A Life of Learning |
I tell my students that leaders are readers and readers are leaders. But I find that many people do not read, or what they read is not worth reading. Reading is to lead to learning. Learning is that which leads to light. Many references in the Bible about knowledge are positive, a source for good, and can also be a means of warning and protection (Ps 119). In the garden, God said; “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Gen. 2:17). It is the only prohibition that God gave Adam and Eve and it was for their good. The fact is, some knowledge belongs to God alone (Deut. 29:29) and when we attempt to gain this knowledge apart from God, we seek to declare our human independence from God. As Daniel Alshire reminds us, “Knowledge split apart from God is like atoms splitting in a nuclear explosion. The power unleashed causes great damage. Knowledge, when removed from the divine source, can become idolatrous and destructive; it eviscerates the goodness of learning and its generative contribution to human flourishing.” Learning can lead to the light, but it also has a shadow side which is evident when a good thing is used the wrong way, for a bad purpose, and opposes the will of God. When man seeks to go beyond himself, it often results in him living beneath himself. When we seek to go beyond the boundaries that God has placed upon us, we find ourselves in a state of bondage God never intended for us. Ideas can be ingenious, but they can also be idolatrous. As science takes us into new and uncharted waters creating new ethical challenges, we must always ask the ethical question as well as the science question. We must ask not only, “Can we do it?” but “Should we do it?” Serving Him with you until He comes for us, Fred |