Biblical Worldview at Valor — Teaching, Living, and Loving the Truth

In this episode, Media Department Chair and host, Natalie Tysdal, sits down with Valor’s Director of Humanities and College Counseling, Toby Coffman, to explore what it truly means to live with a Biblical Christian Worldview, especially within the context of high school education at Valor Christian. Toby shares practical insights on how this perspective shapes every aspect of life—from academics and athletics to relationships and future goals. They discuss how Valor equips students not only to know the truth but to love it, live it, and take it into the world. Along the way, Toby reflects on the unique openness of today’s students, the importance of modeling faith, and how parents can partner with the school to ground teens in Christ during these formative years. Whether you’re a parent, educator, or student, this conversation will inspire you to see the world through the lens of Scripture and live with purpose. To learn more about how Valor Christian instills a Biblical Christian Worldview in every subject, please go to valorchristian.com and follow us on Instagram at ValorEagles. Share this episode with your friends and family.

Thank you for listening. To learn more about Valor Christian High School please check out our website. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook!

Transcript

0:01

Toby, thank you so much for taking the time. And welcome to a new school year. It's my pleasure to be here. Thank you, Natalie. New for some of us just coming back, but you've been here all summer preparing for things. The topic for today that we really want to dive into, it's. It's a phrase we hear often. But explain to everyone what biblical Christian worldview is. Yeah, sure. So there. There are lots of different metaphors, I think, for thinking about the faith. But I think it's helpful with biblical worldview to think about the word picture that's being created there, that it's the way we look at the world. And so I happen to be really blind if I take these things off, but if I put these glasses on, all of a sudden, things that were unclear before become clarified. And so to use Scripture as a lens through which we see the world as. And that has to do with theological matters, like what we think about God or Jesus or salvation or the church, but it also has to do with what we think about culture. How do we kind of make sense of our times? Are we reading and looking at our culture through a biblical worldview, or are we looking at it through some other worldview? Because I think that the important thing to note, too, is everyone has a worldview. Some people can articulate them really well, some people can't. But the reality is that we all have one. There's this great story that a writer named David Foster Wallace told about two fish swimming. He gave this at a graduation speech that ended up getting really famous. But these two young fish are swimming through a pond, and they swim past an older fish, and the older fish looks at them and goes, how's the water this morning, boys? And they just kind of nod at him and swim on. And then the other one fish, young fish, looks at the other and goes, what's water? And the point of that story is that you can become so immersed in something that you're not even aware of where you're at. We don't notice oxygen until we have the lack of oxygen. And so I think when we apply something like that to worldview, what it does is it encourages us to be intentional and think about what we're allowing to shape the way we see things. Because we will be shaped by something. We will worship something, actually, whether that's God or success or ourselves or whatever. Whatever that will be we're created to worship or created to believe in. Biblical worldview gives us a frame of seeing that through. Is the Bible shaping what I'M worshiping, is it shaping what I'm thinking about this issue or that issue? Why is it so important here at this high school? Oh, man. I mean, it's important for our mission as a school because we want to, as our mission says, to prepare tomorrow's leaders to transform the world for Christ and to be prepared for that. They have to be shaped by Christ. You, you can't, you can't engage with this world in a meaningful way unless you've learned to kind of operate within the world. You need to know its terms. You need to know what people are talking about and what is going on in a culture. And so what biblical worldview can't mean is like, I just like sit in a room and read my Bible. Like, you can have like a really good biblical worldview then, but you're not actually doing anything with it. And part of our goal as a school is to send our kids out on mission to this world when they leave this place. Whether that is, whether they, as most of our students, go to a four year college, some go to the military, some take a gap year, some pursue vocations. But we want them to be sent from this place to be a blessing and to bring what they've gained in this place out into the whatever field the Lord has for them. And so I think it's vital in another sense because there are so many competing messages that our kids confront. There are so many competitors to a biblical worldview. They're just inundated with all of these different messages about this is how you attain a successful life, or this is what, this is what prosperity looks like, or this is what flourishing looks like. There, there are so many competitors in the marketplace. And you think back, you know, 500 years or so ago, if you're a European, you're just, you're just a Christian, you're born into a Christian environment. You don't know anything else today, man. You, you have to know what you believe and you have to be able to defend it and you have to have reasons for it. And, and beyond that, you have to love it. You can't, it's not just enough to like, know the right answer. You have to love the right things. And I think that's something that can be lost in the way that we talk about biblical worldview sometimes as we make it super