way, children begin to grasp the comparative significance, for example, of the Teapot Dome Scandal and the Great Depression. The textbook also provides clarity on sequence in a narrative form.

As you can see from the titles I’ve mentioned, if my daughters’ history education focused on my favorite historical narratives (or even their favorites) it could create problems in their understanding of the past. They might be confused about the order of certain events. Their knowledge of the past would skew towards my interests. Just as a building’s framework provides structural form and support to everything that comes next, a historical framework (provided by history textbooks) will provide form and support for my daughters’ understanding of the past.

The second reason I want to use history textbooks relates to the worldview I want to teach my children. History is not just an account of events, actors, and places. It is an interpretation of the historical data. And all historians have a perspective that shapes their interpretation of the past.

Take for example Nixon and Mao, a fascinating account of skirmishes on the Russia-China border, ping-pong diplomacy, and Kissinger’s trip to China—a trip so secret that even the State Department didn’t know about it. MacMillan’s book would interest anyone intrigued by the Cold War. But her book isn’t without worldview implications. She makes this point in The Uses and Abuses of History, another one of her books on writing history:

In a secular world, which is what most of us in Europe and North America live in, history takes on the role of showing us good and evil, virtues and vices. Religion no longer plays as important a part as it once did in setting moral standards and transmitting values.

In Margaret MacMillian’s assessment, religion no longer gives us our worldview—history does. I enjoy this author’s work, but I don’t want her works of history to shape my children’s worldview. Instead, my family uses a tool that provides an organized and biblical worldview of the past. That tool is a BJU Press Heritage Studies textbook written from a biblical worldview.

One day, I want my daughters to enjoy learning about Nixon’s Chinese diplomacy and other historical narratives. But before they learn about these places and events, I want them to have a framework for these events. And that framework needs to be constructed on the foundation of a biblical worldview. After that framework is in place, my daughters can learn about the past from varied historians and correctly evaluate the worldview of those historians.

God’s Providence, Columbus’s Mistake

October 8, 2015 by Ben

Perspective matters in all of education, but it’s particularly clear that perspective impacts teaching about the past. The scene of an accident illustrates on a miniature scale how perspective influences the retelling of an event. Where a witness was standing and what he was doing at the time of the accident will dramatically affect his view of the event. Most historians aren’t eyewitnesses of the events they record, but they do have perspectives that color their narratives.

Christopher Columbus provides an excellent example since historians have many different perspectives about this world figure. My friend Wes wrote a blog post that questioned the morality of Columbus’s actions. But I’d like to discuss two different perspectives taught about Columbus’s scientific knowledge.

Columbus—Heroic Individualist

One educational television show teaches children about Columbus by having an “interview” with him. The man playing the part of the explorer explains that most people in his day thought that the world was flat and that anyone who sailed far enough west would fall off the edge. Columbus, however, believed the world was round and therefore thought he could reach the East Indies by sailing west.

In this widely held perspective, Columbus is seen as a heroic individualist, bucking the religious, intellectual, and political establishments of his time by boldly charting a path based on scientific fact. Secularists like this story because it pits the rationality of science against irrational notions of religion. But those details aren’t accurate. This common perspective on Columbus is one that professional historians are trying to dissuade popular culture from believing.

Columbus—Mistaken Merchant

Actually, the scientific controversy in Columbus’s day wasn’t about the shape of the earth but its size. Most people during that time knew the earth was round but thought it was a little smaller than it really is. Since Columbus was convinced that the earth was much smaller than it is, he believed Asia could be reached faster by sailing west.

The religious/intellectual establishment actually had a more accurate estimate of Earth’s size than Columbus did, but nobody at that time knew there was a large landmass in between Europe and Asia.

I appreciate how BJU Press concludes this historical account in Heritage Studies 1 (page 121):

Columbus did not reach Asia by sailing west. Though Columbus did not know where he landed, God did. Columbus did not know he had found new lands to explore. God used the voyage to change the world.

In this telling, Columbus is a mistaken merchant, but God changes the course of human events in a striking way.

Perspective really matters. Some historians want to make people the heroes and ignore what God says and does. As a Christian father, I want my daughters to develop a biblical perspective on the past. This statement from the same textbook (page 123) sums up the perspective I want them to have this holiday.

Columbus Day is celebrated on the second Monday of October. It is a day to remember Christopher Columbus and the land he found. It is a day to remember what God did long ago.

Storytelling and Worldview

September 10, 2015 by Ben

At times the challenge of developing a biblical worldview in my three little girls, five and under, overwhelms me. How can I equip these young minds with something as complex as a worldview? The writings of Paul David Tripp encourage me. In particular, Paul’s simple explanations and illustrations demonstrate that I can develop my daughters’ worldview.

I love Paul’s story about his three-year-old son, who after falling down the stairs exclaimed, “Thank you!” When Paul asked his son who he was talking to, the boy responded, “The angels. And I know how they did it.”

“Who did what?”

“The angels! One stands on this side, and the other stands on that side. They both hold beach balls. When you start to fall, they put the beach ball out to keep you safe.”

Tripp observes that even three-year-olds interpret what’s happening. In this case, the conclusion was immature, and it confused Sunday school lessons with family vacations. But even very young children are capable of understanding stories, synthesizing them, and using them to explain daily occurrences.

