By Dick Derksen, May 2021
Contemporary Christians are confused. The way of life that was their forefathers has not to their satisfaction stood the test of time. More change has occurred in society in the time since the Second World War than occurred in all the millennia before this time. The moral standards that had stood their grandparents in good stead and had determined the laws by which they lived, and the worship styles along with the musical forms they had cultivated in their lifetime, had been established within their churches and had become the accepted thing for Christians attending churches of all kinds. These forms were even well defined and acceptable to the general public, believers or not. The basic technological advances that had been achieved slowly over thousands of years have all undergone major changes in a very short time. The development of power to run everything from light bulbs to Mars rovers, and the internal combustion engine revolutionized almost every activity known to our forefathers. Everything that seemed important to the older generation seems to have been rejected by the contemporary younger generation, leaving the aged struggling with technology that is much too complicated for them, facing a societal morality that is repulsive, and a worship style that seems almost heathen to some, and incomprehensible to others. Decisions become major life crises, as they seek to wend their way through the morass of things they do not understand and do not know how to navigate.
The younger generations seem to be floundering, as well, being told by their parents and by their teachers that they must learn certain things in order to survive in society, while they don’t see any point in learning something that fits them to live in their parents’ and their grandparents’ world, but offers nothing of value to them for their future. Still, those who make the decisions are cast in the mold in which they grew up, and not in that of their pupils or charges, so the decisions they make are based many times on false premises. Many parents and teachers, both secular and Christian, as well as pastors and Christian workers are somewhat frustrated by it all.
What Is Man?/Anthropology
Perhaps the most influential concept that has caused this rapid change is the view of man that has been adopted since Darwin’s Theory of Evolution gained acceptance in 1859, and really gained acceptance since the Second World War in Western culture. Man is now simply an advanced animal, with no sense of anything or anyone higher than him/herself to owe allegiance to, or to seek help from. People needed to figure things out for themselves; that is why our brains have evolved to the advanced state we had reached. After all, haven’t we invented the atom bomb, and haven’t we figured out germs in order to conquer the diseases that had plagued humanity since the beginning of time? Haven’t we developed the internal combustion and jet engines; don’t we have automobiles and airplanes that get us where we needed to go quickly and efficiently? Rockets have taken us to the moon and beyond, haven’t they? Haven’t we gotten electricity to work for us in the kitchen, living room and workplace, and haven’t we figured out how we might harness it to transport us around? Haven’t we figured out how to communicate with each other over long distances and entertain ourselves in our own homes? Haven’t we developed artificial intelligence that can decipher our most complicated thoughts? Yes, evolution has determined our fate in the Twenty-first Century, and when we compare that to a biblical view of ourselves, we are totally confused by it all.
One by-product of the theory of evolution is that it became a white man’s domain. Developed by an Englishman out of Greek roots, it quickly caught on with the Western intelligentsia, who were looking for a way to disengage from religious views of themselves and establish a humanistic way of thinking. Evolution became the basis for everything from social sciences to politics. The education system, with the famous American Scopes trial that defined creationism as counter to known fact, was turned on its head. The purpose of education was no longer to produce thoughtful citizens of God’s Kingdom, but to produced societal changers who would go to the streets to protest the way their forefathers thought and lived.
An example of this might be the concerns we as staff members at Black Forest Academy had in the late 1970’s, as we had more and more students who had been educated in the French system before coming to BFA. They had been indoctrinated to disbelieve their parents’ values. They were to stand against any kind of external authority. They came to BFA with a chip on their shoulders against anything that would curb their instincts or passions. We had to work with parents and mission boards to help them see that, if they left their children in the French system until they were high school age, they could not be ‘reformed’ by BFA rules or staff.
Politics had became involved, because, hadn’t we developed democracy as the highest ideal of this new view of ourselves? Slavery had become the negative example of this principle, as it was lived out by the “most highly evolved” of the human race, who owned the slaves of another race. In South Africa, Apartheid became the supreme example of what can happen when one race considers itself as further evolved than another. Individual evolution had turned into social evolution, and now it was up to the scientists and politicians to carry on this work, instead of an all-wise, all-knowing and all-powerful God.
