The Seven Mountains – Education
The Seven Mountains – Education
Education is the mind of a nation. It is the institution that transmits the knowledge of generations into the present youth of our nation. It is to communicate discriminately what is worthwhile and of good repute. All education is not equal. Good education develops out of a biblical worldview deriving from applied theology.
What we want in our nation is education that enables people to self-govern – to lead themselves in the ways of truth. We want education that equips citizens to use their God-given talents and abilities to contribute to the life of the nation. Good education should produce scientific breakthroughs, brilliant businesses, well-learned educators, skillful artisans and musicians, and governmental servants of good conduct who have a healthy worldview. It ought to produce great agriculture, industry, technology, and innovation. It should grow national prosperity. It should ensure a sound justice system.
Within the 7 Mountain Framework, the Education Mountain encompasses the education of the entire nation. As Christians, we tend to self-preserve. Our educational worldview may not extend beyond protecting our own children’s education. We may homeschool our children or put them in a great Christian school. These are noble sacrifices for Christian parents to make. It ensures that our lineage is provided a quality education founded in truth. But the next step is to serve the next generation in our nation.
Discipling the education mountain will require Christians to work in mainstream education. This will include teachers, principals, coaches, curriculum writers, textbook writers, school board members, etc. The goal is not to control education. It is to disciple it. Let truth be its master, not Christians.
The same applies to higher education. Post-truth philosophy abounds in our nation’s universities, especially in the humanities courses such as English, History, Art, Philosophy, Sociology, and Psychology. These are overrun with professors who cannot profess truth for they operate in a post-truth worldview.
I once sat in a history class at my university listening to my professor lament plagiarism as a moral wrong. She had been impressed upon by the school to lecture on the moral depravity of plagiarism to her class. Her class responded with a myriad of reasons for plagiarism being excusable. She was aghast. This is the same professor who had told our class all semester that there is no truth and no way to know the history. She failed to see the contradictions of her worldview. I could get angry and think she is purposely indoctrinating her students into a moral malaise of relativism. However, I know that she is only teaching what she believes to be accurate and fails to understand the consequences of her worldview.
If I harbor anger toward those in education as people who are intentionally teaching falsehoods to unsuspecting youth, I will believe Christians are victims unable to ever reform our national education. Instead, I can rest assured that truth is not common sense and people who do not have the truth do not, in fact, have it. They are not people who know the truth and choose to teach lies instead.
Without the Bible as true revelation informing us of what is true, you have no foundation on which to base the existence of truth. The world will only move farther away from what is good education without Christians shining the light of truth into the darkness of what has become our nation’s educational system.
As Christians, some of us, but not all of us, are called into the mountain of education. For some that will be serving the children of believers in Christian schools or educating children at home. For others, it will be serving inside the schools and universities to make an impact on our nation’s education at large.
Maybe you are homeschooling a child who will one day become an educator. Your job is fanning that flame of passion in that child. Perhaps you are paying tuition for your child who will one day grow up to write the nation’s textbooks. Knowing that the education mountain is for the flourishing of the entire nation will help you parent those children in their vocational callings.
The work of reformation is multi-generational, but it starts today.