Whenever people ask what I’ll do with an English degree, I have a ready answer: “I have no idea.”
Unlike engineering or nursing students, an English major’s career path treads in ambiguity. I became an English major not because I had a specific career in mind, but because I wanted to sharpen my skills as a reader, writer, and critical thinker. However, I felt pressured to settle on some—any—career path, to justify my time at college.
Since grammar school, I have followed a utilitarian view of education. I was told that my education must center around my career, and my career on what would make the most money. I believed that what I learned in world history was only useful to get a good grade. I took honors and AP classes to increase my chances of getting into college. Even in college, general education became a box to check in order to move on to career-focused classes.
However, the notion that education is an instrumental—rather than intrinsic—good is more worldly than Christian. In John Milton’s Of Education, he writes:
“The end of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents by regaining to know God aright, and out of that knowledge to love him, to imitate him, to be like him, as we may the nearest by possessing our souls of true virtue, which being united to the heavenly grace of faith makes up the highest perfection.”
—John Milton
Milton believes that education is one of God’s ordained means to reverse the curse of the fall. God created us as thinking and feeling creatures, calling us to love Him with all our minds and hearts. While Adam’s sin has darkened our minds and hardened our hearts, education habituates us to think and feel in God-honoring ways.
This Godward, as opposed to inward, focus makes Christian education distinct. Colossians 1:16 says, “all things were created through him and for him.” Christ is the genesis, glue, and goal of the cosmos. He is the Logos, the true wisdom of God, “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:3). Far from being incompatible with reason, Christianity is the garden in which the mind grows best.
Since all truth springs from Christ, Christians need not fear embracing it when found in non-Christian sources. God has revealed himself not just through the book of the Word, but also the book of the world. Many of those who reject God are still astute readers of God’s world. Often, they see His glory in unique ways and can help open our eyes to see more of the world’s wonders.
A materialistic worldview reduces education according to its usefulness in the here and now. But as Christians, we walk by faith and not by sight. We believe in the “deeper magic,” the unseen things that are often more true than the seen things. The value of a Christian approach to education is that it bends our souls toward virtue and cultivates a moral imagination shaped by our teleological end. Could education have a grander goal?
Featured image by jcomp
- On a Christian Approach to Education - May 20, 2024
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