Some people don't understand how much difference a good education makes. It opens your eyes to a wider world. It helps you understand things you never understood before. It gives you opportunities for a better life that you would never have had without the education.
But education isn't enough. No matter how many PhD degrees you get, your heart is still no different than anyone else's. We're all still basically selfish, out for what we can get, focused on taking care of No. 1 and making the best life for ourselves we can.
God's Word says: "There is no one who is righteous, not even one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside" (Romans 3:10-12).
The reason education doesn't solve everything is that we have a heart problem, not a head problem. Jesus said that all sorts of evil -- theft, murder, adultery, deceit, envy, pride -- begins in the human heart (Mark 7:21-22).
It's like when termites get into the eaves of a house. They tunnel into the wood from behind. When it rains, moisture gets into the wood, and it begins to rot. Outside, the eaves are nice and white, but the wood underneath is rotten. Paint it as often as you want, but the rot keeps eating away beneath the surface.
So get another degree. Fill your head with more knowledge. But you still won't be a better person than an uneducated tribesman in the jungles of Borneo.
You want to be a new person? You want to get rid of the old you that is never satisfied and always wants what it can't or shouldn't have? You want to experience the change that sets you free from the sin that rules your heart now?
Only Jesus Christ can make that radical a change in your heart. But when you admit that your heart needs to be changed and you ask Him to come in and take over, He makes an entirely new person out of you.
"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away; new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
Are you ready for the education of a lifetime?
Posted on
Mon, February 22, 2010
by D. James Kinnaird