Leading Our Children Out of Darkness

Part Two


By Ronald Kirk
Special to ASSIST News Service


Let us not forget the religious character of our origin.

Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely; in the full conviction, that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity.

Daniel Webster, 1820, said, regarding the Pilgrims, "Is it not that, in the chain of human events, the birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birthday of the Saviour?"

John Quincy Adams, 1837, said, "Just as ancient Israel's experiences glorify Israel's God, and just as their experience provides lessons for everyone's edification, so the providential American experience glorifies God and encourages the godly."

The American Christian church's heritage of thought and action based on biblical grounds, with expressions in expanding spheres, began to fade as Americans prospered materially toward the end of the 18th Century. In the early 19th Century, many abandoned the faith for Unitarianism. As the Jewish nation looked backward toward Egypt, Americans looked back to Europe and its fashions, even sending the children to European schools, where old wineskins corrupted the youth.

Subsequently, through the movement known as Pietism, Christians retreated into the walls of the church, limiting Christian expression to personal worship and evangelism. Mainstream, self-serving pietism has cut the heart out of Christian expression, producing an ineffective testimony to the world. Christian practices limited to attending church services, verbal evangelism and missions alone do not fulfill the God-ordained mandate of the whole Gospel. This weak testimony produces poor evangelical results, because it fails to exert all the effects of the Holy Spirit's work in men and their influence on others.

The Bible instead requires that we manifest comprehensive expressions of the faith of Christ. We are to make disciples of all nations and not mere converts. We are to be salt and light, and thus exert godly influence on others. The Scriptures command us to stir up our gifts to contribute to the building of the Kingdom (see 1 Cor. 12:7; 2 Tim. 1:6). Christians should produce good works of every kind, that testify of God's glory to the world. Furthermore, we should participate in the growth of grace and wisdom with fellow Christians in every endeavor-so that whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we do all to the glory of God (see 1 Cor. 10:31; Eph. 2:10).

As Christians render to God what is God's, and to Caesar what is Caesar's, the influence of the godly is preeminent-a fact observed all through history whenever God's people assert His lordship in their personal and corporate lives, with expressions of the gentle and peaceable spirit of Christ. The good news is that many astute Christians are again taking up the mantle to see God's will done on earth as is it in heaven, which has come to be known as the Christian or biblical worldview.

Education has perhaps suffered the most from weak Christianity. Psychology, the new religion, observes human behavior and presents a contradiction to the biblical view of man, based on sight, not by faith. Modern psychology institutionalizes sin in the name of science and established a normalcy that negates the Gospel or the need for redemption.

Historically, education reflects contemporary culture and elevates it. We now live in a debased age where normal education perpetuates the humanistic status quo, which itself resulted from the humanistic movements of the 19th and 20th Centuries. To mark the impact of these movements, my informal surveys over the last 10 years suggest that evolutionary, behavioral psychology is the basis for educational theories in teacher preparation departments of virtually every Christian college and university in the United States, with only a handful of known exceptions.

Proper Christian education prepares the next generation for its ultimate calling in Christ, to prepare for eternity and to minister to others. America's legacy of Christian education, in the light of good doctrine and a focus that is theologically sound, holds the promise to exceed the spiritual and practical accomplishments of the past. The development of the "Get Wisdom! Program" of historical Christian philosophy and learning methods has produced very gratifying results in the crucible of experience, even during the early stages of its development. This program has served families of every conceivable background from the broken and damaged to the gifted and accomplished for over 20 years of success.

Gospel Foundations

Why educate and to what end? The Bible tells us that people perish due to a lack of knowledge (see Hos. 4:6) and that God's Word is a lamp to our feet (see Ps. 119:105). Darkness hides chaotic and destructive elements, even as is evidenced when routine social order is temporarily disrupted during blackouts or disasters. Jesus requires Christians to make converted disciples of all nations, teaching them His ways in all things (Matt. 28:18-20). Thus, education is fundamentally evangelical.

Evangelism requires two elements: the Seed-the Word of God; and good soil-the human heart. Nowhere in creation is good soil naturally found. Under the curse, the ground brings forth weeds and thorns. The soil must be worked and improved to support the life-sustaining crop. Just so, the human heart must be prepared in a character capable of receiving grace for the ability and wisdom to live out a purposeful life. Mere verbal evangelism fails the New Testament's witness of the power of God in peoples' real lives. Christian education requires several often neglected elements.

