Many of us have become refamiliarized in the past year with verses such as “Train up a child in the way he should go…” (Prov. 22:6) and “Thou shalt teach them [God’s commands] diligently unto thy children” (Deut. 6:7). During the reformation the Lord has given, we have been struck by God’s word that reformation must influence all aspects of life: the church, our homes, and our schools. In a series of articles entitled “Reformed Principles Applied in the Classroom,” I will have particular interest in this third sphere of life. Specifically, I see a need in my own teaching and the teaching of our Christian schools at large to work to incorporate Reformed, biblical doctrine into the classroom in all subjects.

Of course, this is easier said than done. We may talk all day and discuss the importance of incorporating Reformed doctrine into the teaching of the school—how vital it is to have the doctrine of the school match the doctrine of the church and home, and how important it is to point our children to Jesus Christ in all things; but at the end of the discussion, we wonder how this is to be done. But this wondering is good; it will lead the child of God to the scriptures to search the depths of the truths therein for answers. What I hope to set forth in a series of articles is the teaching of scripture and the Reformed creeds on cherished doctrines of the Reformed faith and how specifically they can be brought into various subjects (social studies, mathematics, science, English, and others). This is intended for all Reformed believers, as I pray these principles and applications can extend to all spheres of life for our covenant children because of the foundation in God’s word of these principles and applications.

One of the most important principles of the Reformed faith, and therefore a principle that must be emphasized and applied in the Reformed classroom, is man’s utter nothingness. This truth is subject to the relentless attacks of the world, the false church, and our totally depraved natures. Our schools, as they are founded on the truth of the gospel, must defend against these attacks and develop the truth regarding this doctrine concerning man. Without a proper understanding of man’s nothingness, there can be no proper understanding of the greatness of God and the glorious salvation we have in Jesus Christ! This truth regarding man must be fully integrated into the teaching in the schools, not just as an assumed truth or merely hinted at every once in a while, as I fear it often is in Christian classrooms.

What scripture really teaches about man is not a flattering picture. Psalm 103 speaks to us,

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. (vv. 13–16)

In Psalm 51 David confesses, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me” (v. 5).

We read in Job 25:4–6,

How then can man be justified with God? or how can he be clean that is born of a woman? Behold even to the moon, and it shineth not; yea, the stars are not pure in his sight. How much less man, that is a worm? And the son of man, which is a worm?

Galatians 6:3 teaches us, “For if a man think himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceiveth himself.”

In these verses and others, we find God’s teaching about man: man is dust and weak like grass and flowers; he is conceived and born dead in trespasses and sins; he cannot be justified in God’s sight by his working; he is a worm; and in his pride man thinks he is something when indeed he is nothing.

Yet the textbooks and curriculum we use in our classrooms often compromise this teaching or even directly contradict it. This is because the world’s doctrine of man, devoid of the light of the gospel, must be antithetical to scripture’s. The world must war against the sobering truth of man’s humility—it must, and it does. History textbooks go on for pages about a specific man or woman from history and all the good his hands accomplished, all her magnificent achievements; and the textbooks vaunt this person as someone the students should aspire to be like. But the critical Reformed eye, fixed upon scripture, will see that this image falls miserably short of the only standard for good. I will enumerate a few examples so that we may look according to God’s word and apply the word to well-known, well-loved men from history.

To begin, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin were deists. These beloved “founding fathers” of the United States denied that God is triune and that God had any interest whatever in the creation, and believed instead that God let his creation run its course without interfering with it at all. They denied that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and therefore rejected the possibility of salvation through him. Yet these men dared to reference the Lord’s name in the documents they authored and signed their names to that began this country. From thence the United States was deemed a nation founded on Christian principles. However, these men are not role models; these men should not be looked up to; these men lived wicked, Bible-denying and therefore God-hating lives. (Thomas Jefferson even had his own version of the Bible later named the “Jefferson Bible,” in which he extracted some teachings of Jesus from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and cast aside everything else—including anything indicating Jesus’ deity and work of redemption.)

History books and articles and websites abound with the supposed wisdom (which is no wisdom but foolishness [1 Cor. 3:19]) of these men. How many of us know “proverbs” such as “A penny saved is a penny earned” or “Early to bed, early to rise…” or “Nothing in life is certain except death and taxes,” from the mind of Benjamin Franklin? Is this wisdom? Is this the truth? God tells us this wisdom of the world is foolishness before him because Jesus Christ is the wisdom of God, and God himself is truth. How could a man who denied the deity and salvatory work of our savior Jesus Christ have any true wisdom at all to share with us?

Another famous deist—one who openly called into question Christ’s deity, promoted evolution, and believed a type of universal salvation; one whom the world loves to exalt to the peaks of morality—was Abraham Lincoln. From his leadership during the Civil War to his stance against slavery to his thoughtful, heroic, and patriotic speeches, the country in which we live loves to extol Abraham Lincoln. But again, if we think according to the word of God, if Abraham Lincoln too denied the wisdom of the word of God, how can we behave as though he has wisdom to share with us? To do that would be to actively look away from Jesus Christ, the wisdom of God, and seek wisdom in the dark, depraved recesses of the heart of man.

