At both Randolph’s private school in New York and the KIPP charter schools, teaching good character is central. It’s no different in public schools in Colorado. In Douglas County, where my wife worked for several years before coming to Front Range Christian, the district claims to teach ethics to all students, such as honesty, integrity and respect. Now, what I’ve observed at many Christian schools is, oddly enough, about the same.
In the Christian school world, there are two terms that are widely thrown around: biblical integration and biblical values. First, “The Bible is integrated into everything we do. It’s not just a class it’s a worldview.” Well, this is valid, if we’re thinking here about Kuyper’s understanding of worldview, as expounded by his disciples, like Francis Schaeffer. However, I rarely find somebody who can really tell me what a biblical worldview looks like in Civics, Spanish, Physics, Phonics, or Physical Education. How does the actual content of what is taught (not just prayer and devotions) change based on your Christian commitment?
But that isn’t what’s been bothering me. It’s the idea of “biblical values.” Christian schools are different than public schools because they teach “biblical values.” My question is this. What just might those biblical values be? After we talk for a while, they usually come down to this: honesty, integrity, respect, and perhaps kindness or love. Nearly the same as the public schools! “Yes, but we can bring God into the equation. We can talk about these values from the Bible. The public schools can’t.” True, but are will still teaching these same values, but now with Bible verses? This begs the question: are they really biblical values, or are they universal values?
As I prepare to teach for one of my colleagues this Wednesday on C.S. Lewis’ view of natural law, it’s become clear to me that these values are available to all people at all times. They’re a part of our consciences, Christian, secularists, Buddhists, and Hindus. C.S. Lewis borrows the Chinese term for it: The Tao. And C.S. Lewis makes a pretty strong case that all people know two things: there’s a moral standard “out there” that we all know about, and we all know we aren’t keeping it.
And so, we’re back to the beginning. How do we teach young people to be good; how do we teach them to be people of character? If we simply teach universal moral laws that we know we can’t keep, the essential effect of this is heaping condemnation on the backs of young people. After all, I, who am an adult working in a Christian school, know that I fail to keep moral standards on a daily basis. The verse from Proverbs has been too much used: “Instruct a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Yes, this is true…generally. However, let’s remember one thing: the book is called Proverbs—it’s filled with proverbial statements on how life generally works. A proverb isn’t a guarantee. And we know that the human heart is a rebellious thing. It wouldn’t be too difficult to find a set of excellent Christian parents who trained their child in the way they should go, and they went the opposite way instead.
My point is this. Most “character formation” in Christian education, from K-12 to higher ed, more resembles the teachings of the Pharisees than the teachings of Christ. The Pharisees were loaded with good morals. They were more moral than all their neighbors. They even tithed everything down to the spices in their cabinet. But Jesus called them white-washed tombs. Although they knew the Bible verses, they didn’t understand the God to whom they were pointing. They took the law and made it into a moral code, impossible to keep. They were essentially using their religious pedigree and upright behavior as evidence that they were just, and the “sinners” were unjust. In short, they taught “morals.”
What then is really unique about the Christian faith? What then is really the basis of the Christian worldview? What then is it that makes a child, or an adult or a senior citizen for that matter, really good? The historic Christian answer is the gospel.
The gospel is the message of the life, death, resurrection and Second Coming of Jesus. It is essentially a message of grace. While men and women were guilty in their transgressions, enslaved to evil, estranged from God, stained with impurity, and under the curse of Sin, God sent his own Son as a gift to die for their sins, taking their place at the cross, cleansing their sin, freeing them from the curse of sin, and winning the eternal victory over Satan and Death. Grace is the fundamental difference between the Christian faith and all other religions and worldviews. And it is the only way men become good.
How can we possibly expect young children or young adults to become good by teaching them good morals (biblical or universal), when we ourselves know that we have failed to live up to our very own standards? The Gospel is the heart of the Christian message. The Gospel is our very reason for being. It is our foundation for understanding God, ourselves and our world.
True character formation only happens when one sees the cross. When a child understands the gospel of grace, he will look not to the expectations of his parents, or even to the tenuous moral law imposed by his community, whether youth group or Christian school. He will be filled with grace for others. Integrity becomes a reality because confession of sins at the foot of the cross of grace is a reality. Honesty can become a reality because we have nothing to hide---all my shame is nailed to the tree. Respect—a distant acknowledgment of another’s rights—fades into the background as he understands that Christ died for the person sitting next to him. Goodness becomes a reality as the imitation of the one who gave his life for me becomes a reaction, a way of being. Self-less service is the outflow of a life informed by grace.