Because all biblical understanding of life is based in a rich content of knowledge, Christian education ought, of course, to prepare the individual to master imaginative and intellectual content of all kinds. Much of Christian education stops here. Yet Christ requires more.

The Bible largely appeals to the imagination of things that are positive. "The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed" (Matt. 13:31). Education must inculcate a godly imagination, capable of conceptualizing the Gospel in real life, and of creativity for personal contributions that are good, true and beautiful.

The Gospel is fundamentally sensitive to the development of loving relationships. An ability to form and sustain biblically principled relationships at all levels of human intercourse is inherent to the Gospel. Sin tends to reduce us to essentially adversarial relations through acts or ignorance or self-centeredness. Thus, the Gospel requires men to get along with each other! Not with merely superficial manners, the Gospel fosters the ability to maintain community ties.

Further, the Gospel liberates our souls to obey Christ (see 2 Cor. 3:17; 1 Cor. 7:23) to live hopeful, rewarding lives. Moreover, God called His people to take dominion over the earth (see Gen. 9:1-2; Ps. 8:6). This essentially means it is God's plan for His people to invest in the development knowledge and skills for economic productivity, which blesses others and glorifies God. The Lord grants grace and knowledge to reveal His plan to recreate Christ-like characteristics to enter His eternal kingdom (see 2 Pet. 1:2-11) An increase of rudeness on the highways, for example, is evidence of the decline of free society. Governments require order; the less we are self-governed, the more intrusive governmental regulation will be.

Christian education affects the whole man, and is the redeeming factor of every endeavor for a godly influence over all areas of life toward salvation through the Gospel. Humanism, found even in the church, condones sin and discourages the redemptive process. When individual Christians use biblical wisdom to articulate and practice a Christian worldview expressed through fine art, science, civil government, business and every other human endeavor exhibits faith, stands for righteousness and earns the right to be heard and emulated, thus truly becoming salt and light to the world.

Covenantal Relationship

Since state laws require school attendance, the state must offer "free" school and the accomplishment of education is perceived to weigh upon the school. The student thus often adopts an irresponsible entitlement mentality. Meanwhile, the school assumes authority over the student, yet without a means to influence education outside the classroom. This system can lead to an adversarial relationship with parents. While parents point to the school, students dare the school to make them learn, and schoolteachers, caught in the middle, become hardened by the abuse they often receive. Meanwhile, no one accepts responsibility, though the school may take the credit when a student of good character does well, though more often this reflects on the student's family.

From the 1930s under the auspices of John Dewey and others, intrusions into education have affected every area of curriculum with anti-Christian bias. From evolutionary pre-suppositions in science class, to statist politics in social studies, to behavioral presuppositions about human nature, godlessness prevails. Even Christian teachers must submit to the state-mandated content and training in psychology-based educational theories. In other words, the state curriculum puts biblically minded Christians on the defensive. Christians in huge numbers accept this travesty, while elite liberal rulers send their own children to private academies.

Biblically all human relationships are based on agreement, under the commandment to love one another, as the natural outworking of loving God. The Bible calls this kind of mutual agreement covenantal. In education parents, students, teachers and headmasters are all constituents. Since the burden of success is upon the school and attendance in any school is optional, the school dictates its ground rules, within appropriate limits of its authority. Parents then submit to the policies of the school they choose. Thus, parents, administration and teachers must collaborate in the educational process.

The Tripod of Education

Christ's "tripod" of discipleship brings balance to educational method. First, a logical foundation of knowledge to know the way of life; second, inspiration through the truth revealed in the Word of God; and third, discipleship requires life-long effort toward emulation of the life of Christ. Corrections are a way of life for the student, so that the student develops new skills. Discipline results in a decreasing level of externally imposed government, depending upon maturity from its rudimentary practice to refined mastery of the subject. All three Christian principles-the way, the truth and the life-are required for a complete education. The need for disciplined study, working knowledge and character development can not be neglected.

