Understanding how the Lordship of Jesus Christ extends to all areas of life.
Here is a clip of Israel Wayne discussing homeschooling on a national Christian television program:
Israel Wayne is an author and conference speaker who works with Wisdom’s Gate Ministries, publisher of the Home School Digest magazine.
In his book, Revolution, which focuses on the life of the American church, researcher and cultural analyst George Barna uses the term “mini-movements” to describe a number of forces that are shaping the landscape of modern Christendom. According to Barna, research is showing that the most dramatic life-changing catalysts at work among believers today are mini-movements that are not connected with any particular national denomination or specific local church effort.
What are some of these movements that are challenging people to become more serious in their faith and to embrace a comprehensive lifestyle of following Jesus in every area of their lives? The following are some of the movements that I think are the most significant in our day and age. They are not given in any particular order of chronology nor importance. They each have their place and are likely indispensable in the overall big-picture of God’s plan for our day and age.
I have to start with this one because it is the one to which I’m most intimately connected. The modern Christian homeschooling movement has been nothing short of a move of God on our land. It reflects the heart of Malachi 4:6, where God promises to turn the hearts of fathers back to their children, and children to their fathers. Christian parents must take responsibility for the spiritual upbringing of their own children if they want to see Christianity survive the forces of postmodernism and Islamo-fascism rampant in our world today.
Beginning in the 1960s with John Whitcomb and Henry Morris, the return to a Biblical view of origins and the emergence of a new breed of Bible-believing scientists, has revolutionized the Christian world. I believe that the Creationist movement in many ways helped to inspire a new interest in Christian education, encouraging the expansion of Christian schools and later homeschooling in America. This was in many ways a movement of reformation, calling Christians back to believing in the inspiration and authority of the holy Scriptures.
Christian Financial Management
When the late Larry Burkett first emerged on the scene in the late 1970s, talking about financial stewardship, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Today, there are hundreds of Christian financial coaches, and a number of national ministries dedicated to helping believers to become good stewards and managers of God’s resources. There is much work yet ahead, but the groundwork has been amply laid for this important movement to stir hundreds of thousands of Christians to channel their resources in Kingdom activities, rather than worldly pursuits and pleasures.
Men’s Ministry
While all outreaches to the family are important, none is more vital than ministries that reach out to men and encourage them to take spiritual leadership of their homes. Most Christian men have not had the right kind of role models, and therefore feel inadequate to lead their wives and children according to the Scriptures. Groups like Promise Keepers broke ground in this effort of challenging men, and hundreds of ministries (some of them much more effective) have continued this endeavor.
Family-Integrated Church / House Church
In a world where the family is too often split apart by secular forces, many parents have been concerned that the common church practice of age-segregated learning/worship is further exacerbating the problem of disunity in the home. Tens of thousands of families have opted for a method of corporate teaching and worship that are not traditional, but are more Biblical in practice than the typical local church. Absent are “junior church,” age-segregated Sunday school classes, VBS and youth group activities. These family-integrated fellowships usually encourage fathers to lead family worship at home, and the church leaders often strive to avoid going around parents to teach their children.
The Worship Revolution
Among young people in America (and around the world), there is a renewed desire for authentic worship. All over the country there are massive gatherings of people who have come to cry out to God to move in our day. Sometimes these events are reminiscent of revivals of days gone by, and other times they are little more than Christian rock concerts, but increasingly there are select leaders within this movement who are promoting a God-centered (rather than man-centered, self-therapeutic) approach to worship. This movement began mainly in the UK and has found its way to American shores. There is also a renewed emphasis on songs that are theologically sound and vertically oriented (focusing on God, His work and His attributes), rather than a rehash of endless “God is my girlfriend” type songs that are presented as “worship.”
Independent Christian Film-making
This may seem like an odd thing to include in the list, but we live in a visual culture, and no force has shaped modern American society more than television and the movies. Because of the blatantly objectionable content of films from the beginning of the “Silver Screen,” Christians abandoned film-making as an evil endeavor and left it to the dominance of unGodly people. As a result, billions of people receive their worldview through a media channel that is corrupt in it’s content and methods. That is changing as solid Christian believers are creating excellent films to the glory of God. All of the Arts need to be reformed, not just film, but this is perhaps the most unexpected and encouraging development I’ve seen in the past decade.
