Thoughts From Narnia - WCS Integration

2007-09-07T12:11:00.000-07:00

The latest issue of Educational Leadership revealed some findings on recent brain research. They write, "One of the most important findings is that emotion is a driving force behind learning. If we don't see emotional relevance in what we experience, we often don't allow that information to sink in."

I think the whole of scripture affirms this as well as evidence from personal experience. When we are commanded to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, it is a statement that strongly implies those aspects of ourselves are interrelated. Can one fully love God with one's heart without fully loving him with one's mind? Or with one's mind without one' heart?

The greatest learning experiences I have had have been when it has been coupled with a real sense of meaning - an emotional response that tells me that this particular item of knowledge has real importance - that I would be less of a person for not knowing it and a greater person for having learned it. And this is true not just of so-called "sacred" things, but also the "mundane" - the life of a peasant in the Middle Ages; the physical forces present in the motion of bodies; how certain letters combined to form cluster sounds; how art can more forcefully present ideas. etc.

These kind of topics only have value to our students if the students have a sense of the importance of the knowledge. Too often we use cold utilitarianism to motivate them: "You're going to need to know this for the test"; "If you want to get into a good college, you better learn this"; "You need to get prepared for the next grade level". I think students see right through this pretty quickly and utilitiarian motivational tactics are, in my opinion, one of the leading causes of demotivation among American students.

Rather, when students are taught, encouraged, modeled, engaged with ideas that have real meaning and purpose (and really, don't all ideas have meaning and purpose?), their emotions kick in and learning takes off. All great Christian schol teachers have a way of demonstrating to their students how the content leads them to greater thoughts, greater actions, and greater lives. A old professor of mine used the term "high-heartedness" - a sense of nobility to our learning that would motivate even the most stubborn of students. If we can do this, even the mundane becomes sacred.

2007-04-27T10:35:00.000-07:00

We have now had a few weeks to gain some perspective on the shootings at Virginia Tech. During that time my thoughts, like many others I’m sure, have run the gamut and changed many times. As I try to sort through them here is what I have come to:

Are we to take Proverbs 22:6 (Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.) as an absolute, unconditional promise? I ask this because reports from the media give strong indications that Cho came from a family of believers who spent a lot of time praying for and agonizing over him, even before the shootings. Because his life ended in the most unthinkable way, are we to assume that he was not trained properly by his parents? How are we to explain the number of our students that have had great, godly parents, only to see the student become rebellious. While we can hold out hope that they will turn back, is the Proverbs passage a guarantee that they will? Cho didn’t. If we hold to the passage as an absolute promise that every child who was trained correctly will turn out well, I think we can do more harm than good because they don’t always turn out well. And I really think that leaves parents unnecessarily open to judgmentalism and guilt. Rather than an absolute promise, perhaps this passage is merely providing guidance on child rearing. The literary use of proverbs typically isn’t seen as absolute. (“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” can both be true but non-absolute, right?) I think in our school we need to be very careful about making judgments on parents and casting aspersions on them because of how their children turn out, even in the long run. It is God who chooses to make out of the same lump of clay both pots for noble purposes and pots for ignoble purposes.

The power of words came forcefully to my mind. Cho was clearly a person who had suffered verbal abuse from peers and those words took a terrible toll on him. I say this not to exonerate him, but to highlight the potency of the spoken word. God spoke the universe and life itself into existence. He takes it away in the same manner. As people made in God’s image, it would seem that human words have the same type of power, different only in degree but not in kind. As teachers who speak and use words every day as the tools of our trade, this has significant ramifications. We have the ability to extend life to our students, or to restrict it. Not in the ultimate sense - of course, that is God’s prerogative alone - but certainly in the temporal sense.

The brutal results of a lack of forgiveness, jealousy, and narcissism were laid out for all to see. Is it any wonder why scripture commands us to forgive, and to be content, and to think of others ahead of ourselves? We were not made to hold the rage that comes from doing otherwise. The command to forgive is for our own good as much as for the good of others. Cho’s unwillingness to abide by that command destroyed him and 32 others. People cannot live with impunity in a way contrary to the order God has established without suffering repercussions, even brutal ones. What a juxtaposition between Cho and the young lady who twice placed a stone remembrance out for him on the school lawn and urged her fellow students to forgive.