The Gospel – not “biblical values” – must be at the center of any Christian community. This is our only hope in becoming good. For in it we see the goodness of the One who gave his life for ours.
Jeff, you have addressed the key issue in Christian education quite well. Most of our Christian schools are simply factories for Pharisees. It is becoming increasingly clear that the current generation of young Christians, those who have graduated for high school in the past 10-15 years, are rejecting "fundamentalism". They long for real spirituality.....truth! I beleive that if we can build schools that clearly articulate the Gospel, AND live it out daily, we could see revival at our schools and in our communities.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the thoughtful posts.
Thanks, Dana. I appreciate your thoughts. What's interesting to me is that not only are many Christian schools producing Pharisees, but many public schools who teach values and ethics as well. With only a moral standard separated from a declaration of good news, real goodness is an impossibility. But WITH the gospel, Christian schools and universities can become life-giving institutions...
ReplyDeleteThese are my thoughts concerning the Law of God as it relates to the process of educating someone. If the discussion is about how we shape character while educating someone, then I believe we must appeal to the first use of the Law of God which states that the Law of God functions as a guide and a restraint. I would include this instruction under the rubric of natural law just as you mentioned. There is a standard for living which is observed as something outside of human constructs. While we would recognize in an instructor the ethos and pathos needed for effective communication (it would be hard to listen to Satan instruct you on the importance of keeping God’s law), the issue is that the character of the instructor does not validate or invalidate the universal eternal law. The law stands on its own. Thus, the first use of the law becomes instruction for life in the same order as instruction in any other discipline; just as we would teach the truths about science, literature, math, or history, so we should instruct on the disciplines of character as a universal truth given to us through both special and general revelation. In my opinion this is wholly different than teaching people that they can be redeemed through their works, which would be the issue addressed with the second use of the law. Teaching children how they ought to behave is not the same as making them into Pharisees. They might become Pharisees, but that is not the fault of the law, that is the sin of the heart and we can’t remedy this by swinging the pendulum in the other direction as it only creates an imbalance on the other side. Failing to teach them how they ought to behave is to deny the very natural law which we claim to espouse. Why deny what is plainly before us and governs our lives? We do not do this in any other area of discipline. A school’s responsibility is to educate and a Christian School does this from the perspective that the content of the education comes to us not by chance but by a Creator that has set all things in proper place, including the eternal laws that govern all things regardless of what the human condition does with the information. You could teach someone the truths about chemistry and they could misuse that information and do evil with it, but it’s not the fault of the information. To know these laws and expect people to live by them by no means negates the Gospel and we should not be afraid to expect people to acknowledge God’s law. It is recognizing that God exists, he has a standard and we are expected to live by that standard. Only then does The Gospel (the power of grace) have any context and meaning in a person’s life. How can you extend grace, mercy, or forgiveness to a student if there is no standard? Of what are you forgiving him? What would be the cause for mercy? In any other context grace is cheap and we have gutted the Gospel (repent and believe) of its power. As Christians we should at least give students the tools to properly assess themselves so the Gospel has personal relevance. If we abandon those tools (Law of God), we are then left with a vacuum that will be filled with relativism, or interpersonal comparison, or Pharisaical type law making, which, ironically, is the very thing we are trying to avoid. The Gospel then becomes a story about a nice man who died on a cross 2000 years ago, but we’re not really sure why.
ReplyDeleteWell, first I want to thank you for your thoughtful comment. It's given me cause for reflection. Two things: one agreement, and one disagreement. First, I heartily agree that we should teach virtue. Natural law means we know what is right and wrong (albeit through a broken mirror), and we ought to teach young people accordingly. (I might add, however, that teaching virtue is not like teaching any other subject, as you mentioned. The laws of science are what we ACTUALLY observe. Natural law refers to what we OUGHT to do.) But here's where I really disagree. You said "How can you extend grace, mercy and forgiveness if there is no standard?" This is where I disagree. All people know there is a standard, and they know they don't live up to that standard (that is really what CS Lewis' argument is about). Whether that standard comes from reading Bible verses, or a Hindu parent teaching their children right and wrong through their consciences, the law is written on their hearts (Rom. 2). Paul addresses this in Galatians - do you really need to teach somebody to be a law observing Jew before they can become a Christian? By no means. People know their guilt. Ever since Genesis 3, we've been hiding from God and each other. The law only further clarified our need for a Savior.
ReplyDeleteHere's my point: GRACE is what is unique about the Christian faith. God became man to give his life for the lives of his estranged creation. This must be at the core. If it isn't, the spirit of the Pharisee will encroach upon any school or church. If it is at the core, peace and liberation will result.