Social evolution became the accepted theory, because, after all, hadn’t we developed social and political systems that governed our less developed instincts and controlled our environment to suit our advanced tastes and needs? Democracy has been preached in far-off lands by the proponent missionaries of that system, almost as gospel truth needed for salvation. Political parties and lobby groups dictate our views on social and economic issues, as well as our relationships to our world and to others who share it with us. The church has largely lost its influence in this pragmatic society.
Formerly, mores and authority were based on a sense that these components of society were bestowed on mankind by a benevolent Creator and Lord. The post-modern philosophy on which today’s life is supposedly based, aided by a democratic system of government that catered to whoever would provide the votes and the finances for the espoused program, gave vent to individual freedom as the basis for law and morality. Everyone should be free to decide, based on their own feeling of needs and on the common mores agreed on by the society in which they lived. These mores and values change regularly, depending on which group is in the ascendency and which political party gained the upper hand in the last election.
Morality is no longer dictated by divine decree; it has evolved along with social mores, to include behaviours and attitudes that were formerly forbidden. That contributes to the confusion that older generations feel, and to the insecurity of the youth, because there are no solid standards by which to gauge our decisions.
It might be a good idea to look at the Bible again, to see whether we missed something somewhere that might steer us back to where God wants us. Or, conversely, it might show us that we actually are on the right track and need only to catch up with ourselves mentally and emotionally, as well as spiritually. What does the Bible tell us about the main tenets of philosophy that are to determine the direction and parameters of our lives.
God’s plan for mankind and for the cosmos is not stated in one place in the Bible for us. He revealed it to us slowly, and these incremental revelations are recorded for us throughout the Scriptures. Ferreting out the components of His plan will take us through the whole Bible, but it is necessary for us to consider all the aspects of this plan, in order to understand the events and concepts of today, and to apply these to our everyday lives. It is not until the final book of the Bible, for instance, that we find out about “the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). It took the whole of the revelation of God for us to learn what He was up to right from the beginning.
A God for This Generation/Theology
The Christian’s theology, or concept of God, is shaped by the worldview of his/her time. One example of this might be the theology of the Jews in the time of Jesus. John chapters five and six give us a vivid account of an interaction of Jesus with the Jewish religious leaders of His day. Their view was compassed about by their understanding of the purpose of the law in relation to their faith in the One God, and their understanding was limited largely by their devotion to the forms of religion that their forebears had developed, especially since their return from the Babylonian Captivity, and honed during and after the Maccabean Rebellion against the Greeks. The fact that the Romans had overpowered the Hasmonean dynasty that had ruled them for one hundred fifty years since that rebellion had only hardened their resolve to follow their divine Law to the letter. They hoped for the promised Messiah to deliver them from the yoke of the Romans in a cataclysmic struggle between the forces of good and evil. Through it all, the Jewish faith would maintain its purity and power. Their worldview was very materialistic, and could not account for a spiritual dimension. One sect, the Sadducees, in fact, denied a spiritual dimension at all, while another sect, the Pharisees, held to a very ethereal view of the spirit world, largely governed by the appearance of prophets or angels. The Essenes, on the other hand, thought that it was best to ignore all of what society was undergoing and simply wait out the time in the desert until the Messiah would arrive.
In this milieu, Jesus visited the temple in Jerusalem and interacted with the Jewish religious leaders. A healing at the Pool of Bethesda precipitated a long discourse with these leaders, who chastised the obstreperous Prophet for doing so on the Sabbath, when their Law forbade any such work. Jesus responded with a statement that indicated his Sonship with God made all of this argument irrelevant. The Jews refused to consider that God could be anything but a unity, so they drove their anger at the new Prophet. Here again we see that our assumptions drive our understanding of what goes on around us.
Thomas Aquinas brought together the various arguments that had been made for the existence of God in the 13th Century. He listed five such arguments:
- The argument from first mover—something can only be brought into existence by something that already exists
- The argument from causation—everything has come into existence by a Cause that is itself uncaused
- The argument from contingency—even imperishable things must have been caused by something imperishable
- The argument from degree—things we see have various degrees of goodness, truth, etc. Judging something as ‘more’ or ‘less’ implies a standard against which we measure, therefore, there must be something that is most good or most true.
- The argument from final cause or ends (teleological argument)—intelligent objects behave in regular ways, so there must be a higher intelligence that caused them to act this way.
