higher education

Education is very important. I don’t think that anyone would deny that. I fight for all our foster girls to go to college. They are given an opportunity that very few people are given. They are given the option to attend a private four year college for free, no loans, no debt. This is amazing. Yet, most of our kids have been uncertain about college, I was. Looking back, I would love the opportunity to go to college for free, I wouldn’t have appreciated it then, but now, the worth of that education is huge. I push and encourage our girls to go even if they are uncertain, because, even if they don’t want to be there initially, I do not think that when they are thirty they will regret having been given a free college education. I know many people who regret not going to college, I can’t think of any that regret going.
An education will provide for you and your family. In this culture, education is everything. We will always hear of underdog stories, of businesses built by unschooled men, of the high school dropout that later invented something that amassed him a fortune, and we like those stories, they give us hope. But the reality is that those stories are great because they aren’t the norm. They make great movies because they are atypical. If that was the experience of the common person, colleges would be obsolete. And the stories we would be fascinated by would be about the guy that stayed in school and worked hard and got the job he was working hard to get. No, in our culture, those that work hard and get a good education are more likely to “succeed” in our culture, and really, in every culture around the world. This is why I fight for our girls to go to college.
An education will improve your “quality” of life. No doubt about it. Are there formerly successful CEOs living on the streets? Sure, especially in the current economic crisis. Are there highly educated people looking for jobs with out success? Yes. But the other side of the story is that there are high school dropouts looking for jobs and high school dropouts living on the streets, and without doing any research, I doubt the ratio is 1:1. Again, we hear the story of the successful lawyer or politician that has lost it all and we enjoy hearing it, mainly because it makes us feel better about ourselves. Those movies are entertaining because they level the playing field and give us hope. But the reality is that when someone with an education is applying for a job against someone without an education, who do you think will get the job? An education definitely has the very real potential to improve your quality of life.
An education will most likely make you more money. Not guaranteed but likely. There is an add running on the radio for a university in my area that states over a lifetime people with a college education will make almost a quarter million more dollars. That is a lot of money. Again, are there those that defy that, sure.
An education is very important. I don’t have to tell you that. I urge all our girls to go to college.
Yet, an education by itself is useless. Perhaps it is worst than useless. Perhaps, like Leo Tolstoy, an education will only make you wiser to what life is. Tolstoy of coarse wrote “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” he was brilliant. But his brilliance led him to understand what most of us don’t understand today, namely, that life (without God) is pointless and vain and worthless. He attempted suicide several times and removed his children from school to save them the despair of having to understand the pointlessness of life. He thought that if he could keep his children from learning and education they would never realize what it was that he realized, life was futile. But that is not the end of his story.
Leo Tolstoy became a Christian. The thinking man, the brilliant man, the author of one of the most famous volumes ever, became a Christian. He put his children back in school. He understood now the value of an education. He was still brilliant and thinking and fully convinced of Christ.
An education is important but an education not to the glory of God is pointless. You see a great education in the perspective of eternity is of no value apart from Jesus. It may serve you well here but it can never give you right standing before God. An education can never deal with your sins. Only Jesus, dying in your place, to cover your sins, can prepare for eternity.
I urge all our girls to go to college, if not here somewhere, but go. I also urge, with greater stress and importance, to trust Jesus. Because an education \may serve you well in this life, but without Jesus, there is no hope for this life… or the next.