Philosophy of
Christian Education

Strategy for Successful Christian Education¹

For the last sixty years or so, a declining percentage of adults in America have attended and supported a Christian church. My lesson today rests on the belief that one of the best ways to reverse the weakening presence of Biblical faith and morality in our country is through Christian education of our children.

How should a Christian school be designed to provide children with the kind of education essential to both intellectual and spiritual growth. One basic need is professionalism. Just as we need the latest technology to provide the most helpful treatment for our medical conditions, so we need the most effective educational techniques to maximize life-relevant learning in our children. My own commitment to educational professionalism goes back many years to the late 60's, when I was an assistant professor of psychology at a secular university. One of my courses then was a graduate seminar on education.

Yet professionalism in itself will not enable us to overcome today's rapid decline in Bible-believing Christianity. Back in 1986 I wrote a book that was at first accepted by a Christian publisher, then withdrawn from publication at the last minute. Until recently on Amazon.com you could still find it listed as forthcoming. My purpose in that book was to recommend strategies that parents could use to prevent their own children from leaving the church. It was never published because it was judged to be too controversial in its critique of television.

The opening paragraph quoted the results of research reported in 1982, which found that seventy percent of the young people in evangelical churches fall away within two years after graduation from high school. Since then, the picture has become much bleaker. We have good reason to think that the percent now interested in holding on to any form of old-fashioned Christianity has shrunk below ten percent.

Why in the midst of what seems like a losing battle should we persevere in improving our Christian schools? Because we should not view defeat as inevitable. Rather, we should make our schools even better, even more in conformity with God's will and plan for our young people, in the confidence that He will pour new blessing on our work, perhaps even allowing us to see revival in our churches.

My purpose in this lecture will be to define what I believe should be the priorities of a Christian school if it wishes to help stem the flow of Christian young people away from the faith of their fathers. I will discuss the three priorities that I believe are most important.

1. We must make Bible instruction a platform for convincing our students that the Bible is true, dependable, reliable, and a sure foundation for life.

They live in a world that mocks the Bible and Bible believers. Outside the church they are bombarded with propaganda telling them that they evolved by chance from nothing, that they have every right to construct their own moral universe, and that they belong to a struggling race with little hope of survival apart from radical measures setting aside traditional values and religions. Our young people will not stay with us unless we can convince them that what the world is saying is nonsense. It is cynical mythology for the masses. We must bring to our pulpits and lecterns a strong voice for the truth found only in the Word of our Creator.

Therefore, one of the four subjects that I teach in high-school Bible is apologetics. This has been a lifelong interest of mine. I taught it at Pensacola Christian College. It is a featured subject on my website, themoorings.org. I have been reading apologetics ever since I was a boy in a Christian home, wrestling with the world's challenges to my faith. But the church failed to give me the help I needed. I attended a Christian college, where I took several courses on apologetics, but their overall effect was to weaken my faith, because they told me that I could choose to reject creation in seven days and a universal Flood. Yet it was obvious to me that the Bible teaches nothing else. So in essence, from my perspective, my professors at a Christian college were admitting that the Bible is not true. The effect of this and other influences was that for some years while I was a young man, I strayed from the Lord. When I returned, I resolved to prepare for my own sons and for other young people a case for Christianity that for eyes of faith would truly open windows to landscapes of certainty.

What claims concerning the Christian faith does the evidence justify? In the last fifty years, God has poured out new evidence discrediting the theory of evolution. When I was in graduate school at Northwestern University, I worked closely with my mentor, Don Campbell, who later served as president of the American Psychological Association. His well-received paper entitled "Evolutionary Epistemology" was an attempt to show how man's ability to think might have evolved. Knowing my Christian background, he engaged me in discussions to make sure that I had come to accept Darwinism. He admitted to me that classic Darwinism offered no mechanism of progressive change, but he pinned his hopes on neo-Darwinism, and he convinced me to read some of its spokesmen, such as Simpson and Dobzhansky. Through their influence I decided to grant the possibility of evolution, but little did I know at the time that Darwinism of any stripe was crumbling under the impact of four mighty tidal waves of true science.