cerebral, like, let's just learn a bunch of stuff and then, then we'll be okay. But if you learn a bunch of stuff about God, if you don't love God or want to Obey him. You've. You've kind of missed the boat there. Let's talk about that a little bit more. I really like that, because teaching can go a lot of different ways. It can be just teaching it. And here's what you need to know, and here's what you need to memorize. But how at Valor in particular, do we. And I'm asking you this. I know it because I've learned it. And so I'm excited for you to tell it, though, because we spend a lot of time learning these things as educators, as Christian educators. But how does Valor help students to live it and love it, not just memorize it? Yeah. Such a great question. I think, you know, the way we were, the school that I went to growing up, it was, let's cram as much information in my brain as I can. Yeah. Regurgitate it on a test, and then. Then it's gone. Right. And so I think I was in college when the TV show are you smarter than a fifth grader? Came out, and. And they're asking adults all these, like, basic fact questions that you learn when you're 10 years old. And all these adults knew these questions, knew the answers to these questions at some point, but they didn't stick because they didn't really matter to them. And I think one of the key words. It didn't matter to them. It didn't matter to them. And I think it's really good to think through things from a kid's perspective sometime from a student's perspective. Inevitably, if you're a teacher, you get the question sometimes asked genuinely, sometimes asked as an accusation. When am I ever going to need to know this? Outside of. Outside of this class. And I think when you approach life from a biblical worldview, you actually have a pretty good answer to that question, which is, on the one hand, you may not need this specific piece of information, but what a biblical worldview teaches us is that everything we do, we can do for the glory of God. And so you can study for a chemistry test to the glory of God. You can write a really great English paper to the glory of God. You can. And it's not just religious activities. I think that's what we can think like, oh, I glorify God through singing praise music, or I glorify God through going to church or reading my Bible. And all those things are phenomenal. But if those are the only ways that we can glorify God, we actually spend very little percentage of our lives glorifying God. But if you can glorify God. God through the way you study, the way you pay attention in class, the. The way you attend to your teacher and what he or she is asking you to do, all of a sudden, like, your whole life is open to the ability to give God glory. You can give God glory through the way you listen to this podcast. You can give God glory through the way you treat other drivers in traffic. There's. There's so many different ways. And so I think that's one of the things we try to communicate, is that this is more than just knowledge transfer. This is what a Christian education is about, is the formation of an entire human being. And I think, too. And this is something we could talk about at more depth at some point, too. We don't actually know what we're going to do when we're 15 years old. For the most part, we can have, like, here's the careers that I'm interested in. But with technology and the pace of change in our culture, the jobs that were great jobs 20 years ago may not even be available 20 years from now. And so rather than having a job preparation model for school that's getting us ready for career A, B, or C, I think by focusing on the types of people that we're building at this school, by God's grace, that are being formed to become more like Christ, then all of a sudden, you're forming people who are prepared for whatever the future has in store. And because of our mission, by God's grace, are able to help even shape that future because they've been prepared not just to regurgitate, not just to learn and then dump it out of their brain once they're done with the test. But they're able to see where culture's going and sense patterns and respond creatively and proactively to things, rather than just taking in information, whether it be a. Career, a relationship, a hardship that they will have, that they've learned. And that was my next question. And it is, how do we go about grounding students in these formative years, these high school years, beyond the classroom? So we have a lot of activities. Of course, we have other things. We have a discovery program. We talk about a lot of those things. But if you could just touch on why that's so important and how we do that so that we are grounding them in these formative years for those challenges. You talked about it a little bit just now, but go more. Yeah, yeah. So I think the. You hit a certain point in life and you realize, like, how much of life is unpredictable and you couldn't have planned everything, everything, right? And you. And it can all change in a moment too. You're on this trajectory and then all of a sudden it's a different life path for you. And I think that's why there's a model of education that basically treated people. And the term for it is brains on a stick. Like all education for is cramming that brain full of useful information. But the body doesn't matter. Where we're at doesn't matter. The beauty of our location doesn't matter. And what a more whole person view of education does is it doesn't treat us as just brains on a stick. We're brains that are embodied. And those bodies need certain amounts of training, right? They need to be prepared for the world. And so our athletic programs prepare people. There is a sense and scope of the world that opens up to you when you travel outside of where you've been before. You can see pictures of places on the Internet, but there's a full sensory experience when you're there. There's smell and touch and taste as well as sight. And so I think the formation that happens here, there's so much to. And not to get too much