It is my passion to teach and encourage parents to build their lives and their children’s lives upon the biblical worldview. It started back in 1972 when my wife Shirley and I were working with Campus Crusade for Christ at a university campus. We realized that most students were ill prepared and inadequately equipped to give a solid biblical explanation for the faith that we have in Jesus Christ. Whether the child was in a Sociology class, a Biology class, or a Geology class, he was being challenged in his Christian faith.
     I went back to school to get a degree in Curriculum Design so that I could learn how to write educational materials to assist parents and teachers in the writing and implementation of a biblical way of looking at the world. We have been involved in homeschooling since 1980 and have ten children between the ages of 10 and 26.
     I believe there is no single topic of greater significance than looking at life from the biblical worldview. In the 1960s and 70s, Francis Schaeffer asked this one penetrating question, “How should we then live?” Dr. Schaeffer’s answer is that we should be living according to a biblical worldview, a foundation that is laid upon Christ. I believe that question still resounds today in the 21st century. How should we then live? Are we going to embrace the biblical view, or are we going to embrace the nonbiblical view? Today what we see happening in some segments of Christianity is the fusion and synchronization of the two. We must be careful against that. In Back to Freedom and Dignity, Dr. Schaeffer said that Christians must pay close attention to the course of events. We are going to be called upon to answer questions that we have never considered before. We must be prepared to give an answer. In short, Christians must prepare to take the lead in giving direction to cultural change. If it goes poorly, as well it might in this post-Christian world, then we must be consciously preparing the next generation for the new battles that it will face. We must be consciously working and developing in our children’s lives a foundation that is based only upon the biblical worldview.

How Should We Then Live? Francis Schaeffer / Good News Publishing / 1976

What is a worldview? One illustration is that a worldview is like the sunglasses that you look through that give you perspective. Another illustration is that a worldview is like a filing cabinet containing filing drawers. In these drawers are answers to basic questions. There are basically seven questions. Those are the questions that we answer in our book Answers for Difficult Days. The first question is, “Is there a God, and what is He like?” That would be like filing cabinet drawer number one. What is the essential nature of Who God is? Of course, the scriptures reveal the nature and character of God. There are other books to help us. I love The God of All Comfort by Hannah Willis Smith. It is a treasure book of leading your child into who God is. I would highly encourage you to look through this book on the nature and character of God with your children.
     The second filing cabinet drawer of a worldview is, “What is the nature of the universe, its origin, and its structure?” We have been focusing a lot in the Christian community on the origin of the universe in the area of creation, which we should, but we also need to look at its structure. What I mean by the structure is that there is a seen portion and an unseen portion (Col. 1:16). To us, that is very common and has been in western culture for thousands of years, except for the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, there was a denial or a rejection of the unseen portion. We moved into a period of time in history when the unseen portion was not recognized. In fact, as Paul said in Romans 1:18, the truth of the unseen world was suppressed. It was taken away, and we moved into an era called naturalism.
     The third filing cabinet drawer is, “What is the nature of man? What is the essence of who we are?” Where am I from, and where am I going? I love reading literature and asking our children, “What is this person saying about God and the universe? What is this person saying about the nature of man?” In two books that deal with monsters (Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson), one author believes that man is basically good. Shelley believes that man was created kind, benevolent, and generous, and society turned him into a monster. She says then that if you could simply correct society, then man would behave properly. This is not at all the biblical view of man. However, in Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, you think as you read that there are two separate, distinct individuals. Then in the end you realize that hiding deep within Dr. Jekyll is a Mr. Hyde because Stevenson believed that man has an evil nature. Left to himself, the evil nature would totally control the person, which is the biblical position. Man is separated from God, and the result is that he has an evil nature. In a sense what these authors have done is taken a plot with characters and themes and tied basic ideas of life into their stories. We must be helping our children to recognize those false ideas that have been wedded to stories and recognize the true ideas.
     The fourth filing cabinet drawer is, “What is the basis of ethics and morality?” We like to say lots of times, “Well, because Mom or Dad says so. That is why we are doing these things.” But what is truly the basis of the moral and ethical decisions that we make as adults and children? You can think of it in terms of two circles. A large circle represents what man is capable of doing, both good and bad.

Starting Points Syllabus: World View Primer Starting Points Syllabus: World View Primer David Quine / Cornerstone Curriculum / 2002

There is another way you can think of a worldview, which is the picture of a map. A map tells you where you are and where you are going, and it tells you how to get there. C.S. Lewis says there are three maps: the Judeo-Christian map, the map of western humanism, and the map of eastern mysticism. These three maps are seeking to give direction to people, seeking to convince people to go in one way or the other. Jesus said that the way to destruction is wide, but the way to life is narrow (Matt. 7:13,14). If you were to draw an outline of the continental United States and then draw the state where you were born, that state’s outline would be fairly accurate. The states immediately surrounding your birth state would also be fairly accurate. But the further you moved away from your birth state, the more distorted your map would become.
     James Sire says that a worldview is a map of reality. Like any map, it may fit what is really there, or it may be grossly misleading. I like to look at old atlases and see the maps that were drawn of our continent as people were beginning to move over here. They did not start out accurate, but they became more and more accurate. That is what God wants to do in our lives as we teach our children from the biblical worldview. You see, He is correcting our maps. He is erasing a little here and drawing lines over here a little bit as we see Him for Who He is or we see ourselves for who we really are. When He is correcting our maps, it is not necessarily really comfortable to have the lines erased or redrawn.
     Several years ago, my son Blaine and I were in Minnesota at a homeschool convention. We went to St. Anthony Falls, which had been the point of the northernmost navigation of the Mississippi River. However, in the 1940s the Corps of Engineers diverted the river, laid a solid concrete “floor” for the bedrock, and created a series of locks. The river had eroded the rocks so that there were falls that ships could not navigate. Now the ships could go around the falls, go through the locks, and go up further north. That is exactly what God has called you and I to do as parents—to lay a solid, biblical foundation for our children’s lives so they will be able to navigate in and out of culture because we are ambassadors for Christ.

Making Math Meaningful, Level 1 Cornerstone Curriculum / 1997

	Let Us Highly Resolve David & Shirley Quine / Cornerstone Curriculum / 1996

Let Us Highly Resolve by Mr. Quine is a small book with a big message. When the question of math pops up Karen more frequently recommends his Making Math Meaningful.
     - Editors