What’s the point of a Christian education?

Christiaan W. J. M. Alting von Geusau, president and rector of the International Theological Institute, a Catholic center of theology in Vienna and founder and chairman of the Schola Thomas Morus in Baden bei Wien, writes about the nature of Christian education in Plough, the publication of the Bruderhof movement. 

Dr. Alting von Gesau describes an Iraqi man named Joseph who is threatened by gunman to renounce the Christian faith he has found through imitating the example of a fellow former soldier.

The trigger was indeed pulled on Joseph, but he miraculously survived the hail of bullets. He was left for dead at the side of the desert road and somehow made it to a hospital where he was treated for his wounds. He eventually made it to Europe and today lives with his wife and children in France. This true story, told by Joseph Fadelle himself in The Price to Pay (Ignatius Press, 2012) shows that even today Christian discipleship may mean risking – or losing – one’s life for Christ.

He asks, in light of Joseph’s story, about the cost of discipleship–reflecting the title of a famous book by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German who resisted the advance of the Nazis.

For him, there are four lessons: four F’s– friendship, faithfulness, formation, and freedom–which shed light on the kind of formation (paideia) parents must share with their children. These four F’s are suggestive of the distinctiveness of Christian education.

Of friendship, Alting von Gesau writes

Joseph Fadelle found Christ through his military colleague Massoud, who understood and followed the only route to a life lived in truth: divine friendship and human friendship. Discipleship is first and foremost a personal relationship with Christ; this intimate friendship must become the foundation of our life. 

Of faithfulness:

Massoud was faithful to the clear and recurring exhortation to discipleship in the Gospels: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you” (Matt. 28:19–20). This exhortation is directed at every Christian, no matter when or where. Massoud courageously answered this call in a context where this might have meant death. 

He reminds us of the radical call of Jesus:

…living the gospel cannot be a halfhearted affair, because it means faithfully going to all, teaching all, and observing all. Such faithfulness has a clarity that is refreshing and liberating; it should be our starting point for teaching Christian discipleship to our children and young people. It invites them to focus on the essential question as they develop their personality and prepare for their vocation in the world: “What does it mean to be human?”

Of formation, he writes,

To find out what it means to be human – a lifelong task – we need to learn, and teach our children, to see the world through the eyes of God. This is why dedicated study of scripture should be an integral part of every Christian’s education. 

This practice of “seeing the world through the eyes of God” is something I invite my students to do regularly. It means attempting to master the habit of seeing all things through what I call “graced understanding”– something rather like the way a mother views her child, even if he is a criminal. Alting von Gesau goes on to explain this practice.

As disciples, we must dedicate our life to the pursuit of truth. But we can only do so if our hearts and minds have been so formed that we are able to stand upright in a world that is utterly confused, a world that has become enslaved to its passions, to the trends of the day, and to the violence which ensues when faith is detached from reason, and reason is detached from faith. How else can we explain some of the extremes of our age: abject poverty, rising ideologically inspired violence, the sexualization of society, the killing of the unborn, and the breakdown of families? G. K. Chesterton rightly points out that Christian discipleship “is the only thing that frees a man from the degrading slavery of being a child of his age.”

I am struck by the similarity between this observation about inner freedom and that of Viktor Frankl, the psychologist who survived Auschwitz and went on to write the sublime book Man’s Search for Meaning. Describing the utter humiliation prisoners experienced at the hands of the Nazis, Frankl nevertheless points to the last of human freedoms:

When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

His is a thoughtful look at the big picture, the reason why Christian parents must resist some of the trends of contemporary society to find the “narrow way” that most fully reflects the reality of the world and people’s place in it. A discerning approach to education, Alting von Gesau suggests, will involve these four F’s.

Read his whole essay here.

Christiaan W. J. M. Alting von Geusau’s most recent book is Catholic Education in the West: Roots, Realities and Revival.