From the Pulpit: Educating our children and youth
Many schools in our area are reopening with safety precautions designed to protect both students and teachers. Unfortunately, even this has become a political issue. It should not be. Our children will pay the price.
Support for public education in America dates to colonial times. Schools were established in Puritan New England to make certain its citizens were able to read the Word of God. The Bible was often a primary textbook.
People are sometimes surprised to learn that universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton were begun to educate clergy.
Many of the country’s most prestigious colleges and universities trace their origins to the efforts Christians have made to advance education.
Christian support for education is rooted in the belief that human beings are made in the image of God. He is a rational being and the world He created is a logical place.
The universe is orderly and so it can be investigated empirically and understood by the human mind. As scholars probe the nature of the created order, humankind’s potential to understand the One who brought it into being grows as well.
The Christian faith is neither anti-science, nor anti-education as opponents sometimes claim. More than 65% of the scientists who were awarded the Nobel Prize in the last 100 years were professed Christians. Nonetheless, there is a limit to what we may know about God through the unaided study of creation.
We cannot know God exhaustively. He is infinite. Nevertheless, we can know Him accurately because He has chosen to reveal Himself to us. He intervened in the lives of men like Abraham, Moses, and David. Their experiences and Spirit-inspired insights into the nature of the Creator, have been preserved in sacred Scripture.
Christians believe our Heavenly Father is known through His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself told His disciples, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” The New Testament book of Hebrews begins like this: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.” (Heb 1:1-3)
Through scientific inquiry humankind gains understanding of God’s greatness, glory, and power. Through our study of His Holy Word, and an informed faith in Christ, we are given a glimpse into His mercy, grace, and forgiveness. Well-educated people wisely pursue both avenues of understanding. Education prepares young men and women for successful careers and productive lives.
When it is rightly pursued, it also paves the way for them to understand the greatness and glory of our Creator. Jesus declared that we are to love God with all our mind as well as the heart.
Only those who willingly choose to blind themselves to the light of nature and divine revelation will insist otherwise. The men and women who labor to teach our children deserve our support as well as our prayers. They are engaged in a potentially eye-opening enterprise.