Inspiring Minds

Solomon writes:

“So that your trust may be in the Lord, I have taught you today, even you. Have I not written to you excellent things of counsels and knowledge, to make you know the certainty of the words of truth that you may correctly answer him who inquires of you?” (Proverbs 22:19-21).

Christian educators need to have answers for students who honestly inquire…answers that cultivate trust in the Lord, rather than undermine it. It is directly opposite of secular education. Will Durant says, “Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt.” Secular education is built around the philosophy of irrational unbelief. Secular education fosters doubt. Christian education fosters belief...faith.

Educators are called to teach “faithful men.” “Do not speak in the hearing of a fool, for he will despise the wisdom of your words” (Proverbs 23:9). Fools say there is no God—they are the atheists of today. Apologetics is not to be used on fools, but to help the seeker —him who inquires of you—to trust in the Lord.

Before Jesus ascended into Heaven, He told Peter to feed His lambs, as well as His sheep. Lambs, according to various commentators, indicate less mature believers, while sheep denote the more mature members of the Body of Christ. It is needful for Christian educators to assist, lead and guide “lambs” in the continuance of education.

The call of Christian educators in administering the continuation of education is to bring understanding to the pupil. When Christ is truly brought into view, the students, if they will see Him, are humbled. Humility is the road to understanding; fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. The acknowledgment of a higher knowledge—a higher authority—than your own is fundamental. That authority is not always right, or godly, is not the issue. Daniel was able to serve the king of Babylon because he knew God was ultimately in charge.

Because we live in a world of relativism, our anchor of truth must be set before we can weather the waves of secularism that pervade the workplace. Christian education helps to root and ground students in faith. With Christ-in-you, the foundation has been laid for the building up of every area in life. Formal education only rests rightly on Him, and by His light can we discern if the “knowledge” we are given is actually truth. The anchor of Biblical education can hold through all the storms of life; the absolute compass of His Life and Light can guide through any endeavor.

Spiritual Authority

The spiritual realm is not a sort of Neverland, as we have previously discussed. The Christian does not (at least should not) believe in fantasy. Nevertheless, C.S. Lewis conveyed the idea of another, unseen realm in his Chronicles of Narnia. Narnia is a secret land, which must be entered into through a doorway—a wardrobe, to be exact. When a person believes in Christ, he is awakened to the hidden, invisible Kingdom of God. His spirit rises from the dead, and he becomes one spirit with the Spirit. He has gone through a doorway into Christ…into another realm (John 10:7).

Adam and Eve rejected the authority of God because they did not want to submit to someone outside of themselves. The Tree of Knowledge was the tree of becoming one’s own authority. It is important for Christian educators to convey the concept of true authority. People need to know there is something beyond and above them that knows more and better than they do. Whether or not their particular authority at the moment knows more or better than they do, somebody does…even if it is only God. It is hard to imagine the Apostle Paul needing to submit to authority, yet he was not a “lone ranger.”

Censorship is not for the sane man, as the law is not for the righteous. Elders and counselors are more for the sake of unity and safety for all than they are to enlighten the enlightened. However, elders in the Body of Christ do help immature and carnal believers discern the difference between soul and spirit. They confirm and/or deny because many believers do not know the difference between radio and TV, so to speak.

A sure sign someone is not walking in the Spirit is the fact that he is not in fellowship with other believers. The Christian has fellowship with God and other Christians. We can be sectarian by fracturing off from the rest of the Body, or even by only relating to the one fragment with which we agree. But this is far too much like secularism to be taken for Christianity. Paul urged the Philippian church to strive “together for the faith of the gospel” (Philippians 1:27). Like a team, believers are called to be united in one Mind, with one Spirit, not in the sense of all being the same, as if every organ in the body were the pancreas, but in the sense of unity through diversity. Every organ in the body works corporately to sustain life. In submission to the Head, and to one another, the Body functions properly.

