Freedom and Classical Christian Education, Part 4

But a second sense in which education frees us and prepares us to live as a free man or woman is this: education gives us the freedom of knowing the truth. Our Lord Jesus said, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

My upbringing was quite different from my own children’s. When I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, I went to 12 years of public school. When I learned about history, my teachers said nothing about God. When I was taught literature, God was never mentioned a single time (that I recall). But though God was never presented as a part of the subjects I was taught, I learned plenty about God. In fact, I was perfectly trained by my teachers. By their silence, I learned that God is completely irrelevant to history and literature and biology and algebra. I learned the lesson perfectly every day: God is irrelevant. I was taught to think that I could know the truth without God at all.

The experience of students at a faithful classical Christian school, though, is quite different. A Christian school seeks to give its students minds filled with truth so that they will find the freedom that Christ promises. The Bible says that when we are left to ourselves, our minds are darkened by sin, our thoughts are empty, and our minds are enslaved to hating God. Without Christ we are enslaved by our own wicked thoughts, and the end of that enslavement is destruction.

But the truth of Jesus Christ sets our minds free from the terrible master of sin. The gospel sets us free so that we can learn from Christ how to be truly human and how to live with joy. When we learn about the world as it really is, with Christ as Lord of all things – Lord of biology and Lord of language and Lord of logic and Lord of art and Lord of the dinner table and Lord of the basketball court – then we learn what it really means to be human and how to live life as it was really intended to be lived.

That is real freedom. Real freedom is living the way God says life is supposed to be lived – to His glory.