Just thinking. What are your thoughts?

2007-03-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

I recently read this little essay by T.M Moore and thought about how important it was in teaching worldview to teach the beauty of Christianity. That is so easy to miss in our classrooms as we think about all the other content we have to get through. But it is the beauty of Christianity that draws so many people to it.

Jesus taught His followers to believe that they could change the world, that something in their lifestyle and the message they proclaimed would wield power to turn the world on its head, so to speak. Indeed, the first Christians did precisely that (Acts 17:1-9), as they challenged, sapped, and, finally, overthrew the false worldview of Roman emperor worship and brought to light the Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

How were they able to achieve such a revolution of worldviews? A second-century apology for the Christian movement, written by one Aristeides, and probably of Syrian origin, gives us some insight:

[The Christians] have the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ himself engraven on their hearts, and these they observe. The commit neither adultery nor fornication; nor do they bear false witness, they do not deny a deposit, nor covet other men’s goods: they honour father and mother, and love their neighbours: they give right judgment; and they do not worship idols in the form of man. They do not unto other that which they would not have done unto themselves. The comfort such as wrong them, and make friends of them: they labour to do good to their enemies. They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They despise not the widow, and grieve not the orphan. He that hath distributeth liberally to him that hath not. If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof, and rejoice over him, as it were their own brother. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the need with their necessary food. They keep Christ’s commandments faithfully, living righteous and holy lives, as the Lord commanded them, giving thanks every morning and every hour, for meat and drink and every blessing. And because they acknowledge the goodness of God towards them, lo! on account of them there flows forth the beauty that is in the world.

Did you catch that last line? “On account of them there flows forth the beauty that is in the world.” How was the Roman world – a world of gruesome and violent games, rampant sensuality, and the ugliness of slavery, exposure of children, decaying cities, and urban poverty, how was such an empire flooded with the beauty of the Lord? By the daily obedience and ordinary faithfulness of multiplied thousands of the followers of Christ.

In the divine economy influence flows from indwelling. Where the Lord is – where people are growing in His mind and character, nurturing relationships of selfless love, and serving by the humblest, everyday means – there beauty will flow to anoint and transform all that is ugly and dying with the newness of goodness, truth, and life.

Influence flows from indwelling. The more we grow in the Lord the greater will be the power for transformation that flows from us into all the relationships, roles, and responsibilities of our everyday lives. We will change the world one grain of salt, one photon of light, one gram of leaven at a time.

Back in 1974 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn mused on what it would take for the Soviet megalith to come crashing down and his beloved mother Russia to be restored to freedom and beauty. A violent revolution? A fresh, well-oiled, potent political movement? Economic pressure from the West? What Solzhenitsyn prescribed is more like what really happened in the candlelight revolution of 1989. He wrote, in an essay entitled, “As Breathing and Consciousness Return,” that all that was needed for the restoration of mother Russia was for each faithful Russian “to take a moral step within his own power.”

Small steps, taken in concert with millions of Christ-minded brothers and sisters, quickly amount to tsunami proportions of influence.

2007-02-08T08:10:00.000-08:00

Last night in our Advisory Team meeting, we spent time discussing Tozer’s statement in The Knowledge of the Holy, “So, were every man on earth to become atheist, it would not affect God in any way. He is what He is in Himself without regard to any other. To believe in Him adds nothing to His perfections; to doubt Him takes nothing away.”

What a statement. The implications of it are profound, expansive and nuanced. I don’t think we could ever fully understand such an idea so I wonder how many of us truly believe it?

I know I can affirm it mentally and yet live in a very different way. I sometimes get trapped into thinking I must persuade my students of a particular idea about God in order to legitimize God (or more likely, me). As if he becomes weaker or I become less of a teacher if a group of 16 year-olds don’t think something about him. All this attitude does is lead to frustration on my part, resentment on the students’ part, and likely a wonderment on God’s part, as in “What was Troy thinking?”

If we were to fully commit to the idea that what we or our student believe about him adds nothing and takes nothing away from him because he is completely sufficient and independent of us, we would revolutionize our classrooms. The teachers and students would have a level of freedom that would change the dynamic in our school. We would be free to explore those dark and hidden, yet very real, questions and issues that we so often fear students have (as if we’ve never had them ourselves). We would no longer view ourselves as teachers who must get our students to agree with us, but as teachers who allows students to freely explore and think about big questions, given them biblical guidance along the way, but recognizing that God will work in the student’s heart however he wishes, regardless of what we do. That is the kind of environment in which I believe the deepest learning in all disciplines would take place.

