Education

I wonder why our culture believes education is so important. I think that we value it because of our country's (and most countries') standards. To get a good job and to have influence in society, you need an education. In both the secular world and in the church we find that education is paramount in how well you can do. Why is it so important; why have we, as the american culture, created these standards that so stress the idea of education? Do we glorify knowledge? Do we fear the results of uneducated masses? Do we think that knowledge is power?

I don't disagree.

Education is vital.

But I wonder if it is as important as we think...

I casually drove up to my apartment, hastily turned into the parking lot, crookedly parked in the oversized spaces they give us, and thought: "I need to check all of my grades." The next thought was "I wonder if I'm doing badly." The next thought was "Why does it matter if I do well?" The next thought was "So that I can get my degree." The next thought was
"Why do I need a degree? Weren't Paul and the Acts saints mostly common and uneducated men?"
I believe that I have stumbled upon a fallacy of our culture: the idea that education is the key to our ultimate destiny as believers.
Look around and you will see this in everyone. The aspiring pastor goes to seminary. The hopeful missionary is an international studies major. The musician gets a degree to...get a degree.

I don't know what I'm saying, but I just know that if our focus is right - if our focus is on Christ, and our intent in obedience to Him, and our attitude in pleasing him, we will have different values.

Christ's call for each of us to make disciples of all nations beckons not primarily to the uneducated mind but to the obedient heart. It does also beckon at the educated mind, but my point is that His criteria for leadership and His measure for success lies not in how much we know but rather in how much we are willing to sacrifice. Will you be obedient to the Father until death? Will you truly take up your cross - not to lay it down again - and follow the Righteous one?
Will you be faithful in the small? In the unimportant, according to cultural standards?
Will you live kingdom values? Will YOU find satisfaction in Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Father?

I'm tired of aspiring leaders going to seminary to think their lives away, pastoring some church that gives American Christians a place to sit on a Sunday morning. We have created these standards for being "ordained" and for being fit to preach on a sunday morning, when the real standard in the body of Christ is character, obedience, and faithfulness in the little. We do need seminaries that teach truth and empower others to make change, but we also need to keep ourselves from the temptation to walk back into the garden to eat more of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil!

I frankly don't care for the knowledge of good and evil. I want the tree of life. I want the life of God in me for others.

We do need education. But more importantly we need a relationship with the father through Jesus Christ. Without that; without spiritual strength and character, our education is but an ugly coat we wear to cover up our inadequacies. We need Jesus. THEN we can handle the knowledge. Through Christ our education finds meaning and purpose. Through Christ, we can do something.