Christ-Focused Learning

One of the basic focuses of the reformed faith is the call to be Christ-centered.  This commitment expands the whole of learning for Christians. We realize this learning in the secular or empirical domain as well as in the spiritual domain. We limit the revelation of God in Christ if we fail to understand life through him. We are called to see Jesus Christ as Lord of All.

Life is a learning process.  We are rational animals.  We are able to learn and as we do, we can work through the many conflicts of life—growing in understanding God and his creation.  This is central to education, to work through what we don’t know and understand within the whole learning process from the cradle to the grave and beyond into eternity.  It is a call to learn wisdom and is the call in Christ to see in him the culmination of God’s truth. The union of God with man was revealed in the advent of Christ, who completely was attuned to his Father’s mind and will.

Christ-focused learning calls for us to continuously focus our hearts and minds to grasp his truth in all things.   Recall that he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”  In this statement we can learn to see the truth of absolutes and of things of change come together—being and becoming.

There is head knowledge and there is heart knowledge.  The head has a cognitive orientation, while the soul is in the emotional, spiritual domain.  The head knowledge can develop from the rational/scientific, while the soul knowledge develops as the Spirit of God moves within the individual.  The head learns about God and his creation, the soul experiences God in one’s inner being. The head seeks to cultivate behavior, while the soul shapes faith, healing and transformation from within.  In one we find God revealed, while in the other we see God encountered, as we are called to seek to “…glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”  In one there is disciplined change while in the other there is the development of discipleship. The right synthesis of these happens as we realize the Christ-centered focus!

Plato about 2,500 years ago wrote:  “The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.”  The situation has not changed, for we still know so little.   This is very much in accord with what the Bible declares when it says, “For now we see through a glass, darkly…”  Look at all the once-accepted and supposedly empirical truths that have been shown to be misperceived, such as the early concepts of phrenology that have been discarded. All is in process. But as a human race we are often so puffed up about our knowledge that we totally ignore the true source of knowledge, the God in whose image we are made as rational creatures.

However, the Bible teaches that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”  We can recall that the Lord Jesus said:  “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  There is a power in the revelation of Christ that is not only in the spiritual domain but that is in the empirical domain as well. We are called to realize this as Christians!

To discover God’s presence and guidance in learning is a focus that can combine head and heart knowledge… We don’t need to seek to separate the sacred from the secular, for God is at work over all! This focus works like a refracting telescope with the eyepiece lens to look into and the objective lens to complete the magnification.

Heart knowledge, like the eyepiece lens, works with the objective lens of the head knowledge to magnify learning.  The spiritual commitment of the soul enriches the whole cognitive orientation.  Sensitivity to the knowledge and leadership of the Holy Spirit can develop in parallel with rational/scientific/empirical domains of life.   In the experiential journey of faith, we can so wonderfully affirm God’s greatness and creation, as the Scripture says:  “The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.”  Behavior is changed, not by government establishment, but by the healing, conversion, and transformation that come from God.  Here we can find truth not only just taught about God, but we can learn to realize him in total life experience.   From this relationship a disciplined change can develop along with the development of discipleship in Christ.

We can see the multiple problems that are developing in American education—things that all the programs and money in the world won’t correct.  It is like looking through the telescope of knowledge through the wrong end or having the same type of lens on both ends—enslaved to religious dogma as is evident in much of the fundamentalist Islamic teaching or limited to empirical knowledge that totally neglects the soul.

Teaching the so-called facts alone doesn’t cultivate positive character development. Modern learning in the public schools has become very much unfocused, since directives like behaviorism or other philosophies that neglect God can’t give a unified focus. They fail to touch the mind and the heart together in ways to see and relate to the Sovereign God. To see knowledge, grow in knowledge, is fine, but to grasp it as the work of God is much better.

Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century said:  “Some men think that the gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge, some the love of fame, some the pleasure of the disputer, some the necessity of supporting themselves by their knowledge, but the real use of all knowledge is this, that we should dedicate that reason which was given us by God to the use and advantage of man.”  To develop  Christ-focus learning would certainly do this and much more to glorify God in all his creation!

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by Joe Renfro, Ed.D., Radio Evangelist, Retired Teacher and Pastor, Box 751, Lavonia, Georgia 30553, 706-356-4173, joerenfro@windstream.net

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