“A Christian worldview is not a condiment added to a plate full of neutral food in order to flavor it. The faith of our fathers is not an educational afterthought. The ‘potatoes’ always come from somebody’s kitchen. Sometimes Hindus, Muslims, and atheists can be induced to eat Christian potatoes (because the Christian education provided at …
Leaving the Gun At Home
“And in some of the subtle cases, we have to consider what a Christian worldview almost is. In the first place, a Christian worldview is not the same thing as Christian worldview jargon. The oldest trick in the world is to attach oneself to some promising movement or other by simply putting on the uniform …
Christian College Brochures
“From the brochures, it would be fair to conclude that the purpose of attending an evangelical Christian college is to ride horses, eat pizza, and make lifetime friends. In other words, it was hardly a clarion call to academic discipline, integrity, and hard work. At least one college I know of has a Dean of …
Like A Cheap Sweater
“A worldview is like a cheap sweater (or a good sweater too, for that matter). If you pull on a loose strand on your left arm, it is not long before your right arm begins to unravel. Everything is connected. Pedagogy is connected to theology, which is connected to worship, which is connected to politics, …
Western Culture and the Kingdom of God
“At the same time, Western culture receives the emphasis it does because this is the culture in which the Christian faith has made the greatest advances. Western culture is not synonymous with the kingdom of God, but the histories of the two entities are so intertwined that one cannot be understood apart from the other. …
Defining Classical
“The resurgence of classical education over the last decade has been heartening in many respects, but some aspects of it are a bit confusing. No one holds the copyright on the word classical, and given the nature of the word, there has been something of a scramble in the various manifestations of classical education. This …
What’s Wrong With Civil Rights
“There is a vast difference between the way Christians and humanists define ‘civil rights.’ For a Christian rights tend to be negatively defined. For a humanist they are positively stated. For example, a Christian approach can be seen in such common law rights as the right to trial by jury or habeas corpus. A humanist …
Schools for Show Poodles
“Far from teaching children to learn the nature of the world and how to occupy an appropriate station in it, they are what my daughter Rachel helpfully called classical schools for ‘show poodles.’ These schools make it easy for critics who oppose a truly superior Christian education (which necessarily includes the inculcation of humility) to …
Isaiah 5:20
“For example, we have gotten to the point where a preacher can spend the entire sermon talking about himself, and his own struggles, and everyone says that he is being open, honest, transparent, and humble. Another man, who proclaims the truth in a way that indicates something would have been true had he never been …
The Tenets of Envy
“In Christian cultures, envy is understood to be one of the seven deadly sins, what Shakespeare identified as a ‘universal wolf.’ But in democratic societies, envy is institutionalized, and the tenets of such envy are diligently taught to the democratic young when they rise up, when they lie down, or when they walk along the …