Biblical Worldview / Apologetics
When I was a child, Christian worldview training and the teaching of apologetics were largely related to seminarians. Today there are numerous websites, including my own www.ChristianWorldview.net site, conferences, online courses, books, videos and many other resources for learning to understand and defend the Christian faith as it relates to all areas of life. This is one of the most important movements of our day.
I have seen a renewed emphasis on “deeper life” teachings in recent years, and a renewed desire to know Christ more. Thousands of people are reading books and articles on the revivals of days past, and desiring to see holiness restored to the Church. I have been able to participate in several conferences with a focus on repentance, forgiveness, forsaking sin and surrender to the Spirit of God. The old thing is the new thing. What a joy to see the “old” message returning in a new and fresh way. Our magazine, Brush Arbor Quarterly, reflects this emphasis.
Get on the Move
People who believe in the Lordship of Jesus Christ over the totality of human existence, tend to be involved in many, if not all, of these movements. If you are unfamiliar with any of these movements, I would encourage you to check them out, and see if the Lord would have you join Him in what He is doing.
Preface: I am very pleased to be able to share this essay with you because David Quine is a man who has had considerable impact on my own life and is part of my personal journey. In the late 1980s, David began writing a regular column for my mother’s magazine, the Home School Digest, and I began to read his articles. I met David and Shirley Quine for the first time at the HEAV Convention in Lynchburg, VA in, I believe 1989, when I was 13 or 14 years old.
While my mother had recently begun reading Francis Schaeffer and had been impacted by his works, I saw them as dry, academic and unappealing. It was through David, listening to his enthusiasm for applying a Biblical worldview to the Arts and all of life, that I first became interested in Dr. Schaeffer’s writings (which have substantively shaped my own personal worldview profoundly since that time).
David Quine also helped to shape my own philosophy of education, and homeschooling in particular. I have been so blessed to see his faithfulness over the many years and have been honored to go from being a teenager sitting in the audience listening to him speak, to eventually speaking at conferences together with him. David has invested in what really counts: passing on the faith from generation to generation. Because of that, even though he is a humble and unassuming man, his work will remain and endure for many, many generations. I am thankful to call David Quine my friend and to encourage you to plug into his work and learn from his wisdom. You will be thankful that you did. — Israel Wayne
David Quine
The Authority of the Word of God — My Personal Journey (by David Quine)
Once again in history science and culture are challenging the authority of God’s Word. The focus of the issue is the first eleven chapters of Genesis and then the many verses that reference those chapters. The challenge: Do these passages of Scripture represent true space-time history or simply a Christian concept of truth? In other words, is it truth or allegory? This is not just some theoretical classroom discussion, but rather it reflects my own person journey of my understanding of the authority of the Word of God over the past 40 years of study.
This is not a new challenge, but one that has been repeated throughout the history of Western Civilization. Think back with me for a moment to the time of the Renaissance. Do you remember the meaning of the word? Renaissance means ‘re-birth.’ Have you ever asked yourself what it was the re-birth of? It was the re-birth of classical Greek and Roman thinking. The people living in the period of history immediately before the Renaissance based their thoughts and ideas upon the authority of the Word of God. Step back in history one more period of time into the age of Classical Rome and Greece. It was during this period in which the writings of Homer (Iliad and Odyssey), Virgil (Aeneid), Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle served as the authority of truth and reality. The diagram below illustrates this historical shift:
Classical Greek and Roman Period —> The Middle Ages —> Renaissance (the re-birth of Greek and Roman thinking)
There are a couple of important ideas to consider. It was the Christians of the Renaissance who reaching back into the period of Classical Greece and Rome were bringing forward in time and re-introducing the writings of Homer, Virgil, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle into their own culture. This can be seen in the paintings of the Sistine Chapel in Rome where the paintings of the prophets (sibyls) of Greece are side-by-side with paintings of the great prophets of God or in your local library in the work of Dante’s Divine Comedy in which the ideas of the spiritual life are those of “the great philosophy Aristotle”! In effect, these believers ended a period of time (the Middle Ages) in which individuals were basing their lives on the authority of Scripture alone. It is very interesting that those who consider the Renaissance a movement in the proper direction will often call the Middle Ages the Dark Ages! They consider it a Dark Age because those people did not read the classical works of Greece or Rome. The classical Renaissance thinkers began introducing the works of Greece and Rome into the Christian culture of their time period. Carefully consider what they did! They ended the Middle Ages!
However, the story does not end there. God in His grace raised up another movement in Northern Europe — the Reformation. The men and women of the Reformation rejected the classical thought of the Renaissance and embraced Scripture alone (Sola Sciptura) for faith and living. Western Civilization flourished as the Word of God served as its foundation.
