Sunday, July 2, 2017

Importance of Education

I'm reading Plato's Republic. Plato to be sure was a heathen philosopher. However, he speaks of education and upbringing as things to be protected and guarded against corruption in book 4. Plato speaks of music, poetry, and physical training that easily corrupts these two things.
Today, we have even more things that corrupt the minds of men and women every where. You might be able to think of some things but I know that today music, movies, medicine, the foods we eat, the drinks we drink are all things that are used by the system to distort the minds of the masses. Even the News channels all give out bias ideas.
The Christian, however, depends not on these things for truth for living but lives by every word from God alone. So what does this mean? It means that if one is married, or is unmarried, how we are to live is not by experience. But we are to live according to the word of God. The Bible alone is the word of God and tells us how we are to live not the media.
If it is one thing that is honorable about Martin Luther, other than parts, if not all of his theology,  then it's the fact that he stressed education: we need to learn the languages, we need to teach our children, and we need to keep the libraries and books. After all uneducated men and women will allow anything to happen to them even to the point that they let other people tell them what truth is or is not.
For many Christians, or those who profess to be so, knowledge is well despised. Of course this is nothing new people have despised knowledge since the beginning of the first sin. However, the Bible encourages understanding and knowledge of the truth. Philippians 2:5; 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5, 5:1-3; Colossians 1:9; Ephesians 1:9, 17-18, 4:23-24. In fact this seems to be the purpose of the Exodus that the Egyptians might know God (and also the Jewish people no doubt) - Exodus 14:4, Deuteronomy 4:35-36. Of course God's people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. 1 Thessalonians 4 seems to make the effect of our sanctification in knowledge.

The Bible also says,

25At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. 26Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. 27All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.
28Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
 - Matthew 11
"Light" here is taken to mean knowledge and not some sort of weight. Christ is the radiance and glory of God and has revealed his truth to man. He is therefore said to be the light of the world. He is not dark but light and in him does the fullness of deity dwell. Of course in context 28 comes after 27.

Gordon H. Clark says, "But now we have fallen into an 'ocean of arguments' no less deep and wide than Plato's Parmenides. Suppose the child, the human being, is an evolutionary product, simply a more complicated animal, without a soul, especially without an immortal soul. The late Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, said, 'I can see no reason for attributing to man a significant difference in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or to a grain of sand. . . . I wonder if cosmically an idea is any more important than the bowels.' Bertrand Russell's famous passage, quoted in chapter three, builds life and therefore education 'only on the firm foundation and unyielding despair.' The end of man is a doom, pitiless and dark. All the labor of the ages is destined to extinction and must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins. Suppose on the other hand that God created man in His own image and breathed into him the breath of life, with the result that those redeemed by Christ shall glorify God and enjoy him forever.
Teachers teach pupils. But whereas a teacher with the first view of what a pupil is teaches despair along with arithmetic or social consciousness; the teacher with the second view teaches hope.
In these two views, naturalism and theism, are interwined all the strands of philosophy. Even the question whether the government should control education for its own ends and ban God from the schools, or whether the church, home, or private corporations should do the educating, depends on what man is. Once admit that the teacher teaches pupils, it is impossible to rule out any part of philosophy as irrelevant.
Among the considerations that have come under review, some mention has been made of the effect of government on education. Mention should also be made of the effect, or alleged effect, of education on government. Americans often speak of public education as if it were the main support of democracy. Without an educated populace all sorts of evils would proliferate, and the professional educators claim that unless legislatures appropriate almost unlimited amounts of tax money for the schools, the nation will shortly collapse. The fact of the matter is that with hundreds of billions already appropriated for public education, all sorts of evils have proliferated and the nation is already collapsing. A Justice of the United States Supreme Court was forced to resign in the 1960's because of suspicious financial arrangements. The 1970's and 1980's have seen a series of national scandals in all three branches of the government. No wonder America raises its crime rate faster than it inflates its money." -Gordon H. Clark, A Christian Philosophy of Education, Pg. 8-9

Also Theodore Beza says,

"The Kingdom of God is not a Kingdom of ignorance, but of faith and, consequently, of knowledge; for it is beyond the ability of anyone to believe that which he is ignorant of." - Theodore Beza, Preface of Theodore Beza in The Christian Faith, pg. iv

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