Thankfully, our heavenly Father has given us His perspective in terms of a story. It’s a story that even toddlers and preschoolers can learn and use to interpret everyday life. It’s a true story with a beginning, middle, and end. It’s a story that dramatically affects the way we interpret the learning that makes up education. It’s the story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption.

Creation

The story begins with “God created the heaven and the earth” (Genesis 1:1). But when the story reaches Genesis 1:26–28, we learn that we’re special. God creates man and woman in His own image. God tells them to fill the world with little image-bearers and to take care of the world. Then He gives the first man a home (Eden), a wife (Eve), and a job (to name the animals and to work the garden).

Fall

Then Adam rebels and everything breaks. Death, sadness, and fighting come because of Adam’s wrong choice. His sin means that our hearts have been broken and our minds have been polluted. Adam and Eve make clothes out of fig leaves and then hide from God. Adam blames his wife for the sin, and Eve blames the serpent (Genesis 3:7–12).

Redemption

Next, we see that God immediately sets in motion His plan to redeem His fallen creation (Genesis 3:15). He promises that there will be conflict between the anointed one and the serpent. He promises that the anointed one will win and redeem God’s creation. This redemption plan is fulfilled in Christ’s death on the cross, His burial, and His resurrection from the dead.

The story applied to . . . math?

I share this story, not because it’s new or insightful, but because it’s simple and familiar. This is a story I share with my girls during family devotions. It’s a story they hear in Sunday school, and it affects the way they interpret learning, even math!

Math is a powerful tool to help us take care of the world (Genesis 1:28)
Because of the fall, some people use math to deny God (Romans 1:21–23)
The people of God can live in light of redemption by using math to love their neighbors (Luke 10:27–28)

The Creation-Fall-Redemption story doesn’t make worldview shaping easy, but it does make it attainable for my precious little ones. Using this story to interpret learning is critical for providing my children a thoroughly Christian education.

3 Ways Dads Can Lead in Homeschooling

August 11, 2015 by Ben

“Mom’s the teacher, and I’m the principal; she teaches, and I foot the bills.” When I was growing up as a homeschool kid, I heard several homeschool dads humorously relate this sentiment. As dads, we know we’re supposed to take the leadership role in homeschooling, so we put on the mantle of a school administrator. Even though we’re not usually engaged in the day-to-day homeschooling of our children, we end up paying the bills for the cost of education and thus feel that we’ve checked off our responsibility.

God gives fathers the responsibility of bringing up children in the nurture of the Lord. When it comes to the stuff of education, we have a tremendous opportunity to lead and partner with our wives in the homeschooling of our children. Scripture gives us as dads three specific responsibilities related to our wives and children.

To love our wives by sacrificing for them (Ephesians 5:25)
To live with our wives in an understanding way by listening to them (1 Peter 3:7)
To take responsibility for our children’s development (Ephesians 6:4)

Here are three ways we can lead our families in homeschooling.

1. Setting the priorities

Homeschooling provides our families with unlimited opportunities, and we need priorities to determine which opportunities should be labeled “good,” “better,” or “best.” When my wife and I were first married, we enjoyed discussing all the activities we wanted our future children to be involved in such as art, sports, community outreach, music, speech, and debate.

Now that we have three children and our oldest will soon be the age when she can begin participating in some of these additional activities, we’ve realized that there’s only so much time during a week. So we’ve prioritized. When T-ball sign-up came along, we declined.

On the other hand, my wife and I believe that biblical-worldview-based curriculum materials are a non-negotiable. We’ve made that the most important point in evaluating educational options for our family. This is our family’s choice, and you may have different priorities. Here are some priorities to consider:

Biblical-worldview-based curriculum materials
Curriculum for main academic subjects
Bible courses
Music and arts
Volunteering
Sports

Know your priorities and let them guide your decision-making.

2. Finding the best approach

I remember walking around the vendor hall at homeschool conferences when I was a kid. Even then, families had a wide variety of curriculum choices. Today, husbands and wives can be overwhelmed by the multitude of choices available as various vendors tout the success of their products. Where to begin?

Begin with your family’s educational philosophy or approach. Over the past thirty years, homeschoolers have innovated or rediscovered a variety of educational approaches. There’s everything from unschooling to classical education. As families, we need to evaluate these approaches and choose the one that will be the foundation of our homeschooling. There are different ways a dad can be involved in setting a direction.

If your wife eagerly embraces homeschooling:

Support her by listening to her ideas
Ask questions so that you understand
Be able to explain your family’s approach so that you can own your children’s education
Prepare to fund materials that fit the approach

If your wife is overwhelmed by homeschooling:

Ask questions so that you understand her concerns
Research educational programs and share your findings
Listen to her responses
Choose your family’s approach together but remember who will be doing the day-to-day teaching

Don’t be passive. It’s your children’s future. Get involved and stay involved.

3. Stepping in when there are challenges

I remember the day I fought my mom all day over a math concept. I was getting every problem wrong, and I had the wrong attitude. When Dad got home, my exasperated mom asked for help. He got involved, and it made a huge difference—for everyone. As dads, we need to step in when things come up. Here are ways you can step in:

Know your own strengths and weaknesses as well as your wife’s
Maintain your children’s respect for their mother
Help teach or tutor a specific subject
Do a household job so that your wife can set up a hands-on activity
Encourage your wife to continue on with the educational program at the first signs of trouble but speak up when you know it’s not working
Take the kids for a day so that your wife can regroup

Homeschooling is a challenge. Be alert to ways you can sacrifice for your wife and help your children grow.

Ben