American education is committed to the belief that religion is subject to the intellect, and as subject is optional. Teachers believe they can teach mathematical place value apart from a discussion of ultimate values. Politicians believe that a monetary increase for education will produce educational prodigies on par with the American founders. Parents, primarily middle-class, are convinced that more rigorous, scholastic study will pay off in dividends for their offspring, providing them with a financially secure future and attendant happiness. And these are just the Christians!

The educational experience is no more primarily intellectual than values clarification is primarily intellectual. How one is to think is contingent upon how one ought to think. Nevertheless, educators still persist in ordering their educational institutions intellectually.

Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in popular, private Christian education. Popular, private Christian education originally defined itself with public education as reference. Of course, it had this distinctive: private education sought to teach the same content as public education (barring evolution) in a Christian environment (with pastors or laymen as teachers). Since its conception, private education has viewed itself as the antithesis of public education.

However, a distinction can hardly be drawn anymore between public and private education. Why not? Because the integration point for both is the intellect. Despite the aspirations of the private school founders, the policies of the administrators, or the spiritual jargon of the mission statement, the final standard for measuring educational progress is the intellect.

It is proper that schools teach students to think, for that is the function of school. However, what is primary to the educational process is the development of a particular kind of person. If humans were created in the image of God, as the Christian position affirms, then we are first and foremost oriented to God, not to the data of our environment. Just as branches sprout from the trunk, so do the various categories of our lives spring from this physiological truth: the integration point for man is the image of God.

In contrast to this truth they affirm in their mission statements: much of Christian education teaches students academically as if the defining factor of the students’ humanity were their intellect. To merely teach academically, though, is to be ignorant of the integration point of man.

The first act of Adam was not a scientific classification of the animals. Adam’s first act was submission to God’s command to name the animals and was therefore a moral recognition of the authority of God. Adam did not even know that he was to name the animals before he was commanded to name them. It is only after Adam’s moral response that we see Adam the taxonomist.

Not only was the classification of the animals contingent upon Adam’s moral response, but the science of the taxonomy itself was moral. From what resources was the infant Adam to draw? What format did Adam have before him? Was the methodology for classifying the animals amoral and of no consequence, or was the paradigm of moral consequence?

LANGUAGE GRAMMAR

Can one effectively teach See Jane run apart from knowing that Jane is made in God’s image and, therefore, she runs because she wants to run? Does it ever occur to the language arts teacher that because Jane is made in God’s image and is a sinner by nature, Jane is running for either good or for bad? Does it occur to the teacher that See Jane run is the imperative You see Jane run, and to consider by what authority can she demand anybody to See Jane run when he might not want to See Jane run? Does it occur to the teacher that Jane might very well be running in the nude and ought not to be seen.

In the Biblical view God speaks nouns into existence at creation. These nouns indicated their existence at the moment of creation by being what God commanded them to be. Therefore, God calls the sun into being and the sun indicates its existence by doing “sun” things. In the same way God calls fish into being and the fish verify their existence by doing “fish” things.

The point is that nounness is contingent upon the work of God. The work of God is, therefore, central to anything. Why? Because anything that can be known of God or His world He has demonstrated by His work in creation. If God is love, then, it is because He demonstrates love by his actions within the context of creation. We cannot abstractly say that God is love. That means nothing.

Therefore, nouns indicate action just as verbs indicate nouns, for one cannot have a thing without a status of some sort. One cannot have a tree without that tree displaying something of its nature. “Tree” is vacuous without its standing, growing, leaning, or falling.

If this is the position of Christian education, then why are students taught that a watershed distinction exists between nouns and verbs? Why are students taught that what makes a noun a noun is that it is a thing, and that what makes a verb a verb is that it is an action, and that putting the two together makes a sentence?

To summarize, an ignorance of God results in an ignorance of a noun. It is not enough to teach students to parse See as the operative action verb, Jane as the direct object, and run as the verb of a noun clause without their comprehending that the functions of those parts of speech are organized according to the gravity of God.

However, never does this come up in language grammar discussions because Jane, for all grammatical intents and purposes, is morally sterile. In other words we are not meant to view Jane as made in the image of God during language arts class, nor are we meant to think that Jane’s running has any moral intent behind it. In other words, everything that I have argued for is not the point of language arts which is exactly my point: the intellect is the point in private Christian education.

It is understandable that public education devalues Jane, but it is absolutely unacceptable that private Christian education uses the same hermeneutic. It is neither Christian nor sensible to teach that Jane represents a person but for the duration of language grammar Jane is not meant to be viewed as a person but a noun because she is a person, a place, a thing, or an idea.

