by Teri Ong

We are just now finishing our school year and preparing for testing and the grading of final projects. Things are winding down. As I look back on perhaps the most difficult semester I have had in several years, and evaluate it in light of having just taught two courses on the history and philosophy of education, one thing stands out, illuminated against a dark background: Christian education should be essentially a conservatory activity.

Government-sponsored education is “progressive” in nature. By that, I mean teachers and administrators of government school are always on the look-out for some new “need” they can meet in some new way for more and more people.  This is the best way to secure ever-increasing amounts of money for themselves. In the past few months I have seen articles in our local paper about the free breakfast program (“the largest in the state”), requirements for more inoculations against more diseases (including certain forms of sexually transmitted diseases), cultural awareness training programs, mandatory all-day kindergarten, environmental awareness through cooperative gardening at school, etc.

It all makes me feel irrelevant and, sometimes, very tired as I think about trying to keep abreast of all the newness.  But then I realize that I don’t have to keep up with everything because God and His truths are timeless– unchanging from generation to generation. As I teach literature or music or Colorado history, I don’t have to interpret everything according to the latest trends and polling data because the heart-needs of humans haven’t changed .

Students always need to know they are loved and cared for. They need to know that the only thing that matters in the universe is their personal relationship to God. They need to know that being people of character is what will make them successful adults. They need to know that God has superintended all the activities of man that we call history. They need to know that God created all of the material and all of the processes necessary for what we call science. The ability to read, write, and speak is evidence of the image of God in man. The ability to create things is a reflection of the creativity of God.

In other words, the core knowledge required to be a virtuous and mature Christian human is the same now as it has always been. It is my job as a mature Christian who educates less-mature Christians to conserve the timeless wisdom of God and make sure that as many as possible become hearer and doers of God’s Word and will.

There is a place for knowing how to take up the tools that are unique to a given age and

use them to apply truth to a new generation. For example, it is as good to know how to use computer technology appropriately as it is to use old-fashioned books. But that is miles away from embracing the new just because it is new, or rejecting the old just because it is old. As C. S. Lewis warned, if we are thinking in terms of being progressive, we must ask ourselves, “Progressing towards what?” (1) Are we envisioning the outcome of “progressive sanctification” as described by Paul in Ephesians 4? Or are we merely envisioning embracing the latest version of “pop culture 20.13″?

As I write that, I am preparing to use a bit of pop culture as an instructive parable. Those of you who know this little gem will likely think that it is already passe. Others may think, “How can she use a bit of Hollywood fluff to make any kind of spiritual point?” The movie I am going to reference is simply a pretty good story, and since “to the pure all things are pure,” I can see instructive aspects that even the writers didn’t necessarily know were there. As George MacDonald wrote in his essay, “The Fantastic Imagination,” “A genuine work of art must mean many things; the truer its art, the more things it will mean…  ‘But a man may then, imagine in your work what he pleases, what you never meant!’ Not what he pleases, but what he can. If he be not a true man, he will draw evil out at best… If he be a true man, he will imagine true things; what matter whether I meant them or not?”(2)

My illustration comes from Night at the Museum 2: The Battle of the Smithsonian. (3)

Early in the film, Larry the Night Guard finds out that many of the old displays in the museum are slated to be put into deep storage, never to see the light of day again. They are being replaced by technological wonders such as 3-D holographs and interactive robotics. Larry protests to the museum curator, “How can this happen? People love this old stuff.”

The curator, who is struggling with declining ticket sales, replies,“People love what is next.” It always boils down to bodies and bucks.

Larry can’t understand why the old things need to be put in storage; he loves them. He loves them because they literally came alive to him every night while he guarded the museum. He came to be personal friends with all of them.

In the end, he rescues all of the old things from deep storage and makes it so they can come alive for everybody.

Now for a bit of parabolic application.

The screenwriters, through the voice of the curator, were astute in their analysis that “people love what is next.” The Apostle Paul described the Athenians as those who delighted in sitting around hoping to hear or tell “some new thing.” (Acts 17:21) Apart from this human desire, there would be no such thing as “pop culture.” In order for money to be made in the market place, old things have to go into storage and new things have to be created and sold, and all that, as quickly as possible. As poet Ogden Nash quipped, “all that glitters is sold as gold.” (4)

But people should love the old stuff – the old paths.  These are the core truths and values that God calls good, that don’t require a continual striving after the wind (Eccl. 1:14).

“Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls…” Jeremiah 6:16

Some proponents of pop culture, even in Christian ministry and education, argue, “Things that don’t change grow stale and start to decay. That is why we must have a constant diet of change and newness.”  To which, I reply, “Balderdash!”  We don’t have to create, or even embrace “change” for its own sake. God creates all the change we need by making us slightly different people each day of our lives. We come to school or church each day with new experiences and new knowledge that God in His sovereignty has supplied. Likewise, the classroom or congregation of people we face each new day is not exactly the same classroom of people that it was the day before.

Each day that God gives us life is a day of growth in some area, and since He gave it to us, we can be certain that “In every change, He faithful will remain.” (5) The unchanging God, who is “The same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb 13:8), will meet our timeless needs with the eternal supply of His Word. The issues of life and death are no different today than they were for Adam and Eve.

The sad words in Jeremiah 6:16 are at the end of it, “But they said, We will not walk therein.”  Many, I would even venture to say, most people in our society do not care for the old paths, the old truths, the old virtues. They are modern Athenians, sitting with their social media, craving to hear or to tell some new thing.

Much of what passes for “education” in 21st century America is the moral and intellectual equivalent of the latest brand of energy drink, smart phone app, or “reality” show.  It may be fun, or even stimulating, but it has no staying power, especially when life gets hard.  But people, especially young people, will not resist the new and exciting, and administrators will be happy for the resultant bodies and bucks that are streaming in their door.

The educational program or church ministry with high-energy, pop-appeal may give off an aura of well-being, but “personal peace and affluence” (6) are not legitimate goals of the Christian life. Love for these things can make them “become  gods: then they become our demons,” and “demons never keep their promises.” (7)

What is the answer as an educator?

We don’t have to give in to the mentality “People are going to get their pop culture somewhere, so it might as well be from us.” Yes, they probably will get their fill of pop culture, but we don’t have to feed it to them. What would you think of a parent who said, “My children will only eat snack cakes and drink soda pop, so that is all I try to give them. It is useless to try to feed them nutritious meals”? We should think that strategy is absurd.

If people truly no longer care about the old stuff, the answer is not to give them a flashy diet of the new and exciting: the answer is to get them to love and value the timeless truths that God values. Going back to Larry the Night Guard– Larry loved the old things in a way that the public at large didn’t because they all came alive to him and became his friends. We, as Christian disciplers, need to make the old truths and old virtues come alive for others. We do that by animating those things in our own lives. As Paul wrote in Philippians 4:9, “Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.”

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis astutely contrasts the old-style education with the new:

Where the old initiated, the new merely “conditions.”  The old dealt with its pupils as a grown bird deals with young birds when they teach them to fly: the new deals with them more as the poultry keeper deals with young birds – making them thus or thus for purposes of which the birds know nothing. In a word, the old was a kind of propagation – men transmitting manhood to men: the new is merely propaganda. (Page

Feeding children, students, disciples (however you want to look at your non-optional Christian duty as an educator) a constant diet of humanistic philosophy on a pop-style serving dish must be recognized as “new” style education. Giving them an enjoyable diet of high-energy aural, visual, and emotional stimulation, is to be a “poultry keeper,” fattening them up for the eventual kill so others can make a profit. Christian teachers and Christian ministries are not automatically above this kind of operation. Paul warned about those “who suppose that godliness is a means of gain.” (I Tim 6:5)

A museum is a place of preservation and appreciation. Larry the Night Guard’s little friends came alive in an environment where they could be preserved and appreciated.  Bringing the old truths and virtues of God to life will best be accomplished in an atmosphere conducive to their appreciation and preservation. For example, students of art can best learn to appreciate the intricacies and beauties of Canaletto’s paintings in a room where there are several of them that can be compared and where the background architecture and decoration do not distract. It would be silly to have one hanging in isolation in the Tate Modern, perhaps at the head of Tracey Emin’s “Unmade Bed.” Yet that is just what many “pop” church and educational programs try to do– display an occasional Christian truth or virtue in a distracting or degraded setting. I have seen rooms in churches that were to be used for educational purposes decorated in “Christian grunge,” “Christian goth” and “strip mall video arcade” styles, not to mention sanctuaries done in “Hollywood sound stage” style.  Such settings do not lend themselves to the preservation and appreciation of sober-mindedness, uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, etc. (Titus 2:6-7)

I pray that I will never sell out and become a poultry keeper, and that as long as I have interactions with others I will bring the ancient truths of God to life for our mutual benefit.

References:

1 C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1996 ed.), p. 43.

2 George MacDonald, “The Fantastic Imagination” in The Complete Fairy Tales (New York: Penguine Books, 1999 ed.) pp. 7, 9.

3 Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian, a Shawn Levy film, Twentieth Century Fox (DVD version) 2009.

4 Ogden Nash, from the poem “Look What You Did, Christopher”

5 from “Be Still, My Soul” by Katharina von Schlegel.

6 This phrase was used by Francis Schaeffer.

7 C. S. Lewis paraphrasing M. Denis de Rougemont in The Four Loves (one of four books in The Inspirational Writings of C. S. Lewis) (New York: Inspirational Press, 1994 ed.) pp. 217 and 224.