Terry wrote > Don't you
suspect,Lance, that anyone who stays in the word daily has to be
changed ? Why is it that you would expect the most change from the
most educated? God hides things from the wise and reveals them to
babes.
Lance wrote > Yes Terry, I would. In actuality, with some,
this does not happen. I do not know why. By the by, education, as you
and some others cite as problematic from time to time, is not the
issue. The issue is the heart.
You are correct, Lance. There is no indication in Scripture that
Christians are to remain in an uniformed and uneducated state, nor is
there any virtue in ignorance. The devil has made major inroads with
this lie. In fact, he gets more mileage out of it than any other lie in
the church today; it is the one which reads something like this: "to be
formally educated is to be spiritually obtuse." Read Wheaton College
professor Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind
(Eerdmans:Grand Rapids, 1994); he maps the path of this movement. Read
also Os Guinness' Fit Bodies, Fat Minds: Why Evangelicals Don't
Think And What To Do About IT (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, 1994).
The admonition which our Lord made
to his followers, which anti-intellectuals miss, is that we are to be
like little children -- not insensate, nor ignorant, not stupid, but
able to learn. The word for "child" is paidion; it comes
from a word which means formable or impressionable, able to be stamped
by the character of another. Jesus warns the know-it-all
religious-types of his day that they would need to repent and
become like little children, in other words, teachable, or they
would not inherit the kingdom of heaven. When Christians use statements
like Matthew 18.3ff and the verse referenced above to elevate their
ignorance and justify their unwillingness to learn from others, they
establish themselves as the hard-hearted of our day; they are those who
refuse to convert. In all actuality they are those who refuse to be
like little children. And to their shame, Jesus also warned that,
instead of chastising the impressionable, teachable ones among them, it
is appropriate for his followers to welcome them into their midst, that
they might observe them and learn from them in order to become learners
like they are, because "whoever welcomes a little paidia like
this in my name welcomes me" (Mat 18.5). So do not be discouraged by
their baseless bravado, Lance. Know-it-alls have nothing more to
learn; they refused to change their mind in Jesus' day as well.
Bill