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Christian education
Where has all the creativity gone?
Education needs to be about great books and great ideas...
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"Is This The Worst-Ever Era of American Pop Culture?" That was the question asked by a recent Atlantic article about the sheer number of prequels, sequels, remakes, and expanding “cinematic universes.” Among the most notable recent examples in the world of film is Wicked, which reimagined the world of Oz.
The same creative stagnation can be seen in music. While earlier generations could produce distinct kinds of music, it’s increasingly difficult to find meaningful stylistic differences today. Some of the most popular songs aren’t even composed by humans but generated by AI. Where has all the creativity gone?
Many explanations could be offered, but one deserves particular attention. There’s been a precipitous decline of the kind of education in America that awakens the moral imagination, enabling students to think creatively and innovatively within a framework of what is enduring and true. In its place is an education oriented around expressive individualism, where children are encouraged to “follow their hearts” and “look inside,” rather than first know the true, good, and beautiful.
Classic stories develop a life-long love of learning
Classical Christian education is uniquely positioned to fill this void. At its best, the modern classical education movement seeks to recover what Dorothy Sayers described as "the lost tools of learning.” Such an education – centered on great books, great ideas, and classical languages – aims not merely at information transfer but at the formation of a virtuous life. Students are trained in virtue, encouraged to emulate heroes, and invited to explore and embrace visions of greatness. In the process, many develop a lifelong love of learning.
Vigen Guroian offers a compelling account of this formative process in his book Tending the Heart of Virtue: How Classical Stories Awaken a Child’s Moral Imagination. He explains how classic children’s stories like Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe can shape a child’s moral imagination. Young readers are transported into worlds filled with wonder, surprise, and danger. As they imagine themselves alongside heroes and heroines, the images and metaphors of the stories linger and shape how they experience the real world. Children internalize concrete pictures of good, evil, love, and sacrifice by which they can interpret their own lives. When the moral imagination is awakened, Guroian concludes, the virtues come alive with personal, existential, and social significance.
C.S. Lewis made a similar point in The Abolition of Man. After criticizing the dominant educational models that fail to form human beings, he described how education should cultivate students “with chests.” The “chest” mediates between reason and appetite, enabling students to not only recognize what is noble and what is base, and discern between that which deserves love and that which does not, but to also choose rightly between them. This moral formation reflects what makes us truly human.
Creativity has to be grounded in Truth
If popular culture is to experience a renewal of genuine creativity and innovation, classical Christian education may well be the taproot. Ironically, the renewal of innovation doesn’t begin by encouraging innovation for it’s own sake, or from an obsession with what is trendy or new. Rather, it will begin with an immersion in what is permanent and true. It will begin with curious hearts and minds that are trained to think imaginatively within a meaningful moral framework. As Russell Kirk once observed, the works that endure are not those rooted in nihilism, but those that appeal to enduring truths and therefore to posterity.
If classical education is to be Christian, it must be tied to the grand biblical story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration. Learning that is interpreted through a Christian worldview will affirm the dignity of human nature and will also acknowledge its limits, clearly distinguishing between Creator and creation. Within this rich moral universe, students are inspired to imagine and create in ways that honor what is true, just, pure, lovely, virtuous, and praiseworthy.
Classical Christian education offers a compelling model for education in an age of cultural decadence. It is anchored in Christ, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” By forming the moral imagination, Christians are equipped to not only resist cultural stagnation but to create culture anew, as co-laborers with the One who even now is “making all things new.”
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Andrew Carico. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to Breakpoint.org. This is reprinted with permission from the Colson Center.
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Saturday Selections – Jan. 31, 2026
Reformed and Dangerous's Christ is King
A little harder rocking than some of us might be used to, but the fire in the music is a match for the power of the words...
Is Bluey's dad too good?
A New York Times article offered up that critique, and the folks at Breakpoint ministries had this insightful response.
An unexplored mission field: seniors' homes?
I'm really hoping this link works (it is behind a paywall but says I can share it). This is a story of a lady suffering from dementia who is bringing the gospel to other dementia sufferers.
Sex on the silver screen – outsourcing depravity
Tim Challies asks, are we outsourcing our sexual depravity, getting actors to do for our entertainment what we would never do ourselves?
Free will vs. determinism
Atheist Sam Harris has famously argued that because we are just meat machines, all our actions are determined, so we should be more compassionate to criminals because what they did isn't really their fault – their "output" is just a result of all their inputs, with no choice on their part. He denies we have any free will, but, ironically, wants us to choose to be nice to criminals. His campaign highlights his own disbelief in his notion.
Calvinists deny free will too, but mean something very different by it. We know that Man is sinful in all he does, and cannot choose God apart from God's own intervention. But we also know that when we choose to steal, lie, or cheat, we are responsible – we are making these choices for evil. So, we make choices, even as God is sovereign. Do we get that totally? Nope, but God tells us it is so (Rom. 8:7-8, Eph. 2:8-9), and each of us know it is true personally in how we experience both that slavery to sin, and know yet that it is still me, myself, and I responsible for my sins.
The free market's "double thank-you"
Sports can help teach kids a lot of real-life lessons – how hard work pays off, the importance of being a team player, etc. – but there's one big difference between life and games. In the arena there can be only one champion but in life both sides can win.
Socialists deny it, pitting the poor against the rich, and fostering envy over what our wealthier neighbors have (violating the 10th Commandment). But the rich only get rich by being helpful. Unless he stole his money, a businessman can only get rich via free, voluntary transactions. And those exchanges will only happen when both sides agree that they are better off for it. Kid offers to mow your lawn for $20? He's only going to make the offer if he thinks it's worth it for him, and you'll only agree if you think it benefits you. Both are better off. You are both "richer" for it.
When the government manages things, it may force people to do what they wouldn't otherwise want to do. We're taking your money to build this library (and stock it with obscene books). We're going to build a hockey arena so we're hiking your taxes. That's win/lose – one side wins by making others lose. And the government can even pull off lose/lose situations where everyone is worse off.
So we want to combat the Left's envy by remembering the rich only got that way by thousands and millions of voluntary transactions in which not only did they benefit, but the other side was made richer too! Instead of envying them, we should be saying "thank-you" right back to them!
Today's Devotional
February 1 - Introduction to Elisha
On the road to Emmaus, two disciples walked with the resurrected Lord Jesus. Luke describes how beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself (Luke 24:27). It is little wonder that after He left them, they said to one another, “Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to >
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Serving #1104 of Manna, prepared by R. Schouten, is called "The law of love".
