God is good. Lately He’s been putting in front of me lots of reminders of his love for us. Then he showed me why.

A friend gave me Max Lucado’s 3:16, the Numbers of Hope. It’s easy to dip in and out of quickly (especially if you skip through some of the more chintzy anecdotes) and I have been reading it as a devotional over lunch. Lucado shines a fresh light on something that is very familiar to us.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Our church recently adopted three core values and the preaching has been focussing on each in turn. This week we studied the third:  Unreserved Commitment to Love People Impartially, based on 1 John 4 7:21. It too is very familiar; here’s a short snippet from verses 19-21:

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Yesterday I attended a roundtable meeting hosted by the Edmund Rice Centre, a christian ethics, research and advocacy organisation within the Catholic tradition. The Centre is researching a paper on faith-based schools and social inclusion, to be presented at an upcoming symposium organised by the Independent Education Union. Like many of us, the IEU has become very concerned about the mantra of certain public education advocates, that faith-based schools divide the community. The IEU and the Edmund Rice Centre want to put some rigour into the issue, and they are to be commended.

At the IEU symposium on March 17 (http://bit.ly/8XyiHN) a number of us from different faiths have been asked to tackle the issues thrown up by the social inclusion framework. This framework leads to questions such as that posed by Professor Barry McGaw about the role of faith-based schools. We are, McGaw has suggested, very good at producing bonding social capital. That’s the sort of social capital one finds in a highly cohesive grouping of like-minded people.

Such groups, it is argued, are very good at developing belonging and well being among their members. It is the basis of healthy social institutions such as the church or the family. But are faith-based schools (McGaw and others have asked) good at producing bridging social capital?

Bridging social capital builds connections between diverse groups in society. It is important, if not essential, for a harmonious society and a productive economy.

It’s easy to see how a casual observer might imagine that faith-based schools, especially those where all teachers are selected on the basis of faith, educating children from families which by and large adhere to a particular tradition, while producing strong social bonds within their group, might however represent a challenge to building cohesion between different groups. Too easy, really, because when I consider what Christian schools do, I see profound reasons this is not the case.

That brings me back to yesterday’s discussion, during which we were asked to articulate ways in which our schools might contribute to bridging social capital.

As many of you know, I love to argue from first principles. If we are to find the proof that Christian schools do produce bridging social capital – that our students will leave school with a desire to engage with and work for people in other economic, social, ethnic and religious groups - we will need first to show that these characteristics can be found in our God. After all, it is our stated aim that we will educate students in such a way that they will increasingly adopt the character of Christ.

How can there be a better statement of God’s character than John 3:16? Is it not the ultimate act of care for others, that God would send (an active verb) his only son, to only not care for, reach out to, treat with respect, but die for us? The most profound belief of the Christian faith, is that God’s love is exercised in an act of incredible self-sacrifice in order to make reconciliation available to all people, because He made all people and loves all people.

Here’s the challenge then, demanded by a sceptical world which increasingly looks to evidence-based conclusions. If God’s word is true, if we are faithfully teaching it as core, and if our argument is then to be persuasive, then we must be able to show evidence of its impact on the character of our students and through the activities of our school communities. This is the test: do we love others, because he first loved us? John again: Whoever loves God must also love his brother. If God loved the world then it behoves me to do likewise.

Christians school communities – staff, students and often parents, are to be found engaging in many active expressions of God’s love in their local area and to the world. The practice of mission, an increasing and noteworthy activity among christian schools, gives eloquent testimony to our role in building bridging social capital – and of course far more besides. Throughout this year I would love to hear about ways this is happening in your school, as this is a story we need to keep telling the world.

So God is indeed good. He had equipped me with good, fresh insights from His word in preparing me for yesterday’s discussion and the IEU symposium in March.