Implementing A Christian Worldview

In our lives and in our schools

I was asked to give a short talk to my fellow teachers at Caritas Academy on what it looks like to have and implement a Biblical Christian Worldview. This is a copy of my manuscript/notes. I went on a few rabit trails not included, but this was the gist.

Over the years I have had the chance to observe a good number of Christian schools, both classical and non-classical, and a common mistake that I have noticed in some of those schools is that they have tried to be a Christian school by simply augmenting a secular curriculum. In other words, many non-classical Christian schools adopt the secular model of education wholesale while simply adding a Bible class and a weekly chapel service. Even in some schools which have aligned themselves, in name, with CCE they have functionally done the same thing (only they also added a Latin class).

CCE is something completely different from what you’ll ever find in any secular classroom. CCE reaches back in appreciation to the classical world of the Greeks and Romans, but it culminates in the Christian formulation of the seven Liberal Arts given to us by the scholastics of the high Middle Ages who began and ended with God’s revelation of himself in creation and in the Word of God (both written and incarnate). The classical pedagogy we seek to employ cannot be separated from the Christian worldview or it will die like a coal removed from the fire.

A worldview, in general, is pretty much what it sounds like. It is the way a particular person or group of people understand the world they are living in. Some have offered the illustration of a pair of glasses through which we look at not only the material world, but how we interpret all information or propositions that come our way. If one wears rose-colored glasses then everything looks rosy. If someone wears extremely dark tinted glasses then everything looks kind of dark. Everyone has a worldview, that is to say, everyone has a certain set of beliefs and presuppositions which inform how they see and interpret information in the world all around them. Often a person’s worldview is so ingrained that it is simply invisible to them, they are unaware of it altogether, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have one. Socrates once said “The unexamined life is not worth living.” But there is a great dearth of unreflectiveness in our own day, just as there was in his.

If one is willing to examine his own life and beliefs, that is to say his own worldview, how might he go about it? The best way would be to take stock of what he currently thinks or believes to be true about the most central issue of human existence, such as:

1. Is there a God, no God, or many gods.

2. For what purpose did man come into being?

3. What makes man valuable?

4. What is the basic human condition?

5. What does the good life look like?

6. What is man’s ultimate destiny?

The way a person answers these and other related questions will tell you an awful lot about his worldview. The convictions (or, very often, mere unexamined assumptions) that a person has in relation to these kinds of questions determines the way they filter every bit of information they encounter in their life. Becoming aware of one’s own thoughts about these questions is the first step to serious self-examination. Once a person has a clear apprehension of his own thoughts on these matters the next thing to establish is whether or not he is right about what he thinks.

The fool thinks all ideas are equally true, but what will become obvious when you examine the various ways people answer these questions is that they do so in mutually exclusive ways. One person says there is only one God, another that there are many gods, another that there are none at all. These cannot all be true at the same time or in the same way. Aristotle defined truth in the following way:

"To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not, is true." (Metaphysics)

His view, which is undeniably correct (because to disagree with it is to affirm it) is often called the "correspondence theory.” Simply put, truth is what corresponds to reality. What this means is that a person’s worldview is better or worse in relation to whether their convictions or assumptions match up with reality or not. Someone with a perfect worldview sees the world as it actually is and he interprets all information through those lenses.

All throughout history people have offered various answers to those worldview questions, whether via personal philosophies or through a philosophical tradition or religion. Christianity deals with the exact same questions and the same data as every other philosophy and religion, but it answers those questions according to reality. Because it has that foundational clarity, it is able to interpret the world correctly and in a way that most benefits both the individual and society as a whole. Simply put, individuals and society thrive under the Christian worldview because it is correspond with reality and man thrives when in harmony with reality.¹

Another important point to make is that although we can discuss an individual’s worldview, the Christian worldview is not any one individual’s worldview. In other words, while Christians disagree sometimes about certain things, there are not multiple Christian worldviews. There are many Christians who do not always live consistently with a biblical Christian worldview, but there is only one Christian worldview and it is in no way dependent upon individual Christians. If a person who considers himself a Christian answers any of the above worldview questions in a way that is different from how the Bible answers it, he is simply not answering them in a way that is consistent with the Christian worldview (i.e. his personal worldview is not thoroughly Christian).

It’s also helpful to see that the matter of Christian Worldview is more foundational than the questions Christians often disagree about. One can believe in baptizing only professing believers or in baptizing the infants of confessing believers and have a biblical worldview. One can hold to democratic view of church government or a Presbyterian view of church government and have a biblical worldview. One can sing Psalms only in their worship service or have a full scale rock band with fog machines and have a biblical worldview. That doesn’t mean that these disagreements don’t matter or that no one is right or wrong, but only that the question of worldview addresses matters that are far more foundational than these secondary issues. All Christians, no matter their tradition, have affirmed the same things about these questions because that is what it means to be Christian.

With those preliminaries out of the way, let’s return to our primary subject, namely, how do we inculcate a Biblical Christian Worldview in a school? I think the basic answer to how we do this is straightforward, but that is not to say that the work itself is always easy. Simply put we must first make sure that we (the Board, the faculty, and the staff) actually have a Christian worldview and, secondly, we must make sure we live and teach in accordance with the implications of the Biblical Christian Worldview. Let’s consider both of these matters in turn.

The board of directors, the faculty, and the staff must have a Biblical Worldview.