The fact that it seemed possible to prove that God exists did not seem to have the effect, however, of causing people to flock to Him or to the scriptures for their sense of values, except as it allowed them to interpret the outcomes as they saw fit.
Copernicus shattered the contemporary view held by Middle Ages believers, developed by the philosopher Ptolemy, that the world was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around it. After all, didn’t the Bible say that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and it obeyed him. And isn’t heaven up there and hell down there? We have it figured out, the pope thundered, and Galileo was forced into exile. Their world view dominated their view of the scriptures, so it dominated the view of morality, theology and everything else to do with the Christian life. Assumptions dominated theology.
Nineteenth-Century Europe was rocked by, first, the Philosophes of the Eighteenth Century, who had undermined the politics and theology of the Roman Catholic Church in France, and then by the Enlightenment stars that questioned the theological and moral bases on which medieval society had been built. German theologians began to question the veracity of the Bible as the inspired Word of God, the basis for all faith and practice. Higher Criticism took a shot at everything the Christian pastor held dear –Inspiration of Scripture, Virgin Birth, Deity of Christ, etc. – to the point that mainline churches turned almost en masse to liberal theology. The early Twentieth Century saw the Fundamentalist reaction to this discarding of the Bible as the final authority, the splitting of churches, the starting up of new theological training centres such as Bible schools and seminaries, and a new emphasis on apologetics and evangelism. Most older Christians today can trace their roots and the roots of their home churches to one or another of these Fundamentalist streams. I certainly can, and I grew up with the understanding that I needed to keep myself from being polluted by the world, so the list of things I could not do grew longer with every evangelistic crusade I attended and sang in.
Every religion faces several stages in its development: First there is the revelatory stage, where the truth is revealed to a prophet. Then there is the consolidation stage, where the truth is written, preached and accepted, and finally, there is the synthesizing stage, where the forms of the religion become more important than the doctrinal content. One can see this in world religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, and Protestantism with its various sects. One example close to me is the way in which Mennonites went from being a radical Protestant sect going farther than Lutheranism from Catholicism, to becoming mostly a vehicle to receive political benefits by a person’s becoming a member of the established Mennonite Church. Those churches that remained within the Liberal theological camp became more and more fixed on the forms they had created to keep their faith alive. I think Paul describes it best as ‘having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.’
Because of the influences of Higher Criticism and the Fundamentalist movement, liberals and evangelicals of today are torn in many directions theologically. Several spiritual movements have influenced our current positions, but there does not seem to be a general agreement on which of them—Traditionalism, Fundamentalism, Pentecostalism or Charismaticism with their emphasis on gifts of the Spirit, or simply Shopping-Cart Churchianity—is able to provide the light at the end of the tunnel of theological despair.
In the late 1960s and 70s there was a general move within the evangelical church to educate their young in a Christian environment. Christian schools sprang up throughout the USA, Canada, Great Britain and Germany. The number of new schools increased each decade of the Twentieth Century thereafter. At the same time, other Christians considered that it was the parents’ responsibility to educate their own children, so the home-schooling movement gained momentum. By the 80’s, I had to face the fact that missionaries wanted to educate their own children on the mission field, when state education ministries forbade anything except schools that were registered with them and offered a comparable curriculum with trained teachers in school classrooms properly equipped with the latest technology and that met the latest standards of health and safety. Viennese officials would not even allow a missionary family to register their kids in Vienna Christian School for oversight and testing, but to be able to educate them at home with Alpha and Omega curriculum in Salzburg. The fact that the family were personal friends whom I had to discourage didn’t help, either. Then, when I moved back to Germany, I was named Alternative Education Consultant at BFA, and supervised a family whose mother was American and father was German, and who wanted to educate their own children, as the mother had been in the States. The German ministry in their state would not allow this, on pain of their losing their family support payments and, if they persisted, even their children, to social services. They moved out of state near to BFA and I supervised their educational efforts from there. The mother was a good educator and the children were receiving an adequate education, but the government would not let go, threatening ever stronger measures against them. The family eventually gave up fighting the German authorities and moved to the USA, where they could educate as they pleased.
