In the early 1980s the nation was shocked into alarm by a report on the state of America’s schools entitled, A Nation at Risk. So inept, so ineffective, and so dismal was the state of American education, this report concluded, that had a foreign enemy done this to us, we would regard it as an act of war.

What’s all the fuss about?
A Nation at Risk inaugurated a field day for pot-shotting American public education. Critic after critic, report after report, program after program appeared in an effort to fix the problem. “No Child Left Behind” is merely the most recent response to the continuing concern about American education.

But I’m not sure I know what all the fuss is about.  It seems to me that American education is doing just fine, thank you very much, and our legislators seem to think so as well, because they keep rewarding the established system of instruction with more resources and privileges, year after year.

American education is doing an excellent job at its stated objectives: creating economical and political men and women who will find their niche in the materialist economy and bow their knees to the system of political power, believing that every ill can be amended and every need addressed by economic and political means. The economy is limping, but growing. So is government (without the limp). Politics has become a year-round sport. And the evening news reminds us, day after day, that, at the end of the day, the only things that matter are the bottom line and the opinions of those in power (including themselves). I disagree with the naysayers: American education is doing just fine.

However, I do agree with the opinion stated by Charles Silberman back in 1978, just before all this educational hand-wringing and faucet-fixing began to heat up in earnest. In his book, Crisis in the Classroom, Silberman wrote, “almost everybody who wrote about education [in the past] took it for granted that it is the community and the culture – what the Greeks called paideia – that educates. The contemporary American is educated by his paideia no less than the Athenian was by his. The weakness of American education is not that the paideia does not educate, but that it educates to the wrong ends” (emphasis added).

Loss of a perspective
The fact is that contemporary educators, in cahoots with power-preserving politicians, have, through the schools, foisted a worldview on the American public that is dramatically at odds with the paideia that nurtured the Founders of the Republic. As Forest McDonald, Barry Alan Shain, and others have shown, the aim of education in pre-revolutionary America was the nurturing of a people who would create and inhabit a novus ordo seclorum – a new order of the ages, a social, political, and cultural expression of the divine economy. Indeed, as McDonald writes, “so habituated were Americans to thinking in Protestant terms that few could conceive of a civil order in any other way.”

How precisely opposite to the worldview and paideia that are churning out the getters-and-spenders-and-good-times-seekers who are the product of contemporary American education! The present system is succeeding marvelously well, but there’s nothing new under the sun about this civil order of self-seeking and self-indulgence which is the fruit of all those hours spent in the classroom.

The present paideia is likely to continue unfazed and unchanged by critics, at least in the short term. But if that paideia is ever to change, it will require the infusion of new thinking and courageous new leadership – political, educational, and familial – at every level of society. Those new leaders must be developed by a different paideia, with a perspective and worldview more like that of the Founders and less like that which obtains today. Until we nurture a generation of men and women who order and prosecute their lives according to a divine perspective and economy, we can only expect the present system of education to continue its preferred course, creating cogs for the economy and voters for the ballot box, while the culture continues its rapid slide into relativism, materialism, mere sensualism, and decadence.

What we need, in short, is a generation of Christian rulers.

The rule of Christ

Creating a new paideia to replace the present materialist enterprise will require, in the first place, a recovery of the Biblical Gospel. For nearly three generations now church leaders have nurtured a community of the followers of Christ who believe that the Gospel is primarily Good News about forgiveness, peace, and going to heaven when we die. Because of what Jesus has done we can be forgiven of our sins and know peace in this life, and peace evermore in heaven. That’s the “Good News.”

The present generation of Christians has learned this “Good News” all too well. So forgiven are we of our sins that we don’t worry about such unpleasant matters as conviction, contrition, repentance, and the pursuit of holiness. God loves us in all our sin. He will forgive whatever we do. There’s nothing we can do to wrest ourselves from the sin-forgiving hand of Jesus. So let the good times roll.

Further, we have become so determined to know the peace of the “Good News” that we seem to want to pursue it at just about any cost. We want to be at peace with our unbelieving neighbors, so we incorporate their culture into ours and invite them to find themselves right at home in our contemporary worship. We sponsor program after program designed to make our people happy in the Lord – at peace with themselves and one another – and when the old ones wear out, we invent and implement new ones. We have made an idol of peace and its handmaidens, happiness and comfort.

But the Gospel is not merely about forgiveness and peace. It is about the Kingdom of God – the rule of Jesus Christ. The Gospel of the Kingdom – of His rule over the nations in a divine economy of righteousness, peace, joy, and Spirit-filled power for transformation – was the Gospel Jesus preached, the reality He came to bring near, the curriculum with which He instructed His followers, the agenda He is advancing at the Father’s right hand, and the gift and message He entrusted to the community of those who want to follow Him. The Gospel of the Kingdom is about Jesus ruling the world according to the Law of God, by the gracious power of His Spirit, making all things new and putting all things under His feet to reconcile them to God with honor and glory. The Gospel is about Jesus ruling and instructing us to pray for the success of His rule, and to take our place in helping to advance that rule as a royal priesthood unto God (1 Pet. 2:9, 10).

