4. We hope students continue to see, or learn to see, the Bible as

authoritative for guiding the Christian's faith and practice. A friend who

teaches at another denominational school told me recently about an

assignment she gave her students. They were to read a section of Nazi

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's Nightas well as the Book of Job. When they

came to the following class session, one of the students said, "I thought Wiesel's

book was helpful, but I didn't really likeJob."My friend said to her student,

"Whether or not you likeJob isn't really the issue. It's from the Bible, and it

reveals some divine truth about human existence, even if it makes us

uncomfortable. We simply need to sort out what that truth is."

Our son Niles is now four, and it has been delightful to observe him as

he develops notions of authority. By age two he knew that Mommy and Daddy

were authorities, and so he began playing us off of each other, asking one and

then going to the other if the first answer was unsatisfactory. And then one

day, as we were preparing for dinner, he asked if he could have a cookie. I

said, "No, honey, we're just getting ready to eat."His response:"But Godsays

it's OK."Already he had realized that there was an authority higher even than

his parents, and he was using that authority to supersede ours. Even more

provocative was another encounter we had a week later, once again over the

issue of dessert before a meal. This time when I said, "No, you can't have an ice

cream sandwich before dinner," Niles quickly scanned the table in front of

him, picked up a piece of paper with some words scribbled on it (likely a

grocery list in process), and said, "But it says right here that I can have one."

What interested me most about that moment was that Niles had somehow

recognized that the written word carried more authority than the spoken

word.