Four Questions Students Should Ask Their Teachers
- Ray Pritchard
- Published Jul 30, 2004
John Morris wrote an article with the provocative title "Can Christian High School Students Survive Public School Education?" The answer is, of course they can.
Each year hundreds of thousands of Christian students enter public high schools across America. What they receive varies from school to school, city to city, and state to state. Nevertheless, the concern is real. As Elton Trueblood observed at the end of World War II, America has become a "cut-flower" society where the bloom of Christian values has been cut off from its roots in the absolute standard of God's Word. One hundred years ago the Bible was required reading in America's classrooms. Today the Bible even as literature has virtually disappeared from public school education.
Public schools mirror the changes and diversification of American society. In an age that values multicultural pluralism above all else, Christian students know that sometimes they will face ideas diametrically opposed to what they are taught at home and at church. How will they stand up under the pressure? What will they do when they hear evolutionary mythology taught as accepted truth? What should they say when they are told that "all truth is relative?" What will they say when told that abortion does not kill a human life? Or that homosexuality is "natural" and "normal"?
John Morris offers four questions that Christian high school students should bring with them into the classroom:
1. What do you mean by that?
2. How do you know that to be true?
3. What difference does it make?
4. What happens if you're wrong?
These questions, when asked respectfully and not in a confrontational or disruptive manner, allow Christian students the opportunity to lay bare the ungodly worldview behind much contemporary thinking.
Rarely will a student have to go beyond the second question. So much that passes for accepted truth is "accepted" simply because enough people have naively "accepted" it. But Christians do not determine our view of the world by reading the latest Gallup Poll or by silently acquiescing to the views that the majority currently happens to hold. As a matter of fact, the majority has usually been wrong throughout history, especially on matters of morality and spiritual truth.
Josh McDowell tells Christian teenagers: "Don't check your brains at the door." Right on! I would to add to that: "Don't check your faith at the door either." Take your Christianity with you when you go to Advanced Biology, English Literature, and World History. The next time you hear something that sounds strange, smile, raise your hand and politely say, "Excuse me, I have a question."