into the weeds of this, but there's a lot of research about psychology of young people. And that when you're young, your brain is plastic and moldable. And so the things that shape you in the years about 9 to 17, they imprint themselves on our brains to a different degree than you or I learning something. And this is why it's easier to learn French if you're 11 than it is to learn French if you're 41. Because your brain is more moldable and plastic. And so the types of formative influences that are, that are preteens and teens go through actually have a disproportionate weight on the rest of their lives because they become cut into kind of the person that they are and help them see that. And so it is a super unique. And there's so many people at Valor, so many people who work here who thought they were going to teach at the college level or adult ministry or something like that. And what they found is like the further you back up in someone's life, actually the more impact you can have upon them because they are more receptive to truth. They're less kind of hardened in who they are. And there's a unbelievable beauty to that. And there's also a kind of danger to that because on the flip side, if you form in this really beautiful way that sticks. And if you form in a really harmful way, that has the tendency to stick as well. Yeah. How does Valor compare to other schools? Because I say this and I won't say the school. I have two daughters, one graduated college, one went to college. And we went on a lot of college tours. And one of the things that stood out to me was being on one of the tours at a Christian college where the tour guide said, you don't have to believe in the Bible. You don't even have to take a Bible class if you go here. And it actually was. For my daughter, it was a deterrent. She was like, oh, but that's what I want. But for others it's. It's okay. But. And that's probably harsh, but how do we compare on a collegiate level and on a high school level when it comes to biblical worldview and how it's built into the school? Yeah, that's. That's a great question. And I would say from like a 30,000 foot view there, one of the things that we're constantly talking about as staff and faculty at this school is preventing mission drift. That a lot of explain that for. People who don't know too, it's important. A lot of schools. Harvard was founded to be teaching college for pastors. And you'll often hear that cited. And now that is definitely not its motivation for existence. Built into the logo. Exactly. Veritas. And the emblem and all of that. And so there's a. It doesn't happen overnight. Mission drift is slow compromises over time. You compromise here and it makes it easier to compromise over here. And so for an organization to stay truly Christ centered and focused on his mission and to do so in a faithful way, it takes vigilance because the tendency is to roll downhill. Right. The tendency is for things to weaken over time. And so that's from an institutional level. That is something that we're dead set against that not happening here. We want to keep Christ in the center of what we do, regardless of what that might of if that costs us in certain areas or something like that. Because that's the most important thing outside of success. Or we have students who do amazing, amazing things. We had over $10 million awarded last year to our students in scholarships as they left Valor. Our students went to some amazing schools. We had an exemplary group of kids last year. But the most important outcomes for our school related to our students is not their future career success, it's their spiritual outcomes that we have that we want them to know that they're loved by God, that we want them to be shaped by a biblical worldview, that we want them to go to a church that preaches the grace of Jesus and preaches God's word. And so the. At the same time, the. The motto of our school is influence through Excellence. And that can create tensions because sometimes people say, even people at other Christian schools, like, oh, excellence is a worldly thing. That's a desire for success or accolades or something like that. But what we believe here, and I believe this is a scriptural belief that overflows from our Christian worldview, is that excellence of honors the Lord, that He has given us different gifts and talents, and he's given us the capacity to grow in them and to glorify him and to bring attention to him and his name through the way that we use the gifts that we've been given. And so excellence honors the Lord. There's. There's a. I think of the parable of the talents that, that Jesus tells that if you are given a. A big gift, there's. There's that he says, to whom much is given, much is required, that we. We have to make use of the gifts that the Lord gives us. And it's. It's not actually humble to deny excellence. In that case, it's. It's prideful because you're saying that you know better than the Lord what you ought to do with what you've been given. I would also say that excellence in. In our context here, it is not accomplishment. Excellence in our context is making the most of what you've been given. So the, the Greeks had a word. There's like 15 different pronunciations. The first one that I heard is arete, and it's a R, E, T, E with a couple symbols over the E's. And this was their word that's translated excellence, but is also translated as virtue. And so for the Greeks, to grow in excellence was to grow in virtue. And I think there's a lot of similarities between how Christians would think about growth and excellence. It's growth in virtue, growth in Christ likeness. We become more equipped for excellence the more we become like Jesus. I'm sure there are people who are thinking, okay, so I get this, but how do you. How do you build that into math? How do you build that into some other courses? Because it is a part of every course that we have here. Yeah, that's. That's a great question. And I, When I first came to valor, I taught English, and I was. I was like, this is kind of easy to do