By the way, if you have never read Knowledge of the Holy, you are missing out. My pastor in college wrote to about 50 of the top Christian leaders (Stott, Sproul, people like that) for a book he was writing and asked them to list the books that have had the most influence on them. Knowledge of the Holy was by far the most frequently mentioned. It’s a life-changing book.

2007-01-30T12:51:00.000-08:00

A good discussion after school yesterday on the book, Punished by Rewards. I’m really enjoying these discussions as I learn a lot by hearing other people’s ideas and having them force me to sharpen my own. The great thing about the discussions we have is that not everybody agrees with each other or the author. That’s what a faculty ought to be doing, I believe!

For those who wanted to be there and missed it (or maybe even those who had no plans to be there in the first place), here is a brief summary of what was discussed. I’ll try to be as fair as possible in my summary, but it is my blog, after all. If you don’t like it, post a response! J

Here are the some of the issues that came up:

Authority – Kohn’s position on authority was quite clear – adults ought not to impinge on the autonomy of a child. Setting aside the practical impossibilities of that (it is impossible for anyone to be completely autonomous, even if he tried) there were concerns that this was blatantly unbiblical. God seems to ordain a hierarchy of authority and expects us to submit to it. How, though, is that authority to relate the individuals below? In other words, how much autonomy should be granted to an individual by a rightful authority?

Assessment – Do grades motivate students to do better work? Our anecdotal comments were mixed. AP English students seemed to think the idea would free them from an unnecessary burden that had little to do with the quality of work they would produce. Even if they were convinced eliminated traditional grades would work, though, teachers still wrestled with how to implement such a policy given the current system which assumes grades will exist (parent expectations, college admissions, scholarships, etc.)

God and Rewards – A lot of time was spent on what we thought was a critical point – is God a rewarder by nature? How we answer this question really determines much of how a Christian ought to think about the whole book. A number of scripture passages were shared in which scripture itself describes God as a reward giver for those who seek him, those who are merciful, those who are peacemakers, and many, many others.
A counterpoint was made, however, that these might be different kinds of rewards than what Kohn is talking about. Kohn seems to criticize rewards that are superfluous to the child’s action (i.e., do your chores without complaining and you will get a sticker); whereas God’s rewards seem to be directly related to the action. In other words, if you plant corn in the spring and then reap a harvest, the harvest is the “reward”, or natural outworking, of the hard work. Similarly, when God rewards righteousness, it is with things that come as a result of righteousness, namely expanded fellowship with him.
The discussion, due to time constraints, dealt very little with the actual research Kohn submits, which I think is formidable and we would be remiss in not considering. He gives mountains of evidence that providing extrinsic rewards results in the long run in lower motivation, productivity, creativity and other valuable traits. It is easy to dismiss this research as “secular,” and I am sure there is counter research available (there always is), but I’m not convinced that we can easily ignore what Kohn offers.

Our next discussion will be in early spring and again at the end of the year so keep an eye out for those. The two books we are looking at doing are Silence, by Shusaku Endo and When I Don’t Desire God, by John Piper. Silence is a powerful novel (for those who like stories!) about the persecution of Christians in shogun Japan. The title of the book becomes unsettling as you read it. Endo, a Christian, is one of the most lauded authors in Japan. The book is not directly related to Christian education but a great book that should be read. Piper’s book, on the other hand, has things that speak directly to the milieu we work in every day.

I’ll get dates and signups to everyone shortly.

2007-01-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

I suspect the first 18 pages (chapter 1) of Punished by Rewards either resonated with you and had you saying, “Yes, Yes,” or irritated you so much you put the book down and labeled Kohn a naïve idealist. Perhaps there is some middle ground there but this is a book that can evoke strong opinions both ways. I look forward to the discussion our book group will have on Monday, January 29 at 3:45 in the HS library.

Listed below are the names of those who have signed up to join us in the discussion. If your name is not listed, you may still join us, but you will need to get a copy of the book on your own. I know the public libraries have copies.