Society around the Twenty-first Century Christian has provided him/her with a model to follow: We want a God whom we can control, who can do whatever we need done at the moment, who is on call at all times for whatever we think we can’t handle, and who does not chastise or criticize us for doing what we jolly well feel. Many want a God they can keep in their pocket like a handkerchief, just in case; otherwise, they want the freedom to do what their hearts desire, with whom they desire, and to do the next thing when their desires change next week or next month. Above all, our God provides health, wealth and happiness in abundance to His children, or we go to another church that ‘rubs our backs where they itch.’
It seems that, as usual, a strong voice will prevail and lead enough people his/her way, and we’ll see another movement that will take us through its various stages to a new form of religious expression. At the moment, theological confusion reigns in the Evangelical Church, especially in the West. Even the Pope has made some statements of outreach to people of other faiths and to people of other moral standards. Perhaps Transformational Education will provide that needed voice, and CATE will provide the means for that voice to be heard.
History/Metaphysics/Physics
Our concept of our origins and of our relationship to a higher being determines much about how we are to relate to our surroundings and to the people in our lives, as well as to God. The prevailing view that everything and everybody evolved over billions of years is quite different from the view that God created the world in six days and that we have only been on earth about six thousand years. Some Christians I know have settled on the combination of a Creator who began life and then left it to evolution to finish the job. They, too, believe in Transformational Education, but transformed to what? Apparently, God’s plan includes this slow improvement of mankind as part of His Kingdom. Actually, these believers think that God’s Kingdom is being worked out in the Church and it will triumph over evil in the end, with Christ’s coming to create the new world and the new heaven for us all to enjoy.
As we look at history in general and to history as recorded in the Bible, do we see any connections between God’s plan and what we see around us today? Much of this hinges on one simple concept: each of us lives by an assumption – either we believe that there is a God who created everything, or we believe that the world evolved out of nothing or out of a chaos of disconnected matter and energy. Since no one was around to observe either, there is no way to scientifically prove which one is correct. By reasoning back from an assumption that there is no Creator and that the cosmos had to have begun at a certain time in the past, the theory of the Big Bang has gained worldwide acceptance in scientific circles. The circular argument that the fossil proves that the layer of soil it was found it has a certain age, and the the fossil is a certain age because of the layer of soil it was found in has dominated ‘scientific’ dating of the age of the earth. After all, it is man’s reasoning power that has created all knowledge that we have, isn’t it? And it is man’s reasoning that can project backwards or forwards in time and work with mathematical formulas to generate logarithms to enlighten or confuse the best of us.
The biblical injunction that humans should subdue the world around them may provide a starting point in our understanding of our surroundings, and provide the basis for a philosophy of education to guide our studies. It is a matter of faith for either choice, and we are left to try to find answers within our framework of metaphysics by observing what we can discover through observation and scientific experimentation guided by biblical revelation, or we can reason by so-called scientific thought alone. I believe it is best to do our due diligence in the matter of scientific observation and use the Bible as a guide to interpret the facts gained by that observation. Or, as many choose to do; they simply go on enjoying life without thinking about it, until some disaster spoils it all.
Salvation for This Generation/Soteriology
When sin is denied, there is no need of salvation. When sin is simply defined as socially unacceptable behaviour, only political pressure can be brought to bear on the offending member. Our democracies have been based on a Bill of Rights, which gives the individual all possible rights, with the assumption that these are limited only when they cross into the rights of others. As a result, governments are elected on the basis of whether they can curb enough bad behaviour to suit the majority that voted the person or the party into power. Mostly, it is the economy that drives the election, and the economy that keeps a political party in power. As I noticed in my study of the Mennonites, it was the economy that eventually provided the impetus for keeping to the teachings on separation that Menno initiated, and not the lofty theological goals he set at the beginning. The “Privilegien” the Mennonites received in Prussia and later, in Russia, was what drove them. Yes, they could preach their doctrines in the German language they had acquired in Prussia, and yes, they could have their own schools with their own teachers, teaching what they believed to be necessary for them to maintain their faith and not those that were considered worldly, and yes, they were absolved from military duty. The problem was that, in order to get these privileges, the person had to be a baptized Mennonite and registered in the local church. Young people also had to be baptized in the Mennonite church in order to marry. As you can see, the door was wide open for the teachings of the Mennonites and the moral positions they had taken to degenerate, based on the quality of the ones seeking baptism, and for what purpose they were being baptized, to lose their original spiritual value.