biblical integration because you're reading these books where characters make dumb decisions and have to deal with the consequences of their sin. And so it's a pretty convenient bridge from that to scripture. I remember thinking, man, the math teachers, like they have it hard, like they've got it. And now that I think there's a couple things that help you reframe that one. There is one of the phrases that you'll hear people say at Valor is grounded in Christian tradition going back to Augustine in the 4th century, that all truth is God's truth, that there is nothing that we discover that's outside of something that God created and designed. And so every inch of creation is under the lordship of Christ. And so that's true of any vocation that we would do. That's true of any subject we would take. And to circle back to what we were talking about earlier, this means that I can learn calculus to the glory of God and our teachers can teach calculus to the glory of God. And there's something in math that speaks of the order and harmony of God. There's something in science that speaks to the beauty of diversity. I remember going with Discovery to Kenya and getting. You did that recently yourself. And you're on the safari and you're seeing these creatures that look like they're out of a sci fi novel or something like that. And here they are, like in the real world, the diversity and beauty and harmony of God's creation down to Bible, where you know, you're teaching them the very words of God. The other thing I would say though is that because we're not just brains on a stick. Biblical worldview integration in the classroom is not just about teaching math from a Christian perspective or teaching science from a Christian perspective. What it's about, I think a lot at Valor and at most Christian schools I hope would want to say the same thing. It's about the men and women doing the teaching that my oldest son is going to be a freshman at Valor this year. And the thing that I'm most excited about for him, all the programs, all the cool stuff he gets to do, he wants to play soccer and do Discovery and do arts, all of that stuff is going to be great. But the thing that most excites me about him and his time here is the men and women who love Jesus, who he's going to be in their classroom, on their sports field, in the recording studios, all across the board. And so one of the things that I tell our teachers here is that you're a living curriculum. You're a living embodiment of this worldview that you possess, which is why it's so important for the people who work here, staff, faculty, everybody, to have a vibrant relationship with Christ. We need to be growing in that so we can. In our classrooms and in our life groups and with our prayer partners and with our athletes and with our artists, we can overflow this. This love that Christ has put into our hearts to them. And so our cup is being filled by Christ, and we're able to overflow that love and joy to our students. And so I think there is content related to biblical worldview, but I think there's also. What I would argue is more important is the people who are teaching that, because the way they craft their class, the way they're gentle and compassionate with the student who's struggling, all of that, I think, speaks to biblical worldview in sometimes more direct ways even than a Bible verse on the whiteboard or something to that effect. Yeah, they're seeing it lived out. Yeah, they're watching. Modeling is the greatest thing, right? Yeah. And we were talking before we started recording that. One of my favorite sayings in education is that there's more that is caught than is taught that we. One of the mistakes, like, I'm a dad, I have three kids, and one of the mistakes I can make is thinking, like, all I need to do is tell my kids the right things. And there's a certain amount, like, you need to tell your kids the right things. But if you're not living it for them, if you're saying this is what's really important, and then you're living like, this is what's really important, they're going to see through that really quickly. And so what we try to do at this school is model and so that our kids catch our love for Christ. And they're not just told that we love Jesus. They know that we love Jesus by the way. That we love them. Yeah. It's a really beautiful thing when we see our students experiencing the gospel. Oh, yeah. Praise God for sure. And myself being a newer teacher going into my fifth year, I didn't expect the joy I got in seeing that. But you talk about that a little bit. You've been. Now as a dean. Yeah, yeah. You've been a teacher. You've been here for how many years? This is the start of my 12th year. Yeah, I. This is such a great question. And. And I think the. The thing that's so great here is every generation, and it's on the one hand, like, it's kind of silly to group people by generations because there's so much diversity within that. Right. But I also think there are certain trends that are worth, that are worth noting. And one of the things that really struck me a few years ago is that the kids, to kids today, that's such an old guy thing to say. But kids today are, they're asking different questions than I asked when I was a teenager. And I'll out myself here generationally as a millennial and millennials, millennials who are Christians, we were kind of taught by the popular voices in that world to be a little cynical and world weary and kind of protect ourselves with irony because we felt the culture was against the faith or whatever. And so I kind of had this hard edge and thought, oh my gosh, like this is what students are going to respond to. This is what I would have responded to as a, as a 15 or 16 year old. That every generation has its own challenges and its own insights, things that they see more clearly. And one of the, one of the most beautiful things I think about the generation that we're teaching now is they're just so open. They have seen the way that the sort of competing philosophies of life in the world have failed. And so they're