What is Biblical Integration?
By Mark Eckel, Moody Bible Institute

My daughter began reading mysteries around the age of nine. They helped illuminate the biblical doctrine of sin. “What has to happen for a book to be a mystery?”, I asked her. Her response came back, “Someone has to kill someone or steal something.” “Right! And what would the Bible call thievery or murder?” Matter-of-factly, the obvious reply, “Sin.” “Exactly!”, my face smiling, “Every time mystery writers write they explore the biblical doctrine of sin.”

Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who tells the wonderful primary level tale of Horton the elephant saving the society of “Who-ville” from extinction. The key theme running throughout the story, “a person’s a person, no matter how small,” calls to action anyone interested in preserving life.
So important is the concept that crisis pregnancy centers sell the volume around the United States! But where did Dr. Seuss ultimately get the idea for his book? What is the core ideal? The only answer can be Genesis 1! Made in God’s image, everyone has worth, value, and dignity. The doctrine is not stated by a Christian author, but it is a Christian concept!

Biblical integration brings to light the truth (or error) of any subject by interpreting it through Scripture. Biblical integration is concerned with wholeness. Creation had intentional ideals set within itself by God (Proverbs 8:12-36). Sin fragmented human thought, life, universal connections, and the lot. The Christian’s duty of redemption laid out by Jesus recaptures the fragments of truth, excises the error, synthesizing, recreating God’s unique objective for His world.

Biblical principles permeate everything. “Permeation” suggests that the foundation of truth is God’s and God accomplishes the unification of all truth. “Principled permeation” identifies errors and codifies instruction from books or ideas with tenets established in God’s Word. Fragments of truth are acknowledged and made whole by God’s revelation—the essence of coherence. Classification of truth, a system of rules, principles, or codes provides the framework necessary to construct rationale, scope and sequence, and lesson plan construction. Bible verses do not have to accompany every fraction written on the math board. What is important is to know why fractions can even exist identifying that creational imprint from The Creator. The ideal biblical integration begins with the teacher’s biblically informed mindset thinking about educational directives from God’s point of view.
Take, for example, the book Frankenstein. In her classic work, Mary Shelley develops themes of fear, horror, and terror. It is the job of the Christian (and in the case of school, the Christian English teacher) to look at this piece of literature from a Christian point of view, an example of which follows:

Shelley wanted to “make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart” by writing about the “mysterious fears of our nature and awaken[ing] thrilling horror.” Humans scare easily because terror is real. Sudden movements may frighten us. When the unexpected happens, we scream. But the object of our fear is always something different than what we’re used to. The monster in Frankenstein evokes a response from everyone he meets. Some cower. Others bristle. Many respond with a repugnance, aversion, or loathing. It is the unusual that people respond to most powerfully.

It is good to be scared. Dread is an important biblical concept. Jeremiah states that the lack of terror of God was a problem for Israel (2:19). Quivering before God is the response of the writer in Psalm 119:120. God (Exodus 15:11), His Name (Deuteronomy 28:58), His deeds (Exodus 34:10), and His coming Day of Judgment (Isaiah 2:19; Joel 2:31) evokes a terrible trembling in people. The Egyptians who had seen enough of God’s plagues responded properly to their dread (Exodus 9:20). In fact, by fearing God there is no need to fear anything or anyone else (Isaiah 8:12-13).

In Christian homes and schools, everything should be based on a biblical worldview. Since Christians are in the course of growing in Christ, distinctive thinking is a continuous and often arduous development. We live in a world encumbered by an anti-Christian bias (2 Corinthians 4:4; 11:1-15; 1 John 4:1-6). So the individual Christian must bring a biblical thought process to bear on people, policy, and practice to name a few.

Reprinted with permission. Mark Eckel is the Associate Professor of Educational Ministries at Moody Bible Institute and co-founder of Biblical Integration Resources Ltd. ( www.biblicalintegration.com)