A Bit to Read
A Way of Thinking
This afternoon a child in the congregation is to receive the sign and seal of God’s covenant of grace. It
gives an opportunity to reflect on the child’s identity – and therefore on how the child ought (eventually) to
think. Of course, how William ought one day to think is how we all today already need to think.
God is mighty to entrust a given child to any parent on earth, but He in wisdom has entrusted this child to
these parents. More, God is free to establish His covenant of grace with any of His choosing – and He in
mercy has established His covenant with this child, and therefore entrusted him to the care of godly parents.
What incredible wealth for little William, and for Jonathan and Jennifer! How vital that parents make a
point of showing their child, in deed and word, Who his Father in heaven really is.
Education
In our contemporary culture and country, the process of growing up involves formal education. This week
the school doors of the nation open again to begin another year of educating the children of the land. Alas,
most schools in the land disregard the fact of God’s existence, and so train children to think without
including God in their decision-making processes. Yet this God is real, and sovereign; there is not a square
inch of life that falls outside of God’s interest or jurisdiction. That is why we need to be so very thankful
for the God-centered schools the Lord has given us. May the Lord bless the labors of the children and the
teachers in the coming months, so that the next generation is equipped for a life of service in God’s
kingdom. It is our privileged responsibility as parents (with the assistance of grandparents and others
whom God has joined to His body in Yarrow) to stimulate and encourage our children to make the most of
the opportunity they receive to develop their talents for service in God’s kingdom.
As it is, several young people of our congregation will not attend John Calvin School here in Yarrow or
Credo Christian High School in Langley. Instead, these young people will continue their education on a
campus of University College of the Fraser Valley or in the British Columbia Institute of Technology, or
perhaps in one of the bigger universities of the province. They will find themselves in an environment
where God is ignored, and they will be taught to think without regard for God. To be complete, I should
mention that ignoring God, and therefore excluding Him from one’s way of thinking, happens also in many
work environments – and younger (and older) members of the congregation are invariably influenced by
this habit at work. All the more reason to analyze it briefly.
Linnemann
I have before me a book that begins with the following opener: “The university as a phenomenon of
Western culture was from the very beginning a pagan institution.” The author is a significant New
Testament scholar, Eta Linnemann (now deceased). In the early days of her professorship, she
emphatically denied the existence of God, argued that the Bible was put together solely and simply by
people (for heaven is empty), and exegeted Scripture from that perspective – and so simply excluded the
authority of God from her thinking. As a result, she found lots of errors and contradictions in the Bible,
ridiculed other sections of the Bible, and, briefly, trampled all over the holy Word of God.
There came the day when she, by the grace of God, realized that “God is not dead, nor has he resigned. He
reigns, and he is already executing judgment on those who declare him dead or assert that he is a false god
who does nothing, either good or evil” – as she writes in the book before me (Historical Criticism of the
Bible: Methodology or Ideology, Baker, 1990). As one born again through the regenerating work of the
Holy Spirit, she now looked critically and carefully at the way in which the university in which she taught
actually did its research and its teaching. Her conclusion: the human mind is made the final judge of all
truth. It has been so for centuries, she found, and dared to begin her book with the opener quoted above.
Though the last couple of decades have seen the rise of Christian universities, it remains a general truism:
secular education in today’s western culture does not bow before the living and sovereign God. Since some
of our youth study in such places, we do well to learn a lesson from this unbelieving-scholar-becomebeliever.
Limited by Sin
All education involves thought. The mind is a wonderful gift of God capable of thinking and learning, and
capable too of making judgments as to what is right or wrong. Through careful scientific habits as data
collection and analysis, one can prove a hypothesis right or wrong – and eventually acquire the technology
to send a man to the moon or the medical wherewithal to treat a broken bone or mind. It’s a system of
learning that elevates the human mind, that makes its conclusions (correctly acquired) infallible – until new
information comes to light that modify or correct the conclusions.
Well now, what is forgotten in our secular world is that all thought, even disciplined, scientifically
regulated thought, is limited by sin, and therefore inherently fallible. I think here of the church’s confession
in the Canons of Dort, III/IV, Art 1: through the fall man “brought on himself blindness, horrible darkness,
vanity, and perverseness of judgment in his mind….” Article 4 adds that man “does not even use it
[remaining light of nature, CB] properly in natural and civil matters.” The perverseness of judgment in his
mind means that the Christian student needs always to ask himself whether his (scientifically justifiable
conclusions) actually agree with the revelation of God. That’s to say that the student must consciously
place himself under the authority of the Bible.
Mind above Bible
This is the crux of the matter. In today’s secular institutions of learning (and working), you are expected to
operate just the other way around. Instead of you as student placing yourself under the Word, you –exactly
because you are a student are expected to place yourself above the Word. Then it’s quite permissible for
you to disagree with the logical conclusions of this philosophy or that, but it’s not acceptable at university
(or around a board room table) to disagree on grounds that God’s Word says so. If you wish to score well,
you will need to place the philosophy in question on a level with the Bible, then place yourself above both,
and then demonstrate –using rational thought why the Bible is correct and the mentioned philosophy
wrong. Placing the Bible above the mind is judged unscholarly, and attracts hefty penalty points.
When our young people, then, sit at the feet of instructors who see the human mind as the final judge of
what is right or not, these young people are taught a form of thinking. They are taught to judge something
right or wrong on the basis of human observation and analysis – or perhaps even human feelings or taste.
The mind, the person, becomes the final judge, sits enthroned as judge of what is true or not true. That
habit does no justice to the reality of Who God is!
Habits once learned are hard to shake. The danger is very real that those who learned this form of thinking
in school will apply this form of thinking also to matters of faith. One ends up with a rationalized faith,
where God’s instructions are subjected to my thinking – and I consider His instructions applicable for my
life only if they pass the test of my mental scrutiny. We realize: this is a different approach than Noah’s
was. Building an ark because God spoke of a flood made no sense to anyone’s mind. But faith does not
ask whether it makes sense, or whether I can understand. Faith hears and obeys.
The form of thinking promoted in secular education is not sovereign in John Calvin or in Credo (and no
doubt in other institutions of learning in the Valley). Yet inasmuch as this form of thinking is rampant
around us, and certainly characterizes secular universities and colleges, our Young People need to be very
aware of the sort of culture they enter, and what is wrong with it. As parents we also need to be very aware
of the environment into which we send our children, and speak about it with our children.
Discourage?
Does this mean that our youth ought actually to be discouraged from enrolling at secular institutions of
learning? For some youth, I think the answer is indeed Yes, they are to be discouraged. I say this
particularly with regard to those who are not yet settled in their commitment to the Lord, who do not yet
show clear evidence of regeneration. To allow such persons to sit at the feet of those who would instill in
their minds a pattern of thinking that is anti-God is a recipe for disaster.
Others, though, ought not to be discouraged; on the contrary. Education is good, even necessary. By the
grace of God there are youth who demonstrate clear evidence of renewal by the Holy Spirit. Of these it
may be expected that the Lord will hold on to them even when they daily breathe the humanistic air of their
institute of learning. Yet we are not to forget that the Lord uses means to hold on to those chosen to life.
Specifically, it is imperative that those who attend secular institutions of learning have a Christian home
environment on which to fall back in their off-campus hours, an environment where the sovereignty of God
even over thinking habits is recognized. Further, it is of great importance that those who attend such
Colleges or universities have good contact with their parents/guardians as well as with office bearers.
May the Lord graciously bless and protect with His care those children of His whose path has led them to
anti-Godly institutions of learning.
C Bouwman
1 September 2006