The Church and Education

Imagine a missionary meeting with a group of local pastors. The missionary is fully trained, virtuous, has already been discipling individuals locally, and has a well thought out plan to disciple a hitherto unreached people group. Imagine that he gave a clear presentation of his ideas to his community’s pastors and asked them for their support, but instead of supporting him they said the following. “Look, between us we support what you are doing. But we just can’t take resources from our church and give them to you. Most of the members of our church aren’t missionaries. If we give money to support you, but don’t support accountants or nurses in our church it might appear to some that being a missionary is somehow better than being an accountant or nurse. This really is a good idea, but you have to find a way to make it pay for itself. We simply can’t play favorites by supporting you when we don’t support other members in their vocations.”

I actually can’t imagine this happening with the pastors I know; hopefully none of you can imagine this happening with the pastors you know. But change “missionary” to “Headmaster” or “Principal” and “unreached people group” to “children” and the scenario is all too common. For a variety of reasons many churches are refusing to support Christian education.

Anyone that has spent any amount of time with children knows that children are not born fully formed in Christ. Indeed, every generation is born pagan—every child must be both evangelized and discipled. The question is: whose responsibility is it to disciple these young ones? Is discipleship the responsibility of parents or is it the responsibility of the Church?

Obviously it is both. However, the time that kids spend at home and in church is far less than the time they spend in school. At school they learn how to interact with their peers. Their teachers instruct them on how to discern what is true, good and beautiful. They are taught not just facts about math and history, but if and how they should use and value the things they learn in these fields. In short school inculcates within children a view of the world, as well as habits of thinking and behavior, as it trains them in a mode of life. This is discipleship and it influences students just as much, if not more, as what happens in the home or church. Growth in Christ is no more accidental or passive than growth in physical fitness; if we want our children to grow spiritually they must have a fully immersive discipleship, which includes a Christian education.

And yet our churches are by and large neither advocating for nor supporting this. We are (rightly!) investing in God’s Kingdom all over our world, but we are failing to invest in our young. No missionary is asked to completely fund his work in discipling an unreached people and yet we ask the majority of our Christian schools to fully fund their work in discipling our pagan children.

As our economy becomes increasingly hierarchical and our middle class progressively smaller, it is becoming increasingly difficult for Christian schools to fully fund themselves. Many parents cannot afford to send their own children to a private school, let alone to pay a tuition high enough to support the children of others or to ensure that their children’s teachers receive a livable wage. Do we really want Christian education to be limited to affluent children? Is discipleship only for those that can afford it? Is this a principle of the Kingdom of God?

Of course not. But this will inevitably come about if churches do no change their thinking. Given our economy’s structure parents alone cannot bear the burden of Christian education. If Christian education plays a significant part in discipleship, then the Church must support it. Parents that send their children to public schools may feel upset or judged and may leave churches. But our churches must operate on the conviction of what is true and right and not from a place of fear.  

Dostoevsky and False Dichotomies

The human mind is predisposed to simplify. This is necessary because reality is so complex that we are often unable to comprehend it completely. For example, the activities in one cell or the objects in our solar system, let alone our galaxy, are so numerous and varied that we must simplify them in our models if we are to have any understanding of them.  

The same is true in the discussion of increasingly complex political issues. Few, if any, have the time or ability to understand the implications of a thousand page piece of legislation. As a result each political party reduces every political action or idea to a handful of “talking points.” Partisans listen to “their” news sources that repeat these points ad infinitum; if a news source refers to the arguments of the other side it is only to portray them as strawmen and debunk them accordingly. This produces the appearance of debate, but in reality it is mere babble that lacks the purposeful thought and intellectual honesty of true debate. This oversimplification of complex ideas coupled with hyper-partisanship produces a myriad of problems, the most notable being that it forces us into false dichotomies that generally fall along party lines.

The problem with a false dichotomy is that it presents us with two choices, neither of which are good or true, and this artificial either/or prevents us from searching for and discovering true, or at least better, solutions.

This is why I love reading Dostoevsky.  Dostoevsky consistently looks at problems from a unique prospective and refuses to be forced into false dichotomies. Consider Dostoevsky’s critique of laissez faire capitalism in Crime and Punishment. “Hitherto, for instance, if I were told, ‘love thy neighbor’, what came of it? . . . It came to my tearing my coat in half to share with my neighbor and we both were left half naked. . . . Science now tells us, love yourself before all men, for everything in the world rests on self-interest. Therefore, in acquiring wealth solely and exclusively for myself, I am acquiring, so to speak for all, and helping to bring to pass my neighbor’s getting a little more than a torn coat; and that not from private, personal liberality, but as a consequence of the general advance.” This is the type of critique one would expect to read from a Marxist and yet Dostoevsky vehemently rejected socialism in all its forms.

