From my experience working and being educated in public school settings, it appears that there are three groups of students: privileged students with a predisposition to learn and a parent-inculcated civic and moral responsibility to excel in school; frustrated students with learning difficulties and an antagonism toward education that has been reinforced with lackadaisical and juvenile pop culture messages; and a group in the middle that seems unable to find their identity and oscillates between the two extremes. In public schools the first group is often catered to by drooling faculty members eager to take credit for the development, achievements, and high standardized test results of the young prodigies, while the second group is tossed around as school faculty members jockey for position to be the first to pass them through a gauntlet of special resource assistants, individualized education programs, and after school tutoring sessions until the special day when the student gives up and drops out. The ones in the middle, the third group, exist somewhere in between, spending twelve years lost and confused about their identity and the support that they should expect from the faculty.

It is unfortunate that this hierarchy and the institutions that breed such social structures exist. Two thousand years ago when Jesus Christ began his ministry he sought to abolish such hierarchies with the good news that while such arrangements may exist on earth, they carry no eternal significance. The first should be last, the weak will be strong, and the rich will be poor. Even when his own disciples saw children as unworthy to approach the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, in Matthew 19:14 Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me.” On several occasions, Jesus spoke and helped Samaritans and the Canaanites, races viewed by some ancient Jews as dogs (Matt. 15: 28). More directly, in Galatians chapter three the Apostle Paul wrote that nationality, economic status, and gender does not garner any preferential treatment in the Kingdom of Heaven and the way that we treat one another should reflect this reality.

It is my belief that schools should be at the forefront of implementing this heavenly vision of reality and that teaching people to find and follow God’s truth should be an essential part of all education. While I acknowledge that mankind’s fallen nature means that the task of fully instilling these ideas into the mind of each and every pupil during this present age is futile; nevertheless, God has called hundreds of thousands of teachers, pastors, parents, missionaries, and spiritually gifted Christians from all walks of life to teach and live the Good News that Christ brought to earth. Fulfilling this mission will prepare people for life after death, and, in my opinion, for the best and most blessed life that someone could live on this earth. Acknowledging this calling, it is my firm belief that teachers can best educate students in an environment that operates on Christian principles, emphasizes transparency, and strives toward clear and relevant standards.

Fortunately, God did not simply drop the gospel on the laps of humanity without any type of historical background or cultural context. Jesus delivered his message to earth during a very specific time and within a very specific cultural context and with thousands of years of human history and Jewish culture that would assist people in understanding his revolutionary message. In the same way, teachers have the responsibility of communicating truth to pupils and we must acknowledge that we must do so in a very specific historical context and within the framework of ever-changing opportunities and constraints. The best way that any generation of teachers should deal with these dilemmas is by triangulating relevant expressions of truth by recognizing our particular historical vantage point, examining the scriptures and lives of the church leaders who came before us, and applying wisdom, logic, and current cultural metaphors in order to articulate knowledge.

In order to crystallize an understanding of the defining principles that should define a Christian learning environment, it is necessary to define the nature of truth, the universe, and individual perception- the God given structures that define how educators obtain and articulate knowledge; the study of the nature and scope of these knowledge structures is called epistemology (Layman 13). Asserting the precepts that define the epistemic framework that Christian educators must accept is necessary in order to show that the educators are aware of the nature of the truth that they are communicating to the students and the guidelines for further discovery that they are implanting in the minds of the students. It is also necessary to understand that different types of claims require different types of verification. Claims about the physical nature of the universe should be objectively stated and verifiable; claims of opinion and preference about the universe should be validated in qualitative ways and stated on subjective terms that acknowledge both the fallibility and the uniquely given perspective of each man; and the religious claims that help us morally define and give value to the universe should be seen as metaphysical currencies in the marketplace of ideas that compete with one another in order to help humanity define its morals, virtues, and, ultimately, the value of life itself.

Crafting any sort of understanding of the physical world and the cultures that inhabit that world, it is vital that assertions of truth be seen as objective, verifiable, and valuable. In order to avoid the delusion that the world is simply a dream, mirage, or a figment from the imagination of a cosmic apparition, it is necessary to cling to idea that elements in reality can be objectively verified and that humans have the mental and physical faculties to do this. Scientists, writers, teachers, students, and anyone else that thinks or acts can measure, analyze, manipulate and describe elements in the real world. Additionally, each scientist, writer, teacher, student, or thinker can verify, adjust, or disprove those findings based upon the work and study of other people who happen to be analyzing similar or different things. Lastly, it is the duty of a Christian to realize that each and every piece of knowledge discovered or observation made has some degree of value. If we truly believe that God has created and established the universe, possesses control over it, and manifests His glory through the events that take place, we must accept that even the smallest detail or smallest piece of minutia might have some relevance to mankind or God’s plan. The smallest microbes can be used to deliver or heal diseases; the slightest utterance of speech can give blessing or reveal sinister intentions; the smallest mathematical variation can yield either loses or returns in a financial portfolio; and the tiniest circuitry could revolutionize computing. As a matter of stewardship, teachers must be prepared to embed in the minds of our students an inquisitive disposition and the conviction that all of creation is God’s creation. Moreover, we must teach that how we study, use, and maintain even the most seemingly insignificant parts is a reflection of our stewardship of what God has entrusted to us.

