Loving to Learn and Learning to Love: Rediscovering Christian Education

Christianity is always concerned with what is true. Living the Christian life necessarily means aligning ourselves (and—where we can—others,) with the truth, and devoting all of our educational energy to this end. We want to understand the truth about the world around us. We want to understand the truth about our fellow man. Most of all, we want to understand the truth about God.

Christian education today is being undermined by a false dichotomy between love and learning. Rigorous intellectualism is too often accompanied by pride and elitism, and genuine, self-sacrificial love is too often accompanied by poor grammar. We must aim for the center of the mark—simplicity without slovenliness, excellence without elitism.

In 2 Timothy 1:7, Paul writes that “God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.” This is the fundamental triumvirate of the Christian character, and it is crucially important to take the three together. This is not the time for spiritual specialization. Too often we pilfer through God's gifts, picking and choosing. The result is some Christians with power, some with love, some with sound minds, but few with all three.

As my title suggests, in this essay I intend to describe an educational philosophy that is committed to truth, excited about learning, and brimming over with Christ's love. Navigating such a course is not easy, and requires that we set aside our self-interest, look askance at shortcuts, and devote our full attention to the question before us: “How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?”¹

Cultivating a Sound Mind: Learning the Truth

Any honest and worthwhile worldview must define truth as something both knowable and worth knowing. Anything less is nihilist nonsense, because, as Socrates said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” To exist, then, is to inquire into the way things are, and, if we are to inquire thus, it is helpful to believe that there is a way things are. One cannot think meaningfully in a metaphysical vacuum.

Christianity affirms and celebrates the meaningfulness of life, providing a solid foundation for education and rational inquiry. The truth may not always be intuitive, obvious, or witty—the important thing is that it is there. The Bible always speaks of truth as something formidable and real, not as an elusive mirage that changes shape or fades away altogether when you get near it. Truth is like a mountain: solid, indestructible, rewarder of all and respecter of none.

John 1:1 ought to be a foundational text in any Christian educational philosophy: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” It is only because of God-the-Word that reality is rational—that is, something that can be thought about and shared. As Gordon Clark asserted, "Christ is the Logos, the Wisdom of God and the rationality of the universe."² Without the logic contained in Christ, we would not even be able to think in a straight line.³ Our minds breathe logic like our lungs breathe air: it is life-giving.

Of course, there is more to life than logic, just as there is more to a pie than the pie-pan. Logic makes an excellent container for creeds, but it does not make a very good creed. As Os Guinness said, “The Christian faith is second to none in the place it gives to reason, but it is also second to none in keeping reason in its place.”⁴ The Christian faith is rational, but it is not merely rational. Rationalism fits inside Christianity the way a skeleton fits inside a soul. We need logic to support life—we need Christianity to have life to support.

Cultivating a Spirit of Power: Learning How to Learn

It is the fashion, as Clark noted, to talk of the "aims" of education.⁵ (Of course, as John Dewey astutely observed, "Education as such has no aims—only persons [...] have aims..."⁶) For Clark, the aim of Christian education is truth.⁷ No bulleted lists of vague, non-committal mush here. And yet, though this goal is entirely accurate in a broad sense, it quickly becomes a bit unwieldy. The moment we begin, we are faced with all sorts of gritty particulars that compel us to look closely to what we are doing, and to understand it precisely and in detail. This is hard work. As Alfred North Whitehead said, “There is no royal road to learning through an airy path of brilliant generalizations.”⁸ We have the right map and we know where we are trying to get to, but we still must place each step carefully to avoid turning an ankle and spoiling the whole quest.

Truth is the grand object, but education is an incremental process and happens in stages: you do not unload truth en masse on a 5-year-old. We must divide the grand object into bite-size goals and activities. If we adopt Alfred North Whitehead's excellent three-stage model, which describes the educational process in terms of romance, precision, and generalization, these bite-size aims are easy to identify.⁹ They are, firstly, to stimulate interest; secondly, to provide information; and thirdly, to acquire a working mastery of the given subject or skill. For Whitehead, the ultimate goal of education was this "acquisition of the art of the utilization of knowledge."¹⁰

The importance of knowledge lies in its use, in our active mastery of it—that is to say, it lies in wisdom. It is a convention to speak of mere knowledge, apart from wisdom, as of itself imparting a peculiar dignity to its possessor. I do not share in this reverence for knowledge as such. It all depends on who has the knowledge and what he does with it.¹¹

A fourth stage that might be appended to Whitehead's model would be teaching students how to pursue knowledge for themselves, on their own initiative. It is one thing to discipline students, it is another to teach them self-discipline. We want students to absorb the truth, but we also want them to absorb the excitement of learning—to “catch it,” like a cold. The aim here is a vigorous and creative self-sufficiency—"To accustom a child to have true notions of things, and not to be satisfied till he has them."¹²

Education is not about cramming the student's mind full of what Whitehead termed “inert ideas.”¹³ Too many teachers treat knowledge like medicine, working off the faulty assumption that as long as the tonic can be forced down somehow it will produce the desired effect. This is simply not the case. Whitehead argued that “There is no mental development without interest,” and, if we look around, we can see the truth of this statement borne out in practical experience.¹⁴ Incorporating a sense of discovery and adventure lends a sort of mechanical advantage to education—an inclined plane that circumnavigates the sheer cliffs of memorization and rote.

