Max Lyons joins us to discuss his book, The Student Worldview Dictionary, a project inspired by Noah Webster’s 1828 dictionary and designed to help children understand the original and biblical roots of words. In this episode, we discuss why definitions matter, how language shapes worldview, and why parents and educators must think carefully about the ideas children absorb every day.

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode.

Introduction

Marlin Detweiler:
Hello again and welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us an author, Max Lyons. Max, welcome.

Max Lyons:
Thank you for having me, Marlin. Great opportunity.

Marlin Detweiler:
Great to have you here. Max has authored a book called The Student Worldview Dictionary. But before we jump into talking about that, Max, let's hear a little bit about yourself so that people will have some context for knowing you.

Marlin Detweiler:
Tell us a little bit about your family and your education, your career. Sure thing. Married to my wife, Margie, who homeschooled our four children for 25 years as I was working in three different Christian schools, all in the Tidewater area, started out as a teacher. For those that don't know, the Tidewater area is coastal Virginia around Norfolk area.

Max Lyons:
Yes. Started out teaching math, then got into history, government economics, fell heavily into biblical worldview. So taught and then worked in administration in three different schools. There were 38 year period. After that, I moved into position at the Foundation for American Christian Education, helping to train teachers and helping start schools and encourage the growth of Christian education, and was a wonderful experience.

Now, just as of six months ago, started working for myself. My company's called the Biblical Thinker, which, by the way, is you. It's not me. Everything I do is geared toward helping you to think and act more biblically.

The Student Worldview Dictionary

Marlin Detweiler:
Very good. So the project that became the book Student Worldview Dictionary. You've sent me a copy of it. Thank you very much. I've had a chance to just look at it briefly. Why did you do it? What was motivating you to create such a book?

Max Lyons:
I've actually produced nine books and they've all come out of my work in Christian education. I'm not just an academic sitting in a library researching and producing books. Everything is practical. It's curriculum. It's something to help teachers or homeschoolers. And this one is the same way. I had become familiar with Webster's 1828 dictionary, the original dictionary that Webster produced. And it's, you know, it's almost 200 years old coming up in a couple of years.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, not far off.

Max Lyons:
The 200 years old, but a lot of people know the name Noah Webster. But the dictionaries that bear that name today are just using his name and his branding because his name had become synonymous with the dictionary. But the 1828 dictionary is, to me, just such an important tool. Because Webster was a Christian, he used the Bible as the basis for the meaning of words.

He also believed that certain worldview concepts and words didn't change. Obviously, words do change over time, but concepts like sin and marriage and love and conscience and law, those concepts are biblically based so they don't change. And Webster was very wary of words being changed. And you can see in our culture today we have a huge problem with that.

But the Webster's 1820 dictionary has very high vocabulary and is very appropriate for high schoolers and adults, but for young children, difficult for them to read and understand on their own. And people kept asking me, Max, you know, I've got the 1828 dictionary and I love it. Is there something like that available for children? I did some research and I found a Bob Jones Christian dictionary that was printed in 1982.

That's by the way, it's out of print now. And there just really wasn't anything similar to the 1828 for children. So I kind of reluctantly because it was I thought, this is a huge project.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah.

Max Lyons:
You know, we all have to think of our commitment of our time, right? But God gave me the idea of a worldview dictionary instead of defining, you know, 70,000 words, just choose the word. I really didn't need to redefine horse and table and chair because those are not words that would significantly vary.

So God showed me that. I went through the 1828 and called what I felt were the most important words that form one's worldview. And that's what my wife and my daughter and myself did over six year period.

Marlin Detweiler:
Wow. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me that a project like that would take quite a while, especially for a small team like a team of three. So give me some examples. And with that, then help me understand. Help our audience understand what you hoped to accomplish in the production of the work with regard to those examples.

Dealing with Changing Word Meanings

Max Lyons:
Well, what I hope to accomplish, Marlin, was that young children, and we all know how precious they are, but how vulnerable they are to what you give them, they're going to, you know, young age, they tend to believe that their parents and the teachers teach them as they should. But I wanted them to have this source of truth for important words.

