BJU Press Blog

Wesley

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About Wesley

Wesley, who has an MDiv, formerly worked as part of the Bible integration team at BJU Press, helping textbook writers look at their subjects from a Christian worldview. He and his wife are now serving the Lord on the mission field. Read more posts by Wesley.

Should Bible Be a Subject?

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Have you ever spent too much time studying the Bible? You know—you had two services on Sunday, and then because it was a special conference week, you attended daily workshops and sessions where amazing speakers taught you even more about God and His Word. Then to make things worse, you even found yourself reading the Bible for fun in your afternoon free time. That was just awful, wasn’t it?

I’m pretty sure I’ve never met a real Christian who felt that way. Of course, you can get tired. You can get frustrated trying to manage a schedule and Bible study. But if you know the Lord, there’s always great joy in learning about Him through His Word (Psalm 119:97). There’s nothing else as valuable as cultivating true knowledge and fear of the Lord (Psalm 19:10).

Sometimes when we divide up our time for the school week, we don’t always reflect this priority. We spend hours and hours every week working on science projects and math problems with our children. Why? Because that knowledge and those skills are important. But even more important than that is what they use that knowledge and skill for. The education they go through is not an end; it’s a means to an end. They learn in order to live a certain way. Their worldview shapes the way they use all their knowledge and skill.

BJU Press illustration of a boy reading Bible stories

As our children learn music, history, science, and mathematics, it’s essential that they learn the Bible as well. The Bible is going to give them the Christian worldview. This is why Bible study has always been a part of Christian education. It is foundational. Without a thorough knowledge of God and His Word, we cannot direct our learning of science or art in the right way. And we must not assume that participating in public or family worship can take the place of rigorous personal study of the Bible. Our worship flows out of our knowledge, but it cannot replace it. We need our children to be studying and memorizing Scripture with the same academic effort that they study the American Revolution and memorize their multiplication tables.

Many tools are available for that purpose, but the best will be a curricululm that has the big picture in view. You need a tool that not only takes into account

  • where children are academically,
  • what Bible content they should be covering each level, and
  • what they’re learning about in other subjects

but also has an overall strategy for combining all of these factors.

It is through rigorous Bible study that students acquire Bible knowledge, which is the foundation of a biblical worldview.

View BJU Press Bible curriculum.

Celebrate the Resurrection

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A few years ago, there was a movie released on the martyrdom of Jim Elliot and his friends. One of the most interesting parts of the film was what it revealed about the Waodoni perception of life after death. After death, the Waodoni believed, they would face a great boa snake. If they were able to jump over the great boa, they could continue on to “heaven.” But anyone who failed to clear the boa was doomed to return to earth as a termite. In one gripping scene, a Waodoni warrior weeps at the death of his little son. His grief is compounded because the boy “was too small to jump the great boa.” The Waodoni lived in the fear of death.

This has been the condition of mankind down through history. People are separated from God, and their only hope has been to clear an impossible obstacle. I think it’s telling that the Waodoni believed they would face a serpent after death since death came into the world by a serpent (Genesis 3). But the Waodonis’ only hope was to become physically strong so that they could physically jump over the snake. They never knew if anyone had succeeded, but they believed that many, even most, had failed. They had little hope.

The Bible’s story couldn’t be more different! Scripture says you don’t have to jump the great boa. In fact, at the very moment that the serpent led Adam into death, God promised to send Someone to crush that serpent (Genesis 3:15). God’s own Son came and died. He jumped the great boa so you wouldn’t have to. When He died a vicarious death, He rendered that old serpent powerless (Hebrews 2:15). By crushing the serpent, He conquered death and opened the way to heaven. He did for us what was impossible for us to do for ourselves (Mark 10:27).

At Easter we celebrate the resurrection of God’s Son from the tomb—His victory over death. Because He has crushed the serpent, you’ll never have to try to jump the great boa. You don’t have to become a termite forever. Praise the Lord that you don’t have to live in the fear of death!

Celebrating the Creation Mandate

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Imagine this—you’re with a group of friends for a New Year’s Eve party. There’s a fire burning in the fireplace and hot cider in the kitchen. After some holiday food, there’s a time of singing. People begin to share some testimonies about what God is doing in their lives and what they’re learning from Scripture. One girl opens her Bible to share a verse that she just read in her devotions that morning—Genesis 1:28. Hmm . . . that’s an odd choice for a warm fuzzy verse. Then she reads it: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth  and subdue it and have dominion over . . .. ” Now if this were my party, I would be starting to feel a little nervous right about now. I would want to know where she’s going with this.

composition of both the Western and Eastern Hemisphere of planet Earth

Where is Genesis 1:28 going? Why is it in the Bible? This verse is significant not only because it gives us authority over all the animals. We would have been clear on that by the simple fact that we are made in God’s image (1:26). But it’s also significant because it gives us a mandate—the Creation Mandate—to rule over God’s world in His place and to maximize the usefulness of God’s creation for our good and His glory.

First of all, God commands Adam to have children. God wasn’t satisfied with one image-bearer; He wanted the earth to be full of people made in His own image. These people would use and change the natural world that God created. But that’s what God intended—thus His second command to subdue or govern the earth. God designed humans to be creative and to create in and with the world they live in. Everywhere these people went and lived, they were to rule over the creation. All the plants and the herbs would be for food (1:29). Even the most intelligent, powerful, and majestic of God’s animals would be the servants of human beings (1:28). Human beings occupy a place of awesome privilege because they bear God’s image. It’s a position not only of privilege but also of responsibility.

