Human Rebellion and Education

1
Human Rebellion and Education

• Michael Goheen
• Trinity Western University
• Langley, B.C., Canada

2
Danger of minimizing sin

• Believers often have an inadequate awareness of
  their adversary or arch-enemy who is near by
  and crouching at the door (Genesis 47).
• Our tendency to minimize the gravity, scope, and
  power of sin reducing it to individual
  disobedience is much more than an intellectually
  deficiency. It puts us in urgent peril because
  sin is a very vicious and mortal enemy, an
  irascible and persistent power, which must
  certainly be known in order to be overcome.
  (Berkouwer)

3
Fall into sin

• Tree of knowledge of good and evil (2.15-17)
• Arbitrary commandwhy?
• Satanic temptation
• Doubt about divine source or fairness
• Unbelief
• Imaging life in disobedience to Gods word
• Willful disobedience

4
Forfeiting the glory of creaturehood

• Man has take leave of the relation of
  dependence. He has refused to obey and has willed
  to make himself independent. No longer is
  obedience the guiding principle of his life, but
  his autonomous knowledge and will. Thereby he
  ceases, in effect, to understand himself as a
  creature. (Von Rad)
• In desiring to be like God man thrusts himself
  into a dismal and self-defeating privation. In so
  doing he forfeits the glory of his creaturehood.
  (Berkouwer)

5
Characterising Sin Against God

• Against you, you only, have I sinned and done
  what is evil in your sight (Psalm 514 TNIV).

6
Characterising Sin Idolatry

• They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and
  worshiped and served created things rather than
  the Creatorwho is forever praised (Romans
  125).
• If human beings are inescapably religious,
  driven always to seek an object of worship, then
  the fall cannot be characterised solely as revolt
  against the rightful Lord It must be described
  further as exchange of religious allegiance.

7
God or an idol

• Human beings are inherently religious creatures.
  We cannot live without a god, even if it is one
  of our own making. We need a center, an ultimate
  focus, a point of orientation for our lives. We
  have in fact two alternatives. Either we serve
  the Lord and obey his will, or we practice
  idolatry and disobedience (Walsh and Middleton).

8
Sin as Idolatry

• If human beings are inescapably religious,
  driven always to seek an object of worship, then
  the fall cannot be characterised solely as revolt
  against the rightful Lord It must be described
  further as exchange of religious allegiance
  (Chaplin).

9
Idolatry as epitome of sin

• Idolatry is essentially a declaration of
  autonomy and independence from our Creator, our
  rejection of his rightful kingship. . . .
  Idolatry is portrayed in the Bible not as merely
  one sin among many, but as the epitome of sin. It
  is the central act of disobedience which disrupts
  Yahwehs rule over human life (Walsh and
  Middleton).

10
Sin as idolatry
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Relational dimension of sin

• Not transgression of impersonal standard
• Marital analogy Against exclusive loyalty of
  marriage relationship (e.g.,Jeremiah 3, Hosea)
• Paternal analogy Against kindness, generosity,
  goodness of Father

12
Characterising sin Against creation

• Against human life, against shalom, against
  health, against prosperity, against wholeness,
  against human flourishing.
• Am I the one they are provoking? declares the
  Lord. Are they not rather harming themselves, to
  their own shame? (Jeremiah 719).
• . . . disobedience goes against the very grain
  of creation itself. Sin is rebellion against both
  the structure and the Structurer of reality. Such
  rebellion is inevitably self-defeating and
  self-destroying.

13
Wages of sin is death

• See, I set before you today life and prosperity,
  death and destruction. For I command you today to
  love the Lord your God, to walk in his ways, and
  to keep his commands, decrees and laws then you
  will live and increase, and the Lord your God
  will bless you in the land you are entering to
  possess. But if you heart turns away and you are
  not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow
  down to other gods and worship them, I declare to
  you this day that you will certainly be
  destroyed. . . . I have set before you life and
  death, blessings and curses (Deuteronomy
  3015-20).

14
Sin as covenant rebellion
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Sin as a personal power

• Romans 7.8-11
• Sin a seductive power, a damning power, an
  active dynamic and destructive force
  (Berkouwer)
• Sin is a power that seeks to rule and ruin
  everyone and everything. (Berkouwer)

16
Characterising the power of sin

• Redirecting power it redirects our allegiance to
  an idol.
• Malevolent idolatry aims at our destruction.
• Seductive it deceptively conceals its appalling
  nature and as it lures us to death.
• Disfiguring it corrupts and distorts Gods good
  creation.