The conflict seems to be repeated in every age. For example, in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s the authority of Scripture was once again challenged. Guess which book and chapters of the Bible were being challenged. If you thought Genesis chapters 1 – 11, you are right. They were being told that those chapters were just a picture — a story — but not true science or history. However, in the early 1950′s God began a new movement in America. A movement that spread across our land — a return to the authority of Scripture. People like Francis Schaeffer, writing in Genesis in Space and Time, and Henry Morris, writing in The Genesis Flood, began fighting for the historicity of Genesis chapters 1 – 11!
Dr. Francis Schaeffer
This is where I come into the story — my personal journey.
I was raised in a church that rejected those first chapters of Genesis. My pastor rejected heaven and hell. Even Jesus was no longer a real historic person. He was only a fictional idea — a concept –of what a person should strive to become. I was told by the pastor that this was the natural progression of realizing that the first eleven chapters were just a story. By the grace of God in 1967 I became a Christian in my junior year in high school. My view of Scripture changed — it was becoming the sole authority of my life. After graduating I went off to college to begin my studies to become a geologist. I found myself back into the conflict over the authority of the Word of God. In my classes Science and Reason overruled the authority of Scripture at every turn. This caused me to do a great deal of searching. Was there enough evidence for me to accept the authority of Scripture as true in all it teaches or would I accept Science and Reason as the final authority?
Dr. Henry Morris
It was in my senior year in college that I began reading The Genesis Flood. This book gave me a solid scientific basis for knowing that Genesis 1-11 is true. A couple of years later I read Genesis in Space and Time. This book gave me a solid Scriptural basis for knowing that Genesis 1-11 is true. Now I have a very solid basis for knowing and believing that the first chapters of Genesis are true in the truest sense! It is not just a concept, but true space-time history. Two years after finishing my BS in Geology I returned to the same university to begin work on a MS in Curriculum and Instruction Education for the purpose of learning how to write curriculum which teaches how to give a defense for our faith. During that time I had a discussion with a former geology professor who although he was a deacon in a mainline church said that he would have failed me in every class had he known I would come to such a view of Scripture.
That brings us to the 1980′s and the beginning of homeschooling. There were not many of us during those early days of home schooling. There were no curriculum fairs and no conventions. But there was a commitment of the parents to raise their children under the authority of God’s Word and that included a historical understanding of all of Genesis. When local groups started conferences there was this same mindset.
About 15 years ago a new movement of education was being introduced into home schooling. This movement began reintroducing, at very young ages, the ideas of Greek and Roman thinking through such readings as The Children’s Homer, The Black Ships Before Troy and many others. Does it sound familiar? Remember the Renaissance? Once again there is a mixing of Greek, Roman, and Christian ideas pouring into the hearts and minds of our young children.
The apostle Paul warned those in his days with these words:
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ … (Ephesians 4:14-15)
See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Colossians 2:8)
I am concerned for the next generation. What they are taught will soon be what they believe. Pearl S Buck was the daughter of missionary parents in China in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. She was taught in the morning with a curriculum from a Christian point of view and then in the afternoon she was taught a classical curriculum. In her autobiography, My Two Worlds, she writes this:
“These were strange conflicting days when in the morning I sat over American schoolbooks and learned the lessons assigned to me by my mother… while in the afternoon I studied under the wholly different tutelage of Mr Kung. I become mentally bifocal, and so I learned early to understand that there is no such condition in human affairs as absolute truth. There is only truth as people see it, and truth, even in fact, may be kaleidoscopic in its variety. The damage such perception did to me I have felt ever since, although damage may be too dark a word, for it merely meant that I could never belong entirely to one side of any question.”
“Mentally bifocal” … “kaleidoscopic” … “damage” are powerful words in describing her personal inability to believe in absolute truth.
We must be very careful what we are teaching our children — and particularly our younger children because we know that God is very concerned about what they will believe.
In 1984 Shirley and I started Cornerstone Curriculum so that we could assist parents in preparing their children to give a clear explanation and defense for why they believe what they believe. The foundation for such a defense rests squarely upon the belief that all of Scripture including Genesis 1 – 11 is true space-time history. It is Scripture that gives direction in understanding science, history, and culture and not the reverse. Neither science nor history can be properly understood apart from the revealed Word of God. The starting point is the Word of God and not the thoughts of man. We believe that every course of study is under the authority of Scripture alone. This is what a Biblical World View Education is all about.
