BJU Press Blog

purpose of Christian education

Fallen Hearts Twisting Education

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As a child, I enjoyed visiting the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, with my family. With its historic airplanes and artifacts from the space race, the Air and Space Museum was my favorite. One of my most vivid memories from our trip was what my dad said as we walked toward the Museum of Natural History. “Much of what we’ll see in this museum rejects the Bible,” he warned. “We need to remember that what God said in Genesis is true and what we’ll see today is merely what man thinks.”

I remember thinking that some of the displays promoting evolution were silly as I tried to reconcile the assertions of the evolutionary view with the incredible technological advances of our age. How could so many people with so much education and so much money be wrong about this? How could the generation of scientists that produced the marvels I saw in that museum be mistaken about the origins of mankind? The answer lies in what went wrong.

In Genesis 3, we learn that humans sinned and sin broke everything. Now creation groans, conflict spreads, and death reigns. But of all sin’s consequences, it is the condition of our hearts that is most frightful. In a previous post, we looked at how creation shapes education. In this post, let’s examine how the human heart was twisted in every way in the Fall and how, as a result, we twist every part of God’s creation including science, history, and the rest of education.

The Connection of Loving and Thinking

Romans 3:10 teaches us the pervasiveness of sin’s effects on mankind. “There is none righteous, no, not one.” Then in the next verse, Paul quotes a psalm placing what we love and what we think right next to each other: “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God” (Romans 3:11). But what is the link between seeking God and understanding?

Proverbs 1:7 makes the connection between right affections for God and right thinking when it says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” The most important part of gaining right knowledge is a right relationship with the Lord. And the Lord puts His finger on this relationship because if we cannot love the one being in the universe who is most worthy of our love, then we cannot come to correct conclusions about His universe.

That’s the reason brilliant scientists don’t want to acknowledge that God created them. Their distaste for Him leads them to devise alternative explanations for our origins. This is also why historians believe that man created civilizations that invented gods rather than that God created humanity to develop civilization.

Intelligent, educated people come to wrong conclusions not because their minds are incapable of thinking correctly but because—due to the Fall—their hearts are incapable of loving God as they should.

Educating Hearts and Minds

When mankind sinned, the human heart fell. That fallen heart leads the mind to think incorrectly. Given the nature of learning, broken hearts and minds affect every aspect of our children’s education.

When anyone teaches children, he isn’t relaying only facts and skills to the next generation. He’s passing on personal values (what he loves). Neil Postman, in his 1996 book The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School, observed that education is worship: “For school to make sense, the young, their parents, and their teachers must have a god to serve, or even better, several gods.” He argues that US public schools are dedicated to serving, among others, the god of consumerism. Worshipers of consumerism learn so that they can get jobs and buy the best cars, houses, and vacations.

If Postman, who was a secular humanist, saw the religious nature of education, we as Christian parents need to think through the worship implications of the educational choices we make for our children—especially if we’ve dedicated our homes as Joshua did when he said: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15).

The Smithsonian not only presents secular society’s view of the past, it demonstrates secularists’ pride in America’s great accomplishments. That’s why the artifacts in the Air and Space Museum represent man’s hope in continual technological advances. You won’t find a Smithsonian museum dedicated to the hope of the gospel. Our hope of redemption is what we want to share with our children through our homeschooling. In the next post, we’ll look at how that hope transforms education.

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How Would I Ever Use This?

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In my last post, I shared ways to talk about the practical uses of school subjects around the house.

But what about outside the home? How might you teach your child that his education is vitally connected to his ability to earn a living—in any field?

Get your child thinking about various careers. A good way to do this is to develop his interest in other people. Part of caring about other people is being interested in what they do. Teach your child to show interest in others by encouraging him to ask others questions about their jobs. Bolster his enthusiasm for the careers of your family members, your neighbors, or the adults in your church. You and your child might even benefit from visiting a nursing home together. Older and retired adults usually enjoy talking about their past careers.

Assign your child to interview someone in a career that interests him. If he doesn’t feel drawn to any particular career, suggest that he interview a person he especially admires. He may not be as fascinated by the field of accounting as he is by Mr. Brown, the man who keeps the church books and always has a joke and a pocketful of peppermints. Chances are that esteemed people rather than jobs themselves will have the greater influence on his future career choices.

