As I near the end of my time as Principal at Green Point Christian College, I want to remind you all of what I have been trying to say to you over the past four and a half years about what a Christian school really is. Especially as schools like ours come under scrutiny and attack from those who actively oppose Christianity, it is important you understand and appreciate just what we are about.

A Christian school is not just a school that is run by Christians. It is a school that seeks to undertake the act of education from a particular philosophical basis. All schools do this in fact, but we seek to make this explicit and transparent whereas not all others do. There is no such thing as a neutral position when it comes to faith and God. We either believe in God and seek to live in accordance with his pattern for humanity, or we believe in God but essentially ignore him and do our own thing or we refuse to believe in God and substitute something else in his place, usually ourselves.

As a school we adopt the first position. We believe God created the universe and humanity and placed us in an amazing and intricate world that he had made especially to sustain us. His desire was for us to be in fellowship with him and to take up the responsibility to further develop the world and society under his authority. But we were also given the ability to freely choose to go along with this or not and sadly, the first humans chose not to go along with this.

Seduced by the thought that they could take God’s place, they chose to go their own way and we have suffered the consequences ever since. But God did not abandon humankind, he worked out a way to show us where we had gone wrong and how to get back to our original state. That plan involved the coming of his own son, Jesus Christ, to show us again how to live as truly human beings and to take our place and bear the consequences of the punishment we deserved for rebelling against our Creator. The way is now open for us to be re-united with God and to be restored.

Christian schooling is grounded in this story, and we want to show students the effects of this on them and the world and how they can see the world not only as it is but as it can and should be. Everyone views the world through a particular lens of either faith in God or faith in something else. Our society places a huge emphasis on faith in ourselves and in technology. We work to show students an alternative view and invite them to consider adopting this as their way of life. In doing this we do not ignore the alternative world and life views out there but help students examine them as they seek to make their own choice about how to live life.

Next year we will be offering an opportunity for you to come along to some sessions to explore and understand this more so that you can appreciate what we are doing at GPCC, and maybe even consider adopting the Christian approach for your own lives. As we approach the Christmas season, we Christians rejoice in celebrating not so much Santa and personal gift-giving but the greatest gift of all – God’s gift of his own Son to the world that allows us to be restored.

Phillip Nash