MATHEMATICS

A mother whose children attended my school once complained about how much “Bible” I was giving her children during Mathematics. The wife of a former pastor, she asked me “Can’t you just teach them Math?” My wife and I almost laughed out loud.

Popular Christian education believes Mathematics to be one of the most objective sciences. What is of great interest to me is that apart from the disclaimer that Mathematics teaches us about how orderly God is, the majority of teachers leave it at that and continue the Math lesson without any consideration whatsoever of God.

What is, I think, of even greater concern is that some of the best Christian schools teach Math class devoid of moral considerations. One overriding reason is the belief that God created the universe according to mathematical truth. In other words Mathematics is as perfect an expression of God’s truth as one can get if not synonymous with it.

When God created the universe, did He create because He had to create or did He create because He wanted to create? Clearly, if God deferred to a mathematical blueprint at creation, then God was oriented to that which was other than Himself and did not create of His own volition. By deference to a mathematical blueprint, then, He did not create what He willed to create: He created what He had to create. By deferring to Mathematics, then, God is not the Final Reality but only a yes man.

When God created the rhino, did God create the rhino with a walnut-sized brain because compelling forces warranted that God create that size brain in order to keep in check the mischief a rhino could do with a larger-sized brain? If so, then the rhino is God, because God’s will was altered by the potentially dangerous will of the rhino. Certainly, this is not the case.

To argue that God wanted to defer to any compelling force at creation is either a poor use of language or an attribution of finiteness to God. God is oriented to Himself by relationship of the Trinity, and is therefore completely fulfilled. Therefore, creation was an act of God’s will and, therefore, it presented no compulsion whatsoever to the Godhead.

So when I say that God created the rhino, I mean that God gave the rhino its distinctive horns and hooves because God wanted the rhino to have those distinctive horns and hooves and not because the rhino had to have those features. The point here is not that the rhino is a rhino but that God created the rhino the way that He created it because He wanted to create the rhino the way that He created it and not because He had to create the rhino the way that He created it. Therefore, the rhino is the direct creation of God because God involved His will in the entire creative process of the rhino and not because God had to capitulate to a blueprint.

In the same way, God created a measurable universe as an act of His will. Another way to say this is that God willfully created a world in which He willfully intended the science of Mathematics to correspond to created reality if properly conceived and applied. The operative concept here is that God willfully intended it to be so.

What is often the case when the term “mathematical truth” is mentioned is that a particular mathematical system has an internal integrity that is true as each part relates to the whole system. Nevertheless, whether or not that system correlates to the reality of the created world is a completely other matter. Therefore, it would be proper to say that mathematical truth has been of great help—insofar as it properly correlates framework of creation. After all, a day is not a full 24 hours, but all the same, a 24 hour day—taking into consideration the differentials—is of great use to man.

However, apart from the reality of God one can only teach mathematical tricks, but one cannot teach a mathematical system which has as its reference point a reasonable God Who created a reasonable world with the result that systems themselves can be internally consistent or reasonable.

When I can say that one can only teach mathematical tricks, I mean that 1) one can teach Mathematics as valid academic system or 2) one can teach the individual truths of Mathematics as individual truths apart for a system. In both cases these approaches do not correlate to the Christian position.

If one teaches Mathematics as a valid system, it is assumed that one is teaching Mathematics as internally consistent. In other words, the structure of Mathematics (the number system) and the function of Mathematics (the operational possibilities) both correlate so that the numerical value and function of adding fractions is consistent with the numerical value and function of multiplying decimals. Therefore, 1 is everywhere 1 in the area of Mathematics and the operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication that govern the numerical values do justice to the numerical system and to each and every operation to the other.

If one teaches Mathematics as individual truths, one is not concerned with the internal integrity that the Mathematical system provides. So one will not relate the principle of prime numbers to multiplication, or one will not relate the concept of zero to the teaching of basic addition.

I would argue that for what we are seeking to achieve in Christian education, both approaches are philosophically wrong, because they do not unveil the greater principle that any systematic consistency or individual truth is contingent upon God. Because of this formative truth, it bears upon the entire creation. Therefore, Mathematical truth is not in conflict with, say, systematic or individual historical truths. There is a valid correlation of all truths, because God is there Lord. He is the Unifying Principle and Reference for all things.

But when all is said and done, the uncomfortable truth about Christian education at this point is the indifference to its creed by an amoral commitment to mathematical systems.