Here the Christian educator has a distinct advantage over the relativist or nihilist. As Clark noted, somewhat playfully, “Even in the teaching of arithmetic a pessimistic education will be distinguishable from a theistic and optimistic education, at least on rainy days.”¹⁵ Make it fun. Make it surprising. Make it real. The object is not to sneak a little education in the back door when no one is looking, but rather to make learning itself a pleasant, non-threatening proposition—to help students develop a positive perspective on education so that together you can meet the world head-on.

This is not to say that students should never be challenged to do what they find dull or uninteresting, only that teachers ought to be challenged, for their part, to make learning less dull and more interesting, avoiding those disastrous shortcuts that leave students lagging behind, struggling uphill and gasping for air.¹⁶ We must never allow the pressure of learning “things” to extinguish the excitement of learning itself. It is better for a student to know relatively little about Grecian History and be motivated to learn more than for him to know a great deal and be left with a bad taste in his mouth.

Still, education must eventually be concerned with actually knowing things; and, in some cases, even memorizing things. We don't learn only so we can continue learning, but also to have learned. As G. K. Chesterton said, “The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.”¹⁷ Second Timothy 3:7 condemns those who are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.” Truth is meant to be stood on, not merely studied. Spiritual wisdom always turns knowledge into action. It is significant that the wise man builds his house on a rock, but it is also significant that he does in fact build his house. As James Sire pointed out in his excellent book on Christian intellectualism, Habits of the Mind: “Truth and spirituality are of a piece: to know the truth is to do it. There is no dichotomy between the two. To be spiritual is to know/do the truth.”¹⁸

Building your house on a rock is not arrogant, it is only good spiritual sense. Similarly, holding truth dear with confidence and conviction is not presumptuous, it is our inheritance as sons of God. Our understanding of truth is certainly incomplete—“through a glass darkly”—but it is something. As Sire observed, “Because God is the all-knowing knower of all things, we—being made in his image—can be the sometimes knowing knowers of some things.”¹⁹ May God grant us the courage to know what we can, the humility to admit what we can't, and the wisdom to know the difference.²⁰

Cultivating a Spirit of Love: Learning to Serve

It is not enough to have a zeal for truth, a healthy curiosity, and a strong work ethic; a uniquely Christian educational philosophy must also emphasize a selfless concern for others. This is harder than it seems. Because education is about self-development, it tends to foster a subtle selfishness that students justify and teachers encourage.

Students are not challenged to leave their hermetically sealed Christian bubbles and to engage the wider world with transformational moral activity. The Christian life is about 'my soul,' 'my happiness,' 'my relationships,' 'my walk with God,' not about God's world, broken people made in God's image, social justice that is God's will, starving children over whom God weeps, genocide and war that destroy God's children, and God's intent to respond to all of this through the committed, wise, and sacrificial efforts of his redeemed people.²¹

Or as John Stuart Mill said,

It is worth training [students] .... to have a feeling of the miserable smallness of mere self in the face of this great universe, of the collective mass of our fellow-creatures, in the face of past history and of the indefinite future—the poorness and insignificance of human life if it is to be all spent in making things comfortable for ourselves and our kin, and raising ourselves and them a step or two on the social ladder.²²

Christian education could use to recapture this broader vision—this ideal of generosity, just as the Church could use to tenderize her calloused social conscience. Getting through to a hurting world goes far beyond knowing and believing the right things. "If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing."²³ God is much more concerned with how well we love our neighbor than with how well we can parse Greek verbs. Without real, sacrificial service backed up by a real, sacrificial love, we may be moral, religious, and intelligent, but we will miss the target.

Truth without love is like faith without works—dead. Rationalism turns sour and dangerous when it ceases to love, and leads to all sorts of ugly spiritual doubts and dark psychological labyrinths. It is love that gives force and meaning to truth, in the same way that wisdom directs knowledge or the fletching on an arrow helps it to fly true. When Madame Khokhlakov questioned Father Zosima in Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov concerning the proof of spiritual things, the elder answered:

"One cannot prove anything here, but it is possible to be convinced."

"How? By what?"