Daniel, too, understood the concept of authority. While he served ignoble despots, he did not bow to their gods. Daniel understood that the Sovereign hand of God used even the king of Babylon to do His bidding. God restored Israel from captivity by using Darius and Cyrus, pagan kings. In the midst of Babylon, Daniel yielded his heart to the absolute authority of God. Daniel could serve the king of Babylon because he understood authority; he knew God was the final authority, and no despot could thwart His ultimate purpose.

True Christian Science

When Jesus breathed on His disciples and said, "Receive the Holy Spirit," He was not transmitting a thought or feeling to them; He was not transmitting something imperceptible, either. He was turning the light back on inside of man…the life of God is the light by which we see! Atheistic scientists do not believe in God because they cannot perceive Him. The reason they can't perceive Him is that their spiritual perceivers (i.e. their spirits) are not working. When Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree, their spirits died—the light went out, and people became spiritually blind.

All around us, even now, are radio waves. One can tune into the classical station (101.1 FM) if one merely adjusts the radio dial to "perceive" the frequency. If the radio is broken, one might not ever know there is a classical station. If another person is completely ignorant of what a radio is, they might accuse someone who tunes into the radio as being "mystical" or "delusional."

Since God is Spirit, it requires that we tune into His wavelength...His frequency...to perceive and observe Him directly. This does not negate the natural world; it transcends it. To observe Him “scientifically” is possible when your spirit is alive and functioning. One must have a properly functioning instrument to see what cannot be seen with the natural senses. If we say the spiritual man is unscientific because he perceives what we cannot see with natural senses, we must also say the astronomer is unscientific because he perceives what we cannot see with the naked eye.

Telescopes, radar and radio tuners are merely tools to perceive what is imperceptible to the natural man. The spirit of man is much like this. Creatures like bats, dolphins and whales use sonar. The killer whale actually takes a sonogram of his observed subject. He can perceive its temperature and heartbeat, and whether or not it is warm or cold blooded. He knows if he does or doesn't like to eat it because of his functioning sonar. The shark, on the other hand, has no such faculty. He has to take a bite to see whether or not he likes his potential supper.

The spirit of man is the lamp of the Lord…the ignition of His Life brings light to the soul. If one’s lamp is lit, he is not in darkness. The mature Christian can know the difference between his thoughts, feelings and spiritual perceptions, just as much as he can know the difference between television and radio. He can even come to know the difference between 101.1 FM and 94.9 FM. Not many people tune into the classical station and think they are watching Good Morning America. But then, the insane person might look out the window at nature and wonder if, maybe, he has turned on The Discovery Channel.

Long ago people thought John Colter (the "white man" who discovered Yellowstone) was a liar upon his description of it. They called it “Colter’s Hell.” Atheistic scientists do not believe in God because, like Yellowstone, He is unfathomable to them.

The reason one believes astronomers when they say there are red giants in the heavens, or supernovas, is because astronomers have seen them with telescopes. To deny the instrument is an easy way to deny the discovery. Not to tune in to the classical station's frequency does not nullify the station. It merely keeps one from hearing the music.

Spiritual Education

An important principle to grasp is found in 1 Corinthians 2:14, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” Greek scholar and commentator, Kenneth Wuest, says:

“The word ‘natural’ is the translation of a Greek word which Paul uses to describe to the Corinthian Greeks the unregenerate man at his best, the man whom Greek philosophy commended, the man actuated by the higher thoughts and aims of the natural life. The word used here is not the Greek word which speaks of the sensual man. It is the word coined by Aristotle to distinguish the pleasures of the soul, such as ambition and the desire for knowledge, from those of the body. The natural man spoken of is the educated man at the height of his intellectual powers, but devoid of the Spirit of God.”

Aristotle’s “natural” man was the zenith of humanity, yet he was as an ignoramus in comparison to the spiritual man. God is Spirit. His habitat is spiritual—heavenly; His words are Spirit. To the religious relativists of His day, Jesus said, “Where I am, you cannot come.” He was speaking to them as to mere, natural men. In another place, He prays to the Father for His disciples that they “…be with Me where I am.” Jesus dwelt in two realms at once—heaven and earth.