Consider the following problem. Simone and Steve are at the carnival. Simone has $42 of spending money in her hand and Steve has $12 spending money in his back pocket. How much spending money do they have together for the evening?

I failed to mention that Steve’s $12 is in the back pocket of his Levi jeans, but he is wearing his khaki shorts. They, therefore, have $42.

Based upon the information provided in the first part of the story problem, do they theoretically have $60. Our answer ought to be, of what practical use is “theoretically” if it does not correspond to the reality? That is the real lesson: Mathematics primarily about theory or reality? Is Christianity primarily about theory or reality? The question should be easy to answer.

Most students of private, Christian education would coddle the theoretic argument and maintain that $42 + $12. No one is saying that $42 + $12 is mathematically wrong as far as a theoretic system goes. But that was never the question. Clearly, one can see that commitment to a mathematical system is easier achieved than a commitment to properly correlate that mathematical system to reality.

Consider the following problem. Cheryl and Mike are playing cards. Cheryl is winning: she has 30 more cards than Mike’s 13. How many cards does Cheryl have?

The answer, of course, is 43 cards, for 43 is of no practical use unless it is qualified. We speak of 43 minutes, 43 years, 43 sheets of paper if our mathematics is going to be of any use. In the same way that red does not exist except in the context of an object, 43 does not exist except in the context of the created reality. Students who are not taught contextual distinctions like these are being groomed for a lesser end than true freedom—regardless of the 97% average they may have in Math class.

Mathematics, despite an ignorant use of it, gets by with murder because we perpetuate that an intellectually theoretic world is more correct than reality. By teaching students to amorally rely upon a mathematical system prevents them from the innate responsibility of properly relating theory to reality. In reality Mathematics, when it does not correspond with what exists, is no more correct than the attribution of Huckleberry Finn to Jack London.

Therefore, the best one can do is to teach a mathematical legalism: rule-oriented Mathematics that have no reasonable correlation to the Infinite-Personal God or to his world. An alarming number of students are having difficulty mastering the principles of Mathematics because the truth of God has not just been divorced from the laws of Mathematics, but systematically divorced from the truth of the world in its unity and in its variety.

CHEMISTRY

When the Spirit of God hovered over the face of the waters in Genesis 1, both hydrogen and oxygen were present, making up the very water that was created and moved by God Himself. Not because oxygen and hydrogen have to be present in water, but because God willed the water to exist in such a way that He willed it to be made up of hydrogen and oxygen atoms.

Thus, God willed that two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom would be the structure of the water droplet and not that two helium atoms and one hydrogen atom would be the structure—not because God must think that way, but that creation must correspond to the will of God. That H2O is the formula for water is no accident. It was willfully intended.

If this sounds too simplistic and natural an explanation, it is because men do not systematically think in terms of creation, but in abstractions of their own making. If the water over which God hovered in Genesis 1 was not H2O, then what was it? Genesis does not warrant any other translation of water.

But the private Christian school will often do one of two things which is really the same thing. Either they will take a staunch position and fight that a proper rendering of the language of Genesis 1 means water H2O or they will capitulate to scholastic data not rooted in Revelation and concede that water could very well mean something other than H2O. The unity of both positions, however, is in that both discard the import of the Scriptures as formative to academic study in the classroom.

Of what important distinction was their original argument? It was not and it is not important, for when it is put to the litmus test of academics, the Bible for all academic intents and purposes means little.

To hearken back to our illustration of Adam the moral taxonomist, the actual science of naming the animals was itself moral. The Bible makes it clear that named the animals properly “Whatever he called the animals those were the proper names.” Certain names would not have fit, it is clear. Therefore, the way that Adam thought about is academic exercise was of moral import. Why? Because it actually resulted in his getting names right.

Even in his scientific arrangement of living things, the intellectual discernment of Adam has a sufficient cause: namely, that Adam was oriented to God in every way. That means that Adam had modeled before him how he ought to name the animals.

That model, of course, was God’s work in creation. Because God is infinite, God wills the creation into existence by simultaneously calling forth its various natures and defining those natures. So when God says “Let there be light”, the kind of light God wills to be created exists.

How does this transliterate for Adam, being made in the finite image of God? Adam has no prerogative to create out of nothing, nor does he have the authority to format the creation with natures of his arbitrary choosing.

What does belong to Adam is 1) discerning on the basis of revelation what God has already done in creation and 2) properly correlating that truth to the area of the creation with which Adam is working. Therefore, when Adam called the rhinoceros a rhinoceros, he called it rhinoceros because, just as God named His creation according to the natures He willed them to have, Adam observes and discerns the rhinoceros to be categorically a rhinoceros—not because Adam imposed the persona of rhinoceros upon it. Another was of saying it is that the name rhinoceros fit for all the observational intents and purposes.