It is basically the economy that is dictating how governments deal with the pandemic now, and with the racial disruption that is displayed everywhere, and not with the basic issues that led to the problems. Salvation is now provided by a vaccine, not only by preventive measures, and salvation in the area of racial relations is up for grabs to the most powerful bidder. The relationship between Palestinians and Jews is another of those things that flares up periodically, as there seems to be no conclusive answer to this dilemma, with both groups claiming to own the same territory. We know from the Scriptures that there is an answer, and that this answer is coming, the Kingdom of Christ and His reign; but then, we have to rely on the revelation of God’s Spirit to know those things, and if you don’t want to accept that revelation, the conflict will continue indefinitely, and no amount of political diplomacy will get to the root of it all. The problem here is that, if we side with the Jews in their dispute and claim scriptural authority for it, we are accused of hating the Palestinians. If we side with the Palestinians or even show sympathy for their poor economic plight, we are seen as poor Christians and even poor Americans. No easy answer to that one, and it will take a lot of transformational education to satisfy everyone of whatever answer we come to. I think we’ll probably get the answer directly from our Lord when He arrives to set up His Kingdom.
Another political development of late has been the rapid increase in the influence of Islam on western civilizations. Until recently, these people have been confined largely to the Middle East and North Africa, but recent political events in those countries of have brought many refugees to our shores. Governments that had considered Western Protestant values as the basis for their decisions and laws are now being forced to consider the Sharia Law of these new immigrants as also having validity. I think back in history to the founding of our great North American nations. Both were founded on somewhat biblical principles, but tempered by the social constraints prevalent at the time. My own ancestors came to Canada and the USA to flee religious persecution and to be able to practise their own beliefs in peace. Now we have non-Christian groups wanting to practise their beliefs in our country, and we want to curb them. We have gone from being the oppressed to being the oppressors, all in the name of our religious leanings. Where this will eventually lead is anyone’s guess at the moment. Is another civil war imminent in some of our democratic countries of the West, where majority numbers are changing radically?
“Black lives matter!” has become a war cry of many in our society, and other minority groups – native nations, oriental and south Asian, African and Caribbean immigrants, as well as those from eastern and southern Europe – have taken up the cudgels and joined the demonstrations in our major cities, sometimes resulting in rioting and vandalism. Many from these groups have joined together in gangs to promote their way to the top in the quickest way possible – drugs and prostitution – but we must be allowed to have our individual rights to destroy our bodies and minds with these substances and practices. Police forces are backed against the wall trying to curb the murders and violence in our big cities that result from these vices.
Another puzzling phenomenon has hit our extended family. Several young people have declared that they identify now as the opposite sex as that to which they were born. If we criticize this, we are dubbed haters, and if we condone it, we are dubbed poor Christians. We have also been confronted with a same-sex marriage, even in our church. One woman in one of our small groups is married to another woman. The church would not allow her to be involved in Bible teaching, even though she is a Bible school graduate. She is also of native extraction, so she plays the double-whammy card of hate against anyone that takes issue with her situation. We have accepted her into our small group and have shown her love and acceptance, though we try to indicate that this does not mean we agree with her choice of lifestyle.
There is a desperate need for Christians to educate for transformation – change to a more morally-pure life, change to an attitude that is inclusive and loving, that takes care of the other person, that stoops to bathe the wounds of the poor and downtrodden, that brings health and happiness with eternal life to the world around us, that considers the coloured person a brother or sister. There is a need for Christians to quit thinking only of their own prosperity, but to give themselves in Holy Spirit dedication to bringing gospel blessings to everyone around them. What was once known as the ‘social gospel’ may once more become the hallmark of true Christian grace. And, if former tendencies persist, what begins as a purely platonic gesture out of the love of believers for their fellow man will degenerate into a church that simply goes through the motions, thinking that it is those motions that bring salvation.
Transformational education will need to take into account this tendency in our faith, as each generation interprets the tenets of that faith through the eyes of their society, to ensure that the faith we believe in and proclaim remains purely scriptural.
