I don’t think they’re useless, I think there are some very good and real benefits to them, especially from a pastoral perspective. I’m not denying that they might help Christians grow in knowledge and faith, deliver them from (some) temptations, provide a safe environment, provide a supporting community, and encourage Christian friends, among (no doubt) many other benefits. And all this at what is clearly a vital time for development.

The other side of the pastoral issue is this:
1. That is the job of parents and the Church. Of course there are cases where parents or the church don’t fulfil their role, in those cases Christian schools are great! But in general all of the above should be and can be found in healthy families and/or good churches.
2. It reflects a wrong view of the most ‘vital’ time. The time when most of your friends will fall away is not during school, though some do, but in the transition from school to uni and throughout uni. Secular unis, tafes, even workplaces provide not just intellectual challenges to faith but, and more importantly, lifestyle challenges. The question I have is ‘Does growing up in a sheltered environment make the transition easier, or more difficult?’
I don’t have a definitive answer, but here are my thoughts:
a) The difference is greater coming from a Christian school. Instead of the transition being a slight shift up a scale, it is a jolt onto a new scale altogether.
b) Coming from an already alcohol, drug, and sex environment prepares you for uni culture. I was already used to saying no, having courage of my convictions and standing up to peer-pressure. The difference of uni was one of magnitude, but not of kind. It was more of the same. (of course these same things happen at Christian schools, but I get the feeling that it is less common and less extreme). I just try to imagine someone who has never really been to an all-out party before trying to say no to a 20-year old guy holding a goon sack, yelling at you and telling you to open up.
c) After school, one needs to be independent in seeking Christian fellowship. There is no daily devotion at uni, no home-room tutor, no chapel. Stronger Christians, regardless of what type of school they came from, will have no problem seeking out the Christian group and/or a new church. But those who have relied on the institutionalised stuff and never became proactive (simply because they never needed to) might well slip off the radar if they don’t actively seek out other Christians.

So those, off the top of my head, are my pastoral concerns. But my biggest criticism is missional.

My heart is, and always has been, for mission. (So I think I tend to overlook the pastoral aspects sometimes.) This has been, I think, largely due to going to such a pagan school and seeing people I love dearly debauch their way to hell.

From a missional point of view, I think Christian schools (and sporting teams!!!) have a lot to answer for.
I recognise that these are not going to apply to every student in a Christian school, but in general:
1. They take missionaries out of the mission field. There were only 2 other Christians in my grade. The grade below me has 2 in total. That’s 5 Christians trying to reach over 200 lost people. I get emotional about this: every day of school was a conscious effort to try to start conversations, to lift your friends out of their unthinking daze, fend off attacks on your faith, answer objections, and, somehow, hope desperately to present the gospel faithfully. Please hear me: We could use more workers!
Imagine spreading your school alone (not to mention St. Philips, 7th Day Adventist ect) over the other Central Coast schools – there’s another 3 to 5 missionaries per school PER GRADE!

2. They disarm the missionaries. For sure, Christian schools probably provide the *tools* for missionaries in that they grow them in head knowledge. But they remove the urgency for active, desperate evangelism:

• A greater proportion of their friends are already saved.
• Those unsaved are less obviously so.
• The institution assumes responsibility, if not in fact than at least in perception.

Why try hard to share your faith? Most of your friends are Christians, and the ones that aren’t already hear it every week and they’re sick of it. (I’m not making this up, I’ve heard it from someone at your school)
Going to a secular school, surrounded by people who actively and openly reject the gospel, are proud of their sins, and are on their way to hell – it deepens your conviction of need daily! When all 10 of your best friends are unsaved: you can’t help but care. The missionary in a secular school is a deeply convicted one. From what I’ve seen, the missionary in a Christian school is an uncommon one.
This is born out by the CCEC nitechurch mission team: D—, R—, L—- and myself all went to secular schools (A— being the sole exception. He has been out of school a while though.)

3. On a related note, how many people in your grade openly challenge the truth of the Bible, the existence of God, the justice of God, their own sinfulness? And if they do, who answers them? The students or the teachers?
At CCGS, almost any remotely spiritually-related conversation brings intellectual and/or emotional objections to Christianity, and they are just as likely to come from the teachers. And by sheer need, any Christian who cares about the truth of their faith has to find answers: at first to satisfy themselves, and second to satisfy their friends.
You learn to identify the root of an objection, you learn how to express the truth (Biblical, historical ect) in a sensitive, understandable way, you learn to turn questions back on the questioner to reveal their assumptions, you learn to trust the Spirit to give you answers, and you learn to say “I don’t know”.
And you learn this through sheer need, through sheer repetition and trial-and-error.

