Paul wrote so eloquently in Colossians 1 about the pre-eminence of Christ and how He was not only the Creator of all thing but is also IN all things. Christians don't have a secular option. For those who are believers all things are sacred because Christ is all and in all. One of the traits of post-modernism has been the tendency of many believers to compartmentalize God out of most areas of their lives. God is what they "do" on Sunday but that's where it ends. It's like the farmer who raises several types of grain on his farm and has a silo for each type of grain. He strives to keep the grains separate, in its own silo.
One of the disturbing traits often seen in the 21st century Christian is a type of "silo syndrome". There is a silo where the believer keeps God and his religious activities. Then there are other "silos" for the other activities of life; a silo for his business, a silo for his dating, a silo for his college choices, a silo for his career choice. And on and on. God is kept separate from his other areas of life. It doesn't take a genius to see that this is a dangerous way for a Christian to live his or her life. A few years ago I had a senior in a Christian school tell me where he went to college was none of God's business, that was his decision to make. I was stunned, but soon came to realize that this type of thinking was not all that uncommon for Christians today.
I have been in Christian education for over 35 years and have seen the pendulum swing far and wide in the field. Christian schools in my native North Carolina began in the 1960's, often out of a way of avoid integration. They were often "white flight" schools that masqueraded as Christian schools. It was a shameful period of history for Christian education. What was also a blight on our ministries was the tendency to devalue academics by putting teachers in classrooms, teaching subjects for which they had little or no academic background. We embarrassed the name of Christ by being "fly by night", slipshod organizations proudly, if ignorantly, proclaiming that all we needed to be a good teacher was a knowledge of the Word. Thankfully, most of those schools have long since closed their doors, but the stigma they left still affects us in the public eye today. But I am a little disturbed about how far the pendulum has swung the other direction. I fear even in our Christian education field we are teetering on the edge of a sort of "silo syndrome" in our philosophy of Christian education.
There is an alarming trend in many so-called, "Christian" schools to move away from biblical integration in all subject areas. In our attempts to be academically minded we have come dangerously close to isolating the teaching of the Scriptures in the Bible class "silo" or in the chapel "silo" and have started to speak less and less of the Bible in math or history or science or literature. The problem this presents is the diminishing of the main distinctive in Christian education. In the next segment of this blog I want to address what is the TRUE distinctive of Christian education. It isn't dress codes or conforming to rules or being able to quote a litany of Bible verses. It is biblical integration, and it is absolutely vital we never move away from that and fall prey to the "silo syndrome" in our Christian schools.
Grace and peace to you!
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