records to understand the past. However, no written records
exist for the prehistory of humankind.” 3 What about the
record that begins with “In the beginning, God created the
heavens and the earth”? But that record mentions God, and
he’s a religious consideration. So the distant past has to be
analyzed without this ancient written record.
When a historian tries to understand the history of civili-
zation without the Bible, the result is conclusions that distort
what it means to be human. Here’s what McGraw-Hill says a
few paragraphs later.
“The agricultural revolution of the New Stone Age ...
dramatically changed human patterns of living. The plant-
ing of grains and vegetables provided a regular supply of
food. ... An increase in food production in these regions
led to a significant growth in human population and the
growth of cities. Efforts to control the flow of water for
farming also led to organized governments in these new
urban civilizations. A civilization is a complex culture in
which large numbers of human beings share a number of
common elements. Six of the most important basic char-
acteristics of civilizations are cities, government, religion,
social structure, writing, and art.” 4
According to this analysis, the heart of the human story is
the discovery of “the planting of grains and vegetables.” Or
to state it more broadly, science and technology form the
core of human life and progress. Science and technology
gave us civilization, and civilization (after enough time)
gave us things like religion.
If you swallow that, you are well on your way to being
a committed secularist. Science is essential. Religion, by
comparison, is marginal. A child who adopts that view
will not necessarily oppose religion, but he will not see it as
central to life.
And when it comes to analyzing current events—like
unrest in the Middle East—he will likely adopt the view that
McGraw-Hill offers in the last chapter of the textbook.
“Much of the terrorism in the Middle East is aimed
against the West. One reason Middle Eastern terrorists have
targeted Westerners can be traced to Western investment in
the Middle East oil industry. ... This industry brought wealth
to ruling families ... but most citizens remained very poor.
They often blamed the West, especially the United States, for
supporting the ruling families.” 5
Why is there so much violence in the Middle East? Oil
and money. Oil is traded in such a way that many people in
the Middle East are left in poverty. This suggests that if we
evenly distribute the wealth in that region, strife and warfare
will disappear. That’s how you think if you’re a secularist.
Anyone who thinks that way is not living in the real world.
In the real world, people are religious, and their religious
beliefs play a central role in how they view the world and
how they behave. If you do not understand the role of
religion in people’s lives—and how to evaluate religion from
Scripture—you do not understand the world.
What Makes Education Christian?
This is the reason Christian education is so important. Chris-
tian teachers and parents—using Christian textbooks—can
shape the thinking of students from a biblical worldview.
They can show young people that the human race has been
religious from its first day. God made us in his own image
(Gen 1:26). This is the reason all human societies have been
religious in some way. They can also teach that God made
us with the ability and the desire to exercise dominion over
the earth (Gen 1:28). From the very beginning, therefore,
we have developed culture (Gen 2:20-24). Very early in the
human story, we developed civilization (Gen 4:17-22), and
we have continued to do so to the current day.
In all of this, science and technology have played an
important role—their development is a natural result of
God’s calling on our lives. What is central to human life
is religion. In a fallen world, religion is most often twisted
by sinfulness and misunderstanding. The answer to this
problem is not avoiding religion. The answer is to seek God’s
redemption in religion and from that, in all of life.
This search for redemption should be one of the main
goals of instruction in any subject, especially in social stud-
ies. If it’s done well, it will prepare students to live richly
redemptive lives wherever they go. The public school won’t
help with this. Christian education can. It’s worth every
penny.
Dr. Bryan Smith has worked in Christian education for over
twenty years. He has been a classroom teacher as well as a
textbook author. Currently, he serves at BJU Press as the Bible
Integration Senior Manager. In this position, he assists authors
and teachers in the work of integrating faith and learning in the
classroom. Bryan holds a Ph.D. in Old Testament Interpretation.
He and his wife, Becky, have six children.
FOOTNOTES
1. The American Heritage College Dictionary, Third Edition (Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1993).
2. James A. Banks, Our Community and Beyond (McGraw-Hill Education, 2013),
p. 31.
3. Jackson J. Spielvogel, World History & Geography: Modern Times (McGraw-
Hill Education, 2014), p. 4.
4. Ibid., pp. 4-5.
5. Ibid., p. 458.
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