First was the realization that mutations are incapable of creating more advanced life forms. They are like the static you may hear in a radio broadcast. Never is the broadcast improved by such random noise in the background. At a 1966 symposium of leading evolutionary thinkers, one participant summarized the consensus by saying, "We believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the current conception of biology."²

The second blow to neo-Darwinism was the failure of laboratory efforts to synthesize proteins under conditions simulating the most favorable circumstances imaginable in a young planet. One of the leading figures in this field of research was Dean Kenyon, coauthor of the standard textbook entitled Biochemical Predestination, published in 1969. In time, Kenyon became persuaded that his work was futile. In the simulated primeval pools created in his laboratory, nothing happened that could be viewed as a step toward the living cell. At considerable personal cost he abandoned evolutionism and embraced creationism.

The third blow to neo-Darwinism was the explosion of discoveries revealing how vastly complex the living cell is. The microbiologist Michael Denton has compared the cell to a huge factory "carrying out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth." To suppose that it assembled itself by a painfully long series of accidents is preposterous in the extreme.

Yet another blow fell on neo-Darwinism when at least some experts finally realized that in the fossil record there are no intermediate forms. In 1980, Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Museum and editor of a prestigious journal, began sharing with colleagues his own discovery that he really knew nothing about evolution. He said he woke up one morning and "realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolution as a revealed truth in some way."

Beginning in the 60's, the truth that Darwinism is a bankrupt theory slowly spread throughout the upper echelons of the academic world. But few among the elite were willing to speak out, for two reasons: fear of reprisals by fellow intellectuals and fear of fostering a revival of old-fashioned religion. But some have broken the silence.

1. One was the famous physicist and cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle. His close associate Chandra Wickramasinghe, also a physicist, said that the probability of life accidentally emerging from non-life was comparable to the probability of a tornado sweeping through a junk yard and assembling a Boeing 747. In a book coauthored by these two in 1981, they pointed out that the chance development of even a single polypeptide useful to life is absurdly small.
2. Antony Flew, a British philosopher long prominent as a proponent of atheism, announced in 2004 that he had always been wrong. He said that the complexity of nature, especially the living cell, could never have arisen by chance. Behind it there must be an intelligent designer, a superior being that he was willing to identify as God.
3. Francis Collins was for many years the head of the Human Genome Project. In his book published in 2007, he admitted that anything as complex and sophisticated as the genetic code could not originate by chance. It is essentially a language, whose inventor must be an intelligent being. Indeed, he felt constrained by common sense to describe the genetic code as the language of God.

It should be obvious that the best-informed intellectuals in today's world know perfectly well that evolution is not a tenable theory. Why then should the students in our schools be denied this full and decisive proof that the worldview of contemporary culture is simply a lie?

Just as God in the last sixty years has been deflating Darwinism, in the last thirty years He has been deflating the idea that the world is millions and billions of years old. Consider these discoveries.

1. Carbon-14, an isotope with a half-life of only thousands of years, has been found, in apparently plentiful amounts, in diamond deposits as well as in other supposedly ancient deposits.
2. Paleontologists are now admitting that some newly discovered fossils contain soft tissue made of complex proteins which could never have survived millions of years of natural degradation. One fossil recently described had intact blood vessels.
3. A series of recent studies on genetic entropy has established that the rate of accumulation of mutations in the human genome point to human origins only 6000 years ago.
4. In Back in 2015 it was reported that the Rosetta spacecraft studying a comet found free oxygen in the comet's halo. Researchers were amazed, because oxygen is so reactive that none should be left after billions of years. One scientist involved in the project admitted that the comet appeared to be "a very pristine object." Yet no one should be surprised. Our solar system abounds with features that should have disappeared long ago if the timescale of evolutionary science is correct.

If you think there is a good reason to reject young-earth creationism, consult other papers on this site. These will suggest an answer you perhaps had not considered. For example, how can we see stars billions of light years away? It so happens there is a simple explanation, which I cannot, however, provide in a few sentences.

I have merely skimmed the surface of all the proofs that the Bible is true. My purpose in touching on this topic has been to show you that it is both possible and necessary to give our young people a firm grounding in these proofs, so that they will agree with the Bible's verdict, "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Ps. 14:1).

I am now ready for what I believe is the second priority in Christian education.

2. We must build our students' ability to read and think.

Although I am recommending apologetics, we all know that apologetics often falls upon a deaf ear. It is a good witnessing tool only if we are speaking to a real seeker after truth. For our Christian young people, it is a good antidote to contemporary culture only if they are listening. There are two main barriers keeping them from hearing and applying what we say. One is that many people today both young and old simply do not have the critical thinking skills necessary to comprehend and evaluate any kind of verbal argument. Another is that many people today both young and old are already too enamored with lustful and self-seeking life choices to tolerate any challenge. Let us look at both of these barriers more closely.