Also, here are some questions to think about based on the first chapter, just to get your thoughts rolling. Feel free to post a response also. Posts encourage other people to post and exchanging ideas is always a good thing!

Is behaviorism a philosophy that is compatible with Christianity?

What implications does Skinner’s statement on p.6 that people were different from other species only in the degree of their sophistication have?

Is recognizing the concept of a “self” vital for Christianity and Christian schooling?

Kohn distinguishes between causes and reasons on p. 9. Do you agree with this distinction?

On p. 10 Kohn writes, “Behind the practice of presenting a colorful dinosaur sticker to a first grader who stays silent on command is a theory that embodies distinct assumptions about the nature of knowledge, the possibility of choice, and what it means to be a human being.” What kind of assumptions is Kohn presuming? And what is your reaction to this statement?

What is your reaction to Kohn’s correlation on p.14 between behavioralism and and Jesus’ statement in Luke 14?

Finally, what would you say to Kohn after his statement on p.16 that real instruction takes patience and courage while rewards are simply the easy way out?

Group Participants

Troy McIntosh
Bill Williams
Leslie Hejduk
Adam Heath
Tim Adams
David Stoll
Kristen Yaiko
Mike O’Neill
Judy Bechtel
Lyndsey Chan
Sandy Cupp
Gretchen Swift
Tanya Cordial
Jason Crary
Linda Hall
Judy McElroy
Laura Beres
Sharon Dumit
Toni Turoff
Beth Heisey
Tom Anglea
Buzz Inboden

2006-11-29T05:45:00.000-08:00

In the book, My Fundamentalist Education, one of the author’s main complaints against Christianity was that it was intellectually deficient, in practice, if not in actuality. In Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller says he once had the same objection. But how he overcame that is one of the best examples of biblical integration I have seen in a piece of literature. Here is what he writes, and notice how he takes a biblical understanding of reality and applies it to his topic. It is well worth the read.

I couldn’t give myself to Christianity because it was a religion for the intellectually naïve. In order to believe Christianity, you either had to reduce enormous theological absurdities into children’s stories or ignore them. The entire thing seemed very difficult for the intellect to embrace. . .

Help came from the most unlikely of sources. I was taking a literature course in college in which we were studying the elements of story: setting, conflict, climax, and resolution.

The odd thought occurred to me while I was studying that we didn’t know where the elements of story came from. I mean, we might have a guy’s name who thought of them, but we don’t know why they exist. I started wondering why the heart and mind responded to this specific formula when it came to telling stories. So I broke it down. Setting: that was easy; every story has a setting. My setting is America, on earth. I understand setting because I experience setting. I am sitting in a room, in a house, I have other characters living in this house with me, that sort of thing. The reason my heart understood setting was because I experienced setting.

But then there was conflict. Every good story has conflict in it. Some conflict is internal, some is external, but if you want to write a novel that sells, you have to have conflict. We understand conflict because we experience conflict, right? But where does conflict come from? Why do we experience conflict in our lives? This helped me a great deal in accepting the idea of original sin and the birth of conflict. The rebellion against God explained why humans experience conflict in their lives, and nobody knows of any explanation other than this. This last point is crucial. I felt like I was having an epiphany. Without the Christian explanation of original sin, the seemingly silly story about Adam and Eve and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there was no explanation of conflict. At all. Now some people process the account of original sin in the book of Genesis as metaphor, as symbolism for something else that happened; but whether you take it metaphorically or literally, this serves as an adequate explanation of the human struggle that every person experiences: loneliness, crying yourself to sleep at night, addiction, pride, war, and self-addiction. The heart responds to conflict within a story, I began to think, because there is some great conflict in the universe with which we are interacting, even if it is only in the subconscious. If we are not experiencing some sort of conflict in our lives, our hearts would have no response to conflict in books or film. The idea of conflict, of having tension, suspense, or an enemy, would make no sense to us. But these things do make sense. We understand these elements because we experience them. As much as I did not want to admit it, Christian spirituality explained why.

And then the element of the story known as climax. Every good story has a climax. Climax is where a point of decision determines the end of the story. Now this was starting to scare me a little bit. If the human heart uses the tools of reality to create elements of story, and the human heart responds to climax in the structure of story, this means that climax, or point of decision, could very well be something that exists in the universe. What I mean here is that there is a decision the human heart needs to make. The elements of story began to parallel my understanding of Christian spirituality. Christianity offered a decision, a climax. It also offered a good and bad resolution. In part, our decisions were instrumental to the way our story turned out.