When Craig D ran Life to the Full in Term 3 (or 4) last year, there weren’t many non-Christians but there were a lot of Nitechurch members (many of whom came from GPCC). He saw it as an opportunity to ask THEM questions, make THEM think. He, at least, saw this as a need (Dad helped run it, Craig explained to him what he was doing and the reasons for it.)

4. They allow the unsaved to hide. You know yourself that many of your colleagues do not have a real or personal faith. But which? And even those you can identify won’t accept it. They know all the ‘head answers’. The greatest protection against the gospel is thinking oneself already saved.
In a secular school, the true Christians are (generally) obvious, and (generally) all others are self-confessed pagans.

I fully recognise the missional advantages of having good schools with Christian teaching – Sam P, my youth leader, became a Christian because his NC mum sent him to GPCC. And, pastorally, I’m sure that some Christians in Christian schools would not still be Christians if they had gone to non-Christian schools. The implications of this are immense. But, and we will never know for sure, how many more might have been saved had the missionaries been in the mission field?

I’m pretty well out of ideas. Now the disclaimer: of course there will be exceptions to every single thing I’ve said. I’ve no doubt that Christian schools have produced passionate, equipped, convicted missionaries who test and challenge their ‘cultural Christian friends’, who are excellent apologists, and who are very well prepared to transition to the next stage of life. You might be one example. But generalisations work, and, at least from my perspective, I think these generalisations are valid. Many are very concerning.

I’m sure I’ve missed some things.

I guess to sum up my position, there are a lot of good things about Christian schools. For some people, they might mean the difference between falling away and staying strong. I certainly don’t think they are useless.
But ideally, in my view, their role would be replaced by the church and parents (as, IMO, it should be) and the harvest would receive many more workers.

——-

I’m sure lots of people will have strong views on this. I’d love to hear them. Leave a (gentle) comment below.

Very few people deny the existence of any ethical truth. Were the statement above true, you’d be rightly outraged. We know that there exists good and bad.

Have you ever considered the question ‘what makes something good?”. If you accept the existence of ethical truth, you must account for its existence. How do you explain it?

Traditionally, there are three possibilities:

1. morality is objective, absolute, and independent of anyone’s opinion – a moral law distinguishing good and evil is just ‘there’ in the universe;
2. morality is subjective – the moral law exists because of the say-so of a moral lawgiver. This might be you as an individual, a certain culture, or an authority such as God.
3. there is no morality.

What do you think? One of the above? Another one? Why?
Over the next few days I’ll unpack some of these, including the difficult question of ‘is it good because God says so, or does God say so because it’s good?’

Broken, left ashamed, bare,
open for the world to see.
To judge,
to try to understand,
to love, to help.
Reaching for a moment
pure enough to have meaning.
Untainted from the world.
Thankful, clean, Awake.

The cocoon ripped open.
That ray of light,
blinding, peeling our eyes open,
making us face the truth,
maybe too soon.
Painfully beautiful.
Now restored, now healed,
it’s a joy to be
broken, left ashamed, bare.

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow

“The things I thought were so important – because of the effort I put into them – have turned out to be of small value. And the things I never thought about, the things I was never able to either to measure or to expect, were the things that mattered.”

Thomas Merton

Out of all that we do, what of these will matter in the end? How do we work it out?

Do the things we consider important line up with what God considers important?

Experiences, thoughts, comments? Leave a comment below.

I find this sort of stuff fascinating! Do you?

“Time, in this view, is not something that exists apart from the universe. There is no clock ticking outside the cosmos.”

Life is short – it’s probably a good habit on the web, and website writers have become good at catering to this habit. But I have found myself scanning off-line, in newspapers, books, textbooks, even exams!

We can’t scan without losing meaning. At best, comprehension drops as we skip over minor details (statistics, facts, lists of examples like this one), but at worst we can miss the entire meaning completely.

Consider this example. Read the following as you would normally on the net:

Liverpool Street is the finest point of departure in the whole of Southern England because wherever you go from it, whether to Southend or, ultimately, to Outer Mongolia, it cannot fail to be an improvement.

Does the writer like Liverpool Street? Unless you are a more careful reader than me, you read the first few words and skimmed the rest, especially the details in the middle, and so decided that the writer is speaking favourably. But, in fact, they do not “because wherever you go from it … it cannot fail to be an improvement.” By scanning, the content can be completely misunderstood!

My challenge is this: By all means, scan a page to decide if it is worth reading, but if you you consider it worthwhile then read it properly – especially if it is offline.

“I’ve wasted it! I’ve wasted it!”
I never, ever want to come to the end of my life and say that.

My post yesterday about how to (not) succeed at school was a wake-up call. Recently, and on this blog in particular, I’ve been wasting my life. I’m going to try spending less time on stuff that doesn’t matter.

