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Dr. Greene - Articles
An Alternative Consciousness
Someone has said that what Christians need today is an alternative consciousness. This is certainly true when we think about Christian school. The only curriculum any school has is the created world. Public education in the United States has become thoroughly secularized. The Christian school has no other curriculum than the creation, but it must approach that curriculum from a different perspective than that of the public school. Schools pass along to their students a way of seeing the world, a consciousness of reality. Christian schools want this to be a Christian, and so an alternative, consciousness.
We are seldom aware of how deeply the prevailing consciousness of the society we live in finds its way into our hearts, even though we are Christians. Paul is thinking of this when he says in Ephesians 6:12 that we don't wrestle with flesh and blood, that is with individuals in our society, but "against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places."
The secular consciousness has no room for God. It sees the world in thoroughly materialistic terms. It is uncertain how things got started, but is convinced that now reality is simply a physical world developed in an evolutionary manner to its present complexity. Christian schools must offer their students a different worldview.
This is true because of what Jesus meant when he said, "Ye must be born again (John 3:7)". Being born again means more than just the forgiveness of our sins. It means that, but it also means the impartation of a whole new life. Salvation is not a tune-up job on our secular consciousness. It is the planting of Christ's life in us as our new life (John 14:28; 7:38-39). If becoming a Christian means having Christ come to live in us by the Holy Spirit so that we actually enjoy Christ's life as our life, then it isn't strange that 1 Corinthians 2:16 should say, "But we have the mind of Christ." That means that we are to have a totally alternative consciousness of the world from that of the secularist, because "the mind set on the flesh is hostile to God" (Romans 8:7).
Does this mean that we should retreat into a Christian ghetto and await the Lord's return, as some Christians are saying in the light of the collapse of traditional morality today?
Surely not. How then could we fulfil the Lord's command that we should be the light of the world? (Matthew 5:14). What it means is that we should be able to give an answer or "make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence" (1 Peter 3:15). But we cannot do that unless we have a Christian worldview, an alternative consciousness to that of today. We have something to offer today's world which it desperately needs. There is a pervasive hopelessness about culture today, and, as Peter says, we have a hope to offer. What this means for Christian schooling we will explore in further Perspectives essays.
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