The Point of Christian Education Dr. Boyd Chitwood What is it that we try to do at Cambridge Christian? We pray and labor and love and teach with the express desire that our students would live well, explicitly defined as thinking rightly and doing good. All the curriculum boils down to that. Notice what the point is not. The goal is not that they “be happy,” nor that they “be all that they can be.” Not to “do it their way,” and they’re not to “just do it.” “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” (Prov. 14:12) Success and happiness properly defined, along with all the other wonderful graces of human life, can certainly come to our children, but not if those wonderful children whom we love dearly go looking for them where their naturally sinful human hearts will naturally lead. Now, we’re getting down to it. We don’t want our students picking up just any passing thought which occurs to them. Rather, we want them thinking God’s thoughts after Him. Grounded on God’s reliable, authoritative Word and guided by the common grace of trained reasoning. To see the world as God sees it. We don’t indoctrinate; we pursue the Lord’s spiritual formation. And with lots of room in the middle of it for all the ways we won’t yet see it the way each other does because we don’t yet see it the way God does. “We see through a glass darkly.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Our respect for each other and our humility before God better show. We hope our students might get a little humor and Physics like Dave Barry’s trenchant: “Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.” They might also learn a pearl or two of value in business sense from Warren Buffett’s oft too ignored observation that “A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought.” We will teach and train so that our students might not prattle on with baseless personal opinions like a flock of dodos, though neither, we pray, will they show the passionless, convictionless soul of the calculating computer as they figure the ‘best odds for themselves.’ In many ways, we teach the classical, Christian synthesis of western, Biblical thought which the Enlightenment dismantled, unjustifiably and with extreme prejudice we might add. We teach our students the contemporary secular and mostly disconnected curriculum, but we bleed off the poison of its own ill-considered and opposing worldview.
© 2011 Boyd Chitwood. All rights reserved.
Our students should taste virtue with St. Augustine. They learn what is morally and spiritually superior, objective and established by God as good or bad, right or wrong. If we claimed to be a doing a radically new thing, it might give us pause for concern. Ours is a revealed religion from the Sovereign, Creator God. We share in His infinite creativity, but we don’t expect to be rewriting the basics of His providential book along the way; rather we will come to know it better and appreciate it more. Our way is more of a return than a revision. A further point is that we could simply define right thinking as including good action, much as true faith carries with it good works. Educationally, though, I think we can understand it better as a second move. We seek to think rightly, and then choose to do good. Often in doing good, our thinking will be further clarified and purified so the cycle builds on itself. We learn about living out our faith. Certainly in Bible class, but not only there. Many an English or History course is rightly and effectively informed from a Worldview perspective; often a Language or Math or Science class will note the connections of our faith to our living. All of it together makes for a Cambridge Christian education. So, we would be blessed to know that many or most of our students, in discernible ways, and with a distinctive witness, are living well by thinking rightly and doing good, by God’s definition and by the empowering of His Spirit! We are blessed as you parents bring us such children and ask us to partner with you for their good. We are astonished that the Sovereign Lord of the Universe invites us to join Him in that excellent work which He does with them. Do you hear the echo of a well-known verse in those phrases? We wouldn’t usurp any special authority nor certainly sloganize the verse, but we do hear the resonant truth of Micah 6:8: “He has showed you, O man, what is good, And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy And to walk humbly with your God.” Might we say these things of our students? Might we say them of our children? May the gracious Lord be praised!
© 2011 Boyd Chitwood. All rights reserved.