God Bless you as you disciple your children,
David and Shirley Quine
Israel Wayne: Josh, you’ve become known as someone who promotes the concept of absolute truth, and many of our readers would already be familiar with many of your materials devoted to that subject. However, you’ve brought out a different dynamic in some of your newer materials, and that is the aspect of relationship. Can you explain to us why it is important to cultivate a relationship in the transmission of truth?
Josh McDowell: Well, there are many reasons. First of all, that’s how God created us. Science now shows (see Josh’s executive summary of the study by Dartmouth Medical School) that a baby’s brain from the time they are born, and this is amazing, is physically, biologically hard-wired to connect in relationships. I thought, come on, how can science…but then I thought, wait a minute, God created us. God says in Exodus 34:14 (NLT), “You shall worship no other gods, but only the LORD, for he is a God who is passionate about His relationship with you.” Then it makes sense that God would create us to desire to have a relationship and need a relationship with Him and others. So God created us for relationship. Second, God’s dimension, God’s program for truth is in the context of relationships. All truth is relational. Jesus said, “I am the Truth.” Most people have no idea what that meant.
What is truth? Webster defined it, “Truth is that which has fidelity to the original.” Fidelity means the same as “equal to.” So truth is that which is the “same as” or “equal to” the original. What does that mean? Let’s suppose that I say have a liter of water. You say, “No you don’t.” I say, “I do too.” You say, “You do not!” Now is my statement true and yours false, or is your statement true and mine false? We would catch a flight and fly to Paris, France. We’d go to the far out suburb where there’s the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, where they have all the original measurements in metrics. Linear, liquid, solids, everything. We would like my bottle, my liter of water, and we would compare it with the original. Remember, truth is that which has fidelity to the original, same as, equal to. If the water in my bottle equaled the original measurement of a liter then my statement is true. Why, there was fidelity to the original. But if there is a little more or less water then my statement was false. Why, because there was no fidelity to the original. Now, picture this, Jesus said, “I am the truth” in John 14. What did He mean by that? He meant that he had fidelity to the original, or Jesus said, “I am the same as, equal to, the original.” Who is the original? God the Father. It’s probably the boldest claim to deity that Jesus ever made. You see, Mohammed could never say that, Buddha couldn’t say that, no one. Only Jesus. Others say I have the truth, I teach the truth, I believe in truth. Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Why? Because “I am the same as the original, God the Father.”
Do you know why in that context he said, “Why do you say you do not know the Father, when you know me? For if you know me, you know the Father.” Why? Because “I am the same as, equal to the original.” He said, “Why do you say you believe in the Father, but you don’t believe in me? If you believe in me you’ll believe in the Father.” Why? Because “I am the same as, equal to, the Father, the Creator.” And it says there, “Why do you say you haven’t seen the Father?” Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me you’ve seen the Father.” Why? Because “I am the Truth.” This is why he said, “I am the visible representation of the invisible God.” Why? Because “I am the truth.” Christ is the truth. Why? Because he is the same as, equal to, the Father. Now that becomes our standard for everything. Why is lying wrong? Because God is truth. Why is hatred wrong? Because God is love. Let’s put it this way, why is lying wrong? Because there is no fidelity to the original. God is truth.
Jesus intended truth to be relational. He became man. God became man, as truth, and he related to people. So He has created us to understand truth in relationships. That if it is true, it will work. This is why I think the scripture is so dogmatic about relationships. For example, “I have been constantly aware of your unfailing love, and therefore I have lived according to the truth.” I’ll tell you this with homeschooling, just like everything else, but especially more in homeschooling, because they become the source of the very truth they teach, if those kids do not believe, in their hearts of hearts, “My dad and my mom loves me,” they will walk away. It’s the relationship that engenders the belief. I believe part of a Biblical worldview is relationships. If you don’t have relationships incorporated in there it’s not a Biblical worldview. It’s isolated, it separated. We’ve got to teach that all truth is relational. Therefore, no matter what part of our worldview, we’ve got to show that it’s relational. Like with the deity of Christ: what do I learn about the incarnation? Who I am. What do I learn about the resurrection? Where God wants to take me. What do I learn from the Scriptures? What God wants me to be like. All these scriptures are relational. God wants to show us what we need to be like, to relate to Him. Anyone who says, “I believe in a Biblical worldview” has to incorporate relationships in it. Where we are falling down today, and often in homeschooling, is where there is not that loving, intimate relationship. Now, I admire homeschooling. I think homeschooling and Christian schooling is the future of the Church. I don’t know how any kid can come up through all school: elementary, junior high, high school, going to a secular university and in the future really become a Christian leader, unless they had the most phenomenal parents and church. They won’t be able to. It’s too anti-Christian and secular oriented. It’s not public education, it’s secular education, it’s anti-Christian education. But so many of your homeschooling families come from a very narrow, fundamentalist perspective. Now I’m a fundamentalist, if by fundamentalist you mean you believe in the fundamentals of the faith. Yeah, the deity of Christ, the resurrection, the holy life, etc. Oh, I’m a hard-core fundamentalist when it comes to that, but not when it comes to the rules and regulations.