The unbelieving secularists claim to be objective because they believe in science. To them, anything they can’t perceive is non-existent, like God. It has been said that the man with an experience is not at the mercy of a man with an argument. The secularist will undoubtedly say that it is all a matter of emotion; that God exists in one’s feelings and imagination.

My disenchanted friend claims to believe scripture, albeit, he reasons away the idea of spiritual life by saying "spirit" is a metaphor for one’s soul. He insists that Christians do not experience the reality of God’s indwelling presence. Mistaking soulful experience for spiritual experience is very common, indeed. However, the man who has seen Greece is not at the mercy of the man who thinks it is like Antarctica; the man who has been there knows better.

The relativist says it is all in the imagination, but the man who has never been to the Isle of Chios should not tell the man who has been there that it doesn’t exist. One can merely show it to another on the map, but unless a man goes for himself, he merely trusts the word of the one who has been there, that it is there, and that it is as described. The poor, unbelieving relativist will never know spiritual life unless he acquires eyes to see and ears to hear! Having never left Wisconsin, he demands that the crystal-blue waters of the Aegean are a farce; Chios is a fanciful myth to him. He is utterly content with his small world.

As "theological scientists," Christians do not merely theorize about what they believe. The Apostles, like true scientists, proclaimed what they had seen and heard (I John 1:3). Believers know they are the children of God because they perceive Him: “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God” (Romans 8:16).

The Combining of Two Realms

Pagan philosophers have long admitted to the existence of body and soul (mind, will and emotions). What they most often deny and refute—sometimes violently—is the existence of spirit (because they have no personal evidence of such). Claiming to make scientific observations, they live in the world of speculation. Without the ability to perceive God, people decide truth for themselves (based on observations made exclusively by the fallen, thus warped, body and soul). They argue that no two people see anything exactly the same way. Therefore, all is relative to one’s own standpoint. Each person is the highest authority in his own, small world; he is the center of his individual universe.

I have a friend who believes the secular idea that man is just body and soul…nothing more. He has come to this conclusion, much in the way Charles Bradlaugh came to his ideas: he witnessed people (so-called Christians) touting irrational theories and displaying unstable emotions which they insisted were spiritual…claiming the source of their ideas was God. My friend left the island of mythological madness for the more placid waters of philosophy. False representations of Christianity did not kindle the fire of doubt in him, but they did fan the flames.

My friend does not realize his erratic philosophy is merely another side of the same coin. Pagan mythology and pagan philosophy, though not identical, are nonetheless twins. Cultural and ethical differences are all that separate them. Varied opinions are equal if they are all wrong; a dead rat is just as dead as a deceased mouse. Philosophy and mythology are in the same proverbial boat.

What my friend experienced was more akin to pagan mysticism than Christianity. Claiming to be “faith,” it was a system of unbelief, fostered by the negation of creation and the insistence on fantasy. It was like the toy, plastic food offered by children playing house. There is nothing wrong with imagination, per se, but when one insists his imagination is reality, the game ceases to be innocuous.

When Christian educators teach science, math, and other wholesome subjects, the student at the natural level sees the goodness of God. This establishes and strengthens his faith. It is important to establish in the hearts of students that God is just as much God in the ordinary as He is in the extraordinary. There is a type of reverse secularism, which Christian educators should be mindful of—the defiance of common, ordinary, everyday life; the disdain of practicality. God was just as much God in the carpenter shop as He was on the mount of transfiguration. He was just as holy in the stable, among the cows, as He is in Heaven…and just as spiritual.

That God came down to earth is not the negation of spirit, nor the negation of earth, but the combining, once again, of two realms. Adam was made to be spiritual and physical. Jesus, being the Last Adam, is Son of God and Son of Man. The first Adam lost the function of his spirit, and became a creature of mere earth (soul and body alone). The Last Adam is not only the Lord of Heaven, but Lord of earth as well (1 Corinthians 15:44).

