Education

:a section from "Discipling Nations"

:written by Darrow L. Miller

The Theistic Purpose of Learning

 

"The highest purpose of education is theistic. We want people to know God. As John Milton said, "The end of all learning is to know God, and out of that knowledge to love and imitate Him."

Because, as we have seen, a unified field of knowledge exists, true education should give us an integrated, comprehensive view of reality.  Unlike the truncated and fragmented systems so prevalent today, learners informed by biblical theism should be able to find the relationship between God, man, and creation.  They should think broadly and across disciplines.  A real education examines both the physical and the transcendent, the eternal and the temporal.

We live in an intelligible universe.  Because truth is both real and knowable (at least in part), we are fully justified in developing our God-given spirit of exploration, discovery, and learning.  When relativism is king, knowledge is important only insofar as it is utilitarian. The drive to actually learn is shattered, replaced, at best with the method of observation, at worst with a lust to occupy one's mind and be entertained.  A passion for learning exists only when truth can be known.

How different is biblical theism when it comes to education!  Remember the debate between the secular humanist Dewey and the defender of a classical education, Hutchins?  The former wanted merely to prepare people for a job, while the letter wanted to prepare them for life.  The contrast is equally startling with animism, which imprisons the mind by prizing ignorance.  The problem with Africa is that the African mind is imprisoned.  If Africa is to develop, the African mind must be set free.  In Thai Buddhist culture, another expression of animism, Ya kit mak, is a popular phrase.  It means, "Don't think too much!"

I once heard Francis Schaeffer say, "Never let a child's schooling get in the way of their education!"  While his expression was grammatically inelegant, Schaeffer reocognized something that most of our secularized "education establishment" has failed to grasp- that man was created to think and create throughout his life.  

People live and think in very different ways, and some of these ways are radically inconsistent with the requirements of formal organizations."