“New York has one foot in Europe. Los Angeles is a collection of suburbs. Miami is cafe con leche. New Orleans is drunk. Seattle wears flannel. San Francisco is beautiful vistas and empty streets. Boston is ancient. But Chicago is America. The ’85 Bears seemed to symbolize the city in its resurgence, the reawakening of the beast after a funkadelic slumber. It was not the fifteen wins–it was how they were achieved, the smash-mouth style that seemed to capture the spirit of the town” (Rich Cohen, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, 227-228).

“Follow this principle as your children grow: feed their imaginations as well as their rational minds, for the imagination is the fertile ground in which all other studies can grow best” (Wes Callihan, Preparing Younger Children for a Great Books Education, 8).

“[D]isciplining the mind in rigorous, propositional, linear thought about certain core subjects, and learning to appreciate and glory in the beauties of language and words, must be at the heart of education. If it is not, then those other studies will be an incoherent collection of particulars with no overarching, coherent world-view into which to fit them and with which to find real meaning for them” (Wes Callihan, How to Prepare Younger Kids for a Great Books Education, 5).

Consider the quote above on the aim of education. Education first and foremost is about shaping a child-student’s character. However, identifying and appreciating beauty and goodness is at “the heart of education.” If an education curriculum is not beauty/goodness oriented, then its telos is broke. Like a compass with a needle that doesn’t point to the magnetic North, such an education is plumb useless.

The world was created by a good God, and creation in its original form was good, good, very good. The child-student has a Creator. The “overarching, coherent world-view” that allows the child-student to make sense of the particulars of this world is derived from Biblical knowledge/revelation: a beautiful and good Triune Lord made a beautiful and good world to beautifully and goodly mirror and reflect the Creator’s beauty and goodness. However, man, the chief image-bearer of creation, rebelled. Thus, the imago Dei was defaced, and now the world groans under the weight of sin and the effects of the Fall. And yet, the beautiful and good Triune Lord before the foundations of the world chose to elbow-drop Satan, sin, death, and the effects of the Fall, through the perfect obedience of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of the God-man Jesus Christ.

The beauty and goodness in the world was merely defaced, it was not obliterated. Hence, a child-student studies the flawed (fallen) world, studies creation, studies language, etc., in light of Biblical knowledge/revelation, and the child-student learns a bit more and more about the beauty and goodness of the Creator who preordained to restore this world. Education conducted in this fashion necessarily becomes a means for giving God glory; education conducted in this fashion fulfills man’s chief aim of glorifying God and enjoying Him forever. So, an education curriculum with an unbroken and functioning telos will say things like, “Go and sin no more” and “Learn about this beautiful world” and “Glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” And if you can check the box next to each of those three statements, then of course you’ll be able to go find a job and get dominion for Jesus.

“Good works do not make a man good, but a good man does good works.”
                — Martin Luther

 “I Will Prepare for Worship” from Thom S. Rainer’s blog.

This weekend I will attend my church’s worship service.
I will prepare for that corporate worship event;
I will not take the moments lightly.
I will see it as a precious time to gather with brothers and sisters in Christ. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will ask God to prepare my own heart.
I will ask Him to help me hear God’s Word clearly.
I will ask Him to speak to me that I might be changed. 

I will prepare for worship.
I pray that I will not be distracted by my own preferences:
By the style of music; the length of the sermon; the place where I sit;
Or anything that would cause me to focus on me instead of God. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray for my pastor that the sermon will be anointed.
I will pray for strength for my pastor,
And for encouragement in a world that often offers little. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray for other leaders in the church,
Leaders often unnoticed and unappreciated,
And specifically for those who sacrificially care for our children in the services. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray that I will hear God’s voice in the music, in the prayers,
And in every moment we gather as a body of believers,
United in heart, focus, and purpose. 

I will prepare for worship.
I will pray with my family before we leave to go the church service.
I will also pray alone for the services before we leave,
Even if it’s only for a few minutes. 

I will prepare for worship,
As I see fellow believers enter to worship together,
I will pray for them and their families,
And I will pray for their own hearts of worship. 

I will prepare for worship.
I understand I am blessed to be able to gather,
Because I know that many Christians around the world
Are being persecuted and banned from such times. 

I will prepare for worship.
I pray I will understand that it is a foretaste of heaven,
And that I will never take such times for granted,
I pray I will truly rejoice in the house of the Lord. 

I will prepare for worship.
Thank you, God, for your grace.
Thank you, God, for you goodness.
And for allowing me these precious moments to gather to worship You. 

“I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the LORD.”
—Psalm 122:1

“More than any other sport, football is about the coach, the general with the god complex who wants to map every sequence, prepare for every contingency” (Rich Cohen, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, 17).

“Your team is a nation and on game day your nation is at war. That’s what my father understood when he tried to dissuade me from following the Cubs. He believed that a Cubs fan will come to accept defeat as the inevitable end of all earthly endeavors. A Cubs fan is fatalistic: he rends his garments and cries, Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! The ultimate implication of my father’s words was left unstated: a Cubs fan has a greater likelihood of leading an unfulfilled life. Pick your team carefully, because your team is your destiny” (Rich Cohen, Monsters: The 1985 Chicago Bears and the Wild Heart of Football, 11-12).

“The biblical faith holds steadfastly and unmistakably to the Creator-creature distinction. “Know ye that the Lord He is God: it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves” (Ps. 100:3). If there is such a thing as truth and falsehood, there could be no wider disparity between Biblical theology and [Ralph Waldo] Emerson. Those who hold that “all is one” are not Christians. They have the wrong worldview and the wrong god. They have deceived themselves with a worldview incapable of maintaining the preconditions for all human thinking, coherent logic, and social interaction. From a Christian point of view, this is gross idolatry in its blatant denial of the true and living God and its incorporation of man into the godhead” (Kevin Swanson, Apostate, 101).