My unbelieving friend had many experiences with believers who might as well have sung Bibbety Bobbety Boo, or When You Wish Upon a Star in their worship services. To them, the Bible was treated as a book of spells; people were always trying to coax the “genie” out of the bottle to make him grant their wishes.

There is no harm in imaginary places like Neverland or C.S. Lewis’ Narnia. They metaphorically represent real places. Christ Himself was the Master of Parables. Stories can aid in getting people to see beyond the natural world. However, in my friend’s experience, it was the imaginary that was proclaimed—not as something pretend, allegorical or even metaphorical—but as reality!

Religion and philosophy outside of Christ is merely mythology and folly. The call of Christian education is to preach and teach Christ. The putting forward of cultures and creeds as absolute, unless they are rooted and grounded in Christ, is the kind of irrational idolatry that fuels the flames of unbelief. When systems of self-righteousness are built out of fragmented truth, they often look so much like Christianity that the average person cannot tell them apart. Like counterfeit currency, it takes close examination to discern sham religion from true Christianity.

Reason and Mythology

My wife recently received an email from an old friend who is currently studying philosophy at a state university in Illinois. She writes:

“It's interesting…in secular universities how strong the bias is against God, particularly against Christianity. In one of my philosophy of religion classes, one of the girls got up in front of the class and said, ‘I was born and raised a Christian. But this class has torn me up. I don't know what to think anymore.’ I was at a low point spiritually when I first started studying philosophy. I'd had a lot of weirdness in my church and in my own spiritual life that became very confusing. It's a long crazy story, but part of it, I think, is that my church was so ‘spiritual’ that there was no room for rational thought. The ‘rational mind’ was preached against from the pulpit; my own spiritual experiences were almost always anti-rational. I always felt pushed and pulled in strange directions, compelled to do things that didn't quite make sense, and yet they were ‘spiritual’ enough for me to think God was talking to me. Anyway, my church and my life fell apart. I tried to hold myself together. I went back to school. I took anti-depressants. And this pragmatic rationalism that I was being offered was an enticing contrast to the messed-up spirituality I had come from and had bought into. My faith became quite precarious. There was no answer to any of my questions; all the answers were shallow, trite, and banal.”

To many, Plato’s reason makes more sense than Homer’s mythology. I have had experiences similar to my wife’s friend regarding church and secular education. When Christians leave off the very important ideas in nature, and solely stress the "spiritual" aspects (often more accurately identified as emotional aspects) of faith, they come to a rather impractical way of life. They are in danger of losing touch with reality when they lose touch with the whole.

For the gentile, the first lesson toward faith is creation (nature reveals God’s character). The Jews had an even further step—the oracles of God—in the Law of Moses. Nature is for the Gentiles what the Law is for the Jews.

Christian education does not abandon the natural side of life. The Christian life alone is truly holistic. Wholeness in Christ includes nourishment for the spirit, as well as the body and soul. To section off one or two parts from the complete person is to cease to be practical. One could even say it is to cease being a complete human (spirit, soul and body).

Perhaps Abraham was faithful to see God’s goodness in nature before he believed. God did, after all, show him the stars as symbols of His goodness. Guileless Nathanael had a moment of truth under a tree, and Jesus called him a “true son of Israel.” As a young man, I exercised my natural faculty of sight, and turned my eyes to the stars in honest wonder. God answered me in a fashion so undeniable that I would sooner doubt the sun than the heavenly Light revealed to me.

To negate nature—to lessen its importance—is to miss the first step in seeing God; it is to try to read without learning the alphabet. It has been the strategy of Satan to infuse the study of nature—science—with the pagan philosophy of unbelief. Not only pagan philosophy, but also pagan science is being crammed down the throats of students in secular schools everywhere. Like the Socratic poison, it is killing our nation.

The basic lessons of God’s goodness are fundamentally seen in the created world. The testimony of the natural world is being discredited, not by science, but by the connection of science to pagan philosophy. What is seen in nature is seen, not objectively, but according to the bent of self. If we discredit the alphabet, then how can we read? If philosophy begins when one doubts that a tree is a tree, then one can truly, like “humble” Socrates, "know nothing." How much less can one know the invisible God if one can’t even know if a stone is a stone?

