What Makes Education Christian? This question was posed to Hope Murphy and myself recently when we attended a conference hosted by BJU Press in Greenville, South Carolina. We attended the two day conference in order to learn more about Christian education, the Christian worldview, and how to make our lessons more rigorous all while keeping the Christian perspective.
Let’s go back to the question, “What Makes Education Christian?” Does teaching Bible as a class make education Christian? Does having Christian educators in the classroom make education Christian? If you think about those questions carefully, although they are both good things, they do not make education Christian. Bible as a subject doesn’t keep a school Christian. Bible taught solely as a subject makes Christianity seem almost like an afterthought, and our core subjects become “more important” because of their academic content.
Fortunately, we at First Baptist do have Christian teachers who help students see the world with what was described to us as “corrective lenses.” When a student is taught the very basics of Christianity, to obey God’s word and to believe it as true, then they wear “corrective lenses,” and can see the world for what it is.
In Genesis 1:26-27, we learn that God created us to be “image bearers.” Throughout our two days in Greenville, we were reminded of this simple truth. If we love God, and we believe the Bible to be true, then we must love our neighbors, because they too are image bearers of God. If we love our neighbors, and we obey God’s word, we learn to serve our fellow man. Applying this to our classroom studies, teaching our subjects rigorously but also with a Christian perspective, these things will make education Christian. Aren’t we blessed to be able to have both...
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