Training Replaces Ineffective Environmentalism

A biblical Christian psychology must replace pagan, modern psychology, which views man through the mechanistic process of evolution. Evolution presumes man's character cannot fundamentally change, but only his behavior. For example, the psychological and educational establishment increasingly resorts to drugs to control child behavior. Christianity assumes the renewal of fundamental characteristics, created in Christ, which reflects biblical understanding. God created man in His own image, with inherent value and potential; yet, man is lost in sin and needs redemption. God created a wholesome Adam. The Fall corrupted Adam's abilities, and the new Adam has the ability to overcome through hearing and applying the Word of God, or education. In heaven the truth will be clear to all, but education is strategic to redemption, as well as restoring man's capacity for grace to glorify God in accomplishments, such as institutional liberty and justice, industry, and philanthropy. Th! e school curriculum may be directed toward producing these historically tested biblical qualities.

Parents and teachers nurture a child's character, to include inculcating aesthetic tastes, until the child's emulates and adopts their behaviors for himself. Education produces far better results when liberating discipline abounds upon a young mind and heart that is taken captive by biblical instruction at an early age, than when corrections are applied to the habitual effects of neglected sin. Educators must reject the humanistic view that discipline at early stages of development stifles creativity or that poor conduct should be primarily bridled by psychotropic drugs, such as methamphetamine-related Ritalin.

Training Produces Character

Training forges a foundation for accomplishment as the student works to overcome the measured difficulty of learning. Each exertion increases strength of character, but a lack of perseverance results in weakness. Error, lapses or slow learning are no excuse for giving up. The capacity for easy accomplishment is not an opportunity to avoid effort. As stated in God's Word, "to whom much is given, from him much will be required (Luke 12:48, NKJV). A heart for ongoing, systematic repentance becomes a way of education and life. The principles that characterized the statesmanship of early Americans were forged by the educational processes of home, school and society. We must reproduce the biblical practices of nobility and heroism, which resulted in great accomplishments and, with God's grace and power, hope to surpass its former levels.

A Method for All

Well-balanced and educated people. However the mechanistic and linear grading system of modern education often fails to produce this caliber of people. If a student fails to learn an element of a subject, the system typically leaves him behind.2 Biblical discipline neither lock steps the more able, nor lets the weaker learner fall through the cracks. It is neither egalitarian nor elitist. Cornelius Van Til, a twentieth century theologian, apologist and educator, developed a biblical method of education based on his view of knowledge that used a learning spiral.3 The teacher ascertains each student's level, and then urges the student to work both the foundations and the frontiers of the subject matter to produce mastery, from the subject's rudiments to its depth and breadth, according to the student's readiness. Review is required to fill inevitable gaps in comprehension by the human mind. This aspect reveals some of the superior genius of the one room schoolhouse. Further! more, as teacher assesses and supports the student's effor ts appropriately, the student's interest and trust is maintained to continue the process until he masters the subject.

Faithful Effort

A one-to-one relationship between effort and accomplishment is a myth. As the farmer invests by faith, the study must apply diligence and faith that fruition will come in due season. It does. By enduring the process, the student learns to be patient and steadfast, thus eliminating the pervading and obdurate attitude that learning must come quickly and easily, or not at all.

Educators must discourage and correct excuse-making, defeatist attitudes and unruly behavior such as clowning and cheating. All students are incapable of advancement, usually much more than is expected, especially when freed from tyrannical and exacting methods of education and encouraged by gentle discipline. Additionally, Christians can introduce the truth that Christ provides the power of accomplishment!

The Analysis Principle

In this view the educator takes the true scientific nature and historical development of a subject and reorganizes educational material for learning in a scientific, analytical process from its rudiments to its depth and breadth. As the student matures, he acquires the tools for learning. When confronted with complexity beyond his understanding, the methods provided by the teaching scholar are applied by the learning scholar to reduce the topic at hand to its constituent parts for analysis. Then, upon understanding of the constituent parts, the scholar arrives at an improved comprehension of the whole.

This is the essential learning principle. A paragraph is the statement of a coherent thought. To understand the paragraph, the constituent sentence, each word of that sentence and the sounds to identify the word must be clarified. Nothing can be overlooked. Rebuilding the parts to a whole completes the analysis process. When accomplished, analysis produces the ability for creative synthesis and the student has achieved a significant degree of mastery. This approach derives directly from the understanding of the biblical contexts and our God-one God in three persons with equal homoousian ultimacy between each of the constituents and the whole.4
This brief article illustrates how we may maintain the essential unity and harmony between the grand and ultimate revealed purposes of God and their practical details.

"Get Wisdom!" deals with the reality of human nature and provision, and God's purposes among men. It is meaningful, and moreover, it produces quick and remarkable results among teachers, parents and students alike, including those of modest attainment.

