The Purpose of Life & Learning

We believe that God, in his great love, created people, including teachers and students, for two main purposes:
for Relationship
for Responsibility.

He first created a world which was beautiful and which he declared was good (Genesis 1:25). However, this creation was created to obey him in every way - through physical laws like gravity, through instinct, and through natural processes like growth and reproduction. Although this was completely good in every way, God wanted something more - relationship. And so he created people (Genesis 1:27). Unlike anything else he had made, we were created in his image, with a spirit, with the ability to love, with organised language, with an intrinsic moral law, with the ability to be creative and logical, to discover and "think God's thoughts after him",
and best, and riskiest of all, the ability to choose.

God wanted to work together with his people, and so designed us with all the attributes necessary to work in his world as co-workers with him. He gave us responsibility to manage his world and to use and look after it. (Genesis 1:27-28)

The Interact Curriculum seeks to implant in children an awareness of the fact that each is designed for relationship with God, and created with gifts and skills to fulfil a particular role and responsibility in the world as a co-worker with God.

Developing Relationship with God Through Education

God has created humans with an innate desire to learn. But if learning is to be most fulfilling, it will result in closer relationship with God. It has been said that "wonder is the basis for worship". This means that the more we learn about God and his world, the more we have to wonder at, to be amazed at, and therefore the more reason we have to worship God. We should find worship even more natural in a science lesson than in a man-made church building.

Developing Responsibility in Education

We believe that a second reason for learning is because we are called to use what we know and the skills we have for the responsibility we have been given: to make the world a better place, to manage the world around us with God and to be imparters of God's love in his world. This means that our work is also an expression of worship and service to God, regardless of how menial it seems to be. It is fulfilling the very purpose for which we were created.

Therefore, as we learn, we can ask the questions:

• What does this teach me about the nature of God, so that I can worship him?
• What does this teach me about the nature of people or the nature of the world around me so that I can better serve him?
• How does what I know impact who I am (faith and character) and what I do (worship and service)?

The Interact Curriculum seeks to incorporate questions like these into the Teacher Manuals to assist teachers to consider their relevance to the topics studied.