The Purpose of Education – The Law of God and Public Policy: Education (2)

The Purpose of Education

The Law of God and Public Policy: Education (2)

Education is primarily moral and spiritual in nature, not economical and vocational.

“Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it, that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, that your days may be long.” Deuteronomy 6:1, 2

It is a misunderstanding of the work of education to believe that its primary purpose is to prepare individuals to take their place as responsible participants in the economic system. American education today is entirely focused on economics, on helping young people to discover their vocation and to find a job. That is, American educational policy is devoted above all else to practical, economical, and vocational ends.

Such a policy ignores the fact that human beings, made in the image of God, are not first of all producers and consumers, but spiritual and moral beings. As such, the human soul will flounder in discontentment and be a slave to covetous longings apart from a true relationship with God, as Augustine observed: “You have made us for Yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their repose in You.” American education has created a generation of human beings “without chests,” to recall C. S. Lewis’ memorable phrase. Graduates of our schools possess many cognitive, practical, and technical skills, but they lack proper affections and values to orient them toward justice and neighbor-love. American education, based on secular and evolutionary premises, denies a place for spiritual concerns and pursues the competitive and ultimately self-defeating end of material prosperity as its highest ideal.

The Law of God teaches that the purpose of education is first of all to know, fear, love, and serve the Lord our God. Unless students are taught to get and keep their spiritual houses in order, they will not be able to prevent the ruinous power of sin from corrupting their souls and damaging all their relationships and activities in the social sphere. The large majority of America’s institutions of higher learning, prior to the Civil War, were founded on the premise that only a proper spiritual and moral foundation could produce citizens worthy of a democracy and able to contribute to its proper functioning and full fruition. An early Harvard motto declared the purpose of that institution to be “To lay Christ in the bottom.”

All this has now, of course been lost, as George Marsden explained in The Soul of the American University. Christians continue to seek a spiritual and moral purpose for the education of their children in various alternative programs to the public schools. However, as stewards of all that God has entrusted us—including our tax dollars and voting rights—we must not give up on seeking a proper purpose for the education of the children of this land. America has become “a nation at risk” following the present purpose and course of educational policy. Christians, who have the right understanding of the purpose of education, must not be reluctant to augur for that purpose by working to affect public policy in this arena.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T.M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).

Scripture quotations in this article are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, (c) copyright 2001, 2007 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.