The Essential Task of Educators
Late last month, the Department of Justice’s Religious Liberty Commission heard testimony from experts and teachers about the importance of overlapping religion and education. Among those voices was Dr. Hutz Hertzberg, the chief education officer of Turning Point USA’s education arm. Hertzberg argued that the public education system could not be trusted to train children in truth and morals. He also highlighted the importance of teaching children the absolute authority of Scripture.
Dr. Hertzberg’s comments highlight the essential but often unasked question: What is the goal of education? The answer depends on what is true about reality and the human person. Education is never neutral. Every curriculum, every lesson, every teacher, and every student enters the classroom shaped by underlying assumptions about who they are, what is real, what is good, what is true, and whether life has a purpose.
The essential task of Christian educators is to guide students toward the true, ultimate goal of becoming true worshipers of God, who recognize all of reality and truth as belonging to God, and who respond by loving Him with all they are, according to all that He has revealed.
Therefore, Christian education is more than academic excellence in a Christian environment. It is about forming students who know and love truth, can live faithfully in a fragmented and often disorienting cultural moment, are confident in who God has created them to be, and who see their lives as lived in His presence and for His purposes. This framework—truth, hope, identity, and calling—is the substance of a truly Christian education.
In the best of cases, a secular vision of education offers students false and ungrounded optimism in human progress. In most cases, untethered from God’s Story, history appears random, the future uncertain, and life disconnected from any greater purpose. In the end, students are catechized into a truncated vision of life and the world, and especially themselves.
Within secular approaches to education, truth is constructed and ultimately fragmented. Each discipline stands alone, leaving students with the burden of assembling meaning for themselves. In this fractured view of knowledge, “truth” is relative, identity is fluid, and meaning is privatized.
The Christian vision of reality is unified and coherent. The truths of reality reflect the truth about everything. Math reflects God’s precision, and Science His consistency. Literature explores human longings that point beyond the temporal to the eternal. Because all truth reflects God’s grand story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration, education is the pursuit of what is true, and points us to Christ in whom all things in heaven and earth hold together.
In a Christian vision, hope is not mere emotion or wishful thinking. It is secured by the resurrection of Christ and the promise of renewal. This hope connects the meaning of the universe with the meaning and value of the work of our hands. As students realize God has called them to this time and place within His larger redemptive story, learning has meaning.
Godless approaches to identity have left students hopelessly searching for value and dignity in superficial categories of sexuality, self-expression, activism, worldly success, or perpetual brokenness. Students are told to define themselves by feelings, achievement, victimhood, or acceptance.
In contrast, Christian education offers a vision of identity rooted in the foundational truth that we are made in the image of God. In this vision, dignity, purpose, and value are inherent, and restored to us through Christ. This identity is expressed in our relationships: first with God, with ourselves, with others, and with the rest of creation. Every academic subject fits within one or more of these relationships and is understood in terms of how God intended it, how sin has twisted it, and how the ongoing work of restoration might renew it.
While a secular vision of education reduces calling to career choice or personal fulfillment, Christian education frames jobs and careers within a larger context of worship and service. Christian schools help students discover how their God-given talents can be stewarded for kingdom purposes in this particular time and place in redemptive history. When done well, a sense of calling should extend beyond occupation to all of life.
A new Educators’ Edition of Truth Rising: The Study serves this vision. This free digital course, available for continuing education credits in partnership with the Association of Christian Schools International, presents the educator’s task within God’s game plan for this civilizational moment. Every lesson includes practical tips for application. Access Truth Rising: The Study, Educators’ Edition and the full course library at colsoneducators.org.
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Billy Hutchinson.
Photo credit: ©Getty Images/kali9