looking back to older, more traditional forms. And so there is a huge surge right now of young people coming to Christ. One of the most popular podcast episodes of the year this year was Joe Rogan talking to a Christian apologist from Canada. It blew up on, on YouTube and Spotify of this guy answering just really direct questions about can we trust the Gospels, can we trust eyewitness account, things like that. And I love that, that, that, and I think it, it really is a responsibility that we have as teachers and employees at a Christian school is to be responsive to this generation and think about what are they asking, what are they interested in, what are their hangups, what are their aspirations and hopes and can we speak in the language that matters to them? And so I've actually, I've learned so much. I had a group of students over to my house last night of students who graduated back in May. And I was just struck again by how genuine and open and authentic they are. And it's been a call out to me of am I this genuine and open and authentic or am I still trying to kind of protect myself by being hard edged and cynical? And they're not. And it's, and it's beautiful. And so I think not only for reaching their peers with the gospel, but Also for softening the hearts of older Christians who have gotten hardened over time. That is the beauty of a young person living out the gospel and confronting the gospel in their generation is they are a light to the lost, and they're also a light to the people who maybe have hardened a little bit in their first love and have kept up the activity, but the joy they felt in following Christ has been drained away. And to see young people who don't feel a need to restrain their joy, joyfully praising the Lord is a beautiful thing for all of us. So that leads me to how can parents partner? We talk a lot about partnering with parents. Very important. How can parents partner with the school in a biblical worldview manner? Yeah, man, there's. There's a lot of different ways to go with that question. So at Valor, they're in two broad buckets. For Christian schools. There are covenantal schools and missional schools. And so covenantal schools, usually some combination of parents and kid, have to sign a statement of faith asserting, you know, we were believers in Christ and that's why we want to come here. And then there are missional schools where it's open enrollment as long as you have to agree to take Bible classes and go to chapel and be open to certain things, but you don't actually have to sign a statement of faith. And so I think because of that, our families run the gamut here of people who have never been to church or have rarely been to church, to people for whom Christianity is like the sort of defining trait of their existence. And so I think for the kind of the broadest swath of that audience, the number one piece of advice that I would give is to be in church every Sunday. We live in a culture, and I know it's hard here. My son loves to play soccer, travel, sports, and all of that world. It comes up. But one of the most frequent conversations that I have with students about their spiritual life in their home, they'll say something to the effect of, we used to go to church every Sunday and tell. And usually the end of that is something like travel. Fill in the blank. Baseball, lacrosse, hockey, soccer, whatever. And I get that things like that come up. But one of the best ways to shape a biblical worldview is to be with God's people as much as you can. And so the number one piece of advice I would give to shape that in the home is to be in church together. Cause then you. You have conversation topics and things like that that you can talk about based off of what you experience. The dinner Conversations on Sunday nights are some of our best. Yeah, right. Like, you're. You're wrestling with this stuff together. And now that my oldest is, like, in the argumentative phase, he's like, I don't think the pastor made a good point here or whatever. And I love that. Right. Because then we're talking about the. The. He's. He is wrestling with this. He's listening deeply if sometimes. If only to argue. But I think it just opens up richness. And then your kids see that you're prioritizing this, that this is. This is a big deal to you, that you're gonna do what it takes to. To have your family in. In a place where God's word is being preached with his people around you. And I think that's a huge signal to your kids. Yeah, I always like to ask people, and. And by the way, you're going to be hosting some of these podcasts, which I'm really excited about, too, so thank you for agreeing to do that. I always like to ask people, though, your prayer for this school. We're headed into a new school year. There's a lot we could be praying for. What's your prayer for Valor? So it's a great question, because I actually have one. I think some years I'd be like, well, you know, like blessing or whatever. But this year, I've got very specific. A friend of mine shared a sermon with me a few months ago that I shared with our graduating seniors last year. And the. It's not the first line of the sermon, but it's kind of the thesis of the sermon is that God shows up where he's wanted. And so my prayer for this year has been that we would want God at Valor, that we would want him to show up. That we would. And. And some of that is our own preparation. Do we have eyes to see what the Lord is doing? Are we listening to what he's telling us? Are we receptive to that? And so, yeah, my prayer, I actually, I'm super excited about this year. I get the sense the Lord is going to do something big through our school and in the people who are here. And I just want to be available for Him. I want to want him to be in this place. We can. We can get caught up in our own thing. We're just doing our job day after day after day, and we're not inviting the Lord in. And I just want us to be a place where we're inviting him in every day. That's beautiful. Thank you. Great to talk to you. Thanks, Natalie. Appreciate it.