240 Chapter 7 kids are gone too, but you’ve sown something, that God Himself can then in His time give maturity to it again, because it’s about a person and not a system so much. So, as a teacher, you can also give things back to God after a year, or after a day, because He does continue with it. Based on these considerations, the conversational community concluded that it is important to hold on to Biblical truth; above all, to its essence of salvation only in and through the person and the work of Jesus Christ. The conversational community further considered it part of the Biblical mission for teachers to not move away from this, neither in their teaching nor in their educational aims and ideals. However, Christian teachers also need to feel that the Bible motivates them to do so not in an arrogant or imposing way but in a way that reflects human humbleness before God. As one member of the outsider group summarised, in a spiritually meant way: ‘Not through imposition or coercion but through insistence’ (2). 7.2.2 The voice of operant theology As the deliberations on truth and epistemology unfolded on a rather theoretical level, the voice of operant theology was less strong in these meetings. However, besides Biblical references, there were also references made to practical examples taken from classroom experiences. When preparing for the central 13th meeting with invited student guests, at the end of the 12th meeting, three practical examples were mentioned to underpin the strong conviction, as expressed by several members of the outsider group, that ‘it can be very confrontational for a teacher when in a pluriform class questions are openly asked’ about what is presented during lessons. A teacher from the first participating school was asked: ‘Do you really believe that yourself?’ Another teacher, from the second of the participating schools, was asked: ‘Do you experience it always like that?’ A third teacher, from the third participating school, heard: ‘Who actually believes this?’ In the latter case, a student stood up during a lesson on creation and asked how God did that over six consecutive days. This question was asked openly to all of the attending students, implying a confrontation between the Biblical truth claim, on the one hand, and modern scepticism, on the other hand. The Biblical story of creation also appeared in a classroom example offered by a student during the 13th meeting. When this student told the story, a Muslim boy responded by saying that he marvelled that Allah had 2 In Dutch, this is a well-known rhyming phrase: ‘Niet dwingen maar dringen’. It means conviction through testimony by words and personal behaviour, not by pressuring other people, neither by physical nor by social or verbal pressure.
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