Dostoevsky’s critiques of both laissez faire capitalism and socialism are particularly relevant. Since the end of the Second World War many have been prone to divide the world into two camps: capitalist and communist, free and tyrannized. This has caused us to pigeonhole debate and reduce it to overly simplistic solutions, like either more government or more markets. What Dostoevsky recognized in his critique of both laissez faire capitalism and socialism is that both have a similar philosophical justification and both, therefore, have similar consequences. 

Dostoevsky believed that both laissez faire capitalism and socialism are grounded in a form of utilitarianism—both justify sin and evil on an individual level or small scale because it will bring about a greater good to the whole. For example, completely embracing laissez faire capitalism, as understood by Dostoevsky, allows or even leads an individual to disregard Christian virtues like charity and embrace the vice of greed in order to promote general economic growth. Likewise, socialism, in order to help the poor, allows for theft and violence against the affluent. Though we think of these systems as polar opposites, Dostoevsky believed they had the same grounding and justification.     

Given their common grounding, laissez faire capitalism and socialism have the same consequences. Both, for example, undermine faith. Granted the way they undermine faith is very different: communist regimes directly persecute it, while the modern capitalistic West mocks true faith and has created a society of diversion and entertainment that simply ignores it. The respective dystopias of Huxley and Orwell would not have surprised Dostoevsky: because they both jettison Christianity, the repression of communist regimes and the indulgence of capitalistic societies alike can create atheistic societies.

Likewise, both systems undermine family. The Soviets created a society where scarce housing and low wages prevented people from being able to have large families. We in the West are creating a society where expensive housing and education and stagnating wages are making it more difficult for people to have large families, while widespread divorce undermines a significant number of families that do form. Moreover, we have idealized career advancement and self-expression, which in turn leads many to disregard and avoid marriage altogether.

Solutions to our current predicaments are not be found in doubling down on the lesser of two evils, but rather in seeking to look past false dichotomies. Instead of getting bogged down in their relatively minor differences, we should seek to understand and overcome the greater and deeper errors they hold in common. We will never do this without resisting the tyranny of the temporary. Modern thought, as profound as it is at times, shares our assumptions and thereby exacerbates our errors. Old Books on the other hand view the world through different eyes and provide a perspective we lack and insight we need.

Infernal and Celestial Venus

“I don't believe that anybody

Feels the way I do, about you now. . . .

I said maybe, you're gonna be the one that saves me
And after all, you're my wonderwall”

-Oasis

Out of Love Christ rescued His fallen creation from the depths of sin, death, and the dominion of the Devil. The salvific power of His Love reverberates through the cosmos. It is displayed movingly in our greatest literature and its faintest echoes are even found in our shallowest teenage love songs. When correctly understood and embraced Love transforms and uplifts us, but when misunderstood it contributes to our damnation.

The love of Dante and Beatrice is an obvious example of the salvific power of love. Dante’s love for Beatrice, when reciprocated and infused with God’s grace, pulls Dante up and out of himself, out of the error and confusion of the dark forest. It sanctifies him and ultimately leads him into Heaven.

Our love, when it reflects Christ’s Love, has this same effect: it transforms the beloved, it carries the beloved to greater heights, it pulls him or her out of vice and into faith, virtue, and charity. In a word, true love makes the beloved more like the One that is both the source of love and its worthiest object.

C. S. Lewis described this transformative power memorably in Till We Have Faces. In the final pages of the book Orual’s perverse and corrupt love for her sister, Psyche, is purified and redeemed as she receives God’s Love through Psyche. “I was being unmade. I was no one. But that’s little to say; rather, Psyche herself was, in a manner, no one. I loved her as I would once have thought it impossible to love, would have died any death for her. And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and oh, gloriously she did) it was for another’s sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake.”

Contemporary popular culture recognizes the salvific power of love, but it oversimplifies and thereby trivializes it. This is a tragedy. For love misunderstood does not lead to salvation, but rather damnation. A love that is grounded in the intensity of the lover’s feelings, like the love expressed in the song quoted above, is self-centered and not a love that reflects Christ’s Love. It is therefore not the type of love that will lead to salvation.

In every potential moment of love each party is confronted with an “other”, with someone outside the self that offers something that the self lacks. This creates a shock to the self. While it may be that every moment of potential love begins with feelings and self-gratification, there is always an accompanying choice: the lover and beloved can settle for the temporary euphoria of feelings and self-gratification or pursue and receive something better and higher. When lover and beloved reject grace and choose self-gratification they thereby attempt to make each other into appendages of themselves. Instead of seeing each other as Ends made in God’s image, worthy of self-sacrifice, they come to view each other as a means to the gratification of their respective egos or libidos, via fantasy, manipulation, or even force. This love, instead of elevating both parties, leads to their mutual degradation.  

