Ken Smitherman, President, Association of Christian Schools International (retired 2009)
The arrival of the new year always seems to generate a pursuit of new beginnings. We focus on new commitments, new challenges, new changes in conduct—our focus is on newness, or starting over. We seem to concentrate only on the things that need to be changed rather than on those that should not change.
Christian schooling is one of the few areas that emphasize integrating what is unchanging with the new and changing. As Christian school educators, we want to develop in young men and women an understanding of both unchanging biblical truth and its application to an ever-changing world. True biblical knowledge carries with it an understanding about many things that confront us in life along with warnings associated with them. Even when we feel overwhelmed with the speed of social and cultural change around us, it is critical to know that biblical truth and its application remain unchanging.
Living in a culture that is undergoing constant change is a challenge at best. And too often, the prevailing worldly wisdom says that Scripture no longer speaks to life in the midst of such rapid change—that it was relevant for people of ancient times, or for the backward and narrow-minded, but certainly not for the educated person of today.
We find our faithfulness challenged when the Word of God tells us something we know might offend our culture.”
—Dennis McCallum, general editor of The Death of Truth
The Christian school was never intended to replace the church or serve as a substitute for it. Rather, it was developed as the place for a distinctive kind of teaching and learning that can happen when all knowledge is viewed through the lens of biblical truth. It is not a place where the study of mathematics or science or foreign language or the fine arts is less rigorous because these subjects are taught from a biblical perspective. Christian schooling must never result in a lessening of intellectual development; instead it must develop an intellect that rests on a spiritual foundation.
Spiritual formation comes from integrating genuine biblical understanding into the standard academic subjects as well as from teaching and learning in formal Bible classes that are taught no less rigorously than other academic subjects. We believe that this kind of teaching will develop in our students a richer and deeper understanding of God’s Word. That understanding will include not only the Bible’s rich promises but also its deep warnings and alerts for faithful followers of Christ—warnings that will strengthen the students’ walk with Him, preparing them to confront the seductions and enticements of our culture.
The book Fight on Your Knees, edited by Mell Winger (2002), is a great reminder of this call to diligence and watchfulness. The following excerpt about the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster emphasizes the importance of staying alert and paying attention to warnings and alarms:
Two electrical engineers in the control room that night…were “playing around” with the machine. They were performing what the Soviets later described as an unauthorized experiment. They were trying to see how long a turbine would “free wheel” when they took the power off it.
Now, taking the power off that kind of a nuclear reactor is a difficult, dangerous thing to do, because these reactors are very unstable in their lower ranges. In order to get the reactor down to that power where they could perform the test they were interested in performing, they had to override manually six separate computer- driven alarm systems. One by one the computers would…say, “Stop! Dangerous! Go no further!” And one by one, rather than shutting off the experiment, they shut off the alarms and kept going. You know the results: nuclear fallout that was recorded all around the world, from the largest industrial accident ever to occur.
In partnership with parenting, Christian schooling includes the difficult task of helping our students understand consequences. Of course, it takes far more than warnings and alarms to develop biblical understanding. Nevertheless, we must help our students recognize the reality of the warnings and know how to respond as believers.
Some Things Change Some Do Not 34.6