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Faculty Contribution
Benjamin K. Forrest Professor of Christian Education and Associate Dean College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University Sean Turchin Associate Professor of Philosophy, College of Arts & Sciences, Liberty University
CONSTRUCTIVE TEACHING: CULTIVATING AN EDUCATION THAT IS CHRISTIAN Education that is distinctively Christian should be constructive in nature.1 At the center of the Christian narrative is a God who created an ordered world where there was previously chaos. It is of a God who redeemed humanity from sin, and a God who will ultimately recreate in the eschaton for His glory and for the enjoyment of His children. God constructs as the crescendo. Still, deconstructing is also valuable so that a better construction can fill the void. For God responds to sin with consequence (2 Samuel 12:1-14; Romans 13:4; Galatians 6:7), disobedience is met with discipline (Hebrews 12:5-11), and misunderstanding with rebuke (Job 38). Deconstruction comes in these forms so that God might offer His people a better alternative, a state of living that is holy and honorable, to their benefit and His glory. Sometimes the whole purpose of such deconstruction is for our growth, not from a consequence of sin or loving discipline, but because God desires us to be transformed into a greater likeness of His Son.
Deconstruction: The First Step, but not the Final Step Theologians have believed that “deconstruction” was part and parcel of the Christian life; true Christianity accordingly is a life of continual deconstructing in order to be reconstructed in the mind of Christ (Philippians 2). For example, Martin Luther offered that true Christianity is a calling for individual hardship, rejection of the world, and taking up one’s own cross. For Luther, true Christianity is one where the cross stands at the center. It is a theology of the cross that defines what it is to be a Christian; unlike the Catholic Church of the time and its “theology of Glory” which is akin to a prosperity or self-help gospel common today. If one seeks to be a Christian, then one seeks suffering, in a sense, a deconstructing of the self in order to be fashioned in the likeness of Christ. The Danish theologian Soren Kierkegaard thought something similar. For Kierkegaard, a true self is one
which exists in relation to God, or as Kierkegaard maintains, one can only truly come to know oneself before “the mirror of the Word…To stand before the mirror means to stand before God.”2 However, in our current state, we find despair because we cannot find truthfulness in our own searching. Thus, due to sin, we are not what we were created to be, and our capability for a relationship with God and self fails to become what it was intended to be. It is only then, by God’s revelation, that we ourselves can become aware of our need and its remedy.3 Kierkegaard was compelled first to expose the inability of human reason in reconciling itself to itself and ultimately to God. Therefore, he points to God’s grace in revelation as God mercifully made known the human need for redemption. A Kierkegaardian deconstruction of the self, then, is one that implores humanity to understand ourselves within the context of our original formation, which is in relation to our Creator. But modern conceptions of this deconstruction/reconstruction are unable to complete the project because they lack knowledge of what is, in fact, a “true self ’, which is only found before the foundation of our selfhood, this being God in Christ. Modern conceptions are constantly deconstructing an individual without identity and then reconstructing false identities that have nothing to do with justification and sanctification of the individual. Only Christianity does what nothing else can; it deconstructs the false self in sin to reconstruct the image of God that has been lost or, depending on one’s theological view, highly obscured.
Moving to a New Educational Location As people living in a fallen world, we come to life tarnished by the stain of sin. Yet, early in the life of God’s people, God gives Moses instructions for parents to teach their children (Deuteronomy 6:1f.; 11:18f.) as a means for teaching them covenant faithfulness, which reconciles. Education is one of the ways to