The weight of this responsibility started to sink in when Adam disobeyed God. Not only would Adam die, but so would all mankind with him (Romans 5:12). His wrong choice as a leader damaged everything he was supposed to be ruling over (Genesis 3:17–18; Romans 8:22). But Adam’s damage didn’t destroy God’s design of the world. Even God’s cataclysmic judgment with a worldwide flood didn’t undo His order. After the Flood, God reaffirmed each part of the Creation Mandate with Noah and his family (Genesis 9:1–20).

Today we are still directed by the Creation Mandate because we still live in the world that God created. Though sin has deeply affected God’s creation, the world still works. People are born every day, and they make useful things. In many cases, they’re fighting back against the effects of sin and the Curse. The Creation Mandate gives us a glimpse of what God created the earth to be and how we can live all of life to the glory of God. And that is something worth sharing with your friends at a New Year’s Eve party.

Learning in Order to Teach

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statue of General George Custer on horse
Statue of General Custer by Dwight Burdette/Wikimedia Commons/CC-By 3.0

In a recent post, Karin showed us how the whole Bible is connected in one big story about God’s work to restore a fallen creation back to Himself. The truths of the gospel describe to us our destitute position and God’s wonderful deliverance. God has exalted the human race far beyond what we deserve—first, by creating us in his own image (Genesis 1:26); second, by promising to redeem us (Genesis 3:15); and lastly, by sending the Son in the likeness of human flesh (Romans 8:3). These truths also have implications for our whole lives, including what we do in relation to education.

Education should develop people in all the ways appropriate for human beings. This honors the reality of the image of God in man. We’re also training our children to live among other image-bearers. This can only be accomplished if they truly realize what being an image-bearer means and have been trained to view others that same way. School is a valuable opportunity for Christian worldview shaping.

Let’s consider one subject area—history. Do you ever talk about people as you teach history? Of course, you do. People are the primary topic of history. But does the fact that those people are made in the image of God ever affect what you say or do? Consider one familiar figure in American history, General George Armstrong Custer. To some people he’s a tragic hero. To others, he’s a villain. What you believe about the image of God in Custer, the men under his command, and the Plains Indians will affect what you say about him and the Battle of Little Bighorn.

I hope you’ll take a trip sometime this summer and visit a historically significant place. There, on the wall or in the ground will be a statue or a plaque to a certain man. Your homework assignment is to apply the reality of humans as image-bearers to that man. Then share that with your kids. Why is his statue there? Is he important? Is he valuable? Was he good or bad or a mixture of both. Remember that “good” and “bad” are determined by God. A person is not good simply because he agrees with you.

As you talk about him as an image-bearer of God, you can ask another question, “Did he honor the image of God in other people?” As you prepare to defend your conclusion from the Bible, you just might find that your own thinking hasn’t been entirely scriptural. What a wonderful opportunity to develop your biblical worldview alongside your child’s.

Don’t Celebrate Columbus Day?

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Columbus was only one of many famous explorers, and he never actually got to the North American continent. So, why celebrate Columbus?

Christopher Columbus arrives in America
Christopher Columbus arrives in America by L. Prang & Co., Boston/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain

As early as 1792, there were official celebrations of Columbus’s voyage. In 1934, in response to lobbying by Italian immigrants, Congress passed a resolution asking the president to designate October 12 as Columbus Day. President Roosevelt signed a proclamation in 1937, but it was still not a federal holiday. In 1968, in honor of Columbus as an example of the courage and determination of all immigrants who have come to America, Congress decided to create a legal public holiday to be celebrated on the second Monday of October each year.

But Columbus’s arrival in the New World actually opened the door for major changes no one wants to celebrate. Europeans brought enslavement and death to thousands of people in the Americas. If humans were simply advanced primates, perhaps these acts could be explained as necessary for the survival of the fittest. But human beings are image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:27), and the Bible teaches that that people are to love their neighbors (Mark 12:31). A Christian cannot please God by celebrating or even by ignoring the death or mistreatment of other people.

The real question is whether you can celebrate the good that someone does without talking about the evil that he does. The Bible gives us guidance on that. As the Old Testament accounts show, God used people like Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, and David despite their failings and sins. But God does not whitewash their history. In each case He details both their successes and their failures to love God and their neighbors. However, God does not always feel compelled to give both sides. In Hebrews 11 there is a list of heroes of faith. God mentions Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, and David, but not their failures. The list even includes Rahab, Samson, and Jephthah, all of whom were conspicuous for sinfulness! Why are they in this chapter? It’s not that the failures don’t matter. God spent a lot of time talking about their failures in other places. It’s just that a person is not simply the sum of his failures; he is also a product of grace working in his life.

When historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto took up the question of whether Columbus was a saint or criminal, he concluded on the five-hundredth anniversary of his famous voyage that “the real Columbus was a mixture of virtues and vices like the rest of us, not conspicuously good or just, but generally well-intentioned, who grappled creditably with intractable problems.”

So what can you celebrate on Columbus Day? Celebrate the truth. Remember that early explorers such as Columbus courageously faced enormous obstacles and persevered. Acknowledge the fact that many also sinned against their fellow human beings. Recognize that in spite of man’s sinfulness, God is gracious. Thank God for the good, and learn from the bad. For Christians, Columbus is a reminder that we are all sinners desperately in need of the grace of God.