For example, hippopotamus means water horse. What this means is that a hippo which makes its home in North Africa correlates in that part of the world to a horse. It is not a horse: it is distinctly different. It has been named, however, with the nature of horse as reference, save that it lives in the water. In similar fashion this is what we mean when we say that Adam correlated the name rhino to the nature of the rhino as a distinct kind from the other categories of creation. So Adam called it rhino because God designed the rhino in such a way and Adam was so derived his method of discernment from God’s work in creation that the name rhino properly fit.

Therefore, as the direct creation of God, the rhino, in its zoological context as well as in every other possible context, says something about God. It must say something about God, because God’s will was involved in its creation. Because God’s will was involved, God meant something very specific when He created the rhino. Christian educators who totally miss this formative point I am convinced are in the dark about how to disseminate Christian doctrine in the language of academics.

Therefore, if one undertook an honest study of the rhino, it would inevitably give credibility to the God of the Bible. This is formative. If the rhino is the direct creation of God, then any proper conclusion drawn from a study of the rhino would not only not contradict what God has revealed about Himself—but understand—it would also proactively and aggressively say something about God. That is how pervasive God is! The moral dimension is pervasive!

I am convinced that what I have applied to the rhino is a just interpretation of what God has said about the data of creation. Therefore, the only way to undertake any study and not to arrive at a deepened reverence for God is to suppress the proper knowledge of any thing, that is, to revise it apart form its proper relationship which is that of the creature to the Creator. In other words, it is abnormal to subject any data to a God-free revisionism so that when faced with Geometry, a child can actually walk away with not only a complacency towards His Creator rather than a growing awe or a seething dislike, but with no thought about the Creator at all! This should not be!

The intellect is not nor can it be the integration point for man—not because the intellect was ruined at the Fall, but simply because the intellect was never the integration point for man. Private Christian education further exacerbates the problem appealing to the ruined mind of men as the integration point for every area of life. The moral dimension is the integration point for man!

In addition the fallen intellect is in opposition to God. As one of our own has said, if a person who does not believe in ghosts saw one, he would not nor could he admit to seeing a ghost because he has already determined that ghosts do not exist. In deduction, the man wills not to believe in ghosts against all sound reason. Therefore, the man’s belief is moral or rather immoral for in this context he does not want to believe in that which he, for all proofs available, is compelled to believe.

So belief directs the intellect and not vice versa. The Bible says that man functions on the basis of internal laws or codes he himself breaks. These laws are not restricted to a theoretic religious sphere but are at all levels and at all times being challenged and altered so that a man can be damned by his own law code apart from the law of Scripture. Therefore the mundane and the grandiose urge and movement are both morally engineered.

Private schools must take belief into consideration in the development and in the achievement of their mission statements. Many private Christian schools are ultimately ineffectual because their objects were finite. The object of the common private school is finite if the basis upon which the child is sought to change is the intellect. The object of the education, therefore, will be ineffectual and will never be able to achieve the great schemes of the mission statement because its object is not God but rather a creature of God: the intellect.

The line between the Infinite and the finite is clear-cut in the Bible: 1) God and 2) everything else. The Scriptures insist that God is infinite and is in His own category; therefore, all else is the creature of God and subject to God. This goes for the black hole as well as for the atom. If the intellect, a creature of God, is the object of education, then it no longer functions as subject to God but as object displaces God and becomes heretic.

However, the intellect, when subject to God, produces a godly intellect. The orientation, however, whether it be in the academic or in the athletic realm is Godwards and never ultimately towards any isolated part of the universe. Why not? Because as creatures of God, all parts of creation ultimately exist for the pleasure of God.

If men and women are created in God’s image, then we are first and foremost oriented to God—not to the data of our environment. This is foundational to the discussion of education. Just as branches sprout from the tree trunk, so do the various categories of our lives spring from this physiological truth: God is man’s integration point.

Therefore, every synaptic pulsation of man’s brain is rooted in his comprehensive orientation to God. If a man or woman could at any time evade that orientation through the use or disuse of any faculty, then God would not be Lord of humans.

If the intellect, a creature of God, is the object of education, then it no longer functions as subject to God but as object displaces Him. The Moral Compass makes the case that if taken seriously, the foundations of the Christian creed provides for the substantial liberalism needed to aggressively address the peculiarities of our post-modern world in the local and global realms.