Now this was spooky because for thousands of years big-haired preachers have talked about the idea that we need to make a decision, to reject or to follow Christ. They would offer these ideas as a sort of magical solution to the dilemma of life. I had always hated hearing about it because it seemed so entirely unfashionable a thing to believe, but it did explain things. Maybe these unfashionable ideas were pointing at something mystical and true. And, perhaps, I was judging the idea, not by its merit, but by the fashionable or unfashionable delivery of the message. (Miller, Blue Like Jazz, pp. 31-33)

2006-11-29T05:42:00.000-08:00

Thanks to the book discussion group last night for a lot of insightful comments and banter. A lot of issues came out of it and we didn’t have time to get into some of them even though they were worth pursuing. Here are a few that I thought might warrant some more feedback from all of you. Please feel free to post comments here and further the discussion.

Given the fact that Rosen’s dad and step mom were aloof from her spiritual upbringing, what does that say about the families in our school with similar conditions? Can we expect those students to grow spiritually? How do we overcome the hurdle that it presents?
One of the comments (Buzz?) was that Rosen, like others, are looking to follow something bigger than themselves. In Rosen’s case, it was the wonder of science. Which leads to the question, are we presenting a full enough picture of God to our students? What might we need to undertake in order to assure that we do?
The idea of certainty came up a lot. Rosen makes many comments about how her education was delivered with a definite air of certainty on most subjects. What issues, as Christian school educators, should we take a position of certainty on? What are the implications of doing or not doing that? Why was this such a big issue for Rosen?

2006-10-27T05:53:00.000-07:00

The faculty book discussion group on My Fundamentalist Education, by Christine Rosen, is scheduled for the HS media center on November 28 at 3:45pm. (ES teachers may need to ask for permission to leave right at dismissal.) The books have been ordered and should arrive next week. I'll make sure each of you who signed up gets a copy. Here is the participant list for this book:

Adam Heath
Deb Mackay
Tom Burns
Jason Crary
Leslie Hejduk
Buzz Inboden
Tanya Cordial
Beth Heisey
Mike O’Neill
Jane Kettering
Judy Bechtel
Gretchen Swift
Linda Hall
Marti Alt
Judy McElroy
Patti Hayer
Kristen Yaiko
Troy McIntosh
Bill Williams

A good turnout!

Obviously, it will be important that everyone reads the book prior to the discussion date. Here are some questions to sort of get the ball rolling on the discussion, although we don't need to limit ourselves to these. I really don't want to this to be a time of just answering a set of questions, but rather a discussion among of us the ideas and themes of the book.

Why do you think Rosen wrote this book?
What did you perceive her tone to be?
What were her major criticisms of her Christian schooling? Are they valid? In part? In entirety? Not at all?
Were there indicators that her criticisms were simply the product of a lack of understanding spiritual things?
Is there anything we can learn about ourselves from criticism from outsiders?
What other major questions, issues, ideas came to mind as you read this book?

Feel free to post comments here prior to and after the meeting! It would be great if there were some posts on here that we could interact with on the 28th.

2006-10-17T07:30:00.000-07:00

A teacher sent me a very good article today by an English professor at Huntington College named Jack Heller. It is entitled Further Scandal: Christian College Professor Doesn't Teach from a Christian Worldview. Heller, by all appearances a sincere and orthodox believer, provides some thoughtful counterpoints to the emphasis on biblical worldview teaching. The brief article can be found here: www.newpantagruel.com/issues/1.4/further_scandal_christian_coll_print.php

He makes some very good points:

First, much of what passes for Christian worldview is badly misplaced. He is correct that the Nehemiah Institute's description of a biblical worldview is nothing more than neo-conservative politicism (http://www.nehemiahinstitute.com/). We need to reject that as an identifier of biblical worldview even if many of us are, in fact, conservatives. Let's face it, if capitalism were part and parcel with a Christian worldview, why did it take 1700 years for Christians to figure that out? That is not to say that capitalism is necessarily opposed to a biblical worldview, only that many of the sacred cows to which we hold are not necessary to a Christian worldview. On that, I believe Heller is right.
He is also correct that by affirming the fallenness of our intellect, we must then affirm the impossibility of identifying and living a consistent and thoroughly true Christian worldview. We will never arrive in this age at an agreement on what the one true biblical worldview is. And even if everyone were to agree on it, it still might be flawed.
He is also correct that other things may legitimately influence our worldview other than divine revelation - cultural, geographical, personal influences. All of these things may influence how we perceive the world and legitimately fall under Christian liberty. One person finds meat sacrificed to idols offensive, another finds it no problem at all.

