So far I have tried to show that God's mandate to disciple our children is extremely involved and comprehensive in scope (Deut. 6 and Ephesians 6). Christian Education is a proactive endeavor(biblical discipleship- to inculcate a biblical worldview in our children) not a reaction to something (public schools are bad). Even if government schools were amoral or somehow neutral (and they are not), 14,000 seat hours before the age of 18 amounts to serious lost discipleship time in some fleeting adolescent years.
As Americans we are conditioned to think schooling is something our tax dollars should provide, a right of citizenship as it were, but we have to shake such a notion. This mindset or the idea that education is somehow the job of the government has caused the Church to give up too much opportunity in a precious, crucial, worldview-shaping area.
Once again, to visit the important goal of Christian Education, a worldview is the set of beliefs about fundamental aspects of reality that ground and influence all one's perceiving, thinking, knowing, and doing. In the previous post I posed some basic questions that should be considered, answered, and applied in the study of all subjects and academic disciplines. Looking even more closely at the elements of one's worldview, you can see why it is so very important to have these areas informed by Scripture.
The elements of one's worldview, the beliefs about certain aspects of reality, are one's
epistemology: beliefs about the nature and sources of knowledge;
metaphysics: beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality;
cosmology: beliefs about the origins and nature of the universe, life, and especially Man;
teleology: beliefs about the meaning and purpose of the universe, its inanimate elements, and its inhabitants;
theology: beliefs about the existence and nature of God;
anthropology: beliefs about the nature and purpose of Man in general and, oneself in particular;
axiology: beliefs about the nature of value, what is good and bad, what is right and wrong.
My point in all this focus on Christian Education and Worldview isn't to freak anyone out but rather to show the mandate of Scripture, the huge-but fleeting-opportunity we have to disciple our children, and the complexity of the process. Education is not just reading-writing-and arithmetic in some kind of amoral vacuum. Education involves worldview-shaping. Our worldview means everything when it comes to how we will act.
2 comments:
I can’t imagine anyone in this post-modern, anti-Christian age, not willing to make whatever sacrifice it takes, to see that their most precious of all gifts from God, receives a Christ-Centered, Christ-molded, Christian Worldview education, based and built upon God’s Holy Word.
Thank you Tony, may your Thoughts on Christian Education be that of those who are in doubt as to how to educate their children. Yes, there are many factors to consider of which you and your readers have pointed out. Such a travesty to have a child who has the opportunity to get a Biblically Based World Viewed Christian Education be toss into the Humanistic Socialistic Darwinist Government Schools.
Post a Comment