Shaping a Biblical Worldview

By Dr. Bryan Smith

Christian teachers often struggle to show students how the Bible is relevant to the subjects they teach. As a result, many decide to push the Bible to the margins of the educational experience. So, instead of being foundational to the learning process, the Bible is relegated to devotionals and prayer requests. Students raised with this kind of education get accustomed to seeing the Bible as irrelevant to all areas of life.

The Bible itself, however, gives us a different view of its role in our lives. The book of Proverbs tells us that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov. 1:7). If that is true (and it is), then the Bible must be central to education. But how?

Christian educators should engage in the work of biblical worldview shaping. A biblical worldview is best expressed in the storyline of creation, fall, and redemption. As we see how the world is created, fallen, and in need of God’s redeeming work, we come to adopt a biblical worldview. Taking these three key ideas as lenses for examining the world, we come to discover that faith and learning are bound together and that faith in God must govern the entire educational experience—if that experience is to be worthy of the name Christian.

Creation

Creation tells us how God made the world to work. God created us in His own image (Gen. 1:26-27) and has called us to rule over His world in His name (Gen. 1:28). We are made to mirror God in all that we do. We fulfill this calling by living according to God’s will in every aspect of life—in marriage, family life, religion, government, science, technology, engineering, and business. The purpose of education, then, is not to teach students simply the concepts and skills of science, social studies, math, and English. It is to teach these concepts and skills as tools for managing God’s world guided by God’s wisdom. It is to teach students to discern God’s expectations for every part of life and to model for them what it looks like to live in God’s world according to His creational design.

Fall

The Bible teaches that because of sin (rebellion against God), everything in God’s world has become twisted. Nature does not respond to our dominion as it was meant to (Gen. 3:16-19). Worse than that, we do not respond to God as we should. Our minds and our hearts are bent away from God (Gen. 3:11-12; Jer. 17:9). Sin is high treason against the King of the Universe and makes us guilty and deserving of death. Because we are sinners, we seek to live in every aspect of life according to our own desires. We use our knowledge and experience to bend marriage, religion, government, science (and all the rest) away from God’s good design. Education has not been left unaffected by our fall into sin. The concepts and the skills of each subject are now placed in the context of a sinful vision for human life—individual life and cultural life. The secular system of schooling that dominates education in our nation may be academically rigorous, but it is rigorous in the interest of advancing life without God.

Redemption

But God has not abandoned the work of His hands. He sent His own Son into the world to save it and to rule over it as the first Adam was supposed to do (Gen. 3:15). Christ subdues believers to make them His own. Christ becomes the King of the believer’s entire person—the mind no less than the will and the emotions. Repeatedly, the New Testament asserts that salvation involves the mind. Paul tells believers to be delivered from worldliness through the “renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2).

As Christians—people who have repented of sin and who believe the gospel—we should pursue education as a way to restore the rule of God in the lives of His people. Education, in other words, should serve a redemptive purpose. We teach the same concepts and skills that are taught in secular schools, but we place these things in a different context. These are no longer tools for living in rebellion against God. They are tools for living in God’s world according to God’s design.

We should endeavor, then, to teach students how each subject is rooted in the way God made this world to work, how each subject has been damaged by sin, and how each subject may experience God’s redemption—as we apply biblical wisdom to the questions and controversies it raises. In the end, we are attempting to produce mature followers of Christ—“those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14).

A Methodology for Worldview Shaping

At BJU Press, we believe that shaping a biblical worldview in students is a process that unfolds slowly over time. That’s why we have developed the Levels of Biblical Worldview Shaping©. We have found that students grow in internalizing a biblical worldview as they encounter worldview-rich themes on several different levels of complexity. These themes will differ from one academic subject to another because each subject looks at God’s world from different perspectives. In my experience, some of the most common themes are identity, design, ethics, and justice. In what follows, notice how the justice theme may be developed in a social studies course.

Recalling Biblical Teaching

Near the beginning of a course, students may be asked to recall significant biblical statements that will influence their understanding of an important theme, such as justice. After giving a brief, simple definition of justice, the teacher may choose to introduce Genesis 1:26-27 and Mark 12:31. If students can recall these verses—or just significant phrases from these verses—they have achieved the first level.

Explaining Biblical Teaching

Later in the course, students should be asked to state biblical teaching in their own words. For example, what does it mean to be made in God’s own image (Gen. 1:26-27)? Who is my neighbor, and what does it mean to love my neighbor (Mark 12:31)? It is also important to give students opportunities to express what they believe is the relationship between the biblical statements they have memorized. So, for example, why are Mark 12:31 and Genesis 1:26-27 put in the same category? Through instruction we hope to show students that we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves because our neighbors are made in God’s image—no less made in God’s image than we are.

Recalling and explaining are foundational to biblical worldview shaping, but by themselves, they do not amount to biblical worldview shaping. We do not begin to shape a worldview until we are engaging students in critical-thinking learning experiences.

Evaluating Core Ideas

On this level, we confront students with an idea, event, or opinion that we know they should disagree with. Our goal is to see if they can use the lower levels (recalling and explaining) to give reasons for their evaluation. So, for example, we want to see if students can use the truth of the image of God in all humans and the command to love our neighbors to evaluate an event as unjust.

Formulating a Christian Understanding

When students are evaluating, they are usually arguing against something they do not believe. This is an important step in the process of worldview formation, but it is not the final stage. We also need to see if they can tell us what they do believe. In other words, we need to ask them to state (and defend) the position they are willing to take. In a social studies course, this will often take the form of proposing an alternate course of action that could have been pursued but was not pursued, a course of action that would have been biblically faithful.

Applying Your Christian Understanding

On this level, a biblical worldview gets personal. Here, we ask students to reflect on how this theme—understood from a biblical worldview—should affect their own lives. So, for example, we want students to consider that justice is about more than government policies and geopolitics; it’s also about how we treat our friends and our family members. Have we been unjust? How do we need to change so we are living in a way that conforms to God’s good design?

Not Education as Usual

Christian education is a high calling. It is a key way in which we fulfill the command to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28:19). But for us to succeed at this calling, we must avoid the trap of education as usual. Education as usual will produce results as usual. But if we pursue a different course—if we move forward with daring faith in the power of the Bible to change lives—we may be blessed to see a mighty work of God among us.

Dr. Bryan Smith has worked in Christian education for over thirty years. He has been a classroom teacher as well as a textbook author. Currently, Bryan serves as the Director of Biblical Worldview at BJU Press. He and his wife Becky have six children.