So, for example, marriage, you know, we know that the world has redefined marriage now as basically a union of one or more persons. Right? Not, you know, as Webster defined it biblically. He said, it's a union of one man and one woman for life. But modern dictionaries don't do that. And I wanted children, you know, the go to for the meaning of words today often is this right, or

Marlin Detweiler:
For those that are listening-only, he held up his iPhone.

Max Lyons:
Yes. Forgot this is audio.

But yeah. So you know a lot of people don't even use physical dictionaries anymore. Some people do, and we should. But to grab the definition of a word quickly, we're going to sources that are not biblically based and often will not give you the correct definition of the word. If I may, I'll give you a couple others, you know.

Marlin Detweiler:
Sure. Yeah, I like that.

Max Lyons:
How about gender? I've done some contrast and I found just going into my phone doing a Google search. I found this definition of gender, a social concept which distinguishes the different gender categories, it is the range of social, psychological, cultural and behavioral aspects of being man or woman, or one of 70 other genders. That's what you get.

So, you know, do we want our children to be taught that or, you know, Webster says the gender is the condition of being male or female according to the scriptures, in biology, there are only two genders, male and female. Well, that wasn't Webster. That was the Student Worldview dictionary.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, the first part of it was probably gender was probably Webster 1820 wasn't it?

Max Lyons:
Yeah. It was. Yeah. And I did a lot of conflation of like I wrote, I preserved Webster's 1828 dictionary for the most part because it was so good. As I was doing this editing, I'm like, this is great. I don't want to lose this. So I kept a lot of Webster's original work. But then I added the very first definition, or sometimes several, or the ones that I wrote that were child-friendly, you know, written out of that, the child.

Marlin Detweiler:
Could I can certainly understand the need to bring it down to the level of the student. You want to speak their language. And that was very astute of you. What we have and you alluded to this at the beginning, is we have two things going on here. The one that we're talking about is the definitional problem that we find when we step away from biblical thinking.

So the idea of marriage being redefined even legally at this point in America, marriage has been legally defined in ways that we would not be satisfied with, that we would not be comfortable with. We believe that marriage is between one man and one woman, and you can't marry yourself. You can't marry the same sex, you can't marry more than one person and have the proper biblical definition of marriage.

But what about words? How are you addressing if men, maybe you're not. This is outside the purview of what you've done. But what about words as they have morphed appropriately sometimes from culture and they now have different definitions. Here's a word I learned. You know, I knew that the word gay has come to be an identifier noun for somebody who has same sex attendances.

They are attracted to the same sex in a sexual and relational way. Before that happened in the last 50, 60 years, it was thought of as happy. And so, you know, the gay was synonymous with happy. A definition would be happy. But when I looked at it historically, I found there was a third definition, one that we had never been taught, one that existed, I believe, at the time of the 1828 dictionary.

And that was it was a term of derision for drunks. And I'm sure you're familiar with that. I was not. What about the morphing of words like that? How are you incorporating that? How are you dealing with that in what you've done?

Max Lyons:
This is something that I found out about as I was doing the job. What you're pointing out is something that's challenging. And it has been for me because, you're right, you know, words do change. I discovered that in my work, the first volume has a little over a thousand words, and 125 of them are words that either did not exist in Webster's time, because 1828, that was before communism and socialism, even, Darwin.

Marlin Detweiler:
There is an evolution of language; it simply doesn't stand still.

Max Lyons:
Yes. So and then I also discovered that there were words that changed meanings when I looked like that from Webster's time to now. And so I had that challenge. I've discovered that being a lexicographer is not an easy job for the faint of heart.

No it's not, and I'm glad I'm only doing a couple thousand words and not, you know, 100,000. But yes, that is incorporated in this work. I've tried to make it not only user friendly for children, but relevant for today. I also have quotes in there that help you understand the words. So I've got Founding Father quotes, literary quotes.

Webster loved the literary author, so he had a lot of quotes for them. I've added American founders and thinkers and more Scripture. You know, he did not have scripture for every single word. And I've added, you know, because a lot of these words are very scripturally laden. So as far as their meaning. So I've added a lot of Scripture as well.