"By the experience of active love. Try to love your neighbors actively and tirelessly. The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced of the existence of God and the immortality of your soul."²⁴

I must here answer those who complain that all this talk of love is superfluous or somehow compromises the splendid aerodynamics of raw truth. I myself am quite sympathetic to this complaint: all too often love is presented as something spineless and mushy—a weak excuse for cowards and bystanders. When I speak of learning to love I do not have in mind an emotional, impulsive, “easy” love, or a love that is “soft” or somehow anti-intellectual. Love—in the 1 Corinthians 13 sense—“rejoices with the truth.”²⁵ As Ernest Dimnet said, “Love, whether it be the attraction of Truth, or pure, simple, elemental love, always opens up the intellect and gives it the freedom of genius.”²⁶ Love, then, is not a frivolous nuisance in our quest for truth—it is absolutely essential. Omitting love from learning is like removing the steering wheel from a car in order to save weight.

Anyone who devotes themselves to an intellectual life must recognize the danger of elitism. Here again, a solidly rooted love will help us maintain a healthy humility in our work and a generous respect for those who read fewer books. When Clark argues in Appendix B that “The power we exert under God is reasonably calculated to vary directly with our mental ability,” I am compelled to respectfully disagree.²⁷ A smarter person makes a better intellectual, but it does not follow that he necessarily makes a better Christian. There is no Biblical basis for this “hierarchy of intelligence”; if anything, the Bible would turn such a hierarchy on its head.²⁸ The important thing is not whether you are given two talents or ten, but what you do with what you are given. As Clark himself says in Chapter 6, “What is required is that each should use faithfully what he has received.”²⁹ Your usefulness to God is not dependent on your I.Q. any more than it is dependent on your eye color. That is the wonderful thing about God's Kingdom; as Caedmon's Call sings,

The truth is a river

where the strong can swim in deep

and the weak and the broken

can walk across so easily³⁰

Are we teaching students to compare themselves with others, or to simply and honestly do the best they can? Are we avoiding the distractions of peer pressure and the tyranny of group-think? Are we affirming the value of every individual and maintaining an atmosphere of freedom and possibility? Are we known by our love, or only by our literacy?

Seeking First the Kingdom

Most of us go about the business of our lives and just sprinkle some spirituality on the top like Parmesan cheese. This is not the way the gospel was intended to work. The Kingdom of God is supposed to be the driving force in our lives, and everything else is supposed to spring out of that passion. As Jesus admonished us on the mount, “Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.”³¹ Or, as C. S. Lewis said, “Aim at heaven and you will get earth 'thrown in': aim at earth and you will get neither.”³²

Christian education is about seeking the Kingdom. There is work to be done. Let us set our minds to the task of building, develop an active interest in the world around us, embrace the scandal of the cross, and ask God to continually conform us to the image of His Son, “so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”³³

That, my friends, is our calling. Let us press on toward the mark, and as the day lengthens and each horizon beckons beyond to the next, may our education equip us to run well.

1Psalm 137:4

2Gordon H. Clark, A Christian Philosophy of Education, (The Trinity Foundation, 2000), 58

3Colossians 2:2-3, Acts 17:28

4Os Guinness, God In The Dark, (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1996), 167

5Clark, 14

6John Dewey, Democracy and Education, as quoted in Steven M. Cahn, Classic and Contemporary Readings in the Philosophy of Education, (McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1997), 306

7Clark, 95

8Alfred North Whitehead, The Aims of Education and Other Essays, as quoted in Cahn, 265

9Whitehead, as quoted in Cahn, 268-273

10Ibid., 264

11Ibid., 269

12John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, as quoted in Cahn, 157

13Whitehead, as quoted in Cahn, 262

14 Ibid., 268

15Clark, 45

16As John Locke observed, “It is much easier to command than to teach.” (Locke, as quoted in Cahn, 152)

17G. K. Chesterton, The Autobiography of G. K. Chesterton, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2006), 217

18James Sire, Habits of the Mind, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 10-11

19Ibid., 61

202 Timothy 2:15, Psalm 131:1-2

21David P. Gushee, “Attract Them by Your Way of Life: The Professor's Task in the Christian University,” in David S. Dockery & David P. Gushee, ed., The Future of Christian Higher Education, (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1999), 151

22John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address at Saint Andrews, as quoted in Cahn, 257

231 Corinthians 13:2, ESV

24Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 1990), 56

251 Corinthians 13:6, ESV

26Ernest Dimnet, The Art of Thinking, as quoted in Sire, 89

27Clark, 147

28 1 Corinthians 1:26-29, Ecclesiastes 9:11

29Clark, 96

30Caedmon's Call, Back Home, “Beautiful Mystery”

31Matthew 6:33, ESV

32C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 134

33Ephesians 4:14-15, ESV