This month, campus life and classes are ramping up at Cooperative Program-supported schools, like Hannibal-LaGrange University, Missouri Baptist University, Southwest Baptist University and Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary/Spurgeon College.
Across the state, Missouri Baptist churches and associations have in recent years begun—or are expanding—their own educational programs: for example, churches like Crossway Baptist, Springfield; Heritage Baptist and Hillcrest Baptist, Lebanon; Tower Grove Baptist, St. Louis; Lynwood Baptist, Cape Girardeau. Many other Missouri Baptist churches and ministries are collecting school supplies and helping families in other ways as the school year begins.
Moreover, hundreds of Missouri Baptists are investing in their communities by teaching young people at public and private schools and universities across the state. And thousands of Missouri Baptist parents are now beginning the daily process of helping their children understand math problems, prepare for spelling quizzes, decipher their Spanish homework, and write term papers.
It’s clear, then, that Missouri Baptists are heavily invested in education – and this shouldn’t be any surprise.
Christians throughout history have shown a deep concern for learning and education. Consider this, for example: In the late fifth and early sixth centuries, as the Roman empire was declining, a Christian Roman statesman named Cassiodorus promoted education in the liberal arts, ultimately handing them down to us through the Middle Ages. During the Middle Ages, Christians invented the university system. And centuries later, in the United States, Christians founded the nation’s first universities (Harvard University’s original motto, adopted in 1692, was Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae – that is, “Truth for Christ and the Church”). Eventually, these universities abandoned their Christian ideals – a sad tale told by church historian George Marsden in his book, The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief.
Of course, Christians have long recognized that learning and education (particularly, in matters of this world) aren’t ultimate. They remember the apostle Paul’s warning, “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” As the devout Christian poet George Herbert said in the early 17th-century, people have long explored the heavens and the ocean depths; they have “sought out and found” many things, but they too often fail to seek out their “dear God.”
In 1939, less than two months after the outbreak of World War II, Oxford don C.S. Lewis consoled undergraduate students experiencing the insecurities of war.
How, these students wondered, could they focus on their studies when the fate of Europe hung in the balance?
Even more importantly, Lewis responded, how was it “right, or even psychologically possible, for creatures who are every moment advancing either to Heaven or to hell to spend any fraction of the little time allowed them in this world on such comparative trivialities as literature or art, mathematics or biology”? This question begs an answer.
Lewis answered these questions in two ways: First, he said, God put in human nature the capacity and desire to learn and to pursue the knowledge of truth, beauty and goodness. And, in keeping with their nature, humans have pursued learning even in the face of disaster. “They propound mathematical theorems in beleaguered cities,” he said, and they “conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells.”
Second, since it’s in our God-given nature to pursue these ends, we’re bound to do so. In other words, we’ll always receive some kind of education. The only question is, What kind of education will we receive? “If you attempted … to suspend your whole intellectual and aesthetic activity, you would only succeed in substituting a worse cultural life for a better,” Lewis said. “You are not, in fact, going to read nothing …: if you don’t read good books, you will read bad ones. If you don’t go on thinking rationally, you will think irrationally.”
This brings us to one key reason why Missouri Baptists must be invested in education: No matter what else may happen, children and young people across our state are learning something. We should do all we can to make sure they learn the truth. We should call people – no matter how old they may be – to love God not only with heart and strength, but also with all their minds (Mark 12:30). We can and should call them back to the foundation of a true education: “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7).