restoring all things
a framework for applying a christian worldview in all arenas of life
Just a brief post today.
A term that gets thrown around a lot in Christian education is “Biblical Worldview Integration” (BWI). Schools will boast about Scripture being integrated into every class in the building, from Bible to biology, phys-ed to physics. This is all well and good. Scripture should reign supreme in a Christian school. And, as our tradition has argued for 2,000 years and was perhaps most punchily phrased by Abraham Kuyper, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, Mine!”
The problem is that for all of the lofty rhetoric surrounding BWI, Christian schools often promise more than they deliver when it comes to actually integrating faith into the classroom and showing the sovereignty of Christ over every square inch of existence.
This is, most of the time, for good reason; primarily, they have other stuff to teach as well. It is hard to thoughtfully integrate a biblical worldview into the classroom while simultaneously preparing students for the AP Calculus exam. It is not impossible, and it can certainly be done and is done well. However, the delivery of content and the integration of a biblical worldview can sometimes be uneasy bedfellows.
And this isn’t really a problem. I don’t think there needs to be a Christian math, for example. Math is math, whoever made the discovery and whoever does the work. Now, a Christian theology of math is needed, but not a Christian methodology. We can honor God in a math classroom by doing math really well. We don’t need to apply some random Bible verse to the lesson (that will likely be badly contextualized anyway). Christian schools should also train their students to think about how they can use their math skills to bring glory to God.
In his book Beyond Biblical Integration: Immersing You and Your Students in a Biblical Worldview, Roger Erdvig tackles some of these challenges. I do not intend to give a comprehensive response to his book, but there is one section that I want to highlight because I think it has implications beyond the classroom.
In thinking about how to encourage students to adopt a comprehensive biblical worldview, Erdvig draws on the work of John Stonestreet and Warren Smith from their book Restoring All Things. Those authors suggest four questions for engaging the world that Erdvig adapts below.
Here are his four questions:
What is good in our culture that we can cultivate?
What is missing in our culture that we can create?
What is broken in our world that we can cure?
What is evil in our culture that we can curb?
I appreciate this focus. Each of these verbs is required at various times and in different contexts. Sometimes, we can be drawn to curb when we should create or to cultivate when we should cure. Sometimes, the answers will overlap: we will, perhaps, curb through creation. Part of our work as Christians is to discern what the Holy Spirit would have for us in any given scenario. What is required of us, and how can we best bring this about?
Each of these four requires an active engagement with the world. We do not merely sit back in passive lamentation of the world around us; we work to change things.
This is a framework for BWI, too. Can Christian schools get better at training students to not only see the brokenness of the sin-filled world, but also give them tools for bringing redemption, light, and hope? That is a type of integration worth putting energy into.