And we could go on. There are abundant examples of men from history in whom the world delights and whom the world vaunts above the word of God because of their achievements, intelligence, insights, leadership, and other qualities. We could talk about the world’s love of the military acumen of the hedonistic Alexander the Great. We could discuss other men of wicked, worldly wisdom, such as Gandhi, Confucius, and William Shakespeare. And textbooks explode with praise for men such as Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, John Locke, and Thomas Paine, who favored science and reason over Jehovah God. Let us not fall into the trap of the devil and fix our eyes upon these men as those who are good, wise, and worthy of imitation. Let us not teach as the world and exalt mere men, but instead let us extol the wisdom of our God, who would use such wicked and profane men for the cause of the building of his church and the glory of his name!

I must confess that this was a grave weakness that I experienced in my schooling while growing up in the Protestant Reformed schools. Often when these historical figures were taught, the message was that they were great and quite something to behold and even that we should aspire to be like them. Look at how intelligent they were! Look at how they challenged the common ideas and practices of the day! Look at how hardworking they were! Look at their abilities to speak and write so eloquently! What needed to be said instead was that these men were nothing! God is great; God alone is great! Jesus Christ is someone to behold and follow! Follow not after the apparent wisdom of these men, who attempted to divorce wisdom from the source of truth. Seek the face of Jehovah!

I will also confess that the mentality so prevalent in the world has seeped into my own instruction. I remember, for example, making much of the genius of Carl Gauss, a famous mathematician who at the age of a young elementary school child could add the digits 1 to 100 in the matter of a couple of minutes by using an invented formula. I made much of the intellect of this man, when instead I should have praised the God who gave Gauss his intelligence so that God might be glorified and who first established and maintained the laws that Gauss discovered only by God’s sovereignty.

But what about instruction involving godly men, even ones who did much good for the cause of the gospel and reformed the church? Our temptation often is to exalt them in our teaching because of the good works they performed. This too is a grave mistake. While men such as Noah, Job, Paul, Augustine, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, John Calvin, Hendrik de Cock, and many others were given by God as good examples of life and doctrine and while their writings have been used by the church for many years, they too were men. Let us not forget that. They were men who had the same totally depraved natures we have and who desperately needed the saving work of Jesus Christ. Let us teach our students that God alone raised up these men in the church; God justified them before his sight; God gifted them with spiritual gifts of the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ; and God ordained the theology they would develop, the reformations they would bring, the deeds they would perform, and the very words they would speak and write. Truly, these men, just like all other men, were nothing of themselves.

God alone makes men what they are, and so we must apply that also to all prominent unbelieving men we teach our students. God gave these men their offices; God gave them their intellects; God set them in high places; God gave them loyal subjects, citizens, and soldiers; God led them to make discoveries and conclusions about his creation. And what did these unbelieving men do? All that they could do! They pressed these things from God into all manner of unrighteousness and with their wickedness led astray thousands and millions of people. These men were set up in these offices, with these gifts of earthly intelligence, insight, power, and the like, so that God might condemn them daily by their actions and cast them one day into the eternal judgment they deserve for raging against the very God who gave them those gifts. Let us teach about these men what God taught David in Psalm 73: “Surely thou didst set them in slippery places: thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation, as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors” (vv. 18–19). Let us say to the world that will puff up these men and their external gifts that we reject their wicked doctrine that makes something of man and nothing of God!

A final practice of applying the doctrine of man in the Reformed classroom will fit more in a science or mathematics classroom. When the students are taught about God’s order instilled in the rules, formulas, and theorems of mathematics and science; when they are impressed with the infinity of God in numbers, sequences, and series and the vastness of space (which all only appear to be infinite, but God knows their end); when they behold the providence and sovereignty of God in upholding all of creation; when they see God’s immutability in the unchangeable nature of the laws of math and the sciences, teach them to reflect on the vanity and emptiness of man.

Man is not orderly like God, but man will make rules and break them to serve his own purposes. Man is not infinite like God, but man is finite, so that he cannot even understand something as simple as the end of numbers or the deepness of space. Man cannot create laws of science and math but is merely allowed to uncover them; and even then, with his dark mind, he often cannot uncover them correctly, or he presses them into his God-hating agenda. For example, man used the laws God placed in his creation to dream up the theory of evolution, which militates against the whole revelation of scripture. Man is not unchangeable like God, but man changes on a whim in his thoughts, emotions, convictions, and beliefs. We exclaim with the psalmist in Psalm 8, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?” (v. 4).

I encourage teachers to apply the Reformed doctrine of man in the education and upbringing of your students. Take this concept and develop it further for your own classes and your own instruction. There is much more to be said on this topic, and there are many more ways to apply this concept to our students! My goal really was only to explore some possibilities of showing man’s nothingness in the subjects taught at our schools, and I doubt I even scratched that surface. God gives us a sober reminder in his words to Adam after his fall in the garden: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19). Let us remind ourselves of these words after every lesson that discusses man and his “wisdom,” power, leadership, intelligence, inventions, and even good works in his laboring for the glory of God. And inevitably, the result will be that we make room to bring greater glory and honor to our God and to his Son Jesus Christ.