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\u201cIf you think education is expensive, try ignorance.\u201d \u201cIf you can read this, thank a teacher.\u201d Such is the wisdom one can expect to find on a car\u2019s bumper. Wisdom, however, is found in God\u2019s Word, which, surprisingly, says not a peep about \u201ceducation.\u201d Yet it does call us to seek wisdom, even as it calls us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. It does speak of truth, and it speaks this truth \u2014 that Jesus is the truth that sets us free.<\/p>\n
Education, once upon a time, was understood paradoxically as that which both grounds us and sets us free. It has now become that which sets us loose and costs us everything. And all because we serve the false god of mammon. Consider first how a modern, or should I say a postmodern, education sets us loose. As Allan Bloom taught us in The Closing of the American Mind<\/em>, the great majority of colleges and universities in the West is firmly committed to the notion that there is no truth and no right and wrong. Ninety-eight percent of all incoming college freshman enter the hallowed halls persuaded of relativism. Over the course of four years, that assumption is systematically entrenched. Thus, students walk away from their college educations utterly adrift. But they are not free from another perspective. Students pay tens of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege of learning the truth that there is no truth to learn.<\/p>\n Why would anyone make such a trade? Foolishness. We have been taught that a college education is the key either to a well-paying job or the key to a better graduate school, which in turn is the key to a well-paying job. We need a well-paying job so that we can afford either private education or at least be able to live in the \u201cgood\u201d school district, so that our children can get into the best colleges, so that they can get into the best graduate schools, so that they can make the money to keep the process going for our grandchildren. I call this \u201chell\u2019s hamster wheel,\u201d and it is time for all of us to get off.<\/p>\n There is, of course, nothing wrong with learning a set of skills that increases our productivity. Studying toward a trade or a profession can be a good and healthy thing, a tool to help us fulfill the dominion mandate to rule over the earth. This is not, however, why the university was created. Education once aspired to be \u201cliberal.\u201d Liberal in this context isn\u2019t intended as a political designation for those who we desire a bigger and more intrusive state. Neither is it intended to describe theological liberalism, which denies the truthfulness of God\u2019s Word. Instead, liberal here refers to the liberty of the graduate. A liberally educated person is one who is equipped not for a mere job but to think God\u2019s thoughts after Him, to see His world as He would have us.<\/p>\n A free man, for instance, is not given to accepting the status quo, assuming that four years down at the state university is an undiluted good. A free man is not given to buying into a deadly nostalgia that assumes his alma mater hasn\u2019t changed in the twenty-five years since he went there. A free man is not simply going to accept the wildly implausible notion that sending his son or daughter off to Vanity Fair for four or more years is a great way to bless his heirs. A free man is wise enough not to buy into the lottery-like unspoken pitch that if you don\u2019t spend a hundred thousand dollars on an \u201ceducation,\u201d your child will starve. A free man thinks deliberately about his own future and the future of his children. A free man finds wisdom where God keeps it, not in the knowledge of the experts but in the simplicity of the Bible.<\/p>\n We worry. A sound, biblical education may prepare our children for heaven, but how will they live? Steeping our children, as they prepare to enter adulthood, in God\u2019s Word will surely feed their souls and adorn them with beauty, but how will they find food, clothing, and shelter? We are not the first to struggle with such worries. Nor the last. Jesus says, \u201cTherefore do not worry, saying, \u2018What shall we eat?\u2019 or \u2018What shall we drink?\u2019 or \u2018What shall we wear?\u2019 For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you\u201d (Matt. 6:31\u201333). <\/p>\n We need this truth to set us free. We need to live as citizens of the kingdom of God such that we know our daily bread, to mix a metaphor, is the fruit of God\u2019s provision through hard work, not the result of our wisdom in pursuing specialized training. Better still, we need to be free enough to know that we are slaves of Jesus Christ. He, and not the priests of higher education, is our Master. Such means that we are free. Such means we are called to raise our children to live free as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIf you think education is expensive, try ignorance.\u201d \u201cIf you can read this, thank a teacher.\u201d Such is the wisdom one can expect to find on a car\u2019s bumper. Wisdom, however, is found in God\u2019s Word, which, surprisingly, says not … Continue reading