Chester Clark

Ouachita Hills College

True Education

I'd just like to invite you to bow your heads with me for an additional word of prayer.

Father tonight we have already invited your presence to be with us.

We recognize though that We are powerless to understand truth.

We are incapable of applying truth to our own hearts and lives unless your spirit guide us.

So once again, we want to just pause and ask that your presence might be here.

May you open our understandings in a way that only you can do.

Tonight I want to talk with you briefly about Christian education.

What is the difference between Christian education and just education in general?

Some might say the answer lies in the fact that at a Christian school you have Christian teachers.

You know that's an interesting answer because in reality in the founding of America there were Christian schools and there were public schools, were there not?

And the Christian schools were, of course, taught by Christian teachers, but guess what?

Maybe that's not the main difference between Christian education and education in general.

Some might say, well, a Christian school has a Bible class.

Because a public school doesn't have a Bible class, does it?

The wall of separation between church and state prohibits public schools from teaching religion.

But is that the only difference between Christian education and education in general.

You know, if we go back to the early days, and we're not gonna spend much time there today, but in the early days of God's people, education received a priority.

We could go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, in fact, couldn't we?

That'd be a pretty neat school to go to, wouldn't it?

With God as your teacher, with the garden as your classroom, with The mysteries of science opening before you on a daily basis, communing with God.

And there in the Eden School is really where we find the real purpose for education.

The purpose for education is so that we can commune with God, the human mind coming into contact with the divine mind.

We can come up through the history of God's people.

We could look at the schools of the prophets.

I want to skip down though quite a few years down to the time of the Reformation.

By the time the Reformation came around, people recognized that they needed a change in education.

In fact, Martin Luther said this, I am much afraid that the universities will prove to be the what?

The great gates of hell, unless they diligently labor in explaining the holy scriptures and engraving them in the hearts of youth.

I advise no 1 to place his child where the scriptures do not reign paramount.

Every institution in which men are not unceasingly occupied with the Word of God must become corrupt." Did Martin Luther understand that there was a need for a change in the principles of education?

Oh, the universities of Martin Luther's days were advanced.

They knew philosophy, they studied the classics, they studied ancient languages, they studied the science of their day, they studied history, they studied all kinds of things, but what did they not study?

And if they did, they didn't make the study of the Scriptures paramount.

And so Martin Luther says very frankly, very candidly, I would not encourage anyone to send their children to an institution where the Scriptures do not reign paramount.

These universities will become the gates of hell.

Which way is the way that leadeth to destruction?

Which way is the way that leads to life eternal?

And Martin Luther recognized, although he stood almost as a solo voice against the great systems of knowledge and education in Europe.

He recognized that the Word of God must be true.

Something had to change if they would save their children from eternal destruction.

And so, schools were established by the Reformers, schools that made the Word of God the center of education.

It was as if in those schools, the students were occupied with understanding the Bible better.

Not just the ideas of the Bible, but the experiences which the Bible described.

The way of salvation was to be open before the students.

That was really the purpose of those schools, to focus their mind upon the Word of God, engraving them the words of God in the minds of the youth.

These schools had such a profound impact that the Reformation very quickly spread from country to country to country because young people from all over Europe wanted to go to a school where the science of salvation was understood.

Though they wanted to go to a school, not just a school where they could learn about history and philosophy and the languages.

Oh, there were bigger schools and better schools.

The young people from all over Europe said, we want to go where we can get an education in the things of God.

And they flocked to Wittenberg to learn from Luther, to learn from Melanchthon, to learn from the other professors that were teaching there, the Word of God, the things of God.

And then, after they learned German, studied in Germany, they would go back to their countries and they began this work of reformation.

We talk about the reformation as if it were just sort of a sociological phenomenon.

Young people, the reformation was nothing more than the Word of God having an effect on people's hearts and lives.

And that spread from country to country, much of that spread was due to young people just like you.

Young people who knew there was a difference between Christian education and any other education they might be able to receive.

The organized church of the day didn't like that because the Reformation included in many cases a departure from the teachings of the Christian Church, the Roman Catholic Church.

And in the Second Council of Trent, I'm sorry, in the Council of Trent, there was specific measures taken, we call it the Counter-Reformation.

And part of the Counter-Reformation was to neutralize the impact of Protestant schools.

And within about 1 generation, not too long after the Reformers had passed from the scene, those schools were no longer unceasingly occupied by the Word of God and what Martin Luther predicted took place.

I'll tell you exactly how they became corrupt.

They started adopting the thinking of the world.

The study of the Bible was replaced by the study of philosophers, of the fathers, of historians, of the classics.

Many things were studied which it was felt people who were educated needed to know.

I mean, how could you not be intelligent in the Greek mythology and all of these things that every educated person knew?

The purpose of school is to get you out to work.

And every hour that is taken up with Something that is not necessary is displacing something that is necessary.

And so the schools of the day began like the schools in the rest of Europe.

The Protestant schools began to reflect the curriculum and the thinking of the great universities.

The place of the Bible in education was lost sight of.

In the Protestant system, the importance of degrees and of being called a doctor and all those, that was downplayed, but not with the educational system widespread in Europe.

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True Education

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