The above are real issues that we ought to consider when we think about worldview.

There are issues, however, that I believe he is, at best, only partly correct on, and it causes him to draw conclusions with which I disagree.

First, while there may certainly be legitimate differences about what consitutes a Christian worldview on issues, he seems to ignore the fact that there is no legitimate disagreement on foundational principles of Christian wv. For instance, there is no debate among orthodoxy on the trinity, on the doctrine of God as creator, on the fallenness of man, etc. So when he claims that there is no continuity between the medeival Christian worldview and 21st c. evangelical wv, he is wrong. While the worldviews separated by 1000 years clearly are not identical, there is a continuity to them that makes both identifiable as Christian. Neither of them perfect, remember, but then if he wishes to apply that standard to worldview, he must apply it to his own essay. Is not his own essy a product of his own wv?
Next, I believe he mischaracterizes the purpose of worldview teaching. Perhaps that is because wv teaching's espousers too often present it poorly and so people develop misunderstandings about it simply by how they speak. He writes that, "worldview criticism too often depends on facile labeling that makes a work's artistry mere window dressing for amateur philosophizing." While that may be true, it does not lessen the need to point out in the discussion of a novel how an author's worldview affects the themes of the work. Being able to understand an author's presuppositions and whether those presupps are true or not are vital to understanding the work and our response to it. (It is not only Christians who respond to art vis-a-vis their worldview, yet Heller seems to ignore that.) So legitimate comparisons may be made between their wv and a biblical one. We do not make such comparisons merely do to "deconstruct" the work and provide a straw man we can then tear down. We do it so that we can train our minds to identify how people think so we can engage them with truth. He is wrong by stating in the first paragraph that worldview teaching must "let students evade the issues the text raises by dismissing it as stemming from a naturalistic worlview." That is not what good WV teaching does. And if it describes what we do, we must change. It is easy to fall into the trap of dismissing postmodernism or Darwinism rather than addressing the reall issues they present. But good WV teaching must engage those issues so that we can wrestle with how Christians must respond to them. Contrasts must be made between truth and error. Otherwise, how would we ever identify sin and the need for redemption?
While he may be correct that Derrida and other postmodernist writers have less of an influence as other things (poor teaching in churches, lack of quality reading, nationalism, etc.) on the thoughts and actions of Christians, he seems to ignore the obvious - that although almost no one in the church has the foggiest clue who Jacques Derrida or Michele Foucault are, they are still living in a culture heavily influenced by them and the culture influences everyone. Just because a person has not read Origin of the Species does not mean they are not influenced by Darwin. Derrida and Foucault have similar influences.

There are other issues in the article worth wrestling with. Heller raises some worthwhile ideas. And even if we disagree with them, the value is that it forces us to clarify our own thinking. In fact, isn't it really better to read people with whom you will likely disagree? Or perhaps you disagree with that statement!

2006-10-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

For comments on the Moore and Colson articles found in BreakPoint Worldview magazine.

Moore claims that we need to "articulate a view of the learner, of the believing community, and of the kingdom of God in the world that can inspire us to greater efforts of instruction and lead those we teach to more earnestness in learning." We need a more compelling vision of what our students ought to become. What should that vision look like?

Colson argues that the prevailing mindset is grounded so fundamentally in experience and feeling that even most Christian are unable to follow complex arguments and reasoning. If that is true, wat must we do differently to counteract that? What should we keep?

2006-10-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

A faculty member sent me this link and asked me to give a response. So, here is the link and here is my response. I'd love to have people critique it!

http://www.christianitytoday.com/tcw/2006/005/7.42.html

Is it possible to read, watch, interact with a text that is clearly unbiblical? Of course. Paul does it on Mars Hill, Daniel does it in Babylon, we must do it by reading the Q'ran or occultic texts if we wish to understand them. The difficult question becomes, can we interact with them as a form of entertainment?

