Biblical Worldview Shaping

Christian educators often struggle to show students how the Bible is relevant to the subjects they teach. As a result, many decide to push the Bible to the margin of the educational experience.

At BJU Press, we believe that the Bible should be central to education. Christian education should use the Bible to engage in the work of biblical worldview shaping. A biblical worldview is best expressed in the biblical story of Creation, Fall, and Redemption. Taking these three themes as the lenses through which to look at education, we discover that faith and learning are bound together and that the Christian faith must govern the educational experience.

Creation

In the first chapter of Genesis, we discover that we are made in God’s image. God has made us to be like Himself in every way that is appropriate for a creature to be like the Creator. For this reason, every person matters to God and should also matter to every one of us. This profound truth becomes the basis for the two most important moral commands in Scripture (Mark 12:30–31). We are to love God with our entire being because He made us. We are to love others just as much as we love ourselves because we are made in God’s image. These two commands summarize all ethics from a biblical worldview. In all we do—at home, at work, at school—we are obligated to love God and love others.

As God’s image-bearers, we are called to an important task. We are to subdue the earth and have dominion over it (Gen. 1:28). This command, known as the Creation Mandate, calls us to maximize the usefulness of the world for the glory of God and for the benefit of our fellow humans. Therefore, Genesis 1:28 becomes the key verse justifying all of academics. You cannot maximize the usefulness of God’s world without knowing about math, science, history, and grammar. This verse also indicates that God-glorifying dominion is not just useful, but is also beautiful. It requires creativity and involves poetry and the arts (e.g., Gen. 2:19–23).

Fall

The Bible teaches that because of human sin, everything in God’s world has become twisted. Nature does not respond to human dominion as it was meant to. And worst of all, the human heart does not respond to God as it should. In particular, human cognition and affections are now bent away from God. Scriptures such as Jeremiah 17:9 and 1 Corinthians 2:14 teach that the fallen human mind cannot understand the world the way it was meant to be understood. Proverbs 1:7 teaches that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Here we learn that proper affection (“fear”) for God is the key to proper cognition (“knowledge”) regarding His world. As long as we are not right with God, we will not understand our world, and we will not live in it as we should.

Redemption

But God has not abandoned the work of His hands. He sent His own Son into the world to save it and to rule over it as the first Adam was supposed to do (Gen. 3:15). Christ subdues the hearts of believers to make them His own. Christ becomes the King of the believer’s entire person—the mind no less than the body and the emotions. Repeatedly, the New Testament asserts that salvation involves the mind. Paul tells believers to be delivered from worldliness through the “renewing of [the] mind” (Rom. 12:2).

As Christians, we pursue education so that we may be more skilled in loving our neighbors as ourselves. That is what it looks like to be submitted to the King. For this reason, the work of the church is not just the work of evangelizing and teaching future fathers and mothers, church members and ministers. We are also engaged in teaching future participants in society and culture: artists, educators, researchers, academics, and tradesmen. Our educational practice should be shaped by Christ’s exhortation in Matthew 5:16: “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.”

Levels of Biblical Worldview Shaping

Shaping a biblical worldview in students is a process that develops slowly over time. Students develop a biblical worldview as they encounter powerful, worldview-rich themes on different levels of complexity. These themes will differ from one academic subject to another because each subject looks at God’s world from different perspectives. Some of the most common themes include the following: design, ethics, identity, and justice.

Recalling Biblical Teaching

Near the beginning of a course, students should be asked to recall significant biblical statements that address a given theme. In a history course, we may choose the theme of justice. After giving a simple definition, we can introduce several biblical statements that the students will need to memorize--perhaps Genesis 1:26–27 and Mark 12:31. If the students can recall these verses, they have achieved this first level.

Explaining Biblical Teaching

Later in the course, students should be asked to state biblical teaching in their own words. We will also want them to express the relationship that exists between the biblical statements they have memorized. Why is Mark 12:31 in the same category with Genesis 1:26–27?

Recall and explain are foundational steps, but by themselves they do not amount to biblical worldview shaping. We do not begin to shape a worldview until we are engaging students in critical-thinking learning experiences.

Evaluating Core Ideas

On this level, we confront students with an idea, an event, or an opinion that we know they should disagree with. Our goal is to see if they can use the lower levels (recall and explain) to give the reasons for their evaluation. So, for example, we want to see if students can argue that an event in history was unjust because of the teaching of Genesis 1:26–27 and Mark 12:31.

Formulating a Christian Understanding

On the previous level, students express what they do not believe. Now we want to see if they can state and defend what they do believe. In other words, we are asking students to state the position they are willing to take. In a history course, this may take the form of proposing an alternate course of action that could have been pursued, one that would have been biblically faithful.

Applying Your Christian Understanding

On this level, a biblical worldview gets personal. Here, we ask students to reflect on how this theme—understood from a biblical worldview—should affect their own lives. We want students to consider that justice is not just about unfair government policies and broken treaties—it’s also about how we treat our friends and our family members. Have we been unjust? How do we need to change to live in a way that honors God and others?

Not Education as Usual

The work of Christian educators is a high calling. But for us to succeed at this calling, we must avoid education as usual. Education as usual will produce results as usual. But if we pursue a different course—one that seeks to transform each student through biblical worldview shaping—we may be blessed to see a mighty work of God among us.