However, simply being able to validate and understand the significance of the universe is not sufficient for the development of Christian thinking; it is only the beginning. In order to use the knowledge that we ascertain through the God given methods of inquiry, we then have the intellectual responsibility to draw conclusions about the physical, spiritual, and ethical ramifications of those discoveries. The study of “what exists and what it means to have existence” is called ontology (Foundations of Christian Education 8). “Ontology analyzes, explains, and defines real things so that humans can deliberate on these categories of existence.” Unless Christian educators can authoritatively answer questions such as “What is our purpose?” or “What is earth’s significance?” or unless Christian educators and thinkers can draw conclusion about our soul and thinking process, the value of a teacher’s work is no greater than a measuring instrument. Teachers simply become yardsticks measuring the great morass of reality that require a choir of unwilling and semiconscious students to chant back our response in a cantata of multiple choice answers. Finally, and most importantly, we need to answer these questions simply out of obedience. In the Bible it says that Christians should “always be ready to give an answer” for the hope in Jesus Christ that they possess. A significant part of this hope involves understanding how Christ’s message both simultaneously influences and defines the universe. (1 Peter 3:15).

In addition to being able to place value on items in God’s universe, teachers must also be able to instruct and guide students to find beauty and goodness in God’s creation. In other words, teachers must be able to articulate the aesthetics of God’s creation. The quest for this understanding is called axiology (The Philosophical Basis of Christian Education). This study mostly involves how “human beings, through the arts and our senses, gain new understandings of the nature of truth, beauty, and goodness (Layman 12).” While it may seem like aesthetics is something that is rarely considered, its discussion is one of humanity’s most frequent activities. When a person recommends a movie or a book on the basis of plot structure or artistic elements, he has asserted an aesthetic preference. As people form political opinions about what societal institutions are best to implement, they have answered an aesthetic quandary. Even a question as simple and basic as whether it would be good to help someone is an aesthetic dilemma. Teachers must acknowledge the decision making processes inherent in these types of situations and help students answer these life queries with responses that are congruent with a Christian worldview.

After acknowledging the epistemic processes that enable people to craft thoughts and know about knowing, and after acknowledging that these assertions can be objectively verified and assigned value via ontology and axiology, people now have the tools to chisel out a clear picture of mankind’s metaphysical realities. The term metaphysics was coined by Aristotle and defined by Jack Layman as an attempt to answer “the basic questions of reality, such as the nature and essence of things… and the nature of man (7).” When an educator comes to terms with the fact that we don’t have to live in the midst of a confusing milieu, but have the mental capacity and possibly even the God given duty to wrestle with such questions and reach conclusive answers, it has the potential to change everything that we do. No longer do we have to be wistful floating specks swirling through the winds of time, but we become empowered to help people seriously think about life’s purpose, one’s moral responsibilities, and the theological and philosophical meaning of the world that is larger than any one person. In other words we can think and reach conclusions about philosophy and religions, or, as Jack Layman calls it, help people engage in a particularly “stubborn attempt to think about life’s basics (The Philosophical Basis of Christian Education).”