I believe that is the problem with how Christians interact with media today - we have come to view media's purpose (film, TV, music, novels, etc.) solely as entertainment and not as an exercise of the intellect and will. And I think that has been disastrous although nobody wants to bring this idea into the debate. Take an example. About a year or two ago I watched the movie Fight Club. Rated R, scenes in it that were pretty bad but it was a film that was extremely well done and an important one in our current cultural climate. It was this generation's Cool Hand Luke - a narrative apologia for existentialism. Did I "enjoy" watching the film? Yes. Not because I was "entertained" but because I was engaged with the ideas in it because this was a film with powerful ideas in it. That, I think, is the critical difference. If I were to watch a film like Fight Club with the sole intent to have mindless entertainment, then it is wrong. But when it becomes a vehicle for learning how to engage the themes and respond to them truthfully, it can be a good thing.

A simplistic explanation that could probably be elucidated more, but I think one that merits fuller discussion within the church. The entertainment/intellectual/will split is a bad one. We are in bad need of a theology of recreation/entertainment because the de facto one that we typically operate from isn't working.

Anybody else have thoughts? Would love to hear them!

2006-09-28T06:56:00.000-07:00

If I were a betting man, I would be willing to bet a large sum that the best teachers at biblical integration are teachers who read important books. There really can be no substitute for a teacher who regularly interacts with ideas by reading books. Let's face it, we are in the business of ideas. In order to be effective in our business we need to know the basic commodities in which we deal.

A couple of thoughts on this:

Obviously, we need to be readers of scripture. If we do not have some depth of knowledge in the foundation, we will not have a proper grid to evaluate other texts.

Sola scriptura, however, was never meant to mean that scripture is the only book we should read. Even the Grace Brethren motto, The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, should not mean that. If they did, we could never have even a sermon, let alone a book. Rather, these words mean that scripture is the perfect (though not exhaustive)revelation of the God from which all goodness, rightness, and truth flow. Other texts may have truth, goodness, and rightness in them (and certainly many do, even many books written by unbelievers) but those traits always flow from God himself, even in a text written by a fallen person. Sola scriptura, then, says that scripture is the only original source of truth. Other texts containing truth pull from that original source.

Read important books. When I walk into Christian bookstores I am usually saddened because it is flooded with books that the church could do without. And the church's legacy of rich, important books is forgotten because they are no longer marketable. Do yourself a favor and do not shop for your next read off the rack of the Christian bookstore. More than likely, the books we ought to be reading are not found there. A quick look at a list by Christianity Today of the top 100 religious books of the 20th c. ( http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2000/005/5.92.html) tells me I could find seven or eight of the titles, at most, available at the typical large Christian bookstore. And if you go back into earlier centuries, there is even less likelihood of finding one.

Read old books. C.S. Lewis said that for every two contemporary books we read, we should read one old book. And by old, he did not mean last decade. He meant last century or even older. (He was a professor of medeival lit., after all.) Not because writers back then did not have problems or errors, but because they were not the SAME problems or errors that we have today. And the different perspective allows us to identify our own error and problems more easily. If you have not picked up a book by Augustine, or Luther, or Assisi, or Kempis, or Edwards.

Don't search for books ABOUT biblical integration. Find books that DO biblical integration. Find Christian authors in your subject area and absorb their works. If you teach history, grab Mark Noll or George Marsden. Literature teachers (of course, you are probably the best readers among us) find Leland Ryken, or Gene Veith or Flannery O'Connor. Art teachers would benefit from Thomas Schirrmacher, Hans Rookmaaker or even Francis Shaeffer. Math teachers could check out James Nickel. Elementary teachers would gain from Ruth Beechick or Susan Macaulay.

Don't ignore books from outside evangelicalism. Though we obviously have doctrinal differences with other streams of Christianity,we still can gain a lot from their work and they often point to easily missed blind spots within evangelicalism.

Don't ignore works by non-Christians. If we truly want to engage with ideas and teach our students to do the same, we must be familiar with those ideas.

2006-09-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already done so, go as soon as possible and grab a copy of the latest issue of Christian School Education (Vol. 10 Number 1) that just came out. There should be copies in your school office. If not, send me an email and I'll mail you one.

