Strawberry Cake and Cultivating a Biblical Worldview

Imagine you are making your friend a birthday cake. Your friend happens to love strawberries, so you decide that you are going to make her the most strawberry strawberry cake you can imagine. You go to the grocery store and buy strawberries to decorate the top of the cake, strawberry jelly to put between the cake layers, and strawberry extract to flavor the frosting and the cake. You even buy strawberry ice cream so you can offer your friend strawberry cake a la mode. Strawberry, strawberry, and more strawberry.

Now, imagine that instead of making cake layers that taste like strawberry, you make chocolate cake layers instead. Chocolate is your favorite cake flavor, so, without thinking, you make the chocolate cake recipe you like the best. You realize your mistake, but you don’t have enough time to begin again. You still put the strawberry jelly in between the layers, flavor the frosting with strawberry extract, and place the strawberries in a delicate circle around the top of the cake.

The cake looks like a strawberry cake on the outside, but inside its not a strawberry cake. You have adorned a chocolate cake with red, ripe, bursting-with-flavor strawberries, but you haven’t made a truly, strawberry strawberry cake like you set out to do. You have, however, not completely ruined your friend’s birthday cake, either. You still used some strawberry elements, though perhaps not as many as you could have used. Your friend likes chocolate, anyways–just not as well as she likes strawberry.

A Chocolate Cake Christian

For most of my Christian life, I’ve been the type of Christian that looks like a strawberry cake, but tastes like chocolate inside. Please allow me to explain.

As part of our teacher development earlier this school year, we read a book called Teachers, Curriculum, Control: A “world” of difference. In the book, Daniel Smithwick shares some results from a worldview analysis of Christian students who attend public schools. These students took a survey called the PEERS Test. He says about the results, “Overall PEERS scores for students in Christian schools vary from a moderate-Christian worldview to Biblical Theism. But scores from Christian-home students in public schools predominantly fall in the Secular Humanism or Socialism categories.”

Until I read the results and analysis of this particular PEERS Test, I had no idea how much the worldview taught in public schools had affected my own worldview. I realized that even though I claimed the name Christian, some of my worldviews didn’t come from the Bible. They came from what I had been taught in public school.

Justice Begins and Ends with God

One example was my belief that the government typically does what is good for the people. I didn’t start doubting the efficacy and goodwill of the government until after college, when I really started to pay attention to how the media and lobbyists influenced the decisions made by lawmakers. I noticed that many of those in leadership positions weren’t looking at what was right and true, they were answering to whoever was shouting the loudest. What I noticed was a lack of integrity among those making decisions for our nation.

Question 9 (Q09) of this particular PEERS Test asked students whether or not they agreed with the following statement, “Educational programs must be supervised by the government to ensure fairness, uniformity and equal opportunity to all citizens.” The bibilical worldview response is to disagree with this statement. 79.0% of Christian students attending Christian schools gave the biblical response to this question, while only 60.0% of Christian students attending public schools gave the biblical response.

I’m ashamed to say that my reaction to Q09 was not to disagree, however, it wasn’t to agree either. I think I was a little taken aback by this statement because I had never really thought about it before. The more I thought about it, the more I made the connection between the lack of integrity in many government leaders and their ability, or rather inability, to “ensure fairness, uniformity and equal opportunity to all citizens.” Justice begins and ends with God, not the government.

Freedom in Christ

Along the same lines, I also grew up believing that more government influence will yield better lives for its citizens. Question 59 (Q59) of the same PEERS Test reads, “Day-care schools for infants and toddlers, under the supervision of professional educators, will enhance the educational process of children and will produce more well-developed and productive citizens.” The biblical response is to disagree with Q59; 65.1 % of Christians who attend Christian schools disagreed, while only 49.8% of Christians who attend public schools disagreed.

This question also made me pause and think. If you had asked me whether or not I agreed with the statement from Q59 back in high school, or maybe even college, I probably would have said yes. I still like the idea of children becoming productive members of society. The questions to ask, however, are: to which society does Q59 refer, and how does that society define productive?

As a Christian parent, I would like my children to serve God in whatever vocations or career fields to which he calls them. The most important thing I can do is to teach them to love Jesus (see this post), which begins at home, not at school. This will make them productive members of society. Productive, meaning they will bring glory to God’s name, and society, meaning the world God created, including the communities in which he places them to live and work and have their being ¹.

The government has none of this in mind when they train children to be productive members of society. What they have in mind are citizens who will follow the laws they put in place and keep up with the popular ideas of the time in which they live. That is not the way God calls Christians to follow him. We love God first. We respect the governments God puts in place, but respect isn’t the same as blind submission. We are free in Christ to not submit to any laws or mandates that go against what Scripture teaches.

Becoming a Strawberry Cake Christian

Smithwick summarizes well what I realized about myself when he writes, “Many, if not most teachers in Christian schools receive their education degree from state universities. Consequently, while being Christian in heart, they are often humanist in mind, to some degree.” This might seem like a reversal of the strawberry and chocolate cake example, but it isn’t really. For years I’ve been teaching from a humanist standpoint, the chocolate, while using biblical knowledge as a guide, the strawberry. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines humanism as “a doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values.” That described me well–I just wanted my students to succeed. Now, as a classical Christian teacher and mom to two wonderful children, what I want the most is for all the young people in my life to know and to love Jesus. That defines their success, and nothing else.

This has required me to start dismantling those chocolate cake layers, and it often feels like I’m dismantling them crumb-by-crumb. As soon as I’ve tossed a humanist idea in the garbage, I notice another one, ready to be met head-on, grappled with, and finally thrown down in the glorious light of biblical truth. I thank God that he placed resources in my life like Teachers, Curriculum, Control in his perfect timing, and I pray that he’ll continue to show me the areas in which I need to replace a humanist worldview with a biblical worldview. A good teacher never stops learning. May we all continue to be good teachers, striving for the upward call of God in Christ Jesus ², and seeing the world he created through his eyes.

1. Acts 17:28 ↩
2. Philippians 3:14 ↩

Photo: Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash