Right Questions Wrong Answers

The other day I ran across this quote from C. S. Lewis.


Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.
C. S. Lewis 


There are certain strains in our society that tell us that education is the solution to all the ills of our society. As someone who actually believes in sin I disagree with this position.  The problem isn't uneducated people, the problem is people.  As a society we've been reminded of this with the recent economic abuse enacted on regular people by Bernie Madoff and his ilk, but we also see it in the political sex scandals of Wiener and Strauss-Kahn. These were all well educated people who commit wrongs against others, abusing their position and justifying there wrong doing.  All of this lines up with this quote and what ultimately underlines humanity. Sinful and corrupted human beings  to serve self first. Sadly when the educated sin, it often has the potential to hurt many more people.


This TIME article reinforces this idea that its not only the uneducated (or entitled "celebrities") who sin.  The author points out that the rich steal more often than the poor.  From an economic and needs standpoint that doesn't make sense at all. Yet this is the reality, educated people easily rationalizing why they don't need to follow the rules.  Why they can do as they see fit.  


I think its the unwillingness to submit that is at the heart of all sin.  We rebel against God and his ways, we put ourselves on the throne and proceed to serve self above all.  For some of us those sins might express themselves in shoplifting, or sex scandals or financial indiscretions, but for all of us we stand against God rather than at his feet.  Education (while extremely important and highly recommended and something my kids had better commit to or else) doesn't help us submit our will to God.  Instead it gives us more tools with which to rationalize and justify our self serving nature. Scripture says since knowledge puffs up and as we are grow ever prouder it becomes harder and harder to submit. So lets pray that God would give us humble hearts, that we would see our sin for what it is, and that we wouldn't pin all of our hopes on the answers and pathways the world provides. Instead lets pin our hopes on Christ and walk humbly and act justly.  


I'm hoping to post a follow up relating to awareness as the hipster answer to social problems related to this idea that education is the answer to everything...

Illustrious

My posting has been anything but.  However I'm gonna start posting illustrations here for my own future reference and if anyone else wants to post them. As I read I'll rewrite them, not verbatim and only reference the book not pages.  


The cockapoo and the pitbull


Once there was this cockapoo (cocker spaniel/poodle mix) that was a long time resident of a couple who then decided to get a pit bull as a puppy.  The cockapoo did not like this uninvited guest in the least and bullied the puppy into submission, even as the pitbull outgrew the cockapoo it didn't dare challenge its former tormentor.  One day the cockapoo got some gum or something in its hair and needed too get it cut off.  Well upon his return he started walking around as if he owned the place, but the pitbull saw this skinny shaved dog prancing about in his house and jumped his housemate with the full force of a pitbull.  At that moment the relationship changed forever...
In the same way, Satan is a parading pretender and we don't live in the victory that Christ has won for us. Instead we are bullied, and beaten down under the weight of our sins when we should really be reminded of the power of God's grace and not our own weakness.  




The second is about submission.  Say a car and 18 wheeler are driving down the highway, but soon a lane is merging in and the 18 wheeler is in the lane that is being merged.  The big massive truck is the one that needs to yield due to nothing more than its position. It is required to follow the rules in order to avoid a big mess.  In the same way we are all called to submit in lots of situations, the most talked about one is wives to husbands. Less talked about are the biblical commands to submit to God, (James 4:7) Pastors and Elders (Hebrews 13:17) Gov't (1 Peter 2:13-15) and Employers (1 peter 2:18) as well as children to parents.


Both are taken from PB Wilson's liberated through submission