While popular culture has largely failed to recognize this hard truth, great literature has not been so blind. One of the most frightening examples of this is found in Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff, unable or unwilling to choose what is best for Catherine, desires to possess her for his own sake. His false love leads him to hurt Catherine and destroy the lives of a number of individuals around her. But it is not just Catherine and those around her that are hurt; in destroying others Heathcliff destroys himself. He achieves his goals, but his success leaves him cold, angry, and filled with hate. He dies alone, mourned by none.  

Heathcliff uses a brute force uncommon today in the West—we tend to be subtler in our exploitation of others. But the fact remains the same: whenever a man or woman degrades another they lie to themselves and thereby degrade themselves. People are made for God’s glory. When a man fantasizes about a woman he is treating her as a means to his own end. This is a lie; she was created for God, not him. When a woman manipulates a man to get what she wants or needs out of him, she is not treating him like a creature made in the image of God. She too is living a lie. This refusal to embrace truth corrupts the mind and soul. This corruption, if left unchecked, will ultimately destroy mind, soul, and body.

Love confronts us with a choice: will we put the other first and die to ourselves or will we attempt to have our beloved on our terms and for our purposes? In embracing the former we imitate the Love of Christ, embrace the Truth, and thereby transcend ourselves; in embracing the latter we reject Truth and move toward unreality, harming others and damning ourselves. We are all moving either towards salvation and sanctification, to an eternity of everlasting joy and beauty or towards one of damnation, corruption, sorrow, and pain. The way we love is a good indicator of which path we are on.

The Poison of Postmodernism

A specter haunts the West. It denies knowable, communicable truth and thereby threatens the dissolution of all community and the atomization of every individual. While variations of this specter have appeared in prior ages and indeed have never been wholly absent, today’s intelligentsia and masses alike have imbibed and manifest this specter to degrees hitherto unknown. Unless it is exercised, the specter of postmodernism will continue to poison us against each other and undermine the basis of our society while distracting us from questions of ultimate importance.

Postmodernism is a nebulous philosophy and impossible to universally define. Indeed, how can there be a “true” definition for a philosophy that doubts the existence of truth? For my purposes I consider postmodernism to be the belief that the subject projects part of himself into the object he seeks to know, which prevents him from being able to know any objective fact or value. Indeed, because every individual has different contingent characteristics (things like sex, ethnicity, age, class, etc.) every person sees every object slightly different. It follows that man is not only incapable of knowing the truth, but because every individual gives the same name to an object that everyone else sees differently, man is incapable of communicating truth.

It is obvious that our contingent characteristics influence how we view various things: to wit, a poor and rich man will view a tax hike on the wealthy very differently. Every thinker has always recognized this. But postmodernism takes this truth further and asserts that a man’s contingent characteristics determine how he sees things. Whereas people in the past used to think that finding and communicating truth was laborious and difficult, postmodernists believe it is impossible. 

But if there is no knowable truth because every subject projects him- or herself into all objects, then there is no point in attempting to persuade another, indeed, this is impossible. Instead of arguing against opposing viewpoints discourse is reduced to debunking the people that hold them. This approach to discussion and debate is at the root of the complete and utter breakdown of our political discourse. For example, instead of dispassionately discussing complex economic data, patterns, and trends when considering the wage gap, the experience of a working woman is often used as evidence. As is obvious, this destroys dialogue for there is no man that shares this experience and therefore there is nothing a man can say to refute, counter, or even agree with what the woman says. The same is true for issues that involve class, race, age—that is to say, virtually every political and social question.

As important as this breakdown of discourse is, and social and political issues are important, it is of secondary importance and distracts us from issues of primary importance. For example, we are all made in the image of God and no one’s income or lack of income changes that. We have all, young and old alike, sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Christ offers us, no matter our tribe or ethnos, the salvation we need. And we will all die and stand before the judgment throne of God. At that moment none of us will be thinking about the melanin in our skin. Our gender will neither save nor damn us and when we look on the face of God we’ll see clearly the ultimately arbitrary divisions of language and culture.

The most pernicious poison of postmodernism is that it hides the fundamental fact that the things that unite us are far more important than the things that divide us. African-American and Caucasian citizens may not see eye to eye on judicial reform, but this pales in comparison with the fact that they are both subject to mortality. Rich and poor citizens may disagree about economics, but this is of small importance when viewed in light of the fact that they share God’s image, His moral expectations, and His offer of salvation.

Postmodernism is grounded in an epistemology of separation that inevitably leads to division and alienation. When we focus on the things that divide us we lose sight of the things that unite us and it is these things that are of ultimate and eternal importance.