Building the Student Worldview Dictionary

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. So the challenge maybe backing up for just a bit as you face these challenges, you start with this baseline of knowing Webster's work in 1828, and then you build on it into today. What were some of the other challenges that you had to address along the way in the word selection process, your definitional selection, and just a general sense of how to make sure?

The one thing I know about projects like this is if you're not careful, the project creep will end up being two lifetimes worth of work and you just can't get it done. How did you constrict yourself that way, too?

Max Lyons:
Well, that's a good question. Matter of fact, I'm working on a second edition now, adding about 350 words because, you know, once you put something out like this, you get people say, Max, why isn't, you know, such and such in there. So I've compiled those.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's the downside of the many counselors proverb.

Max Lyons:
That's right. But it actually is enjoyable. My goal is to do three words per day to finish this project in a reasonable time. So I spend a couple hours a day doing that. One of the big challenges Marlin was picking words that were age appropriate for children because there's some heavy concepts in worldview ideas. You know, the whole and I had to be discreet.

Sometimes I would write definitions differently because, you know, if I was telling an adult something especially like something sexual related, I'm going to write it differently for a child than I would for an adult. So that was something kind of tiptoeing. And I had other members of my team would say to me, you know, I don't know about this word.

I don't know about that definition or I don't know about that quote. So, yeah, that is a challenge. Yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
So we asked the question, I ask you, why did you do this? And you've really unpacked that nicely. What does success look like as a result of the book being in print.

Max Lyons:
That's a really good question. And I ask myself that all the time because the goal of people like you and me and the work that we do in Christian education is not enrolling people in classes. You know, having people buy your books, having people attend your lectures, your podcast. You know, the goal is the impartation of truth and not just bring it into your mind, but walking.

You know, the Scripture says, I have no greater joy than to see my children walking in the truth, right? So not just knowing the truth, but doing it, you know, the Hebrew definition of learn, I discovered, was not a mental thing. You had learned something when you exhibited a behavior and you did something. That's what learning was.

So to me, success is that people use these projects, these tools that I and others have created and actually walk in them. I'm very excited about the growth of Christian education across our country. Marlin, as sure you are as well. Very excited. Christian schooling, homeschooling, micro schools and hybrids are growing.

Marlin Detweiler:
There's a lot going on and we live in interesting times that way.

Max Lyons:
A lot of good stuff going on. And the thing that brings me great joy is to think these there's children hearing truth and walking in truth, that before were in a government system that was not giving them the truth and helping them to walk in ways not pleasing to the Lord.

How Do We Teach From a Christian Worldview?

Marlin Detweiler:
As you use the term Christian worldview or biblical worldview, and I kind of use them somewhat synonymously, and maybe you would differentiate them, but what is it that you're really after? Really, you know, let's we. I've learned in my life to not assume the obvious. So let's talk about the obvious here for a minute. You've named this the Student Worldview Dictionary.

The term worldview comes across in much of what you speak about and interact with. Tell me what you mean by worldview.

Max Lyons:
What I mean by that term is the set of assumptions or presuppositions that each one of us holds. A lot of times we're not even cognizant of those presuppositions because the nature of a presupposition is it's become so ingrained in you that you're not consciously thinking about it anymore.

Marlin Detweiler:
Metaphorically, it's a little bit like the foundation of our house. It serves an incredibly important role, but it's not something that we even see.

Max Lyons:
That's a good analogy. Some people have used the analogy of glasses that your worldview is, you know, like your glasses. It's what you're seeing through.

Marlin Detweiler:
You look through. Yeah.

Max Lyons:
You're looking so, you know, probably like a lot of other people, I spent a majority of my life learning the biblical worldview. And you never stop learning it. But all of my education was secular high school, college. It wasn't until I got into a master's program that I even knew that there was a biblical worldview. And I was like, what?

You mean there's a view of science other than what I learned, you know, evolution. I mean, I didn't know that there was another option. Yeah. So I've spent, you know, up until this time, learning a biblical worldview myself. So it's something that all of us are in the process of learning, but some of us take it more seriously than others.

