August 2018

Last week I shared how the majority of parents, church leaders and teachers believe that the main purpose of schooling is to prepare students for more schooling!  They may not articulate this as the main purpose of schooling but in practice this is the reality.  As a new school year begins, I believe it is important that Christians develop a few key objectives that should drive the education we give our children at home, church and school.  It is essential that these objectives are achieved if we are going to fulfill God’s purpose for education and correctly prepare our children for the future.

Goal #1:  Our Children Must Increase In Their Knowledge of God

There is no doubt about it.  All education involves the acquisition of knowledge.  However, too much of our educational efforts have to do with gaining more facts about a wide variety of topics.  Unfortunately, most of this effort to know more “stuff” does not provide our children with the God-intended meaning behind all the facts they are taught.  John Piper explains why just knowing the facts about something isn’t real education.

Modern people suppose that if they have the facts about a given thing, person, or event, they have the truth.  They forget that facts are not meaningless or value free, and that if we do not associate the meaning with the fact, we do not have the truth.

J. I. Packer reminds us of why God created man in His image.  He wrote,

Once you become aware that the main business you are here for is to know God, most of life’s problems fall in place of their own accord.

All of the teaching that we give our children should aim at increasing their knowledge and understanding of who God is.  This is what the Psalmist referred to in Psalm 19:1-4 and Paul was saying in Romans 1:20.  Everything our children study is part of God’s creation and should tell them something about who God is.  The late Albert Greene understood this when he wrote,

We must avoid the impression that academics represents the fullness of what school is all about.  Knowing God in and though the creation is what is important…It brings no honor to the Holy Spirit if we then proceed to treat the ordinary school studies, which are derived totally from the created world, as if they had nothing to do with God.  They are laden with meaning because they are all part of God’s way of giving Himself to us, of making Himself known to us.

Are your children increasing in the knowledge of God through their total educational experience?  If not, we aren’t preparing them for the real future.

Goal #2:  Our Children Must Hear God’s Call

In past posts I have shared how God places two calls on individuals.  The first call that God gives to all people is His call for them to be saved.  Scripture tells us that God is long-suffering because He does not want anyone to perish.  However, God also gives each person a specific call.  This is God’s call to a work or vocation.  We have lost the concept of vocation in today’s world.  Tim Keller explains this in his writings when he states,

We must recover the idea that work is a “vocation” or calling, “a contribution to the good of all and not merely…a means to one’s own advancement.”…Something can be a vocation or calling only if some other party calls you to do it, and you do it for their sake rather than your own.  Our daily work can be a calling only if it is reconceived as God’s assignment to serve others.

When the main purpose of schooling is merely preparing our children for more schooling, they may go through twelve or more years of schooling without ever understanding God’s purpose for their existence.  Kevin Swanson puts it this way.

A successful education is achieved when a child is prepared to make maximal use of his God-given talents and abilities in the accomplishment of the child’s calling…The challenge of the first eighteen years of a child’s education is to find that calling…A fulfilled life will be determined by whether he/she has centered in upon his/her calling.

Do your children understand how God has gifted them with certain talents and abilities?  Are they sensitive to God’s call on their lives?  This has to be part of every child’s education from infancy all the way to maturity.

Goal #3:  Our Children Must Pursue Biblical Excellence

In order to pursue true excellence, one must believe that there are absolute standards by which excellence is measured.  Unfortunately, today’s culture refuses to believe that there are absolute standards for anything, including excellence.  This means that excellence is totally relative and is only looked at from a horizontal perspective.  This results in people pursuing an excellence that is only based on “comparison” and “competition”.  One achieves excellence by being better or beating everyone else.  Even today’s western church has adopted this concept of excellence.

A biblical understanding of excellence begins by setting God, Himself, as the true standard of excellence.  Jesus is our model of excellence and our goal is to be like Him (1 John 2:6).  Biblical excellence requires that the primary focus must be on character rather than performance or achievement.  Our motive to be excellent in all things is to glorify God (1 Corinthians 10:31).   Gary Inrig explains how excellence in character is more important than mere perfection in performance.