The views that once dominated education in the hands of God-enabled scholars are still capable to produce world quality statesmen at a rate similar to that found in early America, hundreds per a few million, rather than few per a hundred millions, in every area of human endeavor. A well-educated general constituency will in turn, support God-enabled leaders. Accomplished scientists, artists, lawyers, businessmen, pastors, farmers and skilled laborers of all kinds will exert the same influence that Christians enjoyed in early America. Surely, by His grace, we can reproduce it. Indeed, we already have begun to see the results!

How to Fight Political Correctness

Following bullets are ways to impact our children's education:

• Encourage critical thinking to apply logic and discern truth in information
• Lead students to discern moral absolutes and reject moral relativism.
• Stress cognitive objectivity or justice over personal opinions or feelings.
• Avoid learning methods that take short cuts and set false standards.
• Discuss the analytical process of comprehending subject matter.
• Provide classical literature for a foundation of cultural influences.
• Use English first for education and learn at least one foreign language.
• Correlate the need for laws of logic as a complement to scientific evidence.
• Ensure against the belief that humans evolved from lower animal forms.
• Recognize the effect of the Fall and the need for redemption in Christ.
• Promote self-discipline, personal efforts and accountability.
• Discuss and exercise ethical behavior, including community service.
• Eliminate or discredit sex education that departs from hetero-sexual marriage.
• Validate historical facts regarding Christian civilization and traditions.
• Define political terms accurately, such as liberalism and conservatism.
• Examine the actual workings of limited government, communism and socialism.
• Understand why America's founding fathers rejected any form of fascism.
• Stress the value of personal excellence for the blessing of others and rewards.
• Offer opportunities for independent study, including oral and written exams.
• Support the establishment of a voucher system for optional education methods.
• Be aware of Goals 2000 programs and oppose outcome-based agendas.
• Take a stand for observing Bible-based truth, goodness, justice, and excellence.

Notes

1. Ron Kirk, a Christian educator, has studied and taught the biblically and historically identified applied-faith philosophy outlined in this essay since 1980. The principles he sets forth have now long proven themselves in the curriculum and methods of pioneering day and home schools. Gloriously married since 1971, Ron and Christina have five children and five grandchildren. Ron was ordained as a minister of the Gospel in 1984. This article, originally titled "Get Wisdom! A Biblical Christian Philosophy and Method for Education," was published in Chalcedon Report, September 2001. It has been rewritten by permission.
2. One student of mine lost a brother in the fourth grade, causing him emotionally to close down for a time. He missed lessons in fractions, but his school passed him on. He never learned math beyond the third grade level until he came to me in the ninth grade. He thought he was stupid and could not learn, until we systematically reviewed the material on fractions. He caught on in about two weeks of special half hour lessons and never looked back.
3. True knowledge approximates the world (properly guided by God's declaration of reality-His Word) within our minds. Our ability to know derives from forming associations in the mind between individuals of every kind into an increasingly complex understanding of reality.
4. A Homoousian is a Christian who believes that Jesus Christ is of the same substance as God in accordance with the Council of Nicaea's definition of the Trinity.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This insightful article is a companion article to Dr. Ted Baehr and Pat Boone's new book CULTURE-WISE FAMILY: Upholding Christian Values in a Mass Media World. It is available in a special section of www.movieguide.org.  Entertainment expert Dr. Ted Baehr and legendary musician Pat Boone think it's time we began paying attention to our mass-media consumption. They urge people to make wise choices for themselves and their families so they can protect their children from toxic messages in the culture. The Culture-Wise Family offers a rich, authoritative analysis of the many perilous trends in a time when parents face challenges that are unprecedented in their intensity and detrimental influences. This book builds on the firm foundation of a biblical worldview and analyzes the implications of other worldviews as they are expressed and promoted in media, entertainment, and public education, the three purveyors of the increasing secularization and pluralization of our times. It will not only help you to protect your children and grandchildren, but also it will help you redeem the times and the culture!

One of the most significant contributions we can make to our culture is to educate our children. The word "educate" comes from the Latin educo, which means "to lead out of" and inferred that an educator led a student out of the darkness of barbarism into the light of Christian civilization. Regrettably, today educational processes often imply the opposite-to lead out of the light of Christian civilization into dark neo-paganism. This chapter addresses this predicament and offers solutions using insights from two Christian educators who are gifted with Christian wisdom, knowledge and understanding.

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