Morals for This Generation/Axiology
Today’s standard rationale for where morals originate is that society creates morals, based on needs within that society. Murder, for instance, destroys part of the society; therefore, it is wrong to kill someone. But, that leaves open the question of when life begins and ends – hence, the debates over abortion and euthanasia. What is life anyway: a chemical reaction, an electrical stimulation, a quiver in the protoplasm? Sometimes, society takes the easy way out and declares something that has been considered illegal or immoral as now being legal and morally defensible. The use of substances that produce altered psychological or psychic effects would be another example here, as well as the obvious practices of abortion and euthenasia.
In ‘the good old days’ governments largely listened to the general populace, who were mostly raised with Christian values, if not true faith, and made laws according to the morality taught by whatever church was most dominant in their society. Not so anymore. Because the majority of our populace is no longer indoctrinated in biblical morality, but has chosen to determine its own sense of morality, based on social values and individual rights, governments are now at bay to the highest bidder. The civil liberties unions are having a heyday.
Because society has developed social media to a very high extent, it has come to dominate our lives. Whether by means of television, cellphones, tablet or computer technology, we can google anything anyone says about almost everything, and we can communicate our ideas and our feelings around the world in seconds. This can produce much good, but it can also be a vehicle for criminal minds to alter everything from our concept of which foods to eat, to influencing election results in a democracy. Society, mostly resting in governmental hands, continues to grapple with this problem we have created for ourselves. Our abilities to create areas that could be problematic seem to supersede our sense of morality in how to control our impulses and our use of the technology we create. The thinkers of our society would say that our highly-evolved brains will figure this out, as they have figured out previous problems our inventiveness has created. The Canadian government is at this time wrestling with a bill to limit the powers of social media giants, and it has constantly had to deal with demands to limit gun ownership to stem violence. They might allude to the ways in which laws had to be created to stem the misuse of the automobile back at the turn from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century. The issues change with time, but the problems don’t go away. They require constant vigilance and new law-making, to curb the rebellious ways of our human nature.
It becomes fairly obvious that transformational education will be needed to bring our society to some form of Christian awareness again. If society is going to benefit from it, our students will need to carry out our teachings into the wider world, in order to ‘change our world for Christ.’
Truth for This Generation/Epistemology
We can only know what our senses tell us: so say the behaviourists, who are totally committed to the assumption that we evolved from simple forms and are continually evolving, and that all matter and all energy are eternal and just need us to organize them into meaningful patterns. On the other hand, Creationists have not given up on the idea that there is a Supreme Being that planned all things, created all things, organized all things around “natural laws,” sustains all things by His almighty Word, and who is the uncaused Cause. Again, we must trust one concept or the other. They cannot both be true, and trying to mix the two concepts doesn’t provide a satisfactory answer to many of the questions we continue to ask.
If we trust in the evolutionary process and society’s attempts to differentiate truth from fiction, and to set limits on our less evolved natures, we have to trust in the observational techniques of our scientists, and reasoning processes of our philosophers, to bring us the answers we are seeking. Hence we have “objective truth,” a concept that appeals to many in our advanced western society. This is based on statistical evidence, as seen in experiments and recorded by scientists in society. The ones who do not agree with this concept are branded as “simple”, “uneducated”, “less evolved”, and other derogatory designations. The fact that observing fallen humanity in its struggles to free itself from the effects of sin only results in quantifying the parameters of that fallen-ness doesn’t seem to affect their acceptance of the ‘evidence’ they have collected, or the conclusions they draw from these statistics.
On the other hand, when the evidence cited by the above unbelievers can actually be better interpreted as supporting a belief in a God that created all things, and revealed Himself to us in various ways, including the Bible, we have to pay some attention to that view. One example here would be the number of scientists who support the “Intelligent Design” view, which, although it actually dates back to Augustine and Anselm, assumes that the intricacies within our universe, from the sub-atomic particles and energies, the eye or ear and all that makes them function in everything from an insect to a person, to the vast expanses of galaxies that are still being discovered, as our ability to probe farther and farther into space increases, are there by design, so that we can discover them for ourselves.
If, as scientists who hold the Intelligent Design view suggest, there is a God who created all that we experience around us, and us, as well, then such a God would want to communicate with His creation. Since the Bible indicates that humanity was created in the image of God, we should be able to respond to the overtures of our Creator to communicate with us. That would create for us an avenue of discovery of Truth in its entirety. That there are two kinds of truth – observational truth and revealed truth – fits easily into this thinking pattern. It is also philosophically sound reasoning.
