Some Principles of Christian Education

MANY church members are confused and unhappy about the problem of Chris­tian education. They are vividly aware of the fact that the aims of Christian education are profoundly different from those of worldly systems. Consequently they find it disturbing to have to admit to themselves that the content of courses offered in Chris­tian schools often approximates quite closely that offered by schools at large. They remember with some disquiet that Christ discarded everything taught by the schools of His day, and they wonder whether we are slipping back to a less significant type of Christian education.

We must remember that we cannot hope to be prepared for citizenship in the king­dom of heaven till we have learned to live successfully in the society of men in this very complex civilization. It is well to re­member, too, that in the time of Christ edu­cation had failed to uncover any real scien­tific truth or any worth- while philosophy. Furthermore, it was an illiterate age. Most people fitted into their place in society without being able to read and write. But today things are very different. We must acquire a multitude of skills and amass a large stock of knowledge if we hope to serve our fellow men in the tradition of Chris­tianity.

It is reasonable to expect that Christian schools will borrow more and more of the material of worldly education.

If Christian education is not to justify it­self by its difference in content from the schools of the world, how are we to know when a school is offering an education that can be labeled genuine Christian educa­tion?

It is not a difficult thing to set down the main principles of Christian education. We have only to examine the pronouncements and practices of Christ as He educated His disciples for their role as foundation citi­zens of the kingdom of heaven.

In the first place, Christ emphasized the nature of the group that was to constitute His school. Every man in the group, with the exception of Judas, joined the school at the personal invitation of Jesus. They all entered the school as dedicated men. Their goals may not have been very clear to themselves, but they all planned to follow Christ. That involved a renunciation of their possessions and their previous social connections. Jesus left no room for doubt concerning His own feelings on the im­portance of this act of renunciation. He spoke of it often. "If any man will come after me," He said on one occasion, "let him deny himself" (Matt. 16:24).

The effect of this renunciation was to draw them together and weld them to­gether as a team. They went out two by two and they were led to lean on one another. During a lively and eventful three-and-a-half-year period they argued away their differences, they dissolved their bit­ternesses, they withdrew together from their fears. They emerged from the terror of the crucifixion as the church of God.

As long as our schools and colleges place real emphasis on the significance of the group that constitutes the school, so long as it is a special group that has renounced the world, they are fulfilling the first principles of Christian education. In the society of such a group there is a world of power.

In the second place, Jesus never ceased to strive to develop in His disciples a sense of the reality of the kingdom of heaven. He spoke of it continually, sometimes as if it were a present reality, sometimes as if it were a consummation for which all things waited. The disciples learned to think of it as something within them, as something all about them, and as something that had a new kind of reality, for it was a king­dom that would emerge more clearly as the illusions of time and sense dropped away. It was a kingdom that grew more real to them as the years went by, for Jesus never ceased emphasizing the differences that lay between the principles of His kingdom and those that operated in the world that they had left behind.

This awareness of the kingdom of heaven is one of the cardinal principles of Chris­tian education. And so long as our schools are striving to make the kingdom of heaven a reality to their pupils they are doing a great deal to measure up to the standards of Christian education.

After all, there is nothing more impor­tant to the conduct of our lives than per­spective. It enables us to give reasonable emphasis to all the main things in life. No doubt Abraham could see that there was real value in wealth, social intercourse, and political influence, but as he looked up into the heavens he began to discern the dim outlines of a city "which hath founda­tions, whose builder and maker is God" (Heb. 11:10). That perspective alone made all the difference between his for­tunes and those of his nephew, Lot.

Jesus placed great emphasis also upon faith in the revelations of God, especially those that Jesus Himself made available to His people. He urged His disciples to be­lieve in the improbable, and insisted that it was the capacity to believe unreservedly in things that lay beyond the reach of the senses and the highest power of human un­derstanding that was the key to unlock doors that otherwise closed firmly upon the prying fingers of mortality. He taught them to think of a reality that lay all about them but evaded the searching senses of unlim­ited power against which rude humanity was insulated—power that dwarfed the mightiest resources of men. Indeed, He spoke calmly of power to remove moun­tains as one of the casual possessions of bright, untarnished faith.