Encourage your child to ask Mr. Brown how he uses specific school subjects in his career. Obviously he uses some math—but how about history or science? Does he ever have opportunity to use his physical education training?

If time and convenience allow, take your child to visit Mr. Brown at his accounting firm. Interviewing him in his own work environment will give you and your child a taste of what everyday life on the job is like.

Give your child some interviewing pointers before he goes for such a visit. Make sure he has a few questions ready. It’s best to stay away from questions that can be answered by yes or no responses. Open-ended questions will give Mr. Brown more time to talk—and probably allow him to impart more helpful information. Courtesy and respect on your child’s part are essential. He should give Mr. Brown time to answer one question before moving on to the next. He should take pencil and paper for notes or request Mr.Brown’s permission to record the interview. Caution him to respect Mr. Brown’s time and to keep the visit short.

The basic questions would work with almost any career. In what specific ways would an engineer or an auto mechanic use math? How would history be useful for a lawyer or a tour guide? How would a librarian or a pastor put his reading skills to use? Emphasize the relevance of Bible knowledge regardless of a person’s career—for personal study as well as witnessing or counseling.

On-location interviews can definitely broaden your child’s experiences. Think of the possibilities. A farmer might let your child try out his tractor seat while he relates his work to science and weather. An interior decorator could talk about the importance of design and color in art while she wallpapers a room. Perhaps your local pharmacist, while filling an order from a doctor’s prescription, could point out the danger of poor handwriting.

Let your child share his discoveries later at the supper table, or have him write out a condensed version of the actual interview and read it to you. Listen to him, and help him put his finger on just what he has learned through this experience. The best way for a child to learn the value of education is not to lecture him—but to let him find out for himself. Maybe the next time he asks, “When will I ever use this again?”—he’ll be able to answer his own question!

What other ways have you found to show your children how their education is connected to the real world?

Structuring a Biblical Worldview Approach

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How can you help your children or students understand and then apply the Bible to all of life? How can you teach them to think and operate according to a biblical worldview?

The purpose of Christian education is rooted in a conviction that children must understand and apply the Bible in every sphere of life. That’s why parents and churches combine their resources to expand the understanding and application of the Bible to all of the particulars within a field of study that the pastor has no time or expertise to address in the Sunday sermon. The purpose of Christian education is not only to provide spiritual and ethical reinforcement but also to provide biblical worldview training for understanding academic disciplines in a way that is consistent with biblical thinking.

Structuring Your Approach

Since expanding the understanding and application of the Bible to all of life is the primary motivation and task of the Christian educator, knowing how to do it well is vital. Choosing a curriculum that provides a solid foundation to build on is the first step. But that’s only a starting point, a guide. It offers help by providing suggestions to point you in the right direction. But the teacher is still key.

The teacher structures and develops the meat of the lesson. What mindset should guide you as you seek to help students understand and apply the Bible in a particular field of study? One helpful approach is to look at your subject matter through the lens of Creation, Fall, Redemption. Evaluate students’ understanding by asking them to explain the subject matter—how it ought to be done or viewed according to God’s creational norms/laws. Evaluate students’ critical thinking by asking them to analyze and evaluate fallen humanity’s twisting of that subject matter. Evaluate their application skills and creativity by challenging them to think through a biblical approach to the subject matter even within a fallen world awaiting God’s full restoration.

One Example: Cultural Geography

Secular textbooks are filled with the subtle assumptions or evangelistic zeal of multicultural pluralism—the idea that all cultures are equally good or neutral and thus equally acceptable. This is consistent with secularist goals and values such as “truth and values are relative” or “tolerance will solve the conflicts of humanity.” However, if cultural geography is taught from the biblical model of Creation, Fall, Redemption, students will learn that all cultures reflect the ideas and behaviors of people groups that are both created in God’s image and fallen. Thus, all cultures combine both creational goodness and human fallenness. Some cultures are more conformed to God’s law than others due to God’s common grace and the influence and contributions of the redeemed in that culture. Students must learn  not only to appreciate cultures distinct from their own but also to critically evaluate all cultures, including their own, by the ultimate standard of God’s Word.

Using Creation, Fall, and Redemption in your thinking will help you shape a biblical worldview in the minds of your students. May God give you help to that end.

How do you help your students maintain a biblical worldview in their studies?