The lead article is a very important one by Nancy Pearcy, one of the best public minds the church has. The article is worth reading and discussing.

One of the vital arguments she makes is that Christian schools often suffer from a "failure of nerve, " or a lack of confidence in their own distinctive vision. They fail to articulate a biblical worldview that relates their religious commitment to the academic disciplines taught in the classroom.

Notice that she does not claim that they become "liberal" (whatever that may mean) or that they compromise on doctrinal issues. What she is arguing is that conservative doctrinal purity is not necessarily sufficient to ensure taht a school has a soldly biblical understanding of their disciplines. She relates the story of Tom, a Christian college student who lost his faith while at an evangelical college. Why? Not because the college lacked doctrinal purity, but, at least in part, because when he asked his teachers how they related their faith to their academic work, "Not one could give me an answer. It became clear that they had only a tenuous understanding of how to reconcile their faith with their academic disciplines. [Eventually], I came to believe that faith in God was without solid intellectual foundation. It was shattering."

The rest of the article deals with the fact/value split that is so common today. Definitely an article worth picking up.

2006-09-25T11:03:00.000-07:00

One of the oldest philosophical questions (and it has real implications for education) is the question of the many and the one. Simply put, is the universe made up of many different parts with no apparent relationship to each other (the many) or is the universe fundamentally of the same substance, lacking distinction between its parts (the one)?

The writer/poet Peter Saint-Andree explains the how the problem works out in people's lives. After humorously describing how many different names exist for clusters of animals (herd, school, pride, etc.), he ends the poem with a sobering note:

What can we learn from animal terms against which you may rail,
From teams of horses and ducks, from coveys of partridge and quail?
The question, I’m sure, is on the tip of your tongue:
Am I just a part of a swarm or clan,
Mere member of a coterie?
Or perhaps, perhaps, am I a man-
Alone, myself, uniquely me?

If the universe is many and there is no unity among its parts, Saint Andree was right – we are alone, disconnected, and alienated. This is the solution the existentialists and nihilists offer. No wonder there is such a sense of despair today.

But if the universe is one, with no real distinction among its parts, we lose any ability to distinguish things. Is courage any different than cowardice? Is justice different than oppression? Is right different from wrong? Even worse, is a person essentially the same as a horse? Or a rock? As strange as it sounds, this is the natural outworking of the pantheists and new agers.

As it turns out (surprise, surprise) Christianity offers the best description of reality and the solution to this problem. If all reality flows from the person of God, and that God is triune, wouldn’t we expect reality to mirror that triune nature? The solution to the problem of the many and the one is the mystery of the three-in-one God. The divine nature displays a unity in multiplicity (and a multiplicity in unity) that we cannot easily comprehend but that we know is true. If God designed the universe to glorify himself, it is natural that we would see the same dynamic between unity and multiplicity in it as in his own nature. If we affirm only his unity, we Islamicize him. If we affirm only his multiplicity, we Hellenize him. It is dangerous to ignore one or the other aspect of his nature. The same is true of the created world.

How does this idea affect our teaching? I believe it has implications for every grade level and every content area. Consider these examples.

Curriculum design: How exactly do we divide the curriculum? If there is a unity to truth, should there really be a difference between a theology class and a biology class? Or between and art class and a math class? Nearly everyone would recognize these as different spheres but still there is the urge to reintegrate them. How do we go about integrating (uniting) our curriculum while still recognizing its different (multiple) spheres? How do we keep our instruction from becoming a jumble of disjointed and unrelated facts (multiplicity with no unity); or a thinly developed generalization with no distinctions (unity with no multiplicity).

Biology: What is the human relationship to other living organism? Do humans have a place in biological classification or are the completely distinct from the animal kingdom?

Sociology: How are issues of race and ethnicity to be approached? How are different sovereign nations to relate to each other?

Mathematics: How do the whole and the parts fit together? How are addition (composition into one unit) and subtraction (decomposition into many units) related?

Discipline: How do you deal with a student as an individual but also within the context of a larger group?

The point is not to provide illustrations of the trinity. Just like a three leaf clover (or any other such illustration) fails to thoroughly describe the trinity, so do any we can pull from our curriculum. The point is to begin thinking how we can use trinitarian thinking to address important content knowledge issues so that our students begin to understand a biblical solution to an ancient problem.