That concept, though, makes the job of the Christian educator more important than ever. Children are not going to be able to discover the things necessary to survive in their world without the guidance of teachers who are forward-thinking and knowledgeable about what needs to be learned. It is exactly here that our greatest challenge appears, and it is right here that we can offer our greatest gift to future generations.
We need a solid and penetrating philosophy of education, on which our curriculum and our school practices, as well as the methodology of our teachers, can be based. If we are going to transform our students into change-makers, we must give them a sure foundation on which to build their beliefs and their skills.
Where is This All Heading?/Eschatology
In addition to their being interested in the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the interest of many Christians today has gone to eschatology. This is not the first time that believers in the Coming Christ have looked to a fairly immediate return of their Saviour. Paul had to remind the Thessalonians that they should figuratively come down from the mountain and put on their work clothes and quit neglecting their duties to their households because of their belief in the imminent return of their Lord. The Anabaptist movement coincident with the Reformation was based in part on the Propheten, a group that emphasized the chiliastic beliefs that Christ was going to set up His Kingdom immediately. Menno’s teachings on pacifism were largely a result of the Anabaptist excesses in taking the city of Muenster in northern Germany and creating the “Kingdom of David” by the sword.
The belief in a superhero who will come and deliver us from the mess we have created for ourselves has produced any number of comic strips and movies. Each one fed the notion that one or another of us will prove to be that hero and exercise superhuman strength and wisdom to set the world to order, as we ourselves envision it to be meant to be. In church, have you noticed the number of our new worship songs that refer to Christ as our superhero in whatever terms the composer felt were best suited to the song. Remember the chorus “The God of Elijah?” It began a host of similar songs. Christians today are looking forward to the Lord’s coming, either in a rapturous meeting in the air, or to establish His Kingdom on earth and set those rebellious heathen in order with His rod of iron.
The Bible gives a clear guideline as to what will lead up to the final moments of history, as Jesus comes to claim His own and to settle the business of His Kingdom on earth. Most European Christians follow a Reformed theological approach to eschatology, while North American Evangelicals hold to a more Dispensational view. This causes some convoluted theological concepts when related to what transformational education actually means. For one it became a way of infusing a fairly literally biblical worldview into Christian society, and for the other it is the ushering in of the Kingdom of God on earth. For the one, the Kingdom is spiritual and within the believer; for the other, it is the slow building of the physical Kingdom until the Church has prepared the way for Christ to come and claim His own. I do think, though, that keeping the definition quite general does provide both elements to think they are doing God’s will, and in the end, to produce the desired results in relationship to a biblical worldview. And, I believe that North American evangelicals must eventually sort out the disparities in their beliefs about the gifts of the Holy Spirit and come to some sort of happy (?) medium that could be called the way church functions in the Twenty-first Century. Perhaps we will be able through transformational education to establish some godly moral standards in our society, as the Victorian Christians were able to do. Christians must also learn how to interact with those of other faiths who have joined them in their democratic countries. Transformational dducation should provide the basis for such spiritual progress.
Philosophical Conclusions
Can Christianity survive democracy? That question has run through my mind a great deal over the past few decades. We see at every turn that the basis of our faith is being eroded by the pressures on our leaders to protect this religious group or that societal group and their respective values. Churches, Christian schools and summer camps, as well as theological institutions are being pressured to accept people who are openly homosexually-oriented as pastors, teachers, cabin-leaders and professors. The curriculum is being twisted to reflect society’s growing awareness of those who feel disadvantaged by the mores and laws of the society in which they live. White supremacy is being challenged at every corner, and Christianity is being depicted as solely a white person’s religion. Recent events and leadership in one of our most democratic countries that prides itself in being “Christian” have left me wondering whether only dictatorial measures can be implemented in restoring some elements of Christian moral fibre into that deteriorating society. It would appear that secularism and racialism have combined to undermine the democracy that this nation has so avidly espoused around the world.
So, I ask again, can Christianity survive democracy?