17
Parasitic quality of sin

• A parasite is an organism that lives off the life
  blood of another it is an uninvited guest that
  keeps tapping its host for sustenance.
  (Plantinga)
• Goodness is, so to speak, itself badness is
  only spoiled goodness. And there must be
  something good first before it can be
  spoiled.(CS Lewis)
• Sin is nothing and can do nothing apart from the
  creatures and the powers which God has created
  yet it organizes all these in open rebellion
  against him. (Bavinck)

18
Structure-direction
19
Scope of Sin

• Personal lives
• Communal expression
• Non-human creation (Romans 8.19-22)

20
Culture Common way of life rooted in a shared
core religious beliefs in form of story.
21
Heart of culture

• Religious beliefs are an organising dynamic
  and directing power of the various elements of
  cultural lifeeconomic, technical, scientific,
  artistic, social, and communal. (Brunner)

22
Three biblical rules

• The first rule is that every man is serving
  god(s) in his life.
• Secondly, every man is transformed into an image
  of his god.
• Finally, mankind creates and forms a structure
  of society in its own image.

23
Creating society in deformed image

• In the development of human civilization, man
  forms, creates and changes the structure of his
  society, and in doing so he portrays in his work
  the intention of his own heart. He gives to the
  structure of that society something of his own
  image and likeness. In it he betrays something of
  his own lifestyle, of his own god (Goudzwaard).

24
Goudzwaard on Ideologies

• Ideologies Humanly constructed stories that fill
  the spiritual vacuum after the Enlightenment.
• Make an end for human society absolute (e.g.,
  material wealth and prosperity)
• Certain social powers or forces identified as
  means by which the goal can be achieved (e.g.,
  freedom of market) saviours or powers which
  people put their faith in.
• Place ourselves under power of these saviours
• Transform whole of society

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Ideology and Education

• How has this ideology affected education?
• Focus on Neil Postmans End of Education

26
Failure of the gods

• . . . the crisis in narrative the decline of
  once-sturdy gods. (25)
• . . . both students and teachers lack a
  narrative to provide profound meaning to their
  lessons. (51)
• god . . . a comprehensive narrative about
  what the world is like, how things got to be the
  way they are, and what lies ahead. (6)

27
What god will your school serve?

• The truth is that school cannot exist without
  some reason for its being, and in fact there are
  several gods our students are presently asked to
  serve. (27)

28
God of Economic Utility

• If you pay attention in school, and do your
  homework, and score well on tests, and behave
  yourself, you will be rewarded with a well-paying
  job when you are done. Its driving idea is that
  the purpose of schooling is to prepare children
  for competent entry into the economic life of a
  community. (27)

29
Transformed into the image of our god

• The narrative/god of economic utility . . .
  tells us that we are first and foremost economic
  creatures, and that our sense of worth and
  purpose is to be found in our capacity to secure
  material benefits. (28)

30
God of Consumership

• One may wonder, then, why this god economic
  utility has so much strength, why the
  preparation for making a living, which is
  well-served by any decent education, should be
  assigned a metaphysical position of such high
  station. I believe the reason is that the god of
  Economic Utility is coupled with another god, one
  with a smiling face and one that provides an
  answer to the question, If I get a good job, then
  what? (33)

31
God of Consumership

• Devotion to the god of Consumership serves
  easily as the metaphysical basis of schooling
  because it is urged on the young early in their
  lives, long before they get to schoolin fact, as
  soon as they are exposed to the powerful
  teachings of the advertising industry. (33)

32
God of Technology

• . . . That people believe technology works,
  that they rely on it, that it makes promises,
  that they are bereft when denied access to it,
  that they are delighted when they are in its
  presence, that for most people it works in
  mysterious ways, that they condemn people who
  speak against it, that they stand in awe of it,
  and that, in the born-again mode, they will alter
  their lifestyles, their schedules, their habits,
  and their relationships to accommodate it. If
  this be not a form of religious belief, what is?
  (38)

33
These gods will fail too!

• . . . the narratives that underlie our present
  conception of school do not serve us well and may
  lead to the end of public schooling . . . (61).
• My intention here is to offer an answer in the
  form of five narratives that, singly and in
  concert, contain sufficient resonance and power
  to be taken seriously as reasons for schooling.
  (61)

34
Another story?

• If the tale of capitalistic progress is
  beginning to fray at the edges then perhaps this
  is an evangelistically opportune time for
  Christian education to offer another story--one
  that replaces the self-salvation of economic
  progress with the tale of a coming Kingdom of
  redemption (Brian Walsh).