When it came to education, Pastor Doug Wilson and his wife wanted their children to learn sound Christian doctrine combined with solid academics. For that, they knew they'd have to go outside the public education system, but their small town of Moscow, Idaho, had little to offer at the time. So in 1981, they founded Logos School, which, together with like-minded Christians from other states, helped launch the modern classical Christian school movement.
Wilson joined 1819 News CEO Bryan Dawson last Wednesday on "1819 News: The Podcast" to discuss the importance of classical Christian education and how Christians should plan to construct a flourishing, godly civilization for the future.
Wilson began by breaking down Ephesians 6:4 and what the Apostle Paul meant by raising children "in the discipline and instruction of the Lord," for which he used the "weighty and loaded" Greek word "paideia."
"Paideia was not simply teaching your kid the sound of the letters or teaching your kid that two plus two equals four," Wilson said. "What paideia referred to was the full enculturation of a child into the ways and customs and knowledge and history of his people."
Paideia is a foundational principle of Christian education and worldview, one that places God at the center of everything and in control of all things.
"The paideia of the Lord would be enculturating your children, insinuating your children into Christian civilization, the teaching of the Lord, the customs of the Lord, the laws and manners and mores of God's people. It's an all-encompassing project. As we like to say here in Moscow: All of Christ for all of life," Wilson explained.
The Christians at the time of Paul's writing didn't have it any easier than those in the 21st century, but they were called to fully follow Christ in faith, just like Christians today.
"From the time Ephesians was written up to the time of Constantine, there were intermittent persecutions of the church by the Roman authority, some of them quite savage," Wilson said. "So it's not as though the Christians in that era or the next century or the century after that were living in small-town America, Mayberry. That wasn't their situation, nevertheless, they were called to faithfulness."
Wilson said despite the troubles and trials of modern life and how things may appear to be going down a dark road, he had a bright outlook on the future.
"I'm very optimistic about the future of human history," he said. "That doesn't mean that I don't have eyes in my head. I can see things disintegrating around us now. I believe that we really are in clown world now, but if you take human history and look at it in 500-year increments, I'm really optimistic. If you take human history and look at it in 5-year increments there are periods where things are looking pretty bad. It looks like everything's falling apart."
Wilson said that on that longer timescale, the truth of Christ always wins out, which is a key aspect of pursuing a classical Christian education. He admonished Christians to think and plan long term, like builders in the 1300s who constructed a cathedral so their great-grandchildren might one day worship in it long after their forefathers were dead.
"Revolutionaries have a central characteristic, and that is that they are impatient," Wilson said.' What do we want? XYZ. When do we want it? Now.' They want dramatic, revolutionary, sometimes violent change, and they want it now. Christians are reformational, not revolutionary. We've got big plans, and God has great designs for this sorry world of ours, but he wants the yeast to work through the loaf gradually. He wants the mustard seed to grow up gradually. He wants the water that's going to fill the earth like the knowledge of the Lord, he wants the water to fill up the earth gradually. So consequently, we need to develop a different mindset. "
To connect with the story's author or comment, email daniel.taylor@1819news.com or find him on Twitter and Facebook.
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