The first struggle or objection to the notion of thinking stubbornly about life’s basics that one may encounter is that humans are but mere individuals with subjective positions. Our home life and upbringing may affect our ideas of normalcy. From the things that we eat, to how we structure our homes, to how we punish rule breakers are based on our seemingly arbitrary sociopolitical and historical position. Just as the Middle Age governments heinously tortured, the Pilgrims savagely slaughtered Indians, and the Old Testament rulers amorously amassed wives, we too must acknowledge that there must be sins within our culture that are totally wrong but even the saved are blind from seeing. Acknowledging this potential limitation certainly limits the authority of any one individual’s conclusions. Next, we must admit that our limited access to knowledge only allows us to make limited conclusions. Be it from corruption and fire, historical accounts that have been sanitized by history’s victors, from deliberately withheld government secrets, or the fact that there is undoubtedly knowledge yet to be discovered in the future, thinkers must acknowledge that since our access to knowledge is limited, our conclusions will also be limited. Finally, an objector who might scoff at the futility of any “stubborn attempt to think about life’s basics” might point out that there are seemingly intelligent people who can compute faster than calculators and recall with photographic memory and there are also those who are extraordinarily unintelligent and due to congenital birth defects seems to have less thinking capacity than beasts. Given such a wide range of intelligences among the human population the critique might be given that any serious response to life’s big issues is nothing more than ideological back scratching amongst one’s peers. An antagonist might state that any grandiose conclusion that a mere mortal might make about life’s big issues is limited by the ability of the thinker and its interpretation limited by the capacity of the receiver. While these limitations are accurate, acknowledging a limitation should not prevent the entire enterprise of philosophical thinking. Just because we can’t fly a manned spacecraft to Jupiter doesn’t mean it was a waste of time to go to the moon. Even the Apostle Paul, the foremost Christian religious thinker, acknowledged the limitations of our conclusions and the relative uncertainty that humans face when reaching conclusions about life’s big issues; in 1 Corinthians 13:12 he writes that understanding out current life is like looking at a dim, dark mirror, and he implies that we may not know the truth until the life to come. Even J.P. Moreland, professor of theology at Talbot School of Theology, acknowledges that the best that we can hope for is “a worldview that consists of the highest percentage of true beliefs and the lowest percentage of false beliefs (101).”

With respect to the framework that philosophical queries must inhabit and acknowledging the limitation of the exercise, it is still essential that Christian educators must assert that truth is objective, verifiable, and valuable. The way that this is done is by starting with the simple metaphysical and religious claim that “the seat of truth is God’s revelation, contained primarily in the word but manifest also in creation (Moreland 29).” By allowing for the conviction that God has granted undeniable, irrefutable truth to certain individuals throughout history and that this is primarily contained in the Bible, Christian educators have a starting point for all aspect of truth that a person might want to assert a truthful claim. If Christian educators can read the Bible and extrapolate irrefutable and mutually exclusive claims of truth about the creator of the universe, the meaning of life, and the way people ought to treat each other, there should be no problem acknowledging the truth and reality of smaller entities such as language, science, and math.

The primary way that God’s truth is first encountered within the Christian community is by individual experience and by accepting the way encountering this truth changes the minds and lives of many of the hearers. Frank E. Gaebelein in The Pattern of God’s Truth states that our reason “under the guidance of the Spirit of God” plays an essential role in this process (29). Albert E. Green, author of Reclaiming the Future of Christian Education, states that “knowing God depends on His making Himself known to us (118).” Knowing that the soul and brain are lost without access to God’s revealed truth will give educators the authority to teach Christian religious ideas to children at the youngest age. This assertion will also push Christian educators to help people live a life full of faith. Knowing that what they are basing their life upon is only verifiable by other likeminded individuals, Christian educators can humbly rest assured that their thought system is still superior to any other thought system because it has been revealed by God. Continuing along this line, if Christian educators accept that the revealed Christian teachings that form the foundation for knowledge are irrefutably true, they will soon realize that they have the privilege and duty to propagate a worldview that is mutually exclusive of all other worldviews and mandated with the authority of the Lord.

Yet it must be acknowledged that no amount of thinking or rational thought can truly provide a clear encounter with God. The only way that spiritual knowledge can truly be grasped is when God’s love changes us. This love may be experienced through the Father directly or, more usually, demonstrated through the loving actions of other Christians. In John 13:35 Jesus states, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus also reminds us of the supreme commands to “’Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbor has yourself.” Ultimately, no matter how hard we try to articulate or define a philosophy of Christian education, if we aren’t doing those things the entire process of Christian education is a waste of time.

The resulting theological positions that are created when a Christian educator accepts that all truth is God’s truth and that the purest truth is revealed through God’s revelation and his word serve as a lens that is suitable for evaluating and analyzing all lives, events, and ideas. The Christian educator believes that God’s Word, in the Bible and revealed to man, is the source of all knowledge and understanding. In the beginning of creation, God spoke the world into existence (Genesis 1); in the middle of creation God clarified his intent though his son Jesus, “the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6”; and in the end God will “make all things new (Rev. 21:5).” By studying God’s word, we can also make definitive insights into His character and person. By studying biblical texts it becomes apparent that the Judeo-Christian God is only true God and that there is no other like him. His followers are commanded to worship only Him (Exodus 20:3). Unlike some other religions, following the God of the Bible is a decidedly monotheistic endeavor. Yet in Matthew chapter 3, an interesting thing happens. Jesus of Nazareth, a man acknowledged to be equal to God (John 1:1); a dove, representing God’s Holy Spirit; and a voice from heaven, belonging to God the father himself, all appear in the same scene. The conclusion is that while God is one, he manifests himself as a trinity at particular times and places. Also from scripture we can ascertain the fundamental teaching that man is inherently sinful and destitute without God. In Genesis’s creation story we see Adam and Eve removed from paradise because of their sin, in the gospels we hear Jesus explain how you must be “born again” to be removed from your sin, and in Revelation we learn that God will restore paradise after fully, and brutally, punishing sin. Understanding these facets of history and human character are necessary if people are to truly acknowledge the reality of what the Bible says about the universal human condition and the requirements for a joyful and fulfilling eternity.

Knowing that these truths provide the basis and background for all other human thoughts, it becomes necessary to justify education. If we are preparing students to populate and inhabit a world that is ultimately going to be destroyed and built anew, why then should we even attempt the necessary task of education? Why can’t take the future promises of heaven and salvation and swim patiently in the murky fatalism of the quagmire of reality until the glorious day Christ returns to redeem us? The reason is that an attitude like this would blatantly reject God’s commands and fail to accept the totality of God’s plan. In Matthew 28 Jesus rises from the grave and claims his authority. He instructs all of his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” and to teach everything that he commanded. Therefore, part of education is providing Christian families with opportunities that will help them understand the world that they are called to evangelize and to answer God’s call to be the salt of the earth (Matthew 5:13). Finally, Christian education is essential because Christians are called to be profitable people and to earn a livelihood. In 2 Thessalonians 3:10, Paul is talking to some lazy Christians and he tells the church that if a man does not work, he should not eat. Christians must be productive individuals, and part of being productive involves understanding that technology and science that play a vital role in our ever changing twenty-first century economy. Only Christian education can effectively fill this gap.

After acknowledging the reasons for Christian education, the next step the Christian educator must take is to determine the elements of a curriculum that honor’s God’s purposes. The first hallmark of a Christian education is one that boldly asserts the gospel of Christ and unashamedly presents teachings from the Bible. While the material learned in a secular education environment such as Daniel’s in the court of Nebuchadnezzar and covertly Christian learning environments such as those that exist in Afghanistan and China undoubtedly serve God’s purpose, the only learning environment that can truly be called Christian are those where the name of Jesus is openly proclaimed. True Christians must be able to say as Paul did in Romans that we “are not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes (1:16).” Second, to have a Christian environment Christian faculty must have unambiguous goals and objective standards. Just as Paul admonished believers to have an orderly worship in Corinthians 14, schools should have orderly learning environments. Curriculum should be planned and purposefully designed by the consensus of the Christian educators delivering it. Finally, a Christian curriculum should be age appropriate. Educators should carefully create curriculum to make it apparent over the course of twelve years of schooling that other modes of thinking other than that of the Christian worldview offer little in terms of eternity and will result in a wasted life. Christian educators should be careful to differentiate their understanding of truth from other understandings of truth prevalent in the world. It is foolish to think that a Christian’s epistemology and self-identity can be based on anything other than the Bible, faith-based claims, and received revelation. Moreover, Christian administrators and curriculum designers should be vigilant to make sure that false and un-Godly theories such as Marxism, social Darwinism, and philosophical objectivism are never taught as true lenses to interpret reality. Instead such subjects should be taught only as background information to help mature students function and understand the unbelieving world and to give them the background knowledge to function properly in non-Christian learning environments such as secular universities.

In addition to carefully selecting curriculum, the appropriate learning environment is beneficial for an effective Christian education. The learning environment should be presented as a carefully crafted conduit designed to filter God’s life-changing love to each child. Donovan L. Graham, a lifelong Christian educator, in his book Teaching Redemptively carefully lays out a picture of an ideal Christian school. He describes an environment where “teachers and administrators… are all committed Christians who have carefully thought about how their Christian faith relates not only to the goals and content of education but also to the process (209).” He also states that the educators “seem far more aware of their brokenness and limitations than they do of the success of their school and its students (210).” The second observation that he makes is that students in an ideal Christian school do not compete with each other. Just as part of the good news is abandoning false social hierarchies, students at the ideal school would not participate in contests and seek rewards and approval, but rather perform acts that matter “in the school community as well as the outside community (Graham 210).” In the same vision of an ideal Christian school Graham describes how discipline should be handled out of love with a desire to correct. “Students learn from the natural consequences of good and bad behavior… sometimes students are suspended… and sometimes they appear to get off ‘scott-free.’… [Discipline] always seeks to restore (213).” Meanwhile, spirituality and academics are closely integrated. At the ideal Christian school “academic knowledge is always grounded in knowledge of God (215).”

To some, a true Christian education may not seem possible in a fallen world, but to many it can be a reality that educators can work to conscientiously implement. It takes work, planning, effort, prayer, and a sincere desire to follow God’s word, but the rewards can make an eternal impact. A Christian school should not implement and reinforce the hierarchical systems of the world, but be an egalitarian setting where all people can learn, all people can grow socially, all people can be united through the love of Christ and the salvation that he has given us.

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