The striking thing about education is that everyone is an expert on the subject. Everyone has his opinion. Perhaps that is understandable because we have all been to school and have experienced education. Nevertheless, we would do well for our philosophy of education to turn to God’s word. In Proverbs 17 we read, The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.
These words could be regarded as a summary of all the wisdom literature. The same words or similar appear in one Scripture after another: Proverbs 910 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight. Proverbs 1533 The fear of the Lord is instruction in wisdom. Psalm 11110 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all those who practise it have a good understanding. Job 2828 Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to turn away from evil is understanding.
The text suggests two heads –
1. The fear of the Lord
Repeatedly I hear people say, “But we shouldn’t fear the Lord, should we?” as if the answer is obviously negative. But surely we should fear Him. If He is Almighty, our Creator, Sustainer and Judge He is awesome. If we are totally dependent upon Him and at His mercy we must hold Him in great regard. In one hymn after another we seem to express approval of fear of God.
How dread are Thine eternal years
O everlasting Lord,
by prostrate spirits day and night
incessantly adored!
O how I fear Thee living God,
with deepest tenderest fears,
and worship Thee with trembling hope
and penitential tears!
God is all powerful and utterly holy. I am not. He cannot abide un-holiness. That makes me tremble. It is right that we stand in awe of God. 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. Come on, He is God almighty and I am a speck of dirt on the face of the planet.
Because Jesus has died I will be acquitted on judgment day and so I have peace with God and peace concerning my eternal destiny. Yet even in that assurance I have to feel some awe and trembling before Him.
Now this is all about our relationship with God. Let me propose that education is about relationships. If someone on the street spits at me as I go by, I may well think, “What an uneducated person – what an ignorant person!” An educated man will relate to people in a proper way. Education is about relationships – relationships with the world about us, with people and society, and with ourselves; and a true education is about relationship with God too.
Everyone relates to God in some way or another. There is the relationship that is warm and willingly submissive, so that I say, “How wonderful God is, how good to me, how great and how gracious – my God how wonderful Thou art!” I relate to God in a particular way. Another man may relate to God in a very different way – perhaps he ignores God, perhaps he rebels against God – even when he senses God prompting his conscience he kicks against God and refuses Him. Perhaps he despises God. He may even declares himself to be an atheist and says that he believes that there is no God. This is an ignorant man – an uneducated man. The context in which a genuine education takes place is the fear of the Lord – an appropriate relationship with God.
2. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Education
This does not mean that you need the fear of the Lord at the beginning and that you can then leave it behind once you have got going. 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. 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. So belief in the Lord is regarded as the beginning in the sense of that which can be left behind.
This is not the kind of ‘beginning’ that is intended by the proverb; here we have the beginning in the sense of that which is foundational. 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! The foundation is essential to what you go on to build. With no proper foundation you will end up with a pile of bricks and sticks when the storm comes.
Without the beginning — the foundation — knowledge will turn out to be a worthless pile of information. Mere information is not knowledge or education. Go back to Genesis 3 and the fall. The serpent said “If you just forget God and what He said about the fruit you will have knowledge – you will know good and evil.” 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. But this new knowledge was not to their advantage at all. It was a disaster and the consequence was dreadful damage in every sphere. Move on to Genesis 11 where we read of the great tower that was built at Babel. People said that they would do something impressive and make a name for themselves as very clever, educated people. When they had built it was an extraordinary feat, but what good was it? They did it against God and He confused them and scattered them. These accounts in the Old Testament narrative illustrate that all the information and cleverness apart from God is worthless. 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 he does not even have the beginning of education. Our world rewards with academic honours those who have no true education.
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?
Are you an educated person? I do not mean to ask about your paper qualifications. Paul spoke of Christ who has become our wisdom: …Jesus Christ, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption (1 Corinthians 130). I mean to ask you, ‘do you have a respectful and loving relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ?’ To establish an appropriate relationship with God is to have the foundation of real education.