3 ways to waste a life:

• Wasting it in the little things – frittering away time minute by minute. Watching just one more youtube video or pressing the snooze button one more time. I don’t think there is anything bad about these things, but there is the potential and temptation to let them soak up your life. (How to stop)
• Wasting it in the big things – A career, an organisation, a sporting team, a family, friends, and relationships. Have any of these amounted to anything? Did you suck the most juice out of every opportunity at school? When you are with friends, do you spend more time discussing lotto results than important stuff?
• Wasting Jesus – Of all three, this will be the one you disagree with.
  If Jesus was who he said he was, the other two ways are of no importance compared to the tragedy of ignoring him. It is worth it to check him out. (Contact me if you don’t know where to start)
  (Disagree? Leave a comment.)

I don’t claim to be perfect in any of these. I find the temptation to waste life in the little things the hardest to resist and the easiest to forget. Procrastinating is dumb – do the stupid assignment and then get out and enjoy life. (Preaching to myself on this one.)

What do you think? Do you ever catch yourself wasting your life? Disagree with me completely? Leave a comment.

(Stolen from savagechickens.com)

Surely there’s more?
savage chickens takes on the meaning of life in 8 easy steps. Sleep, coffee, drive, work, computer, traffic, tv, bed. Repeat steps 1-7 until death occurs.

Food for thought #1:

Waiting For Godot, by Samuel Beckett, is a very thought provoking play. I’ve been reading it for English. There’s stacks of challenging stuff in there, but I won’t unpack it all.

 I just wanted to share one of my favourite bits. (Is it cool to have a favourite part of an English text?)

V: Say you are, even if it’s not true.
E: What am I to say?
V: Say, I am happy.
E: I am happy.
V: So am I.
E: So am I.
V: We are happy.
E: We are happy. [Silence.] What do we do now, now that we are happy?

I’ve been thinking about it for a while now. What do you make of it?

We’ve had some lovely weather this week. Yesterday felt like late Spring (hooray!). Days are getting longer, the air warmer, and the sun brighter.

And it has occured to me that my mood is dependent on the weather. Not completely, but substantially. When the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the colours vivid – I feel great. When it is overcast, dark, or dull, I feel flat.
Has anyone else experienced this? Do you have a different ‘mood trigger’?

I’ve been trying to work out if it is a good thing or a bad thing. I am sure it is good to take pleasure in the wonders of God’s creation, but I’m not so sure that I should feel so low when the sky is grey. If a cloud impacts my joy, how much will real suffering impact me?

I wonder if it is like many of life’s pleasures:

delighting in a taste, enjoying the company of a friend, reveling in the ecstasy of sport, immersing yourself in a movie, discovering new places and travelling the world…

Enjoy them and be thankful for them, but remember that they are transient and will pass away, so don’t pin your joy on the things of this world, but on the eternal.

I’m still thinking about it all, and I’d love to hear your thoughts – leave a comment.

[Photo: the crazy australian (also the studious australian) making the most of the weather! I often ask if I can work outside, I love it!]

Who cares if time slows down when you speed up? Why should you care if you are made of particles or waves (or both)? Why spend time trying to understand it?

This doesn’t just apply to science, but anything you care to think about. Why do it?

1. It’s interesting – this may be just me, but hopefully by the end of this list you will agree.
2. It makes you more interesting – the more you know, the broader your range of interests, and the broader the range of areas you are familiar with, the more you are able to talk about.
3. It’s fun – (Don’t throw anything too heavy at me!) Being challenged, being confused, struggling to understand things…. is fun!
4. Its good to know stuff – (and have a broad vocabulary with synonyms for ‘stuff’) No-one has ever run out of room in their brain. Use it!
5. New types of thinking create neural connections in the brain – erm… yeah, something like that. See here and here
6. It is humbling – It is way too easy to think you’re all that, to think you know a lot. Wrestling with something as hard as relativity prevents you from thinking you know it all. (If you understand it, you are the third person! I’d appreciate it if you could explain it to me )Two more – and they are my favourites:
7. 
   It gives insight into the nature and character of God!
   Why did God do it this way? I don’t know, but it’s good to think about.
   Even better is this: the universe is ordered. We can discover it’s laws. Thats cool. But we can’t understand them – thats even cooler! If even his creation is difficult to wrap your head around, what then of God?
   God is a God who is beyond our comprehension: what we know, we know in part and imperfectly. And it shouldn’t surprise us that this is the case – why wouldn’t the Creator be more complex than the created.
8. It’s useful for when you want to out-nerd your friends.
   ‘Nuff said, really.

[Aside: this can be applied to stuff you do at school, college, university, and even at work]

Have I sparked your curiosity? Have I missed anything you love about nutting stuff out? Do you disagree? Leave a comment.
Update: Don’t miss Vinchuco’s excellent additions in the comments.