God is seen through the heavens, and under the tree; He is seen in the stable and the carpenter’s shop. As learning the alphabet precedes writing, addition comes before calculus: line upon line, precept upon precept. The manger preceded the Ascension; a flower grows from a seed; a building is built on a foundation, and a foundation is built from a cornerstone. One can begin to know an artist by the art he creates; one can surmise there is a builder by seeing the building.

Relativistic Religion

The pagans sacrificed to their myths with an instinctual sense of unworthiness. They wanted to obtain their desires, but felt undeserving to obtain them apart from oblation. As we go further down the road of degeneration from mere feelings of guilt, there is a mode of being, which is seen in the one who stands up and says, “I am worthy.” This one sacrifices—perhaps like Cain—out of insane pride, as if he has something to give the gods, which the gods did not first of all give to him.

This is very similar to Aristotle’s idea of the ideal man—completely self-reliant. In his world, the gods—if they exist at all—are like helpless women on welfare, and he is magnanimously generous in showing them pity. This low estate is the habitat of the agnostic relativist. That he even gives God recognition enough to dismiss Him is freely giving homage, in his way of seeing things. Naturally, this is mostly (if not completely) subconscious.

The average pagan has, at least, a healthy sense of guilt. He panders to the gods because he is confused and confounded. In the Malayan jungles, where my Aunt and Uncle were first missionaries, the natives (known as the Sakai) cut themselves to appease the gods whenever they heard thunder. If the thunder did not stop soon enough, they would sacrifice one of their own. Whether or not the Sakai were glad to believe such senselessness one can’t know. One can say, however, that they were very glad to hear the truth of the gospel. But the relativist, strangely, is not. It is as if he lives in the darkness because he likes it…because he has, deep down, chosen it. Like cockroaches fleeing light, relativists run from reality.

In his book, The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton says the philosophers, if anything, were rivals to the priests. The philosopher who claims to be enlightened has abandoned the search for truth upon his arrival—his conclusion—of atheism. There is the wondering seeker, wandering and searching for truth; and there is the static dogmatist, having arrived at his own, concocted destination. Since this one’s thoughts originate with him, they end with him; he is the alpha and omega of his own delusion.

While our American society was mainly built upon the solid foundations of scripture, the unhinged ideals of Homer and Plato (pagan Greek thinkers) have crept in to masquerade as “reason” and “enlightenment.” Along with The Republic, Homer’s The Iliad is seen as the cornerstone of Western Culture. When it comes down to it, The Iliad is essentially about obtaining one's desire through sacrificing to the gods: self-seeking. The Republic teaches people to question and doubt absolutes through the deductive reasoning of Socrates. The “religious” ideas put forth in The Iliad combined with the “secular” ideas of The Republic serve as foundational elements in both pagan religion and pagan philosophy. This is not to say Homer and Plato have nothing good to convey. It's just that their good is too intertwined with evil to swallow the pill whole. When reading their works one must exercise discernment between right and wrong, holy and profane.

That Plato should blaspheme the mythical gods of ancient Greece is understandable. One should not live in superstitious fear of displeasing Athena, or any other mythical being. Nonetheless, the obvious fact that Athena was make-believe should not cancel out the reality of God any more than plastic flowers or faux fur nullify the genuine articles they seek to copy. Illegitimate articles do not abrogate legitimate ones.

The pagan reasoning of Plato, allied with the superstition and selfish gain of Homeric religion, is a deadly combination. In reality, these ideals have always been combined. They are two aspects of the same, forbidden tree. They are at once sectarian and the same.

Our society is being eaten by pagan religion and pagan philosophy. Schools and Governments alike have drunk the poison of humanism. Institutions of higher learning are among the most infected with the venom of unbelief. Islam, of all things, is growing at an astounding rate. Buddhism, despite its many contradictions, continues to expand. Christian education is now more important than ever!