Here’s the principle, rules without relationships leads to rebellion. Truth, the truth of God’s word that we are so sold on in homeschooling…we want our kids to know truth, to be embedded in truth, truth to change their life. Truth without relationships leads to rejection. Relationships is part of God’s plan.
Israel Wayne: So just as Jesus modeled truth, as he discipled his followers, parents have the same responsibility. The children are to imitate them as they imitate Christ.
Josh McDowell: In John 13, Jesus says, “Imitate me, follow my example.” In 1 Thess. 1, it says, “Many of you are following our example,” and “Follow the example of those who follow Christ.” Oh yes! Especially today, if we don’t model that truth, they will reject it. There are two cultures now for the first time ever, and homeschoolers had better realize that. Kids do not process truth the way their parents do. Parents process truth through their minds and flow them through the scriptures. Kids process truth through their feelings, their emotions or relationships…called their experience. That’s why when a parent hears a true statement whether it’s the deity of Christ, the incarnation, the resurrection, or whatever, their mind is, “Well, if it’s true it will work.” For the kids, “If it works, it is true.” It’s totally different. For kids you create truth, for adults you discover truth. You can’t communicate the same way to them.
Adults see hypocrisy and say, “They’re not living the truth.” Kids see hypocrisy in their parents and say, “It’s not true.” That’s how the process. Wow! That’s devastating if parents don’t model that very truth. It’s very interesting that Dartmouth Medical School came out and said, you want to pass you values on, and you talk about homeschooling, then model that very truth.
Israel Wayne: What is the difference between belief and conviction?
Josh McDowell: It would be better to ask, “What is the difference between belief and faith?” You can believe something, and I think in the scriptures belief is the same as faith. In the scriptural belief, pisteuo, means not just to adhere to something intellectually, to know it. It means to adhere to it, to grab on, rely in. Probably the best description of that is the Amplified Bible, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world…that he who believes (adhered, relied in, grasped a-hold of). So true Biblical belief is what we see as faith. It is committing to that truth. I would say that when you commit to it, that’s when it becomes faith. It’s like, there could be a big gully here with a rickety bridge going across it, and I could say, “I believe that bridge will hold me. In fact, I know that bridge will hold me.” But that’s only belief. It becomes faith when I commit and walk across that bridge. Then I’m living by faith. It’s taking the belief and committing your life to it and living it out. The difference between belief and conviction is that belief basically in our mode, in our culture, not eastern culture, but in our culture, is to adhere to a set of cognitive facts or something. Conviction is to not only adhere to those facts but to know why you hold on to those facts, and to experience it. Faith is experiential. Faith means to live out what you believe. We need to lead our kids to a life of faith, not a life of belief. Because it goes one step further to experiencing that very faith. But here again, the parent can say all they want to the child, and it’s even more devastating in homeschooling if they don’t do it because they’re around that parent more, if that parent isn’t living by faith, with their money, everything, then those kids are going to walk away. That’s the downside of homeschooling.
Israel Wayne: Do you a message for homeschooling leaders?
Josh McDowell: If there is any hope (and this is just apart from spiritual things), if there is any hope for any morality in this country, the leaders are going to have to be homeschoolers. It’s going to have to be. They are not going to get it in public school. It’s going to be difficult in Christian schools. Now Christian schools are getting better and better. Thank God. They really are. If my son (Sean McDowell) has anything to do about it they’re going to get a lot better!
But I’m just thrilled that homeschoolers win the spelling bees and everything else…what a testimony. But there has got to be those relationships, or ultimately homeschooling will fail.
Visit Josh McDowell at www.Josh.org
To more info on Homeschooling, visit the Home School Digest magazine.
