The Bible clearly teaches that Christ is Lord. He reigns. He is the universal king, the King of kings and Lord of lords. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to him. Right now, he is acting throughout the world as he slowly but surely makes every enemy into a footstall. And yet sometimes you’d be forgiven for thinking that Christians didn’t believe this. We have ceded just about every bit of the public sphere to the enemies of Christ and acted if Christ’s lordship applies to our ‘hearts’ alone. We’ve acted as if the kingdom of Christ is an imaginary realm that we access when we die. But at least we’ve invited Jesus into our hearts though!
What happened to the conquering king? What happened to “Jesus shall reign where’er the sun does its successive journeys run, his kingdom stretch from shore to shore, till moons shall wax and wane no more”? Instead, we sing about running to his arms and how ‘nothing compares to his embrace.’ We’ve given up the majestic truth of Christ’s authority and gradual conquering of the nations and his enemies for an insipid private relational realm.
It is time evangelical Christians gained a renewed understanding of the truth of Christ’s lordship and its implications for culture. As education is my particular interest and field of expertise, I will briefly describe two implications of Christ’s lordship for education.
Firstly, Christians, and particularly Christian pastors and leaders, must wake up to the truth that education is not something neutral. It does not sit outside of Christ’s kingdom. Nothing does. And if Christ is Lord of all, there is an imperative for us to train our children up to recognise his kingly authority over every single atom in this universe. That means Christians cannot but be supportive of a truly Christian education, by which I do not mean a basically secular education with a prayer to start the day and a worship assembly once a week. No, I mean we must support an education that trains children to understand everything from a Christian perspective. Christ must be recognised as lord of all – economics, politics, science, history, mathematics and language. If this is true, we must evacuate our children from the government schools which do not recognise Christ’s lordship but teach rather the lordship of demos. Our children cannot hope to learn Christ’s lordship from pagans who deny it.
Secondly, since Christ is indeed Lord, a truly Christian education will reflect the actual structure of reality in a way that false worldviews cannot. Therefore, a truly Christian education will be superior to what is offered by those who deny Christ’s lordship. Christians should fund and run the very best educational institutions in the world. We should be the leaders in providing a first-class education. People should look at what we are doing, and though they deny Christ’s lordship, they should want their children to be trained by us. And that is what we do see in Christian schools which unashamedly provide a truly Christian worldview education.
Now imagine if this were multiplied throughout the West. Imagine if all supposedly Christian schools actually taught and recognised Christ’s lordship. Imagine if Christian film-makers and storytellers, and IT specialists and scientists and philosophers self-consciously acknowledged Christ’s lordship in their field and sought to apply it. Imagine the impact Christianity will again have when we get it back out into the public sphere.