At both Randolph’s private school in New York and the KIPP charter schools, teaching good character is central. It’s no different in public schools in Colorado. In Douglas County, where my wife worked for several years before coming to Front Range Christian, the district claims to teach ethics to all students, such as honesty, integrity and respect. Now, what I’ve observed at many Christian schools is, oddly enough, about the same.
In the Christian school world, there are two terms that are widely thrown around: biblical integration and biblical values. First, “The Bible is integrated into everything we do. It’s not just a class it’s a worldview.” Well, this is valid, if we’re thinking here about Kuyper’s understanding of worldview, as expounded by his disciples, like Francis Schaeffer. However, I rarely find somebody who can really tell me what a biblical worldview looks like in Civics, Spanish, Physics, Phonics, or Physical Education. How does the actual content of what is taught (not just prayer and devotions) change based on your Christian commitment?
But that isn’t what’s been bothering me. It’s the idea of “biblical values.” Christian schools are different than public schools because they teach “biblical values.” My question is this. What just might those biblical values be? After we talk for a while, they usually come down to this: honesty, integrity, respect, and perhaps kindness or love. Nearly the same as the public schools! “Yes, but we can bring God into the equation. We can talk about these values from the Bible. The public schools can’t.” True, but are will still teaching these same values, but now with Bible verses? This begs the question: are they really biblical values, or are they universal values?
As I prepare to teach for one of my colleagues this Wednesday on C.S. Lewis’ view of natural law, it’s become clear to me that these values are available to all people at all times. They’re a part of our consciences, Christian, secularists, Buddhists, and Hindus. C.S. Lewis borrows the Chinese term for it: The Tao. And C.S. Lewis makes a pretty strong case that all people know two things: there’s a moral standard “out there” that we all know about, and we all know we aren’t keeping it.
And so, we’re back to the beginning. How do we teach young people to be good; how do we teach them to be people of character? If we simply teach universal moral laws that we know we can’t keep, the essential effect of this is heaping condemnation on the backs of young people. After all, I, who am an adult working in a Christian school, know that I fail to keep moral standards on a daily basis. The verse from Proverbs has been too much used: “Instruct a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Yes, this is true…generally. However, let’s remember one thing: the book is called Proverbs—it’s filled with proverbial statements on how life generally works. A proverb isn’t a guarantee. And we know that the human heart is a rebellious thing. It wouldn’t be too difficult to find a set of excellent Christian parents who trained their child in the way they should go, and they went the opposite way instead.
My point is this. Most “character formation” in Christian education, from K-12 to higher ed, more resembles the teachings of the Pharisees than the teachings of Christ. The Pharisees were loaded with good morals. They were more moral than all their neighbors. They even tithed everything down to the spices in their cabinet. But Jesus called them white-washed tombs. Although they knew the Bible verses, they didn’t understand the God to whom they were pointing. They took the law and made it into a moral code, impossible to keep. They were essentially using their religious pedigree and upright behavior as evidence that they were just, and the “sinners” were unjust. In short, they taught “morals.”
What then is really unique about the Christian faith? What then is really the basis of the Christian worldview? What then is it that makes a child, or an adult or a senior citizen for that matter, really good? The historic Christian answer is the gospel.
The gospel is the message of the life, death, resurrection and Second Coming of Jesus. It is essentially a message of grace. While men and women were guilty in their transgressions, enslaved to evil, estranged from God, stained with impurity, and under the curse of Sin, God sent his own Son as a gift to die for their sins, taking their place at the cross, cleansing their sin, freeing them from the curse of sin, and winning the eternal victory over Satan and Death. Grace is the fundamental difference between the Christian faith and all other religions and worldviews. And it is the only way men become good.
How can we possibly expect young children or young adults to become good by teaching them good morals (biblical or universal), when we ourselves know that we have failed to live up to our very own standards? The Gospel is the heart of the Christian message. The Gospel is our very reason for being. It is our foundation for understanding God, ourselves and our world.
True character formation only happens when one sees the cross. When a child understands the gospel of grace, he will look not to the expectations of his parents, or even to the tenuous moral law imposed by his community, whether youth group or Christian school. He will be filled with grace for others. Integrity becomes a reality because confession of sins at the foot of the cross of grace is a reality. Honesty can become a reality because we have nothing to hide---all my shame is nailed to the tree. Respect—a distant acknowledgment of another’s rights—fades into the background as he understands that Christ died for the person sitting next to him. Goodness becomes a reality as the imitation of the one who gave his life for me becomes a reaction, a way of being. Self-less service is the outflow of a life informed by grace.
The Gospel – not “biblical values” – must be at the center of any Christian community. This is our only hope in becoming good. For in it we see the goodness of the One who gave his life for ours.
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