{"id":176,"date":"2013-09-13T22:37:31","date_gmt":"2013-09-13T22:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/?p=176"},"modified":"2013-12-27T13:43:10","modified_gmt":"2013-12-27T13:43:10","slug":"true-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/13\/true-education\/","title":{"rendered":"True Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_1056\"<\/a>The striking thing about education is that everyone is an expert on the subject.\u00a0 Everyone has his opinion.\u00a0 Perhaps that is understandable because we have all been to school and have experienced education.\u00a0 Nevertheless, we would do well for our philosophy of education to turn to God\u2019s word.\u00a0 In Proverbs 17 <\/sup>we read, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge<\/i>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

These words could be regarded as a summary of all the wisdom literature.\u00a0 The same words or similar appear in one Scripture after another:\u00a0 Proverbs 910<\/sup> The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 Proverbs 1533<\/sup>\u00a0 The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom.<\/i><\/b>\u00a0 <\/i>Psalm 11110<\/sup>\u00a0 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practise it have a good understanding<\/i><\/b>.\u00a0 <\/i>Job 2828<\/sup>\u00a0 Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding<\/b><\/i>.<\/p>\n

The text suggests two heads \u2013<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0The fear of the Lord<\/i><\/strong><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Repeatedly I hear people say, \u201cBut we shouldn\u2019t fear the Lord, should we?\u201d as if the answer is obviously negative.\u00a0 But surely we should<\/i> fear Him.\u00a0 If He is Almighty, our Creator, Sustainer and Judge He is awesome.\u00a0 If we are totally dependent upon Him and at His mercy we must hold Him in great regard.\u00a0 In one hymn after another we seem to express approval of fear of God.<\/p>\n

How dread are Thine eternal years<\/h6>\n
O everlasting Lord,<\/h6>\n
by prostrate spirits day and night<\/h6>\n
incessantly adored!<\/h6>\n
O how I fear Thee living God,<\/h6>\n
with deepest tenderest fears,<\/h6>\n
and worship Thee with trembling hope<\/h6>\n
and penitential tears!<\/h6>\n

God is all powerful and utterly holy.\u00a0 I am not.\u00a0 He cannot abide un-holiness.\u00a0 That makes me tremble.\u00a0 It is right that we stand in awe of God.\u00a0 It is amazing that he receives us, and yet we treat it as our right that He accepts us and gives us a place in heaven.\u00a0 Come on, He is God almighty and I am a speck of dirt on the face of the planet.<\/p>\n

Because Jesus has died I will be acquitted on judgment day and so I have peace with God and peace concerning my eternal destiny.\u00a0 Yet even in that assurance I have to feel some awe and trembling before Him.<\/p>\n

Now this is all about our relationship with God.\u00a0 Let me propose that education is about relationships.\u00a0 If someone on the street spits at me as I go by, I may well think, \u201cWhat an uneducated person \u2013 what an ignorant person!\u201d\u00a0 An educated man will relate to people in a proper way.\u00a0 Education is about relationships \u2013 relationships with the world about us, with people and society, and with ourselves; and a true education is about relationship with God too.<\/p>\n

Everyone relates to God in some way or another.\u00a0 There is the relationship that is warm and willingly submissive, so that I say, \u201cHow wonderful God is, how good to me, how great and how gracious \u2013 my God how wonderful Thou art!<\/i>\u201d\u00a0 I relate to God in a particular way.\u00a0 Another man may relate to God in a very different way \u2013 perhaps he ignores God, perhaps he rebels against God \u2013 even when he senses God prompting his conscience he kicks against God and refuses Him.\u00a0 Perhaps he despises God.\u00a0 He may even declares himself to be an atheist and says that he believes that there is no God.\u00a0 This is an ignorant man \u2013 an uneducated man.\u00a0 The context in which a genuine education takes place is the fear of the Lord \u2013 an appropriate relationship with God.<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0The fear of the Lord is <\/b>the beginning of<\/strong> Education<\/i><\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

This does not mean that you need the fear of the Lord <\/i>at the beginning and that you can then leave it behind once you have got going.\u00a0 People used to send the young to Sunday School to give them a good start in life and learn some sound morals; then in their early teens they could leave behind Sunday School and church attendance, especially if they were boys.\u00a0 Again in our primary schools hymns and perhaps Bible stories are used; then at secondary school those things are forgotten and Christianity may even be explicitly denied.\u00a0 So belief in the Lord is regarded as the beginning in the sense of that which can be left behind.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

This is not the kind of \u2018beginning\u2019 that is intended by the proverb; here we have the beginning in the sense of that which is foundational.\u00a0\u00a0 When you build a house you begin with the foundation, but you do not then leave that initial work and build the structure somewhere else!\u00a0 The foundation is essential to what you go on to build.\u00a0 With no proper foundation you will end up with a pile of bricks and sticks when the storm comes.<\/p>\n

Without the beginning \u2014 the foundation \u2014 knowledge will turn out to be a worthless pile of information.\u00a0 Mere information is not knowledge or education.\u00a0 Go back to Genesis 3 and the fall.\u00a0 The serpent said \u201cIf you just forget God and what He said about the fruit you will have knowledge \u2013 you will know good and evil.\u201d\u00a0 They took the fruit in disobedience to God; there was a sense in which what the serpent promised was fulfilled: they knew the difference between the experience of obedience and the experience of disobedience.\u00a0 But this new knowledge was not to their advantage at all.\u00a0 It was a disaster and the consequence was dreadful damage in every sphere.\u00a0 Move on to Genesis 11 where we read of the great tower that was built at Babel.\u00a0 People said that they would do something impressive and make a name for themselves as very clever, educated people.\u00a0 When they had built it was an extraordinary feat, but what good was it?\u00a0 They did it against God and He confused them and scattered them.\u00a0 These accounts in the Old Testament narrative illustrate that all the information and cleverness apart from God is worthless.\u00a0 A man may have exams and degrees to his name and be an academic authority and be a university professor, but without the fear of the Lord<\/strong> <\/i>he does not even have the beginning of<\/strong> <\/i>education.\u00a0 Our world rewards with academic honours those who have no true education.<\/p>\n

You see why I believe in Christian schooling, why I think it matters that children learn the stories of Jesus, why I am grieved by the undermining of Biblical Christianity in our education system?<\/p>\n

Are you an educated person?\u00a0 I do not mean to ask about your paper qualifications.\u00a0 Paul spoke of Christ who has become our wisdom:\u00a0 \u2026Jesus Christ, whom God made our wisdom and\u00a0 our righteousness and sanctification and redemption<\/i><\/b> (1 Corinthians 130<\/sup>).\u00a0 I mean to ask you, \u2018do you have a respectful and loving relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ?\u2019\u00a0 To establish an appropriate relationship with God is to have the foundation of real education.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The striking thing about education is that everyone is an expert on the subject.\u00a0 Everyone has his opinion.\u00a0 Perhaps that is understandable because we have all been to school and have experienced education.\u00a0 Nevertheless, we would do well for our … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-secondary-school"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2d1Zf-2Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":207,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176\/revisions\/207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gopher-ark.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}