Should We Support Christian Education?

Foundations

By Gilbert Johnson

. . . We must make every effort to give this generation the benefits of our Christian heritage on all levels of learning. In Christian education all disciplines are structured on a Christian, theistic worldview and are taught from a biblical perspective.

Christian educators believe that truth originates in God and that He must communicate it to man. This has been done by revelation. It is the self-revelation of God through Christ and His Word that is the foundation for a philosophy of Christian education. God, the Creator of both the universe and man, must be the center and circumference of all true education. . . .

The goal of education is to discover truth. To the Christian, truth is not relative. What it was yesterday and is today, it will be forever. Christ is the truth, and He remains the same yesterday, today, and forever.

What does today’s student need? Is it simply a measure of knowledge to prepare him for a vocation and to enable him to make some slight contribution to society? Surely he must also know the redemptive plan of God with its eschatological implications and the hope it offers for mankind.

Along with a genuine transforming experience through the power of the Holy Spirit, the student must have an intellectual grasp of truth in order to present an adequate defense of his Christian position before the unbeliever. Christian education is concerned for the whole man in his total environment in the present as well as providing a security that reaches on into eternity. . . .

Christian education is one of the strongest deterrents we have to the moral and spiritual deterioration that characterizes the civilized world. The preaching of the gospel to men everywhere is our primary task; this cannot be accomplished apart from Christian education. In this crooked and perverse generation young people need the benefits of higher education within a Christian framework if they are to serve their generation in the will of God.

Today’s Christians can afford many of the luxuries of modern living; our treasures on earth are manifold. But are we storing up treasures in heaven by the proper investment of our financial resources, our talents, and our time so that Christian education may be maintained on the highest possible level of spiritual fervor and scholastic performance?

This kind of an investment will make a notable contribution to the advancement of Christ’s kingdom.

—Dr. Gilbert H. Johnson, former education secretary of the C&MA
Adapted from The Alliance Witness, September 3, 1969