C hristian teachers often struggle to show students how the Bible is relevant to the subjects they teach. As a result, many decide to push the Bible to the margins of the educational experience. So, instead of being foundational to the learning process, the Bible is relegated to devotionals and prayer requests. Students raised with this kind of education get accustomed to seeing the Bible as irrelevant to all areas of life.
The Bible itself, however, gives us a different view of its role in our lives. The book of Proverbs tells us that“ the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge”( Prov. 1:7). If that is true( and it is), then the Bible must be central to education. But how?
Christian educators should engage in the work of biblical worldview shaping. A biblical worldview is best expressed in the storyline of creation, fall, and redemption. As we see how the world is created, fallen, and in need of God’ s redeeming work, we come to adopt a biblical worldview. Taking these three key ideas as lenses for examining the world, we come to discover that faith and learning are bound together and that faith in God must govern the entire educational experience— if that experience is to be worthy of the name Christian.
CREATION Creation tells us how God made the world to work. God created us in His own image( Gen. 1:26-27) and has called us to rule over His world in His name( Gen. 1:28). We are made to mirror God in all that we do. We fulfill this calling by living according to God’ s will in every aspect of life— in marriage, family life, religion, government, science, technology, engineering, and business. The purpose of education, then, is not to teach students simply the concepts and skills of science, social studies, math, and English. It is to teach these concepts and skills as tools for managing God’ s world guided by God’ s wisdom. It is to teach students to discern God’ s expectations for every part of life and to model for them what it looks like to live in God’ s world according to His creational design.
FALL The Bible teaches that because of sin( rebellion against God), everything in God’ s world has become twisted. Nature does not respond to our dominion as it was meant to( Gen. 3:16-19). Worse than that, we do not respond to God as we should. Our minds and our hearts are bent away from God( Gen. 3:11-12; Jer. 17:9). Sin is high treason against the King of the Universe and makes us guilty and deserving of death. Because we are sinners, we seek to live in every aspect of life according to our own desires. We use our knowledge and experience to bend marriage, religion, government, science( and all the rest) away from God’ s good design. Education has not been left unaffected by our fall into sin. The concepts and the skills of each subject are now placed in the
SIN IS HIGH TREASON AGAINST THE KING OF THE UNIVERSE AND MAKES US GUILTY AND DESERVING OF DEATH.
context of a sinful vision for human life— individual life and cultural life. The secular system of schooling that dominates education in our nation may be academically rigorous, but it is rigorous in the interest of advancing life without God.
REDEMPTION But God has not abandoned the work of His hands. He sent His own Son into the world to save it and to rule over it as the first Adam was supposed to do( Gen. 3:15). Christ subdues believers to make them His own. Christ becomes the King of the believer’ s entire person—
RENEWANATION. ORG 21