Scriptures, Worldviews and Education:

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Scriptures, Worldviews and Education Living the
Story in a New Era
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What does it mean to be educated?

• Recognise and rejoice in God and the goodness
  of all things he has made
• Discern and resist distortions within the
  created order
• Confront and renew those distortions with the
  grace of the gospel

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Five points of cultural transition
Progress
Pessimism
Commitment
Choice and change
Creed
Community
Logical, Rational
Irrational, Intuitive
Dogma
Deconstruction
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Worldviews
Worldviews are networks of implicit beliefs.
These beliefs are embedded in widely held stories
that answer fundamental questions of life and
serve to give meaning to the whole of life.
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I believe in Christianity as I believe that the
Sun has risen not only because I see it, but
because by it I see everything else.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
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Worldview Criteria

• Are the worldview beliefs coherent and
  consistent or contradictory? Does the story
  hold together?
• Are the worldview beliefs liveable? If I embrace
  a particular worldview, am I able to live out of
  it when confronted by all the experiences of
  life? Or will the living of life betray its
  inadequacy?

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Worldviews

• Genetic inheritance, basic personality and
  inborn insights
• Religious, philosophical and cultural traditions
• Socioeconomic conditions
• Various institutions such as marriage, the
  family, and education
• Human relations and friendships
• Vocational choice and work experience
• Psychological and physical health
• Sexual experiences
• Warfare
• The scriptures

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A mystery story
... with two narratives
The first is a sprawling, ramshackle narrative
that does not seem to be leading any place in
particular. It is filled with clues, false leads,
imaginative hypotheses, and characters ...
There is a second narrative. This narrative is
crisp and clear and explains in considerable
detail what was really occurring while the larger
narrative was unfolding ...
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It is important to understand that this second
narrative is not a subplot, even though it is
short. It is the disclosure of the architectonic
structure of the whole story. David Steinmetz
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And he said to them, O foolish ones, and slow of
heart to believe all that the prophets have
spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ
should suffer these things and enter into his
glory? And beginning with Moses and all the
Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the
Scriptures the things concerning himself. Luke
2425-27
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These are my words that I spoke to you while I
was still with you, that everything written about
me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the
Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their
minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to
them ...
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Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer
and on the third day rise from the dead, and that
repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning
from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these
things. Luke 2444-48
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Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer
and on the third day rise from the dead, and that
repentance and forgiveness of sins should be
proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning
from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these
things. Luke 2444-48
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Immersion Shapes Engagement
Gospel
Holy Spirit
Philosophy
Enthronement
Culture
Ascension
Worldview
Resurrection
Death
Life
21st century
Birth
Israel
Creation
Church
New Creation
Jesus Christ
Fall
LORD
Act 4
Act 5
Act 6
Prologue
Interlude
Act 1
Act 2
Act 3
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What is our responsibility as Gods people in the
21st Century?

• Immerse ourselves in the scriptures
• Incarnate the story individually and communally
• Tell the story intriguingly and brilliantly and
  invitationally
• Let the story shape education in every way big
  story/little stories

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It has seemed puzzling to me how greatly attached
to the Bible you seem to be and yet how much like
pagans you handle it. The great challenge to
those of us who wish to take the Bible seriously
is to let it teach us its own essential
categories and then for us to think with them,
instead of just think about them.
Rabbi Abraham Heschel (1907-1972)
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Elisha and the bears
He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was
going up on the way, some small boys came out of
the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go up, you
baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" And he turned
around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in
the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out
of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. From
there he went on to ?Mount Carmel, and from there
he returned to Samaria. 2 Kings 223-25
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Elisha and the bears
He went up from there to Bethel, and while he was
going up on the way, some small boys came out of
the city and jeered at him, saying, "Go up, you
baldhead! Go up, you baldhead!" And he turned
around, and when he saw them, he cursed them in
the name of the Lord. And two she-bears came out
of the woods and tore forty-two of the boys. From
there he went on to ?Mount Carmel, and from there
he returned to Samaria. 2 Kings 223-25
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The curses of the Mosaic law
Then if you walk contrary to me and will not
listen to me, I will continue striking you,
sevenfold for your sins. And I will let loose the
wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you
of your children and destroy you livestock and
make you few in number, so that your roads will
be deserted. Leviticus 2621-22
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If only there were evil people somewhere,
insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were
necessary only to separate them from the rest of
us and destroy them. But the line dividing good
and evil cuts through the heart of every human
being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of
his own heart? Solzhenitsyn in Plantinga, p. 49
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Postmodernism, in recognizing that we are all
deeply flawed, avoids any return to a classic
doctrine of Original Sin by claiming that humans
have no fixed 'identity' and hence no fixed
responsibility. You can't escape evil, within
postmodernity but you cant find anybody to
blame either. ... Second, the analysis of evil
offered by postmodernity allows for no
redemption. There is no way out N. T. Wright
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Christians have always measured sin, in part,
by the suffering needed to atone for it. The
ripping and writhing of a body on a cross, the
bizarre metaphysical maneuver of using death to
defeat death, the urgency of the summons to human
beings to ally themselves with the events of
Christ and with the person of these events, and
then to make that person and those events the
center of their lives these things tell us that
the main human trouble is desperately difficult
to fix, even for God, and that sin is the
longest-running of human emergencies. Cornelius
Plantinga
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Three distorted responses to fallenness
Incomprehension
Denial
Trivialisation
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November 2006
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March 2007
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Key worldview question What is wrong?

• Evil is not fundamental it is a distortion
• Evil is however pervasive and comprehensive
• Three contexts human heart, groaning creation,
  demonic
• Cross and resurrection transformation,
  renewal, victory over grace and judgment
• Important distinctions can be made between the
  source of evil and its consequences

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What does it mean to be educated?

• Recognise and rejoice in God and the goodness
  of all things he has made
• Discern and resist distortions within the
  created order
• Confront and renew those distortions with the
  grace of the gospel

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