Many Christians don’t have a thoroughly Christian worldview. This is not to say that they don’t love Christ or that they don’t desire to believe the Bible and its teachings, only that they may not have yet had sufficient discipleship. A Christian will accept the teaching of Scripture once he sees and understands it, a non Christian will likely not (unless they are on their way to becoming a follower of Christ). It is of absolutely critical importance that we make sure we do our best to hire (or appoint to our board) those who have a solid Christian worldview.

Further, it is all of our responsibilities to make sure we are growing in our ability to articulate and defend our Christian worldview. Taking a look, once again, at our worldview questions how well can you articulate the biblical answer?

1. Is there a God, no God, or many gods?

2. For what purpose did man come into being?

3. What makes man valuable?

4. What is the basic human condition?

5. What does the good life look like?

6. What is man’s ultimate destiny?

Can you cite chapter and verse as to various places where the Bible addresses these issues? It’s one thing to have the basic right answer (which is good), it’s another thing to be able to cite a proof text from Scripture for each answer (which is better), it’s even better to be able to show how the Bible answers these questions over and over again across all sixty-six books of the Bible. We should be ever seeking to increase our own biblical literacy. Wherever you are at in your own biblical literacy, whether you know a lot or a little, it’s okay, just keep going.

Can you recite the names of all the books of the Bible?

Do you know how the books of the Bible are grouped (major and minor divisions)?

For how many books of the Bible are you able to give a simple summary of its contents?

Which books can you give a more detailed walkthrough (Major section by major section, chapter by chapter, pericope by pericope)?

How much of Scripture have you committed to memory?

Can you tell the whole story of the Bible in a clear and flowing fashion in just a few minutes?

We must be ever growing in our knowledge and understanding of God’s word, becoming fully saturated with the thoughts of God until his thoughts become our thoughts and we bleed a Biblical Christian Worldview.

We must live and teach in accordance with the implications of the Biblical Christian Worldview:

It’s very important to understand that “having a Biblical Christian Worldview” is not only about having the right answers. The right answers are critically important (orthodoxy), but we must also live and teach in accordance with the implications of these biblical truths (orthopraxy). As James tells us “faith without works is dead.” A person who can answer the questions in the right way, like a gameshow contestant, but does not live in accord with their precepts does not have a Biblical Christian Worldview. We must demonstrate both knowledge and faith by our works.

The first place this should show up is in our personal lives. I worked for a brief time at a “classical” charter school. The faculty were trained to talk a lot about virtue, though they were not allowed to trace virtue back to its source. Worse yet, though the topic of virtue was often on the lips of the faculty, many of them lived a life absolutely void of virtue. I was privy to many conversations among the faculty in the work room in which they discussed various forms of debauchery they participated in last night. Despite saying the right thing according to the script they were given (having the right answers) they did not embody the principles they parroted to the students. I was under no delusion that this was completely lost on the students either (nor should you be). When we don’t live what we teach people see it. It’s one thing to fall short as you seek to live up to your high aspirations, we are human, it’s another thing to be a hypocrite. Our students and their families are smart enough to detect hypocrisy. Even if we fool them, we will not fool God.

The next place we should see our worldview working itself out is in the liturgy of our school day and classrooms. If the Christian worldview is true (and it is) then it should shape everything we do throughout our day. We don’t want to emulate and augment a secular education, we want a thoroughly Christian education. How can we shape our school day so that it is mindful of the God who is there? How do we fulfill our purpose and bring intentional glory to God throughout the day in song and prayer? What does teaching look like when we recognize our students as image bearers of God who are valuable and not simply as consumers and producers? How do we address students while recognizing that both they and we have inherited a fallen and sinful nature? How can we begin to build up virtue and righteousness in them and begin to live the good life in light of Christ’s death and resurrection? How can we orient our whole day around the fact that we have never met a mortal but are ministering to everlasting souls made for a world to come? Everything we do, every day, in every class should be affected by these questions.

When we are teaching math, what does the Christian Worldview have to say about that? I am not suggesting we do a Bible study instead of teaching math, but we should recognize that God is the one who made the universe and that numbers are used to tell us true things about what God has made and that they correspond to God’s own thoughts about his creation.

When we are teaching history, how do we see God’s providence in the events that have unfolded? How has man as a glorious image bearer manifested itself in incredible works of architecture, literature, and art? How has the brokenness of man affected the various declines within various civilizations? How has belief in everlasting life through Christ inspired men to build great things?

Whatever you are teaching, at any moment, don’t forget to think about the implications of the Christian worldview. It’s easy to get stuck in the weeds. We are trying to teach kids how to read, to write in cursive, to do arithmetic, to create and dismantle syllogism, to conjugate a verb, etc. and it’s easy to just simply focus on the operations of getting that kind of work done, but we must step back and ask ourselves, and our students, “what does Latin/Geometry/Biology/Logic or even Sumerian Mythology have to do with God and the Christian faith?” For we are not programming robots, we are discipling souls. Education is a quest for truth and all truth belongs to God. In other words, coming to believe the truth is coming to align ourselves with what God knows. The more truth we find, about anything, the more we are becoming like him. Education, properly done, is all worship.

1. I’m aware that this is simply an assertion in this article, but the purpose of this article is to discuss the implementation of a Christian worldview, not to defend the truth of the Christian worldview (which is the job of Christian Apologetics). I’m happy to recommend resources to anyone who would like to know more about why I can confidently say that Christianity has the correct worldview.