Transformational Conclusions
Where do we go from here? Do we give up? Do we fight with tooth and nail to keep our values intact? Do we become placard-waving radicals on our nations’ streets, demanding changes from our leaders that reflect our own worldview and values? Do we institute a paper blizzard of articles and books decrying the plight we are in? Do we get ourselves on TV to decry the fact that our values are no longer being accepted by society and government? All of these have crossed my mind, and probably that of many other Christians, over the past several years. Looking back on the history of the Church and its various eras, with attendant issues and solutions, I doubt that any of these are the answer. I believe that transformational education, beginning with the children of our Christian parents, the parents themselves and the grandparents that are still holding on to old values and forms, will provide the answers. If the Muslims and other religions can think that they can transform the world into their image, then surely Christians can depend on the Holy Spirit within them to do the transforming work that will make new creations out of each child of God. Once again, Christian values could determine the ways in which our respective societies will go, and hopefully, God’s Kingdom will be fulfilled in each of us and through each of us.
I mentioned earlier about the beginnings of the modern Christian school movement and the concurrent home-schooling craze. Another concurrent phase of this movement was the thought that having a Christian education meant having a Christian curriculum. A BEKA, Alpha and Omega, Bob Jones University Press, and a number of other forms of Christian curriculum were touted to develop a Christian worldview or mindset in our youth. At the same time, in other parts of the Christian world, educators were wrestling with national or provincial curriculums, trying to see what it was about them that made them un-Christian and humanistic. In most cases, the majority of Christian schools in Canada operated on the curriculum of their respective provinces. The feeling was that it was the matter of having a Christian teacher teaching the curriculum and weeding out or explaining the objectionable material that would produce a Christian worldview in the pupils, and not the material in the lesson per se.
My work in schools for missionary children helped me to see a more international picture of what education could, and possibly should, be. Working together with individuals from many parts of the globe helped me to see that we each of us, as Christians, come to education from our own national or state’s point of view. Naturally, because we think we turned out perfectly, we think our system must be the best and therefore, should be introduced to everyone else. Provinces and states, as well as European countries, pride themselves on having in their minds the best educational system in the world.
Black Forest Academy had adopted the Saskatchewan curriculum for its high school, because the first principal of the high school, Dick Driedger, had been an administrator in that Canadian province and had experience working with their curriculum developers. By 1998, our Canadian population in BFA was less than our Korean population, and the number of American teachers and students had multiplied to the point that the Saskatchewan curriculum could no longer be used. Other international schools seemed to be thriving on the International Baccalaureate, so I began to investigate that program as a possible alternative. Could ‘Theory of Knowledge’, which is the basis of the whole IB program, be Christianized was my thought. I contacted a couple of Christians who worked in international schools for their input, and they assured me that they did not have to give up their faith to teach this course in an international school.
I decided to go back to school and investigate the whole matter of international education, so I enrolled at the University of Bath, in England, which is the Centre for the Study of International Education. I completed my MA in Education there, with the dissertation topic, “The Perceptions of International Education Held by Teachers, Administrators and Senior Students in Three International Christian School” in April, 1998. At that time, I also began my coursework toward my Ed.D, with courses in educational philosophy and in comparative and international education. In one course I did an analysis of the PISA test results in various countries, including Germany, where I was living, and made some judgments of the efficacy of certain measures being taken to improve standings in this international battery of tests, as against other countries’ results. I ran into problems with my professor in the educational philosophy course, whose contention was that I had to first convince him that God existed, before I could go on to try to develop a philosophical rational and curriculum basis for an international Christian school. It took three years of writing and re-writing my paper and still the professor would not give me a pass, even though the department head OK’d it. Finally, the professor retired, and I was able to work out a strategy that would not compromise my beliefs with the new professor, and in 2006 I completed my last doctoral course. My thought was to pursue the idea of creating a solid foundation for international Christian education through my dissertation research, perhaps pursuing the idea of using the PISA test results in international Christian schools against the results in the native countries of their participating students to generate some theories on which to work further on my project. The Lord had other thoughts. He wanted us to return back to Calgary to join our family there and begin the new phase of life called retirement. I never got to the dissertation, so my doctorate is still hanging in limbo somewhere. My thought at the time was, ‘I don’t need a doctorate to be an Opa.’ Here I am still researching and writing, hoping that at least the Christian world will see that my education might pay off some day. Maybe someone else in CATE will be the one to get the inspiration to finish my project. I’m satisfied that maybe my beginnings in this area will result in my hearing the Saviour’s “Well done, good and faithful servant,” which is more to be desired than any doctorate.