Worldview in our world

I was rather pleased to read this post by Gene Edward Veith because next week in Awana, we're going to be talking about politics in the six worldviews (Christianity, Islam, Marxism, secular humanism, new age, and postmodernism). I'm looking forward to it, but I'm generally in over my head. There's nothing like describing six views of biology in fifteen minutes.

For the last two times, we were discussing law. I didn't quite like the book's presentation of Christian law, so instead we talked about Aquinas' four principles for a just law. They are that it's a result ("ordinance") of reason, for the common good, by a proper authority, and published so everyone knows about the law.

On the one hand, I feel terribly awkward discussing Aquinas with my Protestant third through sixth graders, not to mention out of my depth; but on the other hand, that much is pretty straightforward and even if you disagree with him, he's a respectable source. It won't hurt them to at least be familiar with one thread of Christian thought. And now they've heard about Aquinas and can pronounce his name. :-)

I also found it helpful when we got to postmodernism, because we were able to do a neat little compare-and-contrast chart. Postmodernism pretty much denies all four of those criteria. I summed up that view as law being a result of power, for the subjection of minorities, by whoever can get the power, and communication of the law will be spotty at best. All of this, of course, is simplified and probably gruesomely oversimplified; I know it's a very slippery worldview, and of course no two postmodernists will agree entirely on anything. But I think it's worth teaching.