Learning to Behold

I’m often asked by concerned parents what we can do to improve our schools, in general, or our Christian schools, in particular. I’ve no doubt surprised some parents and teachers by suggesting that it is foolish to suppose that the categories of theological instruction can stand against the giant, Imagination. A Christian imagination is not something to be added to a Christian education. It is the very blood of that education, and in important ways its action, or its receptiveness, is a form of prayer.

As an aid in the forming of that imagination, I said that we could turn to films made before our current hatred of the family, of manhood and womanhood as completing one another in marriage, and of the natural human orientation toward God. Love of those things cannot be produced, like bottles in a factory. It is not even a deduction from theological principles. It is instead like fresh air or sunlight, good things we are given, and in which we participate by right feeling.

But when I ta…