First is the decline in critical thinking skills. Critical thinking refers to the workings of a mind that is critical not in the sense of slicing up other people, but in the sense of skillfully pursuing truth. For about sixty years now, performance on standardized achievement and aptitude tests has been going down. Courses at all levels and institutions have been progressively simplified. The language of printed materials in every realm of society, whether for schools, the mass market, or other users, has been trending away from rich vocabulary, imaginative description, and linear reasoning. People are reading less and less while looking at screens more and more. As Christians, we should see these developments with grave concern. We cannot allow our children to become functionally illiterate. After all, we are people of the Book.

What does that mean? That means, first, that we should love this Book (Ps. 119:113, 119, 127, 159). All these terms for the object of the writer's love—law, testimonies, commandments, precepts—have the same generalized meaning: they refer to the whole Word of God (Ps. 119:160). How do we express our love for God's Word (Ps. 119:97; 1:1-6)? We put it into such a central place in our hearts that it continually comes to mind. But here is the question. How can we know it so well unless we are constantly reading it? We can't. So, the next question is, how often should we give it our attention (Deut. 6:6-7)? Within our families we should discuss God's Word at evening devotions as well as at other opportune moments during the day. The best foundation for discussing it is clearly to read it. Yet is it enough for us to do the sort of reading that merely skims the surface? Certainly not (2 Tim. 2:15). We are to study God's Word. But you might object that this verse is addressed to a pastor and Bible teacher, not to an ordinary layman. But God's will is that we should all become qualified to teach His Word (Heb. 5:10-14). It should be obvious that no one can fulfill what is expected of him unless he can not only read the Bible, but also read it as a regular exercise that he enjoys, and read it with good comprehension, capable of digging into its depths.

Therefore, as people of the Book, we must teach our children to read and to love reading and to understand hard reading. That should be a priority. Also, we cannot allow our children to stop using their minds for critical thinking, because there is an evil world eager to do their thinking for them. If we leave them uneducated, they easily become puppets of the media and of political demagogues and of false religious teachers.

To stop our children from joining the modern parade to idiocy we must identify the motive power behind this parade. What is causing these alarming trends? The effects of mass culture were among my professional interests as a social psychologist, and I have long followed the research in this field. There is no doubt that one of the prime causes of the breakdown in learning during the last sixty years has been television. On the basis of compelling evidence, the American Academy of Pediatricians reached the conclusion back in 2001 that too much video stimulation is harmful to children. The guidelines these doctors issued were far more restrictive than anyone outside the profession would have predicted. They said that children under two years of age should not watch any video (including television, videotapes, computer games, internet, DVDs), and that older children and teens should watch no more than one to two hours of quality video per day. The doctors' chief objection to television was that it stunts intellectual growth. The academy did not withdraw these guidelines until 2015, when they said, almost apologetically, "In a world where ‘screen time’ is becoming simply ‘time,’ our policies must evolve or become obsolete." It is evident that the change was dictated not by science but by social pressure.

The original guidelines were wise words from doctors committed to the welfare of children. Yet how many Christian pastors relayed these words, or the underlying research, to their congregations? How many Christian schools have warned parents about the dangers children face in a video world? We need the gumption to speak unpopular truth. Even as the academy guidelines have been recently compromised, new evidence has been forthcoming to support a push in our schools and churches away from videos and back to books. A 25-year longitudinal study published in the December 2015 issue of JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Psychiatry reported that young adults who watched more than three hours of TV per day showed impaired mental capacity 25 years later, even when such possible confounding factors as educational level were statistically controlled. An article published in the prestigious journal Social Forces in 2014 found that among measured variables, the prime factor determining a child's reading performance was the number of books in his home. Only 100 books boosted performance 1.5 grade levels. The nearly maximum effect was 2.2 grade levels, achieved by 500 books in the home. The economic class of the parents had a pronounced effect, but far weaker.

Why have I digressed to discuss the dangers of television? Because we are wasting our time teaching Bible unless our students have been prepared to read and to think. Besides doing our best to fill our children's world with more books and fewer screens, we must in our schools make a push to revive instruction in critical thinking. Although best-selling curricula for Christian schools boast that they are designed to achieve this goal, many in my estimation get sidetracked onto what is artificial or trivial. The best foundation for critical thinking is a return to traditional methods of education. Take math, for instance. If I showed you the kind of textbook that I used in grade school, you would see that it abounds in word problems. Such problems, in a real-world setting that is verbally described, promote the development of language as an analytical tool. They also provide the right introduction to math, which is a specialized form of verbal reasoning. The math books that I used in my junior and senior years of high school were much harder than anything that I as a teacher have ever used at the same levels. But as a young student I was ready for them, given my background in traditional math. They also contained more verbal language than you find in today's textbooks.

The proper basis for critical thinking in the language arts is grammar. In my grade school years we received a thorough introduction to this subject, such that by ninth grade we were ready to study advanced grammar, and afterward in our English courses we devoted little time to it. Of course, in the ninth grade we were also taking Latin, another great instrument for building critical thinking skills. The proper emphasis of higher English courses is literary criticism, demanding that students not only read, but also understand and evaluate what they are reading. Even courses in history and science should not be simply memorization of facts. Science is the study of abstract principles and laws. History is searching the past for trends and watershed moments for the purpose of understanding both their causes and the issues at stake.

Finally on this point let me say that Bible class is another resource for building and broadening the minds of students. Whenever I teach a survey course, whether over one book or many books, I require students to read and summarize every passage before we discuss it in class. Also, every student has regular opportunities to stand before the class and give a devotional talk. The ability to take an idea from another source and correctly reformulate it in your own words is perhaps the most basic of all critical thinking skills. Certainly it is the best starting point for further study.

The third barrier to hearing a strong defense of Christianity is preference for the kind of self-centered lifestyle that is popular in today's world. Removal of this barrier should be the third priority of Christian education. In other words,

3. We must protect our children from the destructive influences of contemporary culture.

The only adequate protection is a thorough grounding in Biblical Christianity. Let me list the high-school Bible courses that I offer in addition to a year-long course on apologetics. Together these illustrate the full coverage of truth that I feel is essential to clothe our children with the armor they need to fend off the fiery darts of the wicked. Another purpose of this list is to show the kind of teaching we must give new converts as soon as possible, to help them stand firm instead of falling away.

I devote a whole year to the life of Christ. Walking with Him is the alternative to walking with the world. Therefore, I do my best to lift Him up before the students—to show, in their language, what an awesome person He is—yes, what a mighty hand and thunderous voice, but also what a kind heart and loving smile. I try to convince them that if they walk with Him, they will be safe, they will be strong, they will be happy forever. My goal is to strengthen their bond to the One who is the source of every good thing.

I also devote a whole year to a course on basic Christianity. Its purpose is to teach in detail all the disciplines essential to growing in Christ and becoming strong enough to resist the world. The textbook that I use is my book, Primer of the Christian Life.

The fourth yearlong course I teach presents God's plan for the ages. For one semester we concentrate on the Book of Acts, which remembers the beginning of the Church Age. For another semester we focus on what Scripture says about the Last Days. I cannot here embark on a lengthy discussion of prophecy. Let me say that Christian faith in my family goes back three generations to a time before the beginnings of the fundamentalist movement. My mother was saved as a girl in 1919 when a prophecy preacher came to her church. My father, a careful student of prophecy who was in the mainstream of Christian thought seventy years ago, held to the view that when Paul and Peter speak of the Last Days, they are referring to our own period of history at the end of the Church Age. My own extensive writings on this subject include a Daniel commentary and many papers on my website. Here I will say only that in my view, you will come to the same conclusions if you let Scripture speak for itself. It is an important question, because if I am right, Scripture contains many warnings and commands addressed specifically to us in our time, and we have a duty as parents and teachers to make sure that our young people hear them. Their spiritual survival may depend on understanding their place in history. If they remain in ignorance, maybe they will think that Christianity is fading because the world knows better. Maybe they will fail to keep themselves separate from the general flow toward apostasy. Maybe they too will adopt a form of godliness while denying the power thereof (2 Tim. 3:5).

If, however, we can inspire them to stand firm in the truth, we will not only win their eternal gratitude and the gratitude of their loving families, but also we will hear the Lord's commendation, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant" (Matt. 25:21).