In this age of science, when men insist on feeling for the hard, demonstrable real­ity of each fact before risking their weight upon it, Christian education must dare to teach the mystical and unscientific concept of a reality that lies beyond the reach of knowledge and yet materializes under the warm hand of faith. Christian education can take in all the facts of science and make use of all the methods of science so long as it retains its right to believe as Jesus taught.

Finally, there are three related concepts touching the function of life which Jesus taught with such emphasis that they have come to be thought of as the very hallmark of Christianity.

The first of these is the concept that our life is not our own; it is a gift that we hold for a limited period while we develop it and add to it, as it were, new potentialities and strengthened tendencies before we pass it on. As Jesus showed in two or three pow­erful parables, we are like managers who have been given executive responsibilities to develop our lives for the most complete glory of God and the benefit of men. In­activity, failure to strive, to make the most of our opportunities, is a cardinal sin in the kingdom of heaven. The secret of life is to work, to pit our powers against the cir­cumstances that would hold us back, to grow more and more adequate as our ca­pacities expand under exercise, to lay at the feet of the Master a life that is im­measurably more developed than that which our parents conferred upon us.

This is the very essence of Christ's philos­ophy of life. The Christian education that does not lay great stress upon the glory of development through ceaseless effort, that fails to make its pupils aware of the high expectations of our Creator, is not a clear echo of the education that Jesus imparted to the twelve.

Again, Jesus spoke in unmistakable terms of the function of this development. His pronouncement was so startling that few worldly men have been able to believe that it makes sense. He taught that the highest use of our powers was to spend them for the enrichment of others. Furthermore, He taught that service of this kind was the gate­way to happiness and contentment. "It is more blessed," He said, "to give than to re­ceive" (Acts 20:35).

For most people success and happiness seem to lie in the opposite direction. They seek security behind a wall of personal su­periority built of piled-up possessions and exalted position. To risk any of their ener­gies for others seems a foolish and reckless procedure. They fancy that everything given away is taken directly from the vaults of their own limited happiness. There is pleasure, they feel, in the very process of piling up treasure and in the very act of exerting authority.

Jesus taught the precise antithesis of this. He showed that we can only remain healthy when the currents of life are flowing out­ward, when all the energies of our being are intent upon the business of giving to others, when we are cutting at the very roots of pride in ministry for our fellows.

Even Christians of good reputation often fail to learn the full truth of this philos­ophy. That is why Christian education must place strong emphasis on this aspect of the philosophy of Christ. Indeed, the school that makes much of these things speaks in the very accents of Christ.

Finally, Christ gave His own pupils a sense of destiny. To them belonged the duty of taking His way of life and all the information they had received concerning the kingdom of heaven to the whole wide;

world. His last words to them must have lingered long in their memory: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to ev­ery creature." He taught them that every subject of the kingdom of heaven was a herald of the kingdom. He was continually impressing them with a sense of the urgency of this assignment. He said on one occasion, "Look on the fields; for they are white al­ready to harvest." He made it clear to His pupils that He had set them apart and edu­cated them primarily for this purpose.

A system of education that fails to em­phasize this duty can scarcely be called Christian education. In Christian schools there must be an exhilarating atmosphere. Life is mightily significant. Every pupil is stirred by the conviction that he has some­thing to do. He is working on a task that is greater than he. But part of it is set aside for him. His personality and talents and training make it intimately his own. The eyes of the universe are upon him. Such a conviction is the richest heritage of a Chris­tian education.

Here, then, are criteria against which we can measure the adequacy of any sys­tem of Christian education. Has it gathered a society of believers in the midst of which echoes of the world seem faint and far away? Does the kingdom of heaven loom large there? Are the treasures of faith spoken of as something more precious than the material and explicable things of life? Do its pupils look clear-eyed into a future that is waiting to draw on all their re­sources in the cause of the Great Commis­sion? Do they learn to look eagerly toward a glowing prospect of spending themselves in this cause? Do they feel the solemn ur­gency to develop themselves to the utmost so that they will be adequate to fill this great role? If so, all is well. For these are the principles of the system initiated by Christ Himself.