…excellence of character rather than excellence of achievement must be the central concern of the believer…the priority of character is due to the fact that what a person is colors all that he does.

Performance takes on eternal significance when it is an extension of one’s godly character.  Consider the words of Darrow Miller.

Because redeemed man is working for God, to fulfill God’s plans, the work is to be done with excellence.  Our guidelines for excellence are found in God’s own nature.  God is true, just, and beautiful.  Our work, in both its means and ends, is to manifest truth, justice, and beauty.

Is the education you are giving your children teaching them that excellence is all about out-performing others?  Are you educating your children in a way that challenges them to pursue excellence of character which will result in their best performance possible for God’s glory?  We must realize that God’s excellence is not based on what He does but on who He is.  That is why He expects us to be holy because He is holy!

These objectives must define and drive the education we give our children at home, church and school.  If we do not achieve these objectives, our children will not be prepared for the future — regardless of what else they might learn!

Next week I will be spending time with my family over the Labor Day weekend.  Therefore, I will not be posting an article next Monday.  I look forward to being back with you on September 10th.  I pray your Labor Day will be a blessed one.

Over the past 2.5 weeks, I have had the privilege of conducting professional development seminars for nearly 700 administrators, teachers and parents from 15 different schools around the country.  During these sessions I asked a series of questions to which I received nearly unanimous answers.  As we discussed the purpose of education, I asked each group a simple question.  What does preschool education prepare the children for?  Without hardly any hesitation everyone in the session replied, Preschool education prepares children for kindergarten.  From this response, I concluded that parents and educators believe that all education is an effort to prepare children for something that they see as important in the future.  With everyone in agreement on this answer, I proceeded to ask a progression of additional questions.  Here are the questions and the answers I received.

1. What does kindergarten prepare children for?  Answer:  Most said it prepared them for first grade while the others were more generic and said elementary school.
2. What does elementary school prepare children for?  Answer: It prepares them for middle school?
3. What does middle school prepare students for?  Answer:  Middle school prepares them for high school?
4. What does high school prepare students for?  Answer:  High school prepares students for college?

Here is the conclusion I came to from these discussions.

The main purpose of schooling is to simply prepare students for more schooling!

I believe this is how most parents look at the education of their children and youth.  Parents send their children to school as early as possible.  Why?  So that they will be ready for more schooling.  In fact, if you ask parents if they want their children to get a good education, you will always get a strong YES.  However, when you ask them why they want their children to have the best education possible, the most common answer you will receive is so that they can get into a good college.  In other words, schooling has become an unending process of preparing our children for more schooling.  It is no wonder that so many graduates leave high school with no real purpose for their lives — other than to go to college.

When the purpose of schooling is to merely prepare a child for more schooling, the child fails to understand how he/she has been created by God for a purpose.  I have heard my friend, Pastor James McMenis, repeatedly saying, Every person is a PURPOSE with a name!

As a new school year begins across the US, I am challenging every reader to ask himself/herself a couple of questions?

1. Am I simply trying to prepare my children/students for more schooling?
2. What are some more meaningful purposes that should be the basis for how I educate my children/students?
3. What do I need to change as I guide my children/students to understand their purpose as I teach them either at home or school?

Next week I will present a few goals that I believe must be the driving force behind the education we give our children and youth.  Please share your thoughts on this important topic below.

I am amazed at how every person desires to live as long as possible.  Even the atheist wants to go on living though he says that he doesn’t fear death.  Whenever some disaster takes place such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or a terrorist bombing, every news station gives full coverage to the rescue efforts and the search for survivors.  Just recently there was daily news broadcasts that chronicled the rescue efforts of a boys’ soccer team that was trapped in a cave due to a flash flood.  This striving for life from when a newborn gasps for his/her first breath to when someone takes his/her last breath, the desire to live forever is a part of what it means to be human.

When God created man in His image, He did so by breathing into man His breath and man became a living soul.  Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, talked about this unique characteristic of all human beings in Ecclesiastes.  In chapter 3, verse 11 we find these words.

 He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. (NKJV)

In every human soul there is the awareness that there is something more than this life here on earth.  This is what gives man the hope that one day he can find fulfillment and satisfaction that is unattainable in this fallen world.  We must remember that man was never created to die.  Death was a result of the Fall.  However, even after sin entered the world, man still had that God-given awareness that he was designed to live forever.

Man was made for eternal things because we were created in the image of an eternal God.  Even though man was made for eternity, he cannot know what all God’s plan is from the beginning to the end. This is because man was made by the only eternal being — God, Himself.

Because every soul will live forever, it is important that we educate our children to know that there are only two options for where they will spend eternity — heaven or hell.  If we give them the best education possible and they find great success in life but don’t know Jesus as their Lord and Savior, their education is worthless.  A biblical worldview education is aimed at preparing them for both this life and eternity.  Our children must know that they were created for eternity and because of what Christ did on the cross, they can receive the gift of eternal life and know that they will spend eternity in His presence.

Man has the amazing ability to create pictures in the mind and then bring into reality what was imagined.  We see man’s creativity in manufacturing, art, literature, music, humor and the common activities of everyday life.  Every parent has probably experienced what happens when he/she purchases a nice gift for a child only to find the gift set aside and the child playing with the box the gift came in.

Understanding man’s creative ability is a topic that has captured the thinking of sociologists, psychologists, educators and theologians for centuries.  The creative nature of man baffles those who try to convince us that man has evolved form non-creative beings over millions of years.

The reality is that our imagination and creativity comes from our Creator.  Since man was created in the image of a creative God, man is the only being that can imagine and then bring into existence what he imagined.  Our creativity is a reflection of the very creative nature of God.  Of course, God is the ultimate Creator and the only One who can create things out of nothing.  Man can merely take what God has created and use those things to create something new.

God expects man to use his creativity to fulfill what is referred to as the Cultural Mandate recorded in Genesis.

Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”  So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.  Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”     Genesis 1:26-28 (NKJV)

God intended for man to use his creativity to rule over His creation as a steward.  However, with the Fall, man’s creativity would be used for both good and evil.  The creative mind of man developed such things as airplanes, computers and the cell phone.  However, man’s creative abilities were used to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center towers killing thousands; to use computers to transmit pornography into the minds of children, youth and adults at the mere click of a button; to use cell phones to captivate the waking hours  of life and destroy important relationships.

One of the most important uses of our creativity is found in man’s ability to create culture.  Darrow Miller in his book, LifeWork, states that God made humankind to be culture makers and it matters hugely what kind of culture we create.  Miller argues that God created man in His image desiring man to create a kingdom culture — culture that reflects the true nature and character of God.  Again, we must keep in mind that man will not automatically create this type of culture.  In fact, because of sin, man is bent toward creating culture that goes against the very nature of God.

We must remember that behind every educational effort there is some “god” that is feared, pursued and served.  This is a very important fact to keep in mind because the education we give our children will play a big role in determining what type of culture our children and youth will create.  Miller explains it this way.

Culture is a product of a people’s cult, or their civic religion.  It’s a reflection of the god they worship…culture is the temporal manifestation of a people’s faith…The cult [faith] leads to culture.  This, in turn, determines the kinds of societies and nations we will build.

In light of man’s ability to create, it is crucial that we provide our children and youth with a biblical worldview education.  This is our only hope to ensure that they will grow up to use their amazing ability to create for good and not for evil.  When we do this, our children and youth will be able to create a kingdom culture — a culture that will be created by image bearers of God reflecting His nature and character to a lost world.  What are we using our creative abilities to do when it comes to educating future generations?