Christ in the Classroom

"Christ in the Classroom"

by Mrs. Nurline Lawrence, Head of School Emeritus
-Mrs. Lawrence gives credit to Dr. James Kallas for these insights on Christian education.

"Education is not simply accumulation of facts, but the molding of an outlook that examines all things from a given center." Albert Einstein

"But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his son" (Galatians 4:4). If we grasp this phrase, we are well on the way to grasping the nature and purpose of Christian education.

Paul's meaning must be put together bit by bit, and only when all the pieces are in place does the overall picture become clear. The first piece has to do with the idea of the Greek philosopher, Posidonius, centuries before the birth of Jesus.

The idea rooted and flowered that man was overwhelmed by forces he could neither cope with nor control; a slave to cosmic deities who made mockery of all his plans - totally controlled by fate.

You will recall the story of Oedipus Rex, the story of a man whose fate is described at his birth. He will grow up to murder his father and marry his mother, no matter how he resists. At the climax of the drama, Oedipus, having discovered that he has indeed what is decreed, blinds himself and runs out of the room.

There you have the Greek's view of man - helpless, blind, running into the darkness, a slave of forces he cannot resist - in need of a savior.

The second piece of the puzzle takes us from Greece to Palestine. At the hand of Anticochus Epiphanes, a contemporary of Posidonius, we have the blackest moment of Jewish history, when temples were destroyed and Jews butchered. This evil ripped at the heart of Jewish religious convictions. The Jews came to the conviction that evil and such dimension was possible only because a cosmic catastrophe had taken place. Many false beliefs arose among the Jews, fed upon by forces of the Greek philosopher Antiochus, and the whole word lay in the power of the evil one. The Jewish view of man - a slave, helpless, blind, running into the darkness, overwhelmed by evil forces he could not resist - in need of a savior.

We can see Paul's thoughts taking shape. As different as the Graeco-Roman tradition and Judaism were in may ways, here they were both united. Both agreed that man was in need of a savior. This then lies behind Paul's assertion - "when the time had fully come" - when the minds of men were ready, when the world stage was psychologically set - when men had come to see their need of a savior - at that moment, God sent his Son.

Which brings us to the third piece of the puzzle. The stage of the world was also set geographically or historically. For 700 years before Jesus was born, one world empire after another was raised up only to fall. Through what was known as the PAX Romana, for the first and only time in all of human history, there was one world, one government, one language.

Travel was fluid along the great Roman road, for there were no robbers to fear, no borders to cross, no money to exchange. For the first and only time in all human history, a wandering evangelist could go where he would, preaching to all he met in one, universal language.

All three pieces lie buried in Paul's cryptic statement - "When the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son." Paul is making the staggering claim that the rise and fall of nations is no accident. God had been active in all this, setting the stage of the world for the birth of the Savior. History was "His Story". Psychologically, spiritually, historically the time had come. The world was unified in such a way that one like Paul could walk the Mediterranean basin preaching to all he met.

Both halves of the Ancient World - Jews and Greeks - knew their need of a savior. At that point in history, Christ was born. This is the powerful context of Paul's assertion.

Surveying the sweep of centuries, he sees in all that has gone before, "the Hand of God" preparing the world for the proclamation and reception of salvation in the name of Jesus Christ.

What I have stated here, someone might say is only interpretation, a Christian reconstruction of independent and unrelated facts. And besides, what does it have to do with Christian education?

Of course, what I have done is to interpret, but that is precisely what education is - and interpretation of a point of view, the modeling and molding of an outlook that examines all things from a given center.

Education is not simply the accumulation of random facts and figures and dates - filling in the blanks, rote learning. Education in the deepest sense is the formation of a perspective, the building up of a position, the development of an outlook from which all life's problems are analysed and evaluated.

Education is a creation of a sense of values, the establishment of priorities. The truly educated person is an integrated person. He or she has a comprehensive, single-minded view that includes all of reality.

Christian education is the importation of a point that puts Christ at the vital, integrative center; that it is Christ as Alpha and Omega, that all human history and knowledge is to be comprehended.

Christian education is indoctrination - a deliberate attempt to cultivate the conviction that it is not only proper and legitimate, but also vitally necessary to see all things from the vantage point of the cross.

There has been, and still is, an abuse of the principle of Christian education, a substitution of piety for intellectual effort, a closed-minded indoctrination for courageous examination of facts. In this system - whoever can write, "I love Jesus" in a nicely flowing hand gets an "A" for English.

But an abuse of indoctrination cannot be allowed to force the pendulum to the other extreme - to cause us to forget that education is education only when it creates a sense of values, when it takes a stand, argues for commitment, zealously proclaims a position.

Today we are told - the teacher should never take a stand: to assume a position and argue for conviction is authoritarianism and medieval - a form of brainwashing.

The teacher is simply to present the facts, all the competing theories, and to argue for none. Let the student make his own choice. All the competing philosophies of life to gallop freely and best will win.

But this is absurd. A true ideology will not necessarily win the race. A false one can sweep over a whole nation. Think of Hitler - think of your own time. We are living and believing today that truth has multiple meanings.

Education is not some mechanical process in which the student is simply exposed to a new bundle of facts and miraculously comes out on his own, with all the right insights. Students need guidance and direction; they need teachers who teach, who take a stand. A neutral - not teaching teacher - impoverishes education and betrays the calling. Even if neutrality were desirable, it would still be unattainable. To take no stand at all is a stand. It is not neutrality but relativism, a denial of absolutes, a denial of Truth. And it is as much indoctrination as any deliberate Christian stance.

All education - not just education in a Christian school - is indoctrination. Education cannot be free swinging and open with no commitment to any cause. For every institution, every area of academic life begins with its givens, its assumptions, its unargued absolutes, things taken as truths beyond all debate.

Christian education rests on the conviction that every area of academic endeavor must be tied to the cross, related to that solitary event that split apart human history - over two centuries ago, Jesus was born, and his life and death are the center of all time.



That conviction undergirds, establishes, and informs all that the Christian teacher says and teaches.


The teacher's convictions, or lack of, cannot be out of his/her teaching of the subject matter or his/her life.

Christian education is the conviction that all academic endeavors must be related to the Christian
proclamation. It is the insistence that behind ordered chemical equations and mathematical formulas we see the Hand of God, who is able to bring design and beauty out of primeval chaos.

It is the insistence that though philosophers can wrestle forever with the great enduring questions of "what is man, and what is life," only when we look at the cross are those questions answered.

For in the cross we wee the truth of man's depravity, that he will crucify the good. We see also that even as we throw Christ's hands apart to crucify him, he spreads his arms to forgive us - and in that is man's worth!

In history, we insist that life is not chaotic, without purpose or meaning. And great literature is great because it speaks of man's desire to be more than an animal - an aspiration affirmed in the first book of the Bible, which says that man is made in the image of God.

This is the purpose of Christian education, to show that Christ is the center of all learning, an pervades every moment of life, giving answer to man's cry for meaning.

May God bless you as you labor together with Christ in the classroom!