But really, all of us should, because God speaks to all of life. You know, as Christian educators, I say, you know, did God have something to say about math, science, history, geography, you know, even art, music and P.E.? Well, as a matter of fact, he did. Yeah. You know, and we may not know it. We may not be thinking about that, but he did.

Marlin Detweiler:
It really is intriguing. I interview a lot of teachers, along with our headmaster and our dean of academics. I'm involved in the last interview for every teacher that we hire in our online school, and I think I've probably done, oh, I don't know, probably a thousand or more interviews of teacher candidates at this point in my life. And what's really interesting is if you ask a teacher who's interviewing for a position in science, if they're coming to us to teach for us, they're not an evolutionist.

They understand the nature of creation. Now, there is controversy between believing that the earth is old and the earth is young. That has to be dealt with within Christendom. And we have that today. But when you deal with a math teacher or a language teacher, a language arts teacher, the question of what makes math?

What is a biblical worldview of math is probably a better way to ask it? Or what is a biblical worldview of learning language? Those questions frequently stump teacher candidates.

Max Lyons:
Yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
What in those things that seem to be without a biblical application, what would you say to our audience about biblical worldview thinking in those categories?

Max Lyons:
Well, some subject areas are more. Late, more.

Marlin Detweiler:
Biblical worldview is more obvious.

Max Lyons:
Yeah, it's more obvious. Thank you. You know, your humanities, your history and your government and your economics to me. And that's the low hanging fruit as far as biblical.

Marlin Detweiler:
That's the easy one. Yep.

Max Lyons:
Those are the easy ones. Literature, too I have found absolutely mathematics. The reason why it's a little bit harder there is because you can't get away from truth in math as easily as you can in government and economics because, you know, if engineers start saying, well, maybe we don't have to worry about two plus two equaling four all these mathematical formulas, you know, we're woke and we don't believe this.

It doesn't work right. So you immediately have consequences in math. So how I tend to think about it, I have a math degree and I have taught math and struggle with biblical integration there, is that math itself is probably oriented even for secular more biblically than other subjects. Other subjects, you can, you know, you can make up these lies about socialism and people believe them, right?

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. But you can't say two plus two equals five sometimes.

Max Lyons:
But, you know, they're actually trying that, this latest round of wokeness.

Marlin Detweiler:
It's been going on for a long time. But what I would say, you know, when I have a teacher interview and I'm giving a little bit of a help to those that might be listening that might interview with us at some point. But the idea is the reason that two plus two equals four today and tomorrow, and every day thereafter is because God himself is immutable. He doesn't change.

Max Lyons:
That's right.

Marlin Detweiler:
And so because he doesn't change, we can trust the numbers to not change also.

Max Lyons:
Yes. That's right. Good.

Marlin Detweiler:
Other aspects that I would say in math involve the beauty of math, the Fibonacci sequence, the Pythagorean theorem. These things have, especially for those people like me who love numbers and I assume you as well, they have a beauty about them that has to be understood to not be accidental.

Max Lyons:
Yes.

Marlin Detweiler:
They have a created nature to them, and they're demonstrated not just on sheets of paper with pens or on computers with screens and keyboards. They're demonstrated in the creation that we observe in unbelievable ways. It is. And those aren't things I learned in my public school.

Max Lyons:
Can I add one more real quick?

Marlin Detweiler:
Sure. I wish you would.

Max Lyons:
Genesis 1:1, you know when God created the that you know. God said later on, let us make man in our image. So we know that that's speaking of God as a Trinity, the father, the son, and the Holy Spirit. So from the beginning you had math because you had three persons, right? One, two, three. There's beginning of mathematics, the very basics counting. And, you know, the different entities right there from the start. Yeah, yeah.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, you've raised your hand in the marketplace to say, hey, you got to take a look at these things. You got to think well about these things because these presupposition issues will affect your children when they become adults and are leading lives of their own. We have to make sure we don't simply assume that these things won't affect because they will if we're not intentional. Thanks for bringing that to our attention.

Max Lyons:
Sure thing.

Marlin Detweiler:
And folks, thank you for joining us on this episode of Veritas Vox. We hope to see you again next time.