Until we begin preaching and teaching the Gospel that Jesus proclaimed, we will not be able to raise up a generation of Christians who rule their own lives “under the heavens” and realize in all their labors the growing presence of Jesus’ rule of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Spirit.

The nature of the Kingdom of God
The rule of Christ, embodied in the Kingdom He is giving to His followers (Dan. 7.18; Heb. 12:28) is truly a new order of the ages – a novus ordo seclorum. It is a spiritual order, in which all the priorities, protocols, and values are rooted in eternal verities and unchanging norms. It is a Kingdom “not of this world,” as its King announced to a bemused tyrant (Jn. 18:36).

The Kingdom of God is also a moral order. Its concerns are interpersonal and judicial, and it is designed to bring into being a community of neighbors who love God and one another in ways holy and righteous and good (Rom. 7:12).

It is also a cultural order, intending to restore everything in heaven and earth to a condition of uprightness approximating the beauty, goodness, and truth of the original created order (Ps. 45:6).

The Kingdom of God is a personal order. It exists, in the first instance, in the souls of those who trust Jesus for the redemption of their lives, and who, having received the Kingdom in the Person of the Holy Spirit, find that, increasingly, from glory to glory, He is at work in them, willing and doing to transform them into the very image of Jesus Christ (Ezek. 36:36, 37; Phil. 2:12, 13; 2 Cor. 3:12-18).

Finally, the Kingdom of God is a progressive (not progressivist) order: those who have received it are called to seek it, to work diligently to realize its full potential, and to join Christ at the Father’s right hand in subduing all things in their lives and spheres of influence to the righteous, peaceable, good, and holy order which is the rule of Jesus Christ (Mt. 6:33; Mt. 11:12; Eph. 2:1-10).

When our pastors and teachers begin teaching this Gospel, rather than the truncated half-Gospel of forgiveness and peace – which, because it is not Jesus’ Gospel, must be another Gospel (Gal. 1:6-9) – then we will be in a position to begin thinking about a new paideia unto a new community of learners working together achieve a new order of the ages.

Educating for the Kingdom of God
We can only outline in the barest of terms what such a paideia might involve. It will, however, be dramatically different from what passes for Christian education in our churches today.

Certainly education that seeks the Kingdom of God must be rooted in Scripture and the grand tradition of the faith (2 Tim. 3:15-17; 2 Thess. 2:15). It must be committed to wide learning, for the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it (Ps. 24:1; Eccl. 1:12, 13), and He is putting all things under His feet to advance His rule on earth as it is in heaven (Eph. 1:22, 23).

The new paideia must focus, in all its expressions, on the formation of Godly character – minds captive to Jesus Christ, hearts enthralled with God and His Law, consciences trained to wisdom, and lives progressing in Godliness (2 Cor. 10:3-5; Ps. 119:97; 1 Tim. 1:5; 2 Cor. 7:1). Such an educational program can only be accomplished through a curriculum established in loving discipline, in which all willingly submit to those spiritual exercises and regimens that train the soul and life for Godliness. It must be a community undertaking, a conscious collaboration of home, church, and educational specialists at all levels.

Finally, education for the rule of Christ – education designed to nurture Christian rulers – must concentrate for the long term on the realization of a new spiritual order: the Kingdom of God. Four general objectives must guide all our instruction and assessment: the achievement of divinely-ordered lives, divinely-ordered relationships, divinely-ordered communities, and divinely-ordered culture. If we keep these objectives in mind, and order all our instruction to achieve them, we will certainly come closer than at present to nurturing a generation who rules their own lives, and in every sphere of their lives, according to the Kingdom agenda of our Lord.

Is such an education possible? Past generations of the followers of Christ have realized more of it than we in our own generation have even dared to dream, often against the most impossible of odds, and in the least likely of settings. The martyrs of the first three centuries; the Celtic Christians; the generations nurtured by Alcuin and Rabanus during the Carolingian revival; 16th-century Lutherans in Germany and Calvinists in Geneva; Hollanders at every level of society under Kuyper; and many, many other examples from Church history stand ready to encourage and enlighten us as we take up the task of nurturing a new paideia for a new order of the ages lovingly and truthfully prosecuted by a new generation of Christian rulers.

It is a long-term proposition, I admit. But what are the prospects for our children and grandchildren if we in our generation refuse to make the sacrifices, prepare ourselves, and redirect our educational efforts from the dismal failure which is contemporary Christian education to the brighter prospect of a Kingdom paideia?

Next steps

What role are you currently playing in the paideia – the educational environment – or your church? What are you contributing? What are you learning? Do you think this paideia will ever change unless we all begin thinking more along Kingdom lines? What will this mean for you. Share this article with some Christian friends. Meet to discuss these questions and consider what you might do together to strengthen the paideia of your church.

For additional insight to the work of Christian education, order Craig Dykstra’s book, Growing in the Life of Faith, from our online store. You might also benefit from reading T. M.’s